#softwareengineering

The real vulnerability in the AI‑driven shift in software engineering isn’t the 20‑something just starting out, but the 40‑year‑old already deep into their career, with a mortgage, dependants, and an identity built on years of hard‑earned expertise; juniors can pivot because a few years isn’t a career, but mid‑career engineers face an existential threat with no structured retraining path, conflicting advice about whether to re‑skill, and pressure from an industry that won’t slow down for them, even though what they uniquely bring—judgment, pattern recognition, scar tissue from failed migrations, the ability to sense risk, define success, and avoid tomorrow’s tech debt—is exactly what AI cannot replicate, because AI can generate code but cannot carry responsibility or consequences, leaving the 40‑year‑old at risk of losing the very career they spent decades building, and that is who I’m most concerned about.

I was looking through the official 2026 h1b / lca data published by the DOL (it's mandatory to disclose to them). the dol publishes these public disclosure files for h1b, h1b1 and E3 applications.

for jpmorgan chase, i used the 2026 employer data available through h1bhq:

https://h1bhq.com/search?employerSlug=JPMORGAN-CHASE-and-co-2&fiscalYear=2026

the figures below come from that dataset.

jpmorgan chase is cutting us jobs while filing for 1,843 h-1b positions...

this is the part i have trouble understanding.

jpmorgan chase has been cutting roles in the US. at the same time, the 2026 h-1b data shows 1,843 records for jpmorgan/chase.

the average listed wage is $162,992 (healthy)

this is not mostly a handful of unusual specialist positions. a large portion of the filings are for technology jobs.

some of the most common titles:

278 - vice president, lead software engineer
158 - associate, software engineer iii
102 - software engineer
102 - vice president, sr lead software engineer
60 - financial analyst
54 - vice president, sr manager of software engineering
40 - vice president, product manager
28 - business intelligence analyst
24 - vice president, manager of software engineering
23 - data scientist
22 - vice president, applied ai ml lead

the geographic concentration is also interesting.

400 - new york, ny
348 - jersey city, nj
304 - plano, tx
219 - wilmington, de
176 - columbus, oh
71 - tampa, fl
55 - palo alto, ca
51 - san francisco, ca
47 - chicago, il
42 - houston, tx

80% of the records are concentrated in just NY, jersey city, plano, wilmington and columbus.

i understand why the h-1b program exists...companies sometimes need skills they say they cannot readily find in the domestic labor market.

but that raises an obvious question when a company is also reducing its us workforce.

if the co has enough work to sponsor hundreds of software engineers, data specialists, product managers and other professionals, why are employees in the US being laid off or having their positions eliminated?

are these completely different skills and organizations?

are laidoff employees being considered for these openings?

are positions being eliminated in one part of the company while essentially similar positions are being filled through h-1b sponsorship elsewhere?

or is this simply part of a broader strategy to change where and how the company sources its workforce?

i am not saying every h1b filing represents a replacement for an american worker.

but... 1,843 records in one year (we have 3 mo to go), with an average listed wage of nearly $163K, is large enough that employees deserve to understand how this hiring fits with the layoffs... and job cuts they are seeing around them.

what are you seeing? are teams actually short of people? are laidoff positions being refilled?

are h1b workers joining areas that have recently had reductions?

specific teams, locations and job titles would be relevant.

Payments company PayPal is implementing significant job cuts, impacting over 250 employees at its San Jose headquarters. These permanent layoffs are scheduled to take effect on October 30th. The affected positions are primarily within senior software engineering and engineering management roles. This reduction represents approximately 1% of PayPal's total global workforce. The company is reportedly undergoing a broader cost-reduction initiative.

San Jose, California

https://www.kron4.com/news/technology-ai/paypal-layoffs-payment-app-cuts-over-250-bay-area-jobs/

Big development in the H1B scam. Every Software Engineer position at Capital One contains this text:

At this time, Capital One will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization, or offer any immigration related support for this position (i.e. H1B, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, F-1 CPT, J-1, TN, E-2, E-3, L-1 and O-1, or any EADs or other forms of work authorization that require immigration support from an employer).

Zillow Group has announced significant layoffs, impacting 91 jobs in Washington state. The majority of these cuts are concentrated among senior-level employees, including directors and principal roles. Product and engineering departments are most affected, with senior positions like Product Manager and Software Development Engineer seeing the largest reductions. The company stated these changes are to better position Zillow for the future and move faster. Some terminations are also a result of relocating or contracting out operations.

Seattle, Washington

https://www.geekwire.com/2026/zillow-layoffs-hit-91-jobs-in-washington-state-with-senior-roles-bearing-the-brunt/

Why are so many SAS developers struggling with asymptotic runtime? Time to fix this gaping hole in your knowledge before you deploy yet another catastrophic O(n²) disaster to prod. Listen closely and I'll break it down into tiny, digestible pieces so you can finally comprehend this.

Asymptotic runtime is a mathematical framework used to describe how an algorithm's execution time changes as the input size (which we call n) grows toward infinity.

Note that I said infinity, not "ten items from your local test database."

We don't count actual seconds or milliseconds. Why? Because your slow, outdated laptop will run code differently than a high performance server. Measuring seconds is for amateurs. Professionals look at the growth rate of operations. We look at how the algorithm scales when the data gets massive.

There are three symbols you need to know.

Big O (O): This is the upper bound. It's the absolute worst case scenario. It guarantees that your code will never, ever perform worse than this curve. Since your code likely runs terribly, you'll spend most of your time dealing with this one.

Big Omega (Ω): This is the lower bound. It represents the best case scenario. It's the absolute minimum number of operations required.

Big Theta (Θ): This is the tight bound. We only use this when the best case and worst case growth rates are exactly the same. It means the runtime is perfectly sandwiched between two constant factors.

When analyzing runtime, we completely ignore constants and lower order terms. Why? Because when n is one billion, adding 5 or multiplying by 2 does not matter. Only the highest power of n matters.

Here's the hierarchy of efficiency, ordered from best to worst. Try to memorize it so you can stop writing terrible code:

O(1) - constant time, the gold standard. The input could be five items or five billion items; the algorithm takes the exact same number of steps. An example is looking up an element in an array by its index. It's instant. It's flawless. It's everything your code isn't.

O(log n) - logarithmic time, highly efficient. Every time the algorithm takes a step, it cuts the remaining problem size in half. Think of binary search. Even if you search through a billion sorted items, it takes a maximum of around 30 steps.

O(n) - linear time, acceptable, but uninspired. The time grows in direct proportion to the input size. If you double the data, you double the time. This is what happens when you use a simple loop to scan through an unsorted list from start to finish.

O(n log n) - linearithmic time, the standard for any decent sorting algorithm, like merge sort or quick sort, the absolute best we can do for comparison based sorting.

O(n²) - quadratic time, this is where we enter the danger zone. If you double the input size, the execution time quadruples. You usually achieve this embarrassment by nesting a loop inside another loop because you didn't know how to utilize a hash map.

O(2^n) - exponential time, complete and utter failure. The operations double with every single item you add. If n hits 50, your program will literally outlive the universe.

If you only ever write code that processes a list of ten users, you can ignore all of this and keep writing your sloppy nested loops.But the moment your data scales to millions of users, an O(n²) algorithm will lock up the CPU, crash the server, and force your manager to ask why you didn't learn this in school. Asymptotic runtime allows you to predict these catastrophic bottlenecks before they happen, independent of hardware.

Next I probably need to show you how to analyze a nested loop or how to identify a constant-time operation...

Honest question: Why does Dell have software Engineering Leaders and 10s of thousands of software developers?

Every piece of enterprise software we develop either doesn't work, has to be recalled, or is already 10 years behind the competition when it releases. So why do we have these groups?

15yrs experienced software developer from cognizant (offshore) who is working for Nike for last few years doesn't know what is github or doesn't know the meaning of commit / repository. I mean literally some resources don't know anything and i am not sure how many companies they are working at same time. They celebrate when they hear people who make them work get laid off. ITC leaders trying to build their own empire and they don't want to hire people who are talented and have worked for same company. RIP Nike Technology!

Elon Musk: Coding Was a Top Job for Decades. It Will Be Dead By the End of the Year.

NetApp recently conducted layoffs. These job cuts occurred in San Jose. The affected positions included product management. Software engineering roles were also impacted. Sales department employees faced job reductions.

San Jose, California

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2026/05/26/netapp-layoffs-san-jose.html

Get ready. The layoffs are happening.

Lead Software Engineer
LOB: Technology

https://l.smartnews.com/p-7N8S54w8/P2qeIM

Claude Code launched inside Microsoft's Experiences and Devices group in December 2025. Six months later, the experiment is ending. The tool was not cancelled because engineers disliked it. It was cancelled because they used it too much.

https://www.medtechdive.com/news/medtronic-to-create-european-software-hub-in-ireland/820999/

Now we’re back to the usual agenda of outsourcing whenever possible!

“The Patient Care Systems hub will develop cloud-based platforms and clinical software to support connected care for patients with implanted cardiac devices, according to a Thursday statement from economic development agency IDA Ireland. The investment will add 85 jobs initially. New roles at the site will include leadership, software engineering and systems reliability positions.”

For code contributors, there’s metrics involved now. Even within tiers of needs improvement, meets, or exceeds, they have top, middle, and low rankings. Basically tracking commits from forked branches of mainstream repos. I’m sure they used this as part of the layoff decisions.

One IT department just announced last week it will be moving to AI SDLC. This means developers will basically just be 'reviewing' AI agentic code instead of writing.

What do you all think about this? Will Vanguard be doing layoffs/stealthy layoffs more often over the coming months?

In my opinion, the writing is on the wall and it has been getting more clear across the organization for a handful of years now.

I know this is a layoff related forum but this is like the only way to know about how the inside works...
How does team matching(Software Engineering) work once you got a verbal offer from the recruiter? It's been almost a month and HR/Recruiter haven't schedule a single meeting for me.
Does anyone know how many candidates are in the talent pool and how many headcounts are out there?

Is this normal at Schwab to get asked to created a whole angular application during a specialist software engineer interview that connects to an api. I had until tomorrow to finish it, but I felt it was a waste of my time since I am employed in a different position with other work. I felt it was extreme and I’m moving on. Is this normal.

Anyone else notice a certain class of long-tenured, well-connected engineers getting real quiet lately?

You know the ones. Own half the repos “by history.” Camp in approvals and support channels. Block merge requests from new or non-influential engineers for reasons:
• “I don’t like this pattern.”
• “We usually don’t do it this way.”
• “This feels risky.”

They’d always offer “alternatives,” but mostly superficial ones — renames, style rewrites, or busywork that adds no value and exists mainly to assert dominance.

Then AI entered code review.

Now:
• Reviews focus on correctness, not preferences.
• Style nitpicks don’t block shipping.
• Social connections don’t matter.
• Tests and results do.

Suddenly, the gatekeepers can’t bully through approvals or code owner lists, and new engineers actually get to ship if they do good work.

Watching support-channel emperors lose authority to an LLM that doesn’t care about tenure is oddly satisfying.

Turns out removing politics from code reviews gives everyone a fair shot.

March 1st it's all over red rover. JAVA UI FTW!!!

An walmart director posted like this in LinkedIn. Charging our culture.

If you know anyone impacted by the recent Amazon layoffs, my team at Walmart in Bentonville is hiring software engineers.

I’m an ex-Amazonian (AWS) and made the move a few years ago. We’re working on large-scale problems—platforms, AI, cloud architecture, and modernization efforts.

Questions? Reach out to our recruiter DM me directly.

#hiring #amazon #softwareengineering

Bonus for lead and Senior software engineer?

I am trying to evaluate an offer from AT&T, and I'm hoping you guys can help me understand what the internal range is. The offer is for a software engineering role in Middletown NJ, for $255k base salary. Where does this fall in the band for Principal Member of Technical Staff? Do most principal engineers at AT&T make more or less than this? I know people on this board are obviously unhappy with the company, but I think I am willing to put up with the annoyances that I've read about on here.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-chief-scientist-advice-recent-grads-software-engineers-2025-11

What are software engineer bonuses like in PA and Lake Mary? For associates, senior associates, and VP levels?

In Dallas, Texas IBM laid off the entire Cloud Platform Team (i.e., developers, software engineers, etc.), including the manager.

with the latest AI tools, people can develop a payments application in 10 minutes...
How do they explain having so many people in the office 24 x7 , and supporting old terrible products for years. any logical explanation?

They block all these AI tools from office laptops!

my friend in CCB says they are moving to DevOps model.. anyone heard of it ? How about CIB or AWM ?

By Mattias Bergstrom, Former Forbes Councils Member.

As software technology leaders, we face the same challenges as leaders in other engineering industries, but there are differences.

One of our biggest challenges is employee churn. This is where software companies suffer more than others, especially when losing engineers—because it is not just a resource being lost but training, insight and morale that will take time to replace and can disrupt production. The cost of employee churn is higher than we think. Studies have shown that the average cost to replace a highly skilled employee is 213% of their annual salary.

PayScale found that in 2018, companies like Google and Amazon with above-normal salaries and desirable employee perks still suffered from a median employee tenure of just about 1 year.

We need to start looking to cause and effect analysis and stop looking at statistics. As Mark Twain is often credited with saying, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

After trying to use statistics to work out what is going wrong, we have to accept that the statistics used are not helping. So, what is really going wrong? Well, when we look at software engineering versus other types of engineering, we quickly notice differences in management. In other engineering fields, most managers are engineers themselves. So, the processes and deliverables systems have been developed by engineers, for engineers, for a long time, even since the pyramids were built.

The need for software engineering became huge in the 1980s and '90s. The value of an engineer was too high to have them in management, so leads, project managers and department heads were recruited from the business sector to keep projects “on track.” As business-educated leaders typically have no education in engineering processes, they needed ways to “measure” and manage the engineers without a full understanding of what they do or how they do them.

So, all kinds of ridiculous KPI measurements were invented. The most famous in software engineering is probably the “lines of code,” in which the performance of an engineer is measured by the amount of code they write. Ways to game this include simply extending the comments in your code, having the team agree on a fixed amount of code or, as I have personally seen, checking in garbage lines of code at the end of the day and deleting them the next.

There are a bunch of examples of KPI systems still used today that all engineers know how to game—to mention a few: story point projections, change coupling, commit count and Google DORA. They can all be gamed and are so obviously developed by business-focused non-engineers who have no clue how engineering works. What is most funny is how these KPI systems all see the engineers as measurable menial workers, not as the highly educated, valuable assets that companies need to function and generate profits.

Around these business-developed and managed KPI measurement systems, development methodologies have been created, mostly to keep up with fictional business goals and for the engineers to keep up with the KPIs. Kanban, Scrum and Agile do nothing to optimize the engineering work happening; they only provide an arbitrary way for managers to feel in control.

Got up this morning, went for a walk – logged on to see if there were any replies to my employment applications. None. Been doing this almost everyday mon-fri for coming up to two years since my RIF from F5.

Found two more software engineer/developer openings so crafted an application for the first and sent it. Started crafting the second application and stopped. Why am I doing this? With the state of software development as it is, when all you have to do is pay $1000 to $3000 for a 1 to 3 day course to get guaranteed certification of Expert or Black Belt level, it trivializes what software engineering is. I choose not to be a part of the game anymore. I’m giving up seeking new employment and will let it find me if the software gods so choose.

There was a time early on where software development required being a craftsman and artisan. I was working at a company that was in the first 100 that applied and received its domain registration in the 1980s. Those were good and exciting times. You were a part of something greater. Bugs/Errors/Failures as a result of your work were not an option. If something did come up, that became the first priority to solve (that day). The customer needed to trust you. That doesn’t exist anymore. F5 (as well as other corporations) willingly and routinely release software that has multiple serious issues. Big IP Next is a prime example. Development methods of Agile, Scrum, and SAFe were adopted that have no engineering validity to being used, but they are used anyway.

There are likely hundreds of reasons why I should continue seeking employment – all likely are valid. I choose to be the craftsman/artisan and that type of position will have to find me. If it doesn’t so be it.

Altho i hv no stats, i expect we produce more slides on a daily basis than we do lines of code that actually build us any sort of IP.

And what's depressing is that most of the slideware is just rehash, update, and repackaging of the same old cr-p.

I'm one of the thousands of slide jockey here, so the irony of this post isn't lost on me but hey, tomorrow is another new week in which I'll do the same old sh-t as I've for the past many years.