Missed the LinkedIn Live Event about 2023 tech industry changes: Could someone please summarize the key points?

Switching jobs in the poor economy: good or bad idea?

Unfortunately, we didn't talk about this topic too much - This session was very ad-hoc and had 0 planning. So I'll chime in on this.

As always, I believe in putting yourself in a position to get lucky. If you have spare time here and there, you aren't in love with your current job, and you're able to get good opportunities, I think there's nothing wrong with following up and seeing if you can land something.

However, this economy changes 2 things:

1. You should cherish a good team more - In the economy of 2018 - 2021 in particular, you could switch jobs regularly and get far more money quite easily. It was very much a employee-favored economy as opposed to an employer-favored one. This is not the case anymore as the supply of top-tier tech jobs is way too small to satisfy demand from competent job-seeking engineers. If you're already on a supportive team that satisfies your needs, consider staying on it more strongly.
2. Relationships are far more important - The people who fare well in a layoff-rich climate are those with deep networks full of people willing to go to bat for them. You can't build a rich network if you job switch every 1.5 years. To have truly powerful connections, you need to stay on a team for 2+ years and build presence. This is another reason it's better to stay at one place longer. Here's our expert career advice on effectively networking within your organization.

In terms of what was covered:

• Those working in core areas like system stability (e.g. SREs) will be safer in the current climate. "Nice-to-haves" will be cut. Here's our expert career advice on how to do well in a layoff-rich climate.
• ChatGPT and AI will not replace you as an engineer if you're a high-performing one and not a commodity coder. Here are my in-depth thoughts around what makes a truly high-performer software engineer.
• Side projects are incredibly powerful for career advancement. Zach likes Magic: the Gathering so he built a small app to maintain decklists that got 100k+ users. I have done something similar repeatedly, publishing ~30 apps for fun that have gotten 3 million users combined. You can learn more about how to build effective side projects in our video here.