Is it Time to Panic? Suddenly, Everyone Seems to Need a Job

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I was pivoting to what I’m doing next. It feels a lot of people are going through an upheaval. Is it systemic?

To be clear, I have no idea what’s happening but it looks like a lot of organizations have taken the current landscape to trim their rolls. Of course, some of you might think AI is the culprit but I talked about that in one of my rants if you want to go flame me there ;)

Over the past month or so, I’ve watched as Pluralsight, LinkedIn, Plex, Microsoft and I am sure more that I haven’t noticed. Earlier in the year, the announcement from Facebook, Alphabet, Twitter and Microsoft already left some people worried.

A lot of these jobs seem to be more about developer relations. This seems like a pattern. Sure, startups like SourceGraph are hiring, but can they absorb the other layoffs? I don’t know.

Am I concerned? For my own future, sure. I’m 54 and ageism exists, but I have faith in my abilities. The real concern for me, is that Developer Advocates are being cut. There is a real movement towards Discord as documentation and developer relationships. I think this trend is newer than the pandemic.

The other side of the coin is that overall the unemployment rate is actually pretty low. For me, that meant I wasn’t looking at jobs outside of the tech companies. Sometimes I forget that most tech jobs aren’t in tech companies like Ford, Geico, and Wells Fargo. So, if you’re looking, don’t forget that tons of other companies have openings (in fact, reach out if you are a Vue developer that can work remote, I know of a job or two).

Lastly, I wanted to highlight a few people that I know are looking and that I think are genuinely great. Here are their LinkedIn links:

• David Neal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidneal/
• Joe Guadagno: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephguadagno/
• Ted Neward: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedneward/
• Lars Klint: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lklint/

I am not sure I’m looking for a job yet, but I’m still writing courses and working with clients for the time being. This fall may tell a different tale.

This work by Shawn Wildermuth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at wildermuth.com.

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