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A Tech Job Still Pays $120 an Hour Despite Mass Layoffs (bloomberg.com) 87

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Mass layoffs across the US technology industry have now claimed well over 300,000 jobs. And yet, companies are still hiring in areas they see as mission-critical. Contract positions are still commanding $120-an-hour wages. From a report:The industry hasn't seen cuts this deep since the dot-com bubble burst, but Linda Lutton, who has been recruiting for tech firms since 1987, says it doesn't feel like a bust. For one, she said, firms are still taking her calls. "I'm in constant contact with my tech clients, and they keep telling us, 'We will come back,'" said Lutton, who recalls how clients suddenly stopped answering their phones during the dot-com crash of the early 2000s because they had folded overnight. "I haven't had a single message from a single client saying, 'We have to cut everything down.'" Whatever happens to the tech industry in the coming months and years will ripple across the entire US economy. The sector now claims the biggest share of market value in the S&P 500, accounting for about one-quarter of the index. That's up from 18% a decade ago. Tech accounts for about 6% of US gross domestic product, and a similar share of jobs across the country. The average pay in tech is nearly twice that of the typical US worker.
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A Tech Job Still Pays $120 an Hour Despite Mass Layoffs More

A Tech Job Still Pays $120 an Hour Despite Mass Layoffs

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  • Most job postings are fake (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jrnvk ( 4197967 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @09:46AM (#63396191)
    Or duplicates, or posted due to regulations even though the organization has already decided upon a hire. Itâ(TM)s a good excuse not to hit targets, to keep lower-paid visa workers, and allows you to cut those openings before planning mass layoffs. But itâ(TM)s still a ruse. Easily half of the jobs in tech posted on job boards just simply donâ(TM)t exist.

  • It's because more than 300k people retired (Score:5, Informative)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @09:51AM (#63396199)
    The real problem with any sector these days is retirement as a good number of people retired during covid if I remember right it was in the low percentages maybe up to 5% of the workforce. So even though we have a demand down swing in labor, the shortage was even greater than that. I work in the tech sector and I'm still getting emails from recruiters

    • Re:It's because more than 300k people retired (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @10:27AM (#63396277)

      The real problem with any sector these days is retirement as a good number of people retired during covid if I remember right it was in the low percentages maybe up to 5% of the workforce. So even though we have a demand down swing in labor, the shortage was even greater than that. I work in the tech sector and I'm still getting emails from recruiters

      And despite the popular OK Boomer memes, those olde farts that retired were/are actually worth their pay. My pay is by task, and sometimes there are different hours. I was re-hired part time - could be full time if I wanted - because the younger people they were trying to use found the work too stressful. Or they weren't technically adroit enough. Or they didn't have the right demeanor. You have to be nice, but you have to be respected and obeyed.

      We see it in here all the time, especially since it's popular today to demand not to ever go into work, but that work must be done at home only.

      Guess who goes away first?

      • Re:It's because more than 300k people retired (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @10:56AM (#63396383)

        Worth their pay or not, boomers are retiring. En masse.

        And there is very little coming in to replace them. And you know where we notice this most? Mainframes. Yes, those old, pesky, crappy, legacy shit that's so uncool and nobody under 40 wants to touch. You have NO idea how many huge corporations not only still have them but depend on them, tied to them for sink or swim.

        Quite seriously, if you're looking for a field to get into if you're in it for the money, forget big data, forget AI, even forget security. Mainframe is where the money is. Because these people are desperately needed, the average age of the average mainframer is pushing 60 and they want to retire. They're currently kept in employ for prices that make your average security expert turn green.

        • Re:It's because more than 300k people retired (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @12:10PM (#63396635)

          Worth their pay or not, boomers are retiring. En masse.

          And there is very little coming in to replace them. And you know where we notice this most? Mainframes. Yes, those old, pesky, crappy, legacy shit that's so uncool and nobody under 40 wants to touch. You have NO idea how many huge corporations not only still have them but depend on them, tied to them for sink or swim.

          With a problem that it kinda works.

          Quite seriously, if you're looking for a field to get into if you're in it for the money, forget big data, forget AI, even forget security. Mainframe is where the money is. Because these people are desperately needed, the average age of the average mainframer is pushing 60 and they want to retire. They're currently kept in employ for prices that make your average security expert turn green.

          The COBOL effect, indeed.

          I've encouraged people to go into RF, and even analog. Seems like buggy whips, but it isn't. The entire tech world seemed to think that there is nothing but digital, and RF is the field of people who will die soon, and good riddance.

          Get a degree in the field of electromagnetics, and you can pretty much write your own ticket. I always like to pull out a smartphone among the digital uber alles crowd, to let them know that they are just using a fancy walkie talkie on a radio system. Weird - it shocks some who believe it's digital only. But you are correct about the olde boomers wishing to retire.

          Me? well, my new part time gig helps pay for my pricey toys. And I'm treated well.

          • Re:It's because more than 300k people retired (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @04:18PM (#63397427)

            The thing is, it doesn't get taught as it was. Moreover, there is no reason for the youth of our time to dig into it in their spare time.

            I came a wee bit late to the RF/EE party. I grew up in the 80s when you didn't need mad soldering skills anymore just because you wanted a computer. Though I was fascinated with the "batteryless radio" (a crystal radio) I built when I was 12. Had my friends take it apart and look for the battery, they thought it was magic.

            Dad's physics book was quite the treasure trove for interesting experiments. Though he kept his chemistry book locked away, after I got it, I knew why. Damn, they taught kids in the 60s pretty much how to blow up their school in chemistry... anyway.

            But in general, I was late to the electrical engineering party. Today, I really hate that because I had to relearn everything I needed for my hardware projects the hard way. But I see the same development with the next generation. Me, I can program a wide variety of assembler dialects. And I can easily pick up new ones. It's sometimes hard for me to understand why people consider it such a hard language, to me, it's the easiest, simplest language ever conceived. No multiple inheritance or polymorphism or any such crap, you see. Just straight, pure and direct.

            And that fact also means that I can and do find quite a few quite serious flaws in modern hardware, which allows for a tidy side income in bug bounties. Because the people designing these things today sometimes apparently don't really understand the core implications of what they do anymore either.

            I still wish I understood a bit more about RF. It's what keeps me from digging deeper into the implementation of some Bluetooth devices, and trust me, THAT is a treasure trove of bugs. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, in the history of mankind, managed to implement that protocol securely.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by groebke ( 313135 )

          Mainframes. Yes, those old, pesky, crappy, legacy shit that's so uncool and nobody under 40 wants to touch. Because these people are desperately needed, the average age of the average mainframer is pushing 60 and they want to retire. They're currently kept in employ for prices that make your average security expert turn green.

          60? Incorrect. That would be the low end, not the average. Most mainframers are in their 70's and retired, and double-dipping as consultants.

          AIX admin's are on average in their 60's...

          As far as crappy, in financial and insurance sectors, they generate 80% of the revenue and are about 5% of the CapEx and OpEx, and ~1% of the outage calls.

          • OMG, you're telling me we have the young 'uns among the Mainframers in our company?

            We indeed have one that only turned 54 a few weeks ago.

        • Worth their pay or not, boomers are retiring. En masse.

          Boomers were born 1946 to 1964. That puts them at 59-77 years old. They should be retiring by now.

          If we haven't figured out how to run shit without them, that's on us.

          • The problem is that the bosses don't like to retire, they actually enjoy "working" (I use the term very loosely here). So you have a bunch of 70somethings pretending like they still know how the world works.

          • Worth their pay or not, boomers are retiring. En masse.

            Boomers were born 1946 to 1964. That puts them at 59-77 years old. They should be retiring by now.

            If we haven't figured out how to run shit without them, that's on us.

            It is complicated, for certain. As a mid-aged boomer, I saw the workplace change from a place where you were mentored or apprenticed, to one wherethat was thought of as wasteful, taking two people to do something rather than one. A place that started out with simple charge numbers and ended up with 16 digit numbers, with the accountants expanding their presence from just a couple to the biggest department in the institution, and sucking every last cent of overhead money, and demanding more. Which made Profe

        • I had mainframe work on my resume. I dropped it because it attracted the worst kind of crappy MSP headhunters. The companies stuck on mainframes all have deep seeded management and tech culture issues similar to the place where I scooped up the experience.

          • Well, yes and no. You'll be mostly working in the finance sector, and yes, these folks tend to be VERY conservative when it comes to many things.

            But that's also where the money is, and they're quite willing to part with that money if you offer them a skill that lets them make some more.

      • Not necessarily (Score:2, Interesting)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
        there's a lot of inertia in large organizations. Yeah, I'm sure there's some boomers that're missed. But I can tell you that one of the things that drives this is that when they leave nobody seems to go out of their way to stop them. They just get replaced.

        Also, 300k retirements is 1 good month's worth of new hires. Boomers retiring has an effect, but I'm not sure how strong it really is. Now, the 1m+ dead from COVID, the millions of women who dropped out of the job market because childcare costs more t

        • there's a lot of inertia in large organizations. Yeah, I'm sure there's some boomers that're missed. But I can tell you that one of the things that drives this is that when they leave nobody seems to go out of their way to stop them. They just get replaced.

          Except when they don't.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          Also, 300k retirements is 1 good month's worth of new hires. Boomers retiring has an effect, but I'm not sure how strong it really is. Now, the 1m+ dead from COVID, the millions of women who dropped out of the job market because childcare costs more than they can earn, the long COVID patients and the underemployed because employers refuse to hire for entry level w/o a college degree (read:H1-B Bait) are I think larger factors.

          Not in tech. In tech, childcare costs way less than women can earn. Most tech folks worked from home and thus relatively few died from COVID or got long COVID compared with the job market on the whole. And most tech companies hire without a college degree all the time.

          Anyway, it's worth pointing out that after factoring in the self-employment tax, this is the equivalent of earning $210k pre-tax income per year from non-contract employment, even before you factor in other lost benefits such as company-pro

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ranton ( 36917 )

        And despite the popular OK Boomer memes, those olde farts that retired were/are actually worth their pay.

        Like every other generation, boomers are hit and miss as far as being strong employees. Many of them have incredibly relevant experience and capabilities and are a hard asset to lose when they retire, and many of them have been dead weight for a decade before they finally retire. Just like many millennials are incredible employees and many millennials have no idea what it takes to succeed in the corporate world.

        I'm surprised companies don't have more programs to keep older employees as part time once they h

        • And despite the popular OK Boomer memes, those olde farts that retired were/are actually worth their pay.

          Like every other generation, boomers are hit and miss as far as being strong employees. Many of them have incredibly relevant experience and capabilities and are a hard asset to lose when they retire, and many of them have been dead weight for a decade before they finally retire. Just like many millennials are incredible employees and many millennials have no idea what it takes to succeed in the corporate world.

          Correct. In the end, we're all just people. I had bad luck with a lot of millenials, but two women were among the best people I ever worked with.

          I'm surprised companies don't have more programs to keep older employees as part time once they hit retirement age. I have had the opportunity a few times to work with retired coworkers who came back as a part time contractor, and it was a great experience for everyone involved. They got an easier transition into retirement and I got a wealth of experience and knowledge to pull from while I was learning the ropes in a new position.

          They had a plan called emergency rehire where I retired from. And I went back for a while. But there were time limits on that. It's supposed to be a way to make up for the lack of mentoring in today's world, but the dingdongs just had me doing what I was already doing, and when I left for good, it was like a big surprised.

          The folks I work for now are in a comple

    • This is especially true for companies that still have folks grandfathered into pension plans. Pension plans usually offer a lump sum payout at retirement based on current interest rates. The lower the interest rate, the larger the lump sum payout is. In 2022 when interest rates leaped up, some of my old colleagues had to choose between retiring or essentially working for free for the next 3-4 years.

    • Re:It's because people retired (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Frobnicator ( 565869 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @11:03AM (#63396405) Journal

      Yes, but also no.

      Prior to the pandemic we had the opposite problem. Report [gallup.com] after report [usatoday.com], baby boomers weren't retiring. People age 70, age 75, the weren't leaving the workplace so there was tremendous downward pressure, and even a few of the Silent Generation were remaining at their posts. Gen X and Gen Y felt that pressure and often couldn't move up in the business pyramid because the past guard wouldn't give up top spots. Underemployment was a buzzword ten years ago, people being forced to take a side-gig because there were no vacancies at the level above.

      The pandemic hit, and many Boomers and Silent Generation finally decided to retire. A huge number of the 2020 and 2021 early "great resignation" tend were Baby Boomers leaving [forbes.com], which isn't too surprising since in 2021 they were aged 55-75, and most of the remaining Silent Generation, 75+ at this point, also finally pulled out.

      So over 75 million baby boomers, the bulk were leaving, and the generation replacing them on the other end, Generation Z and Millennials, has about 68 million people. The obvious math issue with population replacement there is obvious. Baby boomers were a boom of babies and a population bubble that people have known about.

      This was a huge part of the great resignation as it applied to tech. Yes, people absolutely were leaving. It's because in tech nearly all promotions come when you cross a company, not from within. The top spots finally opened up so Gen X left to take their place at other companies. This left a vacuum, and Gen Y moved in, same with Millennials, Gen Z, and the new entrants from Gen Alpha starting to take entry level spots. Yes people resigned in mass, and yes the boomers were leaving a hole of about 10 million workers generally, but it never was the sky falling like so many news reports claimed. We don't really see reports right now about people underemployed because there are no senior openings, there are jobs all around in tech despite the layoffs, which is confusing some people.

      These aren't really a tight labor market due to business-side pressures. These also aren't a mass resignation due to not working. These are a tight labor market with roughly 10 million old adults leaving and under-employed people moving up.

      This was coupled with massive growth during the pandemic, especially at a lot tech companies.

      That second side we're now seeing is basically a correction, not a recession.

      While many industries shrunk, tech had a growth explosion. Headline:"Microsoft adds 23k employees in one year, growing 14% despite pandemic and tight labor market" [ahttps]. Headline: Just how massive Amazon has grown during the pandemic, in 8 charts. [fortune.com]

      Now we're seeing a reduction, but compare the numbers. Microsoft had about 10,000 laid off in January, a few more following, but that's still a growth against the pandemic growth. Amazon's first round was 18,000, and another 9 announced this week, but it still leaves them with a bigger workforce. Another correction against the pandemic growth. Zoom had many layoffs, after their explosive pandemic growth. Twilio, Yahoo, etc., all of them look more like corrections to me, not recessions.

      So yes, all the things happened, but they're really just the effect of multiple scales all balancing themselves out.

      • So over 75 million baby boomers, the bulk were leaving, and the generation replacing them on the other end, Generation Z and Millennials, has about 68 million people. The obvious math issue with population replacement there is obvious. Baby boomers were a boom of babies and a population bubble that people have known about.

        It was well known. I don't remember much from Jr High (middle school these days) but I vividly recall my 8th Social Studies teacher round about 1984 sounding the alarm bells of serious issues when the Boomers started retiring. To the issue at hand to funding SS, and others. This should come as no surprise to anyone.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I don't think it's just that. It's that 300k devs were made redundant, but the global dev shortage is well into the millions.

      Big Tech may have decided it was over staffed, but there are thousands of companies that are still have long been desperate for those engineers. The competition for them hasn't gone away, and developers haven't lost their appetite for the salaries they were on.

      I work at a mid-level company that's made it's way past unicorn startup phase that competes with big tech on salaries. Our sa

      • >Big Tech may have decided it was over staffed, but there are thousands of companies that are still have long been desperate for those engineers. The competition for them hasn't gone away, and developers haven't lost their appetite for the salaries they were on.
        They might be desperate, but a) they are not paying comparatively and b) they are a lot pickier - don't ask me why - when hiring.
        One good thing the big companies do, is that they recognize that a good engineer can retool quickly. The smaller com

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Another 5% quit due to Long COIVD too. In the UK around 5% of the workforce has it to some degree. Some serious, some mild enough to keep working.

  • Whoop-de-doo (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fropenn ( 1116699 )
    A contract for $120 an hour is not a good wage.

    After self-employment tax and regular income taxes, that cuts it right there to like $80 an hour.

    Given that contracts do not include health care or retirement benefits, that's like $40 an hour.

    Given that contracts only cover working time and not time to perform ongoing professional development, training, setting up equipment, etc., that's like $20 an hour.

    Given that you have to bid on contracts using un-paid time, that's like $15 an hour.

    Contract work i

    • Re:Whoop-de-doo (Score:5, Interesting)

      by UMichEE ( 9815976 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @10:32AM (#63396297)

      Little known fact - social security tax is only collected on the first ~$160,000 of income. Self-employment tax is mostly just replacing social security tax that you and your employer pay (also Medicare, which doesn't phase out with income). Once you hit $160K, your self-employment tax will drop to 2.9%.

      But you're right, contract pay needs to be significantly higher than ordinary wages in the industry for the contractor to come out ahead. Working as a contractor makes you more keenly aware of expenses and taxes that others don't think about.

      • Also consider that a regular full time professional in the USA gets paid for ~300(+/-) hours a year that they do not work (or even pretend to work). Vacation, sick leave, paid holidays, etc. But then exempt employees may have un-comped OT (or may not). Some contract houses do pay some PTO (IME less than the employer pays), but you get none of it if you are truly self employed. (OTOH you get to buy a lot of stuff with pre-tax dollars.) So I don't think there is a simple answer here.

      • Working as a contractor makes you more keenly aware of expenses and taxes that others don't think about.

        And this right here is why the government HATES contractors and makes their life difficult at every turn. If everyone had to pay self-employment taxes via quarterly payments instead of near-invisible payroll withholding like they do for W2 employees, there would be far far less tolerance for government spending. When the government announces another few billion in money for Ukraine, rather than cheering it on, the public would be up in arms and there would be zero chance of incumbents getting reelected.

        • I think if people knew that 1/8 of their income was going to social security, they'd be really unhappy about it.

          I have a family member who worked at a restaurant. The owners realized that they weren't withholding social security taxes on tips and then began doing so. There was practically a revolt among employees who were really angry that the owners were taking 7.5% of their tips. Many threatened to quit and some actually did.

    • While it is true that contact needs some adjustments for comparison, that much hyperbole is excessive.

      No, it's not the case that a tech contractor billing $120/hr is no better off than a worker in a fast food restaurant.

    • You are omitting the greatest intangible benefit of contract work, that you don't have a boss but a customer. That alone is worth the reduction in the total amount you make.

      • Until you need health insurance.

        • I buy health insurance for myself on an open market for $700/month. While that's outrageously expensive compared to the rest of the developed world, at $8,400 per year after taxes means you only have to charge some $12K more a year -- a fraction of $150-250K/year you can charge as a contractor -- to cover for it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ranton ( 36917 )

      Your math is really bad here. Your estimate of self-employment and regular income taxes is fine, but health care and retirement benefits do not reflect $40 per hour. No company offers $7k per month in health care, life and disability insurance, and retirement benefits to employees per month. If you have a family health plan, that is closer to $20 per hour for a full time worker. $15 per hour if you are single, or $10 per hour if you are on your spouse's plan. And most companies give at best 10%-20% of your

      • Yes, in retrospect it is probably a little high, although my family health insurance annual cost is currently $22,000 (this is a group plan through the employer and this does NOT include my portion of the contribution), and the retirement contributions is something like 9% of salary, so on $160K (which is more than I make) that would be $14,400; or $36,400 combined.

    • It's not quite that bad; you should walk away with 40% worst case after all those things. I'm not sure about contractors today, but for me it used to be closer to 70%; I needed 20% to cover self-employment taxes and benefits, and 10% to cover administrative overhead and unpaid time. I was working more than 40 hours a week though and actually had a company set up for it. The extra things that were tax deductible alone made it a huge win.

      Now, if you are working through a contracting agency it could be a wh

      • Good point about the tax deductible idea - if you are strategic and know the law, this can really help reduce the bite of taxes (although only to the extent that you are investing and spending on your contracting work).

        • Things that are mixed use or otherwise necessary expenses like a computer or cell phone are prime examples, but for my wife's business she was able to put ~50% of her gross income into her 401k and end up with near zero tax liability. I guess not everybody approaches it that way, but we didn't need her income for survival so it made much more sense to build up her retirement account.

    • The tax thing is pretty real. Though, it maths out to about the same for an FTE. Taxes are just that much more "in your face" when one contracts.

      Contracts don't include retirement benefits or health care. True. If you're only insuring yourself, the health insurance thing is relatively cheap-ish. I'd rather be an FTE if I had a partner and a dozen children I have to provide health care for. Hell yeah make my employer contribute to that. But a lot of the other benefits that come with an FTE role don

    • Especially considering that in 2000, Java contractors in Wisconsin (of all places!) were billing at $200/hour. $120 an hour would be a decent mid-90's wage.

  • Sorry to hear ... (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @10:36AM (#63396311)

    ... about that Chief Ethics Officer position. Oh well, Starbucks is still hiring baristas.

    Actually, they're not.

  • $120?! (Score:4)

    by kackle ( 910159 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @11:07AM (#63396427)
    Where? Asking for a friend...

  • I just broke six figures a year. In the last half-dozen years of a multi-decades long career, with a B.Sc. Other than the Big Name companies, nobody pays that kind of money. A third of that in your gross paycheck is normal.

    • Where do you live and what is your risk profile? A solid unix sysadmin in Los Angeles would make a minimum of $160k with less than 10 years of experience.

    • Interesting... I make 6 figures (okay, it starts with a "1", but you get it), and i work for a small-ish consulting company with staff of well under 200. Yes, there are smaller places that pay that.

      I did take a significant pay cut when I left a much larger firm (via a generous voluntary exit offer).

  • Fire and Rehire (Score:3)

    by Macthorpe ( 960048 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @11:44AM (#63396537) Journal

    So they're doing fire and rehire to cut their wage bills. It's not a bust because it's just capitalists doing capitalism

  • One of them, somewhere? How about an average?
    I am currently looking for a job - guess why - and I am getting very few offers above $100/hr, most seems to be between 150K and 170K per year.
    Contracts do not pay more to account for instability, they are just a way for some company to skim my salary when they resell me to another company.

  • $120/hour is peanuts now. You think it's a big deal to be paid what people were paid 20 years ago? That's junior developer/administrator/devops pay. (Support is going to be a bit less...)

    The thing you need to note is that tech salaries have not significantly gone up since the dotcom bust.

    Housing costs many times what it did in the tech culture areas. $120/hour barely gets you a 1000sqft for housing, if you're lucky. Everything is more expensive.

  • Sadly, for far too long, tech companies have used HR ppl to hire, ... well, tech ppl. Problem is, there are just below MBAs for laziness and not really caring about the job. As such, lots of companies have hired trash because HR pushed them (but they were so nice and had such a nice looking resume; And COBOL is needed for working on the Windows Kernel. Right?).

    So, tech companies go through cycles where they have to get rid of the trash so to speak. Basically, good tech companies need ppl that actually wo
  • How many are actual tech workers and how many are those "other" jobs, like managers who don't know tech, or other office positions that are not really tech jobs, but employ people in them (twitter content checkers and fact checkers are NOT tech workers). That said, it's nice this admin has their back by keeping rates low, bailing out the tech industry (not the banks, the actual industry), and making sure "healthcare for all" for the laid off workers......oh wait....they haven't done any of that :( oh well
  • This fight will never stabilize. Companies nowadays are trying to minimize the amount of salaries of employees. I was just reading about the minimum wage recently, you can go now [supremestudy.com] here and find out about it. If companies paid well, then perhaps the quality of goods on the market would be better. Because people would be motivated to work.

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