State of the Market

[SussexSeagull]

Every time I read posts from you it's like two different people posting

You want a gig - you don't. There's no work - there's loads. You're retired - you're not. You love living abroad - you hate it.

Schrodinger's Software Engineer.

[avonleigh]

I think this is as good a summary as I have read of the current situation. Not to say there isn't things we can all do to make ourselves more desirable, I am picking up Cypress at the moment, but there are too many people in my specific skillset (testing), broader industry (software development) and broader white collar work saying the same thing to eliminate it being a problem with your network or CV (I have heard manual work is going better but don't have any evidence of that).

As I and others have said, it might very well be a perfect storm of all the things you have mentioned and more.

Why bother with Cypress? Hardly anybody uses it and it's been around for years. As it's quite limited. Would look at Playwright as that's taking over now from Selenium.

[SchumiStars]

I hate to say it but if there is no demand for developers there will be no demand for testers.

Like I said we need the next greatest IT related project to get all the companies chasing something.

Y2000
Dot.com boom
iPhone
Whatsapp
App Development
NetFlix
.....

Why would a company need to spend on IT projects now, when their competitors are also standing still.

[Fraidycat]

I hate to say it but if there is no demand for developers there will be no demand for testers.

Some people are saying that with more code being written by AI means testers will still be required (for now at least) because the AI generated code is quite bug prone at the moment.

[SchumiStars]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjwqqvqxzxlo

Not IT, but clearly the state of the [job] market is in dire straits.

[SussexSeagull]

Why bother with Cypress? Hardly anybody uses it and it's been around for years. As it's quite limited. Would look at Playwright as that's taking over now from Selenium.

Interesting. Playwright does seem to get mentioned more and more.

[SussexSeagull]

I hate to say it but if there is no demand for developers there will be no demand for testers.

Like I said we need the next greatest IT related project to get all the companies chasing something.

Y2000
Dot.com boom
iPhone
Whatsapp
App Development
NetFlix
.....

Why would a company need to spend on IT projects now, when their competitors are also standing still.

In the words of former Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Eniai, it is too early to say. In the current economic climate, projects not getting green lit kind of wipes out the whole Software Development ecosystem, although historically PMs tend to see any improvement in the market, then developers, then testers because that is how companies recruit for projects (moving testing left is great on paper up until the point someone has to pay for it).

Who knows what will happen with AI? It is possible in the short and medium term that management will want a comfort blanket of some human QA. But then again they might not.

No one really knows and we are years away from finding out.

Like it or not, AI is the next major IT advancement.

[Fraidycat]

Like it or not, AI is the next major IT advancement.

It will takes a few more years. The internet 'came out' in the early to mid 90s but the demand from companies didn't go crazy until 1999 and 2000.

[sadkingbilly]

Let's just say I'm a bit 'picky'.

aye, you carry on.
that trumpet won't blow itself.

[sadkingbilly]

Schrodinger's Software Engineer.

'Software Engineer'?
devs are NOT 'Software Engineer's.
they're application developers.
there's a world of difference.