Ask HN: Are you a 40-year old software engineer without a job for > 1 year?
Large numbers of skilled software engineers are unemployed for months. Many are unemployed for more than a year.
Is this an arbitrage opportunity? What's the best way to harness this concentration of energy?
This happened to me during the dot com bust and I was what I call self-unemployed from 2001-2007. I tried various things to make a living. Developed some games/puzzles websites that still make several hundred bucks every month like clockwork. Tried buying and selling stuff especially dot com surplus stuff like docking stations and also books and music CDs. Bought in quantity at local auctions and on eBay and sold individually through a website or on Amazon. Eventually I studied to become a mortgage broker and passed the real estate exam but then the subprime crisis burst and there was very little demand for mortgage loans anymore. Eventually I landed a software job at a startup and rejoined the full time employed.
Maybe create a software co-op where people meet and can give or get help with any projects they are working on. Meet anywhere convenient like local library or office after hours or even someones garage. Nobody gets paid unless by agreement and to make money people need to sell something (maybe just ads). There's a much bigger chance of success than if all the people work independently.
what was it like going back to tech after 5-6 years? Was it a new stack? Were you doing some personal projects along the way to keep skills up?
The best way to harness this is to offer what companies don't: unlimited time off, no return-to-office, health insurance and savings plans that don't kick-back to the company, flat(ter) management, no all-hands meetings...
I'm overemployed as a 40+ but this would get a CV from me pretty quickly.
Offer some part-time options and you'll get a custom-crafted cover letter professing my love and why I am a perfect fit as well. :)
Part time sounds magical. I think there would be a ton of very talented people interested in only working (and being paid for) 20 hours/week.
Sounds like a good charitable endeavor.
"no one is accepting my current price, so the solution is to increase my demands"?
Multiple possibilities exist but everything depends on context and the skill set.
One option is to start a consulting business with a group of engineers (essentially a market equivalent of a union but with more legal protections) and start charging very high market rates and nickel-and-dime the client hedge fund style with pass-through fees for everything. Use the knowledge of former jobs’ contracts and undercut on price.
If the skill set is very niche and highly specialized you could even attempt cornering the market by recruiting people away that are still employed and sell back their services through the consulting gig (offer profit share as a sweetener, etc.)
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It sounds like you're proposing hiring people for less than they used to make. That can absolutely work.
The problem tends to be that high unemployment tends to coincide with economic downturns. It's hard to get investment to start a business during such a downturn.
Serious question: what's the definition of "skilled software engineer"?
In the world of JavaScript its the person who uses the most tools, sometimes all of them simultaneously.
The CSV CV strategy.
Someone you would consider skilled. Your own personal definition of this would suffice.
I suspect though there isn't a lot of these people that are unemployed. There's more "mediocre" engineers that are in this zone.
Perhaps but it may also include people that were consciously or unconsciously passed on because of their age.
I suspect the largest opportunity right now is to leverage whichever industry you have experience in, and build vertical tooling that leverages LLM.
I too jobless for 3+ years.
> Is this an arbitrage opportunity? What's the best way to harness this concentration of energy?
Here is a profitable idea.
Make a group decision and choose a target profitable SaaS company or startup of your choice, replicate it with AI and race the target SaaS company to near zero in pricing and sell your services as the cheapest offering to SMEs and enterprises (assuming you guys have experience in this area)
Keep it running or sell it to another business and the collective reaps the profits once the target SaaS company is dead or is unable to compete.
Repeat for all or any companies or startups that you wish should not exist or that laid you off in the past
You’re making the mistake of believing that people choose B2B SaaS purely on the basis of price and features. While those are a component, reputation, marketing, and an effective sales force are far more important.
And so do the collective people who worked on the competing SaaS have all of those skills as well to use to their advantage.
Just say you've worked at Google, Microsoft, Intel, etc, 300 years of collective experience.
S4 Capital famously won contracts away from WPP even though WPP had a long standing reputation and marketing prowess.
I would say start an opensource project who's main mission is replacing a big tech app/platform. Bet you could get tons of laid off devs to eagerly contribute to something new and exciting that is taking on the empires.
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New OS to beat Linux?
Consulting for smaller companies to give them cheap software that helps them with their problems cheap? (And scales revenue with many subscribers) - I could write one example that comes to my mind but I dont want to soubd like a shill
Probably some of them are good, but software recruiters have problems to identify who (this happens to many jobs, not only software). I could write a book how recruitment and assessments could be changed to identify real gems.
> I could write a book how recruitment and assessments could be changed to identify real gems.
What if the companies people really want to work at have already solved this issue and the legacy companies won’t figure out how to change before they die off…
What new OS has the potential to have a foothold?
A new OS to replace the incumbents will only be possible in conjunction with a disruptive innovation in hardware. The device driver issue makes it effectively impossible to build a new OS for PCs, tablets, or smartphones. We don't know what the next disruptive hardware form factor will look like yet: a lot of people are betting big on AR/VR goggles but it could be something else totally unexpected.
The new OS that doesn’t exist yet. Linux is starting to show its age, dominated by special interest groups and with the upcoming C+Rust contention it’s a perfect breeding ground for the competitor to enter the scene. Best idea likely not to come from corporate
I would say a Unix OS that can leverage existing Unix/linux tools like OSX, but more open than, and with real UX effort, native UI, not the gnome/kde, whatever stuff. Or at least something that has a Linux subsystem like windows does.
Such OS should be more secure than Linux, yet it should be able to run practically all Linux apps (and ideally Windows apps, too). It should be FLOSS with a good UI and a serious developer team. Such OS exists: https://qubes-os.org. My daily driver, can't recommend it enough.
I like Qubes, but it is just multiple Linux installs running in VMs. Also it depends on Xen and an X server, both of which are not long for this world.
> just multiple Linux installs
"Just" is doing a lot of work here. There is no OS more secure than Qubes, judging by the number and severity of Qubes security bulletins: https://www.qubes-os.org/security/qsb/.
You don't have to run Linux in Qubes. You can run OpenBSD [0], Windows [1] and more [2].
[0] https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/4551
[1] https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/templates/windows/
[2] https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/packaged-mirage-firewall/32097 and https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/exotic-oses-which-i-tried-on-qu...
> Also it depends on Xen
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/7051
> and an X server
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3366
To answer the question directly: there isn't an obvious way that is economical. There's nothing intrinsically valuable about a group of 40+ technologists when most investments seem to be in the AI space or in other hype-driven spaces.
I'm 43, about to turn 44, and I've been unemployed for three years. My former employer fired me for not vaxxing despite being a full-time remote employee as I refused to give in to their ridiculous requirement. I've been taking care of my aging parents since then as my dad has developed dementia.
I'm interested in working in software again as tech has been my life since I was 13 years old. I've got tons of skills and experience, not just in tech but also leadership, but the prospect of insane hazing rituals known as "tech interviews" has me discouraged. I've been considering starting a tech services business but the economy is rough right now and I'm living in one of the most expensive states in the US.
If anyone could use an experienced .NET dev/DevOps or team lead, look me up.
Is it that bad?
I wonder if this is further decimation of the middle class?
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You are not serious right ? Most jobs ultimately are CRUD and LLMs are just the shiny new thing that is hardly 2 years old. There are 1000s of companies/products that require CRUD jobs and are not going away just because of LLMs.
There are still plenty of crud jobs.
LLMs aren't doing anything truly beneficial to the economy. Nothing has really changed. Some tasks are a bit smoother and faster to do with LLM assistance, but as of right now the entire LLM industry is mostly just R&D and not generating any value.
at what point does short term thinking "for decades" become, you know, long term thinking?
The same number closets you'd need to build before you've build a house.
LLMs are just the shiny new thing. Look:
- Most took the easy path, doing CRUD for decades for easy money. Now, with Flash, they struggle to specialize or stay relevant as they are not intelligent enough and never pushed themselves.
- Most took the easy path, doing CRUD for decades for easy money. Now, with AJAX, they struggle to specialize or stay relevant as they are not intelligent enough and never pushed themselves.
- Most took the easy path, doing CRUD for decades for easy money. Now, with blockchains, they struggle to specialize or stay relevant as they are not intelligent enough and never pushed themselves.
etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam