Is the trend for high-paying tech jobs over? Bootcamps, AI and creating our own value

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Imagine that you graduated from university in the field of software/informatics. Maybe you graduated with a high degree. Or, while working in the sector, you developed yourself in many different areas, worked on large-scale/high-traffic projects, learned new frameworks, etc.

In both cases, you either wanted to get a job or change jobs. You had many job interviews, did human resources processes, test cases, online coding, etc. And you are still waiting for a response from the companies you interviewed with or your mailbox is full of rejected emails.

So what’s going on?

What happened to the HR people who looked at your profile on Linkedin, reviewed/downloaded your CV, the jobs that offered high salaries? Companies like Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon stopping their recruitment processes, global companies like these laying off thousands of people… These are the things that are happening in the sector right now.

In addition, processes such as remote working or 4-day work weeks, stock sales to employees, etc. are gradually decreasing, and many global companies have even ended some of them completely.

Is the trend over?

Things many of us in the industry have observed:

• There was a significant decrease in the number of open jobs.
• Opened jobs are closed after a while and then reopened.
• Technical expectations from candidates are increasing day by day.
• The number of people who want to pursue a career in the technology sector has increased with the increase in the number of bootcamps (not only software/informatics/engineering graduates but also graduates from different fields have joined the sector)

etc.

Until 5–6 years ago, there were resources such as official documentation, some free blogs of technology writers, and question-answer sites like stackoverflow to learn something.

Today, we have a lot of resources to learn something, make an application or design a system. And most of them are free. Youtube videos, millions of blog pages and of course artificial intelligence.

Another topic is the Bootcamp issue. I think the winners of this process are the Bootcamp owners. Short-term Bootcamps marketed for people who expect high-paying jobs and want to join the technology sector and even want to learn these technologies in a short time have become the winners of this process.

“Become a data scientist in 2 months”

“Start working at global technology companies with high salaries in 3 months”

They attracted many people with similar slogans. Of course, there are Bootcamps with sufficient training content and training duration, but many of them actually created a hype. And because of this hype, many people who received training did not get their money’s worth.

As a result of all this, those who want to make a career in technology/IT have started to join the sector and apply for job postings as a result of processes such as fast access to resources, application development using artificial intelligence, and getting a certificate from bootcamp (debatable of course). Supply has become low and demand is high.

Leaving aside the developments in artificial intelligence, all this increase in demand and the decrease in the supply of jobs for various reasons has caused a difference in salary policies.

Frankly,

technology seems to have become a victim of its own popularity.

Impact of artificial intelligence

You may have come across many content like this on Linkedin and other social media platforms:

AI WILL TAKE YOUR JOBS

WHO USE AI TOOLS VERY WELL WILL GET YOUR JOBS.

First of all, let’s know that artificial intelligence takes people who cannot improve themselves and adapt.

It is an inevitable fact that AI affects business processes in many ways. If you are someone outside the software/IT sector or a recent graduate, AI can feel like something magical. You can get the feeling of making an application in a few minutes.

However, let’s also look at it from the perspective of people who are in the industry and have worked on large-scale/high-traffic projects.

Bad codes or poorly handled scenarios/tasks can cost companies millions of dollars. In the technology sector, situations such as taking a new development live or resolving an existing bug and taking it live, and handling the related testing processes are high stress situations for many technology sector employees.

On the other hand, apart from coding a good block of code, security-related issues also cause companies to get upset and face millions of dollars in fines if there is a problem. Security concerns during the delivery of a block of code to the live environment can also turn into a high-stress situation for employees.

From another perspective, many companies do not want the information and data in their domain or even their customers to be leaked out in an uncontrolled manner and used. They plan many training programs for their employees, sign contracts, and spend millions of dollars to protect their systems against data leakage. If this data is leaked by employees, consciously or unconsciously, it will have many economic/psychological effects.

AI is sometimes more successful than a human in these matters, and sometimes it fails to produce the desired results due to hallucinations, poorly given prompts, poorly designed AI agents, or other reasons. However, this thought does not comfort us.

So how will we become more value-creating in an era where everyone is a software developer, data analyst, or expert in something, and AI tools are speeding up work and increasing efficiency?

• First of all, we must keep up with technology. Being against it, completely ignoring it will not gain us anything. Breaking machines like the Luddites in the Industrial Revolution will not work. Technology takes those who walk with it.
• Adapting. Today’s technology is artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence agents, etc. Tomorrow, maybe it will be quantum technologies. Every period, a new concept affects the agenda and sectors. And both as an employee and as a person living in this life, adapting to such technological developments and perhaps being one of the first to use these tools and developing products, producing content, etc. will increase our adaptation and value.
• Frameworks, libraries, and programming languages ​​should not be our focus. We should focus on effective ways to solve complex problems.
• Instead of being an engineer, we should focus on the product and develop products that can be sold in the market.
• We must be valuable individuals for ourselves as well as valuable hard workers for the company we work for. We must gain skills such as developing products, solving a problem, and earning passive income using today’s technology, AI tools, etc.
• While AI tools want to take our jobs, we should also strive to create new lines of business, new areas of work, using AI tools.
• Finally, time is passing very fast. It is more important to value time than anything else. The monetary value of time is more expensive than many things.

Thanx for reading.