Everyone is going on about how suddenly finding a programming gig is or has become a lot harder why with the outbreak and the economic downturn it is going g to cause.

But realistically is it true? Did I just pick a bad time to start a new career in this particular field or is it just FUD?

If you're established, it's marginally harder. If you're not, there's a hiring freeze.

Kind of a statement of the obvious though; if someone wants you, the barriers disappear. I'd estimate it's 20% harder than normal right now.

Get ready for 3 years of doing shitty paid internships until you find a junior dev position.
Because after 2008 every company only wanted 25 year olds super seniors with 10 year of experience for the price of a salami sandwich.

Well between the two of you it only sounds marginally worse, nothing that can't be overcome.

If theres a hiring freeze on newbies I'll just do what everyone we else over the last 20 years has had to adjust to doing in the new economy: inflate my resume and bullshit my way into a job. Sucks for hiring managers but you have to eat and pay rent either way, and neither college degrees nor service jobs do either of those things.

That's how everything has worked in the west for years anyway.
This isn't any different.

I almost feel optimistic, thanks. Maybe it's delusions.

@Wisecrack maybe something for you. An apprenticeship is where you work and study while getting paid. Obama imported that system to the USA from Switzerland and Germany back in 2012.

https://apprenticeship.gov/become-a...

@heyheni
Legit hoping it's not a rehash of 2008.

@SortOfTested oh this is economical Armageddon. 2008 was nothing compared what lies ahead of us. Covid19 won't disappear until there is a vaccine or treatment. The infections will start to vane down by October November in the rich countries because of lockdowns. But in the South Americas and African countries it will spread rampant and disrupt the global economy further. My guess is 30-40% unemployment in the USA and 15-20% in the EU. Especially those under 30 years olds will be hit hardest.

@heyheni
I just meant in terms of hiring, discarding of college graduates. It's definitely economically fucked. The US will just print more money. The third world is unfortunately toast.

Pretty sure this is how China becomes the new world power.

You're both pretty smart. Are the projections for this that bad?

Is it seriously on the scale of 2008 or worse? Am I just not seeing it?

@Wisecrack
Hard to say, depends on how governments respond. Given the present state of international leadership, it's not looking good.

What happened in 2008 was a perfect storm for hiring. An entire 4 year span lost an estimated $45k on their total lifetime max salary potential due to a combination of economic downturn and panic cost cutting. Many employees were laid off and told if they wanted to continue in their jobs they had to come back as contractors so the employers could cut retirement and medical benefit expenses. The employees, of course, saw salary cuts and reduced, eliminated benefits as the firms they ended up working for were just holding their w2s.

The crisis was also exploited by predatory staffing firms who doubled down on visa labor. Between 2007 and 2008, the number of professional labor visas increased 25% amid rampant unemployment, it was the first time the cap had been fully saturated. This play was a long game as they didn't generally make less than local resources, they were simply prohibited from obtaining pay increases during their potential six year visa duration, so over time you save as much as 10% compounding over the period. That 10% has a compounding negative effect of future salaries across the market as year over year pay increases and cost of living will never be recouped.

So yeah, 2008 was basically the point where the industry went to shit for a large number of people.

Edit: digestible write up on this topic, fixing numbers, need to stop talking while writing
https://google.com/amp/s/...

Damn, i am also a probably 2020 graduate, and am from India. I am just trying not to end up again in an exploitive environment, but it looks sulky jobs and exploiting environment is going to be the new norm :(

@SortOfTested wow, did not know it was that bad over there. I mean we had some pay freezes and stuff here in the nordics but didn't experience it that bad.

@ArcaneEye
Never underestimate the ability of American corporations to disregard human life. In the realm of building exploitative systems that slowly strip away people's ability to live, they're second to none.

Before coronavirus, 53% of Americans made 30k/year or less. The realistic living wage is 38k. In 2014, 40% earned at or less than 20, which is below the poverty line.

@Wisecrack
2008 was the foreplay, 2020 is the hardcore part.

The U.S american population has so much debt. The 2008 subprime crisis happend because people got a house who could not afford it. And the banks hid that fact in financial constructs. Once someone found that out, the house of card came crashing down in 08.

Today because of the Covid19 pandemic millions of americans loose their job by the day now. Which means they can't pay their car payments, mortgages, credit cards, student loans anymore. It's 2008 all over again but multiplied. In short americans are fucked!

Car debt bubble
https://bloomberg.com/news/...

If you're interested in learning more about Capitalism you may want to consider reading the book or audio book "Karl Marx - Das Kapital".
Also maybe read this about Neoliberalism too.
https://theguardian.com/books/2016/...

@heyheni
The trick here is the entire world entire economy is based on US debt, and the ability of the US to print money. The fluidity of economies is extremely lopsided. China's banks, the 5 of them combined amounting to 3x the nearest largest bank, is sitting on an enormously upside down pile of foreign debt that they will have to forgive. 80% of it is US debt.

I have a slightly more pessimistic, but somehow also more optimistic view of the outcome of this. My wager is that the world governments will simply start defaulting on and forgiving debt in equal measure as a means of propping up the necessarily fiat currency.

We'll find ouuuuuuut.
https://scmp.com/business/...

@SortOfTested yeah good point. Also nice for linking south china morning post.
@Wisecrack you are what news you read. That's why it's a good idea to follow newspapers from around the world.
New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic.

200 top Newspapers
https://www.4imn.com/top200/

@heyheni
They're best taken with a grain of salt, but they're largely accurate with your spin filter on.

My company is still hiring and on-boarding people remotely during this.

Honestly if you have food, utilities, and shelter covered, and you don’t have a big opportunity lined up, fire up an LLC and start hunting some contracts. Yea it will be shitware to begin with but it’s real, professional experience and it will pay bills now and dividends later.

One thing to note about this situation and how it pertains to development jobs is that we are going to see (are actively seeing) a major shift towards enabling remote work for a lot of folks who couldn't do it before. Depending on how everything shakes out economically for the major world powers, there's going to be new opportunities for building and maintaining a massive online office infrastructure that was more of a niche before, and will soon become mainstream. So I would recommend paying attention to the companies your are applying for, and whether they have a strategy for adapting to the post corona world. The ones that do will thrive, the ones that don't will wither. All that being said, the overall job market in the short/middle term is going to suffer and wage growth will falter, but the world is still going to need devs

@SortOfTested

I was gonna post something darker here but fuck it. Already enough bad news going around.

Way it sounds, maybe we'll survive this.

Just have to keep trying.