Practical advice for engineers in these troubled times

Since 2023, the rise of interest rates has caused a sea change in how software companies relate to their engineers. It’s harder to be a software engineer now than at any time in the last decade. The good times in tech are over, at least for now. It’s not just a tough job market, but a tough environment for already-employed software engineers. What can we do about it?

It’s time to reevaluate the way you work

The most important thing is that the nature of the job has changed. If you still have a job, you probably shouldn’t approach your work in the same way as you did in the last ten years¹. This is particularly true if you felt comfortable during the 2010s. Habits that got you rewarded during that period may be actively harmful now. You may have to adapt to some incentives that you don’t like.

For instance, it was a good strategy during the 2010s to lean into widely-visible corporate activities (e.g. organizing talks or internal groups) at the expense of your regular work, because it didn’t really matter how much regular work you did and companies cared a lot about their internal culture. A lot of people who did this strategy have now been laid off.

Prepare for layoffs and firings

That leads into the second point, which is that layoffs are now much more common. Companies that never laid off employees in the 2010s are now beginning to lay people off yearly. Companies that did have a steady stream of layoffs are now increasing the volume. Anecdotally, PIPs² are both more common and more serious: if you don’t show substantial improvement, you’re unlikely to be able to wriggle out of it like you could before.

In the before times, layoffs were treated as traumatic events, akin to natural disasters. Engineers were not expected to be productive in the weeks immediately after a layoff. The priority was on reassuring engineers that this one-off event was over. Today, layoffs are business as usual. You will now (or very soon) be expected to work through them. That means you’ll have to conceal much of your emotional reaction, instead of being able to process it in the workplace.

Attach yourself to profit centers

Of course, you will also be more vulnerable to layoffs yourself. The only way to reliably avoid being laid off is to (a) be competent (more on that later), and (b) attach yourself to profit centers in the company.

As usual, Patrick McKenzie’s advice is excellent here. Companies are irrational in small ways, but overall do systematically aim to increase their profits. For tech companies, that’s more true today than at any time in the last decade.

What features make your company money, or are expected to make your company money in the near future? For instance, at Google the answer is “ads” and “AI”. If you are working on those things, it’s unlikely that your division will have to lay off many people. If you are working on other things, you are vulnerable to being swept up in layoffs no matter how good an engineer you personally are.

Aim to become more employable

Lots of people have written a lot about how to become more hireable in the current market. However, I think it’s very hard to say right now what that’ll look like. Companies could end up abandoning LeetCode interviews in favour of actual projects, now that they need engineers who can get things done instead of just signal how smart they are. Or they could end up doubling-down on LeetCode, because there are now many more applicants for each job that need to be filtered somehow. Likewise, it could be better to gain tenure at a company now (as Gergely Orosz predicts) instead of job-hopping - or not, if it turns out to be even more crucial to stay at one of the small number of successful tech companies.

Given that, for now I would recommend focusing on the fundamentals: i.e. becoming the kind of engineer companies want to bring in and retain. Get really good at shipping. Delivering projects makes you more secure at your current company and gives you nice bullet points for your resume at the same time. Try to make sure you remain technically strong, particularly in growing areas. Make an effort to understand the principles of how AI works, for instance.

Spend your time wisely

It’s also really, really important now to spend your working time doing things that are valuable to the company and your career. Tech companies are less interested in work-life balance and more interested in shipping as much as possible as fast as possible. You shouldn’t react to this by just working the same way for more hours - you should start working more tactically.

I wrote a whole post about this which I won’t repeat here, but the idea is to prioritize visible project work over invisible cleanup and refactoring work. If your employer is pushing you hard to perform, they are explicitly not paying you to do the kind of long-term maintenance that you’d do if you had plenty of slack. You shouldn’t volunteer to do that work after hours. Nobody wants that: your employer wants you to spend your time on the stuff they care about, and you don’t want to work for free (I assume). See the linked post for a bunch more caveats.

Summary

• The tech job market has shifted dramatically since 2023. Old habits may now hurt you
• Layoffs and PIPs are now common. You will be expected to do your emotional processing off the clock
• Your best layoff protection is to be competent and work on projects tied to profit
• Don’t spend unpaid, extra-hours time on invisible work