Knowing how to code isn’t enough to keep you employed in tech

Knowing how to code isn’t enough to keep you employed in tech

The promise of just doing a CS degree or a bootcamp and walking into a six-figure tech job, which was always overhyped anyways, is even less true today. There are many people who have those types of certifications who are finding it hard to find employment, and in general the tech market is in tough straits. It’s definitely not the time to be job-seeking.

What’s changed? Sure, there are economic reasons (companies overhiring before, tech talent being too pricey), supply reasons (too many engineers going for the same roles), and a multitude of other reasons. Many of these, I believe, will naturally correct themselves. But there are two trends I’m watching that I’m not seeing others comment on and I think are actually critically important to where the nature of tech talent is going in the next 5-10 years.

• Outsourcing Throughout my travels, I’ve gotten to know the state of tech in the Philippines. The Philippines is a common source of IT outsourcing (and outsourcing more broadly). I have a lot of thoughts on outsourcing labor (see here for one), but in short, the technical human capital I’ve observed in the Philippines is quite talented and capable (and frankly underpaid and underutilized). I think there’s going to be a continuing trend of hiring more and more Filipinos, especially as people catch on to the quality of human capital that exists. I’m very bullish on tech in the Philippines and especially bullish on the rise of AI in the Philippines; I think that in the next 5-10 years there will be many promising tech startups in the country and, more importantly for our discussion, a surplus of competent AI-enabled software engineers (as opposed to primarily IT and outsourced devs). If you’re an American engineer, how can you justify being paid 10x more than an equally good, English-speaking, hard-working Filipino dev? You can’t, and increasingly, companies are going to think the same. They already are, in fact; this is mostly true for Australian companies that hire quite often from Filipino talent pools but will increasingly become true in the West.

• AI I think that the fear of “AI eliminating engineers” is largely fluff. I don’t believe that AI developers are going to eliminate engineers, largely because most of true engineering doesn’t even involve coding anyways. Engineers have to synthesize context and business needs with technical tools in order to find a way to solve problems using technology. AI will enable faster iterations and development, sure, but the critical thinking, communication, and other soft skills that engineers are actually disproportionately paid more to be good at will just become even more important. I don’t fear the engineer who knows how to code, since ChatGPT can and will continue to code very well. I fear the engineer who can build an MVP of a product in 2 days and spend the rest of the time selling to customers. If all you can do is code, and you can’t think about what you’re coding or why you’re coding it or communicate your value to stakeholders, then what can you do that AI can’t?

What do I think has become even more important?

• Working on financially valuable things Make sure that you work on financially valuable things. If you’re being paid six figures, you need to be solving problems worth a multiple of that. This is why, for example, even admist the layoffs in Big Tech, their ad divisions are still hiring; the ROI for each engineer is still quite high if they’re being deployed to work on improving ads rather than, say, more experimental moonshot projects, DevRel, or other similar projects that, albeit important, don’t have an easily quantifiable lift on the bottom line. The more directly that your work improves the bottom line, the larger your impact and the more indispensable you become. Note that this is different than working on “important” things (I don’t think that improving ad CTR is a very “important” task from a personal fulfillment standpoint). From the point of view of an employer, they need a positive multiple ROI on their employees, and the more directly you show that, the easier you are to justify keeping around.
• Fix people’s problems I mention this in a previous post, but as a software engineer you’re not paid to write code, you’re paid to solve problems and your skillset happens to include the ability to code and work with technology. Make sure that you know exactly what problems you’re being hired to fix, and make sure that you’re not only fixing those problems, but also reminding people that you are fixing those problems.
• Always look out for yourself Companies aren’t families, and the thought that they were was definitely a zero-interest-rate phenomenon. Companies are teams that come together to solve a particular problem, and that’s OK. You and the company have a contractual obligation and that’s it. If they can fire you at any point in time, you need to make sure that you always have contingencies. Make sure that you’re doing work that develops your talent in a way that aligns with your future interests. Build side projects or read books here and there. Keep your knowledge updated. Apply to different companies so you can know your worth in the market as well as recalibrate your evaluation of your skillset. Do the work necessary to make sure that you look out for yourself.

Caveats:

• This is primarily true in the US, which has the highest income for its tech employees (especially big-tech/FAANG/SV).
• Yes, it’s always been true that engineers do much more than code. But gone are the days where just being able to code is going to get you a job.
• I still think that, by and large, getting a job in tech (i.e., doing coding/programming/engineering) is much easier than many other jobs, and it is still a privilege to work in tech with its high salaries, flexibility, and plentiful use cases. Tech is in everything and you can get a job in any field.

It’ll be interesting to see where the tech ecosystem goes. Software engineering is a craft and a trade, and what we’re seeing now is definitely a correction of sorts in the human capital department where you won’t be able to get a tech job anymore from just a 6-month bootcamp. I think it’ll revert in the opposite direction at some point, but I also think that the impacts of outsourcing and of AI are here to stay. Therefore, it’s even more important now for engineers to be acutely aware of the value they provide and to make sure that they’re solving people’s problems, not just being paid to code.