IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.
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Noodleface
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We got hit so hard recently, 2/3rd of our team got wiped out. I'm a bit insulated because I am leading a special project, but I'd be lying if I wasn't slightly worried. If they did let me go theyd lose this project for sure though.
I have been perusing job postings again. It's slim pickings but there's another problem too - this year they gave me a 30% raise and essentially priced me out of finding a new job unless I take a cut. I'm not complaining about the raise, but I really feel in a weird position.
The other issue is I am a tech lead now, and maybe a question for others in a similar role, so I really don't write much code. I review a lot of code though. I'm wondering how the skills i use now (a lot of soft skills, leadership, etc) should transfer to a new job. I don't mind writing code, but I definitely feel like I've hit an area where I really excel at the position I'm in. Has anyone gone from a tech lead at one company to another? What kind of role are you looking for, architect level or what?
I have been perusing job postings again. It's slim pickings but there's another problem too - this year they gave me a 30% raise and essentially priced me out of finding a new job unless I take a cut. I'm not complaining about the raise, but I really feel in a weird position.
The other issue is I am a tech lead now, and maybe a question for others in a similar role, so I really don't write much code. I review a lot of code though. I'm wondering how the skills i use now (a lot of soft skills, leadership, etc) should transfer to a new job. I don't mind writing code, but I definitely feel like I've hit an area where I really excel at the position I'm in. Has anyone gone from a tech lead at one company to another? What kind of role are you looking for, architect level or what?
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alavaz
Trakanon Raider
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I would be worried that you're in a niche tech lead role and it's just going to be a middle manager role anywhere else (even though they'll say it's not). If you leave, I'd go back to firmware dev unless some people you trust can vouch for the tech lead role not being all meetings and bullshit.
Hopefully you've been just saving that %30 like you never got it. I assume your company gives some severance too so I'd just ride it out.
Hopefully you've been just saving that %30 like you never got it. I assume your company gives some severance too so I'd just ride it out.
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Solution or software architect for you. Just be sure to stay technically sharp.
I have been 5 years in a senior architect role and the lack of hands on with network gear has really hurt my critical thinking.
I asked for a lab for my team and think we will get it.
The soft skills are absolutely valuable. The bridge of technical to interpersonal is real.
You developers in general are some thick headed peeps.
I have senior pen testers arguing that app proxies are the same as dedicated utility boxes for development and privileged management
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Noodleface
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Thanks guys.
In terms of remaining technically sharp, it kind of comes with the territory. Besides we write in C, so it's not like new C features are coming.
I will say that a lot of my time is in bullshit meetings, but I'm also in some very high level architecture meetings. I am definitely more of an architect role now, but it's tough to know how well that translates into other companies. Firmware is kind of niche itself, and uefi is like as niche as you can get.
Soft skills make me laugh because I am sure that is why I got moved to where I am over others. I am basically translating from the autistic developers to the higher up normies constantly. Being able to communicate is just severely lacking from engineers.
Also we're building a team and I'm actively involved in the hiring. It's just kind of weird because my title is way lower than what I'm doing.
In terms of remaining technically sharp, it kind of comes with the territory. Besides we write in C, so it's not like new C features are coming.
I will say that a lot of my time is in bullshit meetings, but I'm also in some very high level architecture meetings. I am definitely more of an architect role now, but it's tough to know how well that translates into other companies. Firmware is kind of niche itself, and uefi is like as niche as you can get.
Soft skills make me laugh because I am sure that is why I got moved to where I am over others. I am basically translating from the autistic developers to the higher up normies constantly. Being able to communicate is just severely lacking from engineers.
Also we're building a team and I'm actively involved in the hiring. It's just kind of weird because my title is way lower than what I'm doing.
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moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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Now you just need to upgrade those nerd herding skills you got from the van by... getting the van back in action!
Seriously, though, start telling your bosses what you want in terms of money and life balance. You are the one keeping the money train rolling. They know it. You know it. You know they will fuck you sideways the moment they can replace you with AI or a poo.
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Noodleface
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Kithani
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Nirgon
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Microsoft buys more than a billion dollars’ worth of excrement, including human poop, to clean up its AI mess — company will pump waste underground to offset AI carbon emissions
It wants to bury poop deep underground to counter all the pollution that its data centers generate.
So we are using poop to reduce the "carbon footprint" of people using AI to make India poop pictures...
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Noodleface
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Stop building in China, hiring in India, Trump warns tech majors - Times of India
US News: President Trump has urged American tech companies to prioritize hiring in the US, aiming to curb overseas job creation in countries like India and Chi
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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Noodleface
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As someone who doesn't really care about AI.. stop the India invasion please
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Kriptini
Vyemm Raider
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Hiring locally is more important than AI protections. I lost my last career due to outsourcing. That is already a problem. AI won't be a problem for a little while still at least... and even then, it seems likely that we will still need human operators in AI-integrated industries. We can learn how to do new tasks alongside AI, but we can't compete with India slave labor.
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Control
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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It's a compounding problem though. AI is killing shittons of jobs, and we're giving the 7 jobs left over to h1b's...
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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So about H1B visas. They are capped at 65k per year with another 20k for individuals with graduate degrees. It's a rolling 65k as they are good for 3 years and can be extended for another 3 years beyond that.
Now compare that to:
www.economy-media.com
People need to stop focusing on the H1B visas for foreigners who are at least in this country and spending at least some of that income here and paying taxes here.
Now compare that to:
U.S. Tech Jobs Outsourced Overseas as AI, Cost Pressure Reshape Workforce
U.S. tech firms outsourced 3.4 million jobs in 2024, driven by cost savings, automation, and global labor pools, deepening job insecurity and reshaping workforce strategies.
www.economy-media.com
People need to stop focusing on the H1B visas for foreigners who are at least in this country and spending at least some of that income here and paying taxes here.
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Noodleface
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Agreed with this. H1b are not the problem here, it's the outsourcing.So about H1B visas. They are capped at 65k per year with another 20k for individuals with graduate degrees. It's a rolling 65k as they are good for 3 years and can be extended for another 3 years beyond that.
Now compare that to:
U.S. Tech Jobs Outsourced Overseas as AI, Cost Pressure Reshape Workforce
U.S. tech firms outsourced 3.4 million jobs in 2024, driven by cost savings, automation, and global labor pools, deepening job insecurity and reshaping workforce strategies.
People need to stop focusing on the H1B visas for foreigners who are at least in this country and spending at least some of that income here and paying taxes here.
Anecdotally we just laid off an entire team and we're hiring 7 in taiwan, 7 in Bangalore and ONE in the US. It's a problem.
This is compounded by the fact that as we all know engineering talent from India is absolutely abysmal. The code quality is just not there as a whole.
It's a colossal issue in tech.
Software crosses geographical borders with zero cost. Onshore vs. offshore is a cost ratio of ~3 to 1. Organizations align their incentives towards offshore hiring at the working level--onshore hiring is frozen/positions are rejected while offshore equivalents are approved, and offshore headcount "ratio" becomes a tracked metric where high ratios are celebrated/rewarded for efficiency.
NO ONE in tech is talking about H1B. It's old news from an era where work was on premises and platforms hadn't caught up to international data restrictions. Now I can build a table and automatically generate onshore and offshore views that filter at the row and column level in a legally compliant way. All my dev/test/ple use synthetic customer data or automatically mask anything relevant, and nearly all applications have parity access--no more Citrix or clean rooms that crush output. The reality is that the companies who are deep in this don't even want H1B en masse, because why bring someone over and pay them 3x, AND THEN pay extra for legal Visa support, when you can have an equivalent headcount work offshore doing functionally the same thing for ONE THIRD of the wages? It's no surprise to me that we're seeing H1Bs get perverted into roles they were never intended for--the original use case is heavily outmoded.
And of course, it's the entry level positions that are easiest to offshore, so it's not only a loss of jobs, it's a loss of the local talent development pipeline. All those fresh out of undergrad or career-switcher, train-on-the-job type roles? They don't exist anymore--we're training 3 people offshore to do that work. And now I've got too many people offshore, so I need to set up some offshore management layers just to handle the ops side. So even that onshore SME who would have normally progressed their career as a team leader? Well, they still have "functional responsibility" for managing/training the offshore team, but we only count direct reports for role span, sorry... Meanwhile, leaders make location visits and receive separate presentations from the 'offshore team' who conveniently leave out all of the structure/support/mess clean-up the onshore leads have done to enable them.
If production capacity for critical infrastructure is something we want to protect, human capital for software development is a place worth looking. The human part of more and more industries will continue to move to software--it's worth our time to pay attention to where those skillsets are being cultivated. Frankly, if agentic AI kills off entry level work and puts emphasis back on strong local SMEs who can dramatically increase their own output, it would be a blessing.
But would I be as productive overall with one third of the onshore individuals and no offshore? It's hard to say; I don't think so. Further, because other dev disciplines have offshore components, I have an incentive to maintain my own offshore presence so I can have them side-by-side and communicating during evening grooming and building relationships.
Software crosses geographical borders with zero cost. Onshore vs. offshore is a cost ratio of ~3 to 1. Organizations align their incentives towards offshore hiring at the working level--onshore hiring is frozen/positions are rejected while offshore equivalents are approved, and offshore headcount "ratio" becomes a tracked metric where high ratios are celebrated/rewarded for efficiency.
NO ONE in tech is talking about H1B. It's old news from an era where work was on premises and platforms hadn't caught up to international data restrictions. Now I can build a table and automatically generate onshore and offshore views that filter at the row and column level in a legally compliant way. All my dev/test/ple use synthetic customer data or automatically mask anything relevant, and nearly all applications have parity access--no more Citrix or clean rooms that crush output. The reality is that the companies who are deep in this don't even want H1B en masse, because why bring someone over and pay them 3x, AND THEN pay extra for legal Visa support, when you can have an equivalent headcount work offshore doing functionally the same thing for ONE THIRD of the wages? It's no surprise to me that we're seeing H1Bs get perverted into roles they were never intended for--the original use case is heavily outmoded.
And of course, it's the entry level positions that are easiest to offshore, so it's not only a loss of jobs, it's a loss of the local talent development pipeline. All those fresh out of undergrad or career-switcher, train-on-the-job type roles? They don't exist anymore--we're training 3 people offshore to do that work. And now I've got too many people offshore, so I need to set up some offshore management layers just to handle the ops side. So even that onshore SME who would have normally progressed their career as a team leader? Well, they still have "functional responsibility" for managing/training the offshore team, but we only count direct reports for role span, sorry... Meanwhile, leaders make location visits and receive separate presentations from the 'offshore team' who conveniently leave out all of the structure/support/mess clean-up the onshore leads have done to enable them.
If production capacity for critical infrastructure is something we want to protect, human capital for software development is a place worth looking. The human part of more and more industries will continue to move to software--it's worth our time to pay attention to where those skillsets are being cultivated. Frankly, if agentic AI kills off entry level work and puts emphasis back on strong local SMEs who can dramatically increase their own output, it would be a blessing.
The thing I find to be most lacking is the business context. I've got a fair-sized offshore team, and they're all 'fine' ticket to ticket, but the quality of the output is heavily dependent on the guiding requirements and oversight from my onshore leads. I've experimented with offshore team + offshore lead working direct with the business, and they took the path of least resistance to deliver as much as they could without really thinking through the bigger picture or future requirements. They also didn't understand the business implications of certain features or defects and prioritize/escalate them appropriately. Now I have an onshore lead I pulled in to clean up the mess, implement the right framework, etc.
But would I be as productive overall with one third of the onshore individuals and no offshore? It's hard to say; I don't think so. Further, because other dev disciplines have offshore components, I have an incentive to maintain my own offshore presence so I can have them side-by-side and communicating during evening grooming and building relationships.
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TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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One more recent uh, innovation, I've discovered is that Indians get American CPA licenses IN INDIA. Then take up American accounting jobs that require a CPA.
Keep in mind that getting a CPA has a 5 year MANDATORY university attendance period to be eligible to take the CPA. Something all the young finance guys I knew hated deeply. Having a CPA is a strict requirement for many of the good Accounting->Controller->Finance executive pipeline kind of jobs. Which you now have to compete with India for despite the licensing for it being both local and required. In the United States. It's insane how fucked it is.
Keep in mind that getting a CPA has a 5 year MANDATORY university attendance period to be eligible to take the CPA. Something all the young finance guys I knew hated deeply. Having a CPA is a strict requirement for many of the good Accounting->Controller->Finance executive pipeline kind of jobs. Which you now have to compete with India for despite the licensing for it being both local and required. In the United States. It's insane how fucked it is.