Yep. Wages and 160k+ out of school are slowing down and mostly going away. Still plenty of the regular stuff left.

If you know TF, and container deployments you can find a job for 120k all day at the drop off a hat in the states. Send me a resume and I'll ping you to a role we are filling for 140k.

As a senior I found a role for 210 and turned down 3 150-175k offers 3 months ago.

It's harder, it's still not physical labor for slave wages.

There is a right sizing of over hiring as well as everyone scrambling to find what real efficiency AI brings. It's bringing variability.

Same here. Can't add much to the conversation though. All this stupid AI babysitting and bullshitting sucks the fun out of my profession. For a while now I felt it might be time to leave the tech sector entirely. Unfortunately that's the only thing I'm comfortably good at.

No need, here let my give you the response completely unsolicited:

Its not that no one is getting jobs, its that the market is saturated and getting worse. Tech firms have layed off or off shored hundreds of thousands of workers and with "AI" the number of roles is dropping quickly; especially entry level roles.

One side bad so other side good is always terrible logic.

Good thing I picked a case with a 5.25 bay lol, would love it even without it, lucked out big time

I have actually thought about setting up a Meshtastic node, or perhaps even setting up a LORA link for a personal project.

During the pandemic, my dad asked me to see if we could set up a water temp sensor at a local swimming hole, a few months of work with a raspberry pi, a DS8B20, a motorcycle battery, a web hotel and a friendly neighbor later and we have for several years had an automatic website displaying the current temp in the water at the swimming hole, we borrow the neighbor's wifi, and send the data to the webhotel.

It would be interesting to see if instead of relying on the neighbors wifi we could use LORA nodes to send the data to a node at home and have that submit the data to the webhotel

It was fun and built in bash/php/mysql with zero ai.

A bit of unrequested advice... Help expand, or start a mesh network in your area. The SX1260 lora chips are a modern miracle. Plus, It's basically hiking and socializing activity masked as a tech hobby. There's also a chance of learning a little bit of physics, or community organizing as a bonus.

With the new people you meet, there's also a chance of finding a new hobby. I've met an unexpected number of paraglidists through my various tech interests. People from all kinds of backgrounds are really into flying. Who knew?

finance industry

That's the worst, mate. Just switching to a different filed may improve things. Nowhere is sunshine and rainbows, but I'm I'm in medical tech and not finance. Helping save lives is at least something I believe in, instead of moving money to siphon money.

I think those are symptoms of more general trend - IT is not a tool to make people’s lives easier or fun anymore. Until last 5 years all my projects were about making things possible or automating tedious manual tasks. Now, for almost all use cases there is some solution or components you (or AI) can slap together to build a solution. Today it’s all about cutting costs and increasing margins. There is nothing fun or creative in this job, all feedback you get is lower numbers on dashboard. Budgets are squeezed to make more profit, so there is no time to get bored and improve things around you.

Look, in my IT company, I have to track my time in 3 different system and no-one cares because there is no ROI in automating it. That should tell you in which state IT is

Hey, look on the bright side...

Most people can't even get help desk jobs these days.

Wait for something really important and urgent to come up, and just before the deadline, call in sick for a couple days. Then turn your phone off, don't check your email, etc.

When you get back into the office, perhaps opinions about needing additional IT staff will have changed.

Time to dust off ye olde DVD burner.

I'll have to look into it, thanks for the tip!

I still like tech and like making things too. Really glad I made my gaming PC and server before this current hardware crisis. I keep to areas not affected by AI or hardware problems. I made a bunch of mechanical keyboards/macropads, hitbox leverless fight controllers, etc. I want to make an emulation arcade machine for my kids but AI induced RAM crisis has made that difficult. Want to dabble in home automation too but I'll wait till I have the time to take that on. The more hardware modding I can do and the more woodwork I can incorporate, the better.

Yeah, I feel you, I live alone an watch a shit tonne of YT, luckily I have been curating my watch history for many years now, and my recommendations are quite well tuned.

I have a few channels that have helpt me stay sane.

Clabretro - a guy my age homelabbing with 90s/00s IT gear, really fun.

All the gear - Jack and Ethan from Car Throttle going on small adventures and setting cheap challenges. Really fun.

Philip Thompson - Real life spy stories, well made and interesting.

Code Bullet - chaotic programming.

James Channel - gaming, angle grinders duct tape and super glue.

Aviation Republic - Well made long form documentaries about military aircraft.

Keeping_a_lighthouse - amazing footage, interesting insight into a very special work.

Our own devices - interesting video about interesting things by a lovely Canadian man.

Other than YT, I love driving, and I mostly listen to podcasts, but have recently got into audiobooks, with a main focus on sci-fi.

Brilliant stuff.

Oh and I just found out my favourite lens has been repaired, so soon I'll get to head out with my amazing 24-105mm f4 Lumix lens again.

Ask chatgpt what the best way to go about it would be. I'm sure it'll save you a ton of time!

Same, I hope I won't need any drives this year... or the year after that... and the one after that

Still on help desk and can't seem to get past it. Goat farmer is already appealing but I can't afford it. There are few job opportunities where I live too.

So beautiful 🥲. I like sector unions because it gives way let power to companies

I really like the work, Equipment tends to be a lot more diverse than bog standard IT, networks and systems more targeted to specific applications, technologies could be anything from ethernet to P2P microwave to satcoms to mobile radio to cellular to SDH/PDH, supported applications/systems will keep you forever learning, work locations can be pretty varied. While the industry generally struggles for staff, breaking in can be tough, but I think so long as you're a straight shooter and willing to learn you're generally fine. People transition in from IT all the time.

I picked up building plastic models a couple years ago since my tech hobbies don't really interest me anymore. I like working with my hands on my own terms and it's super satisfying to look at my completed projects.

I can't help but wonder if maybe this is all the same thing the Muslim extremists fight against in their jihads.

Definitely. Seeing the worst sides of capitalism and imperialism, which for a long time made life in the west bearable or even good for most people, radicalized them. But their vision of how things should be is very unappealing to me as well. Theocracy, strict morality laws, misogyny, that's not a better solution. I prefer left-wing radicalization instead, because that's about making everyone's lifes better. ;)