We can’t ignore it, 2024 is one of the worst years for tech employees. Since Covid we have seen multiple rounds of layoffs at big tech companies in the US and Europe, and yes like many others when it started I was still in highschool and didn’t care much what was going on. Now comes 2024 and Iooking at my dreams to work abroad, it could be a tricky situation.


What does this mean for current computer science students like myself? Well after going through statistics and even stalking a couple linkedIn profiles the major thing to notice is how most laid of senior engineers are competing and accepting junior roles and positions offered by startups. This is not very surprising considering the level of competition currently. One company for example, Spotify fired over 600 individuals in 2023 with at least 75% of those being Senior Software Engineers including even some with 20+ experience. Where did most of them endup? Ofcourse in startups. The answer is, how do you even compete with an over experienced dinasour who is willing to accept anything inorder to feed their family.


One of the most surprising things I noticed was how the market changed from 2022, I’d rather not say names but from the looks of it a significant numbers of companies hired to what I can only refer to as trial running their unrealistic projects. And yes indeed they just fired all those people when their stupid ideas didn’t work or bring them any money. Another thing that is not even new to us is companies outsourcing jobs to firms in India, you can curse all you want and talk about quality over quantity blah blah blah but that won’t change the fact that it is happening. Ofcourse Indian developers are cheaper, they have thousands of them and firms literally operate like code factories tackling multiple projects at once and with great regard for time to completion rather than standards or code quality.


Now what should we do? As stranded as I am and emotionally writing this post, I can only guess future proofing yourself is the best thing to do if you are ever going to be looking for jobs abroad. AI and data related jobs are on the rise and simply ignoring those fields is not gonna do for the near future.