IT sector: entry salaries of €20,000 and Amazon-style interviews

From three weekly offers to one per month: the IT sector hangover

The tech market has gone from knocking on your door to making you wait on the landing. Today, someone with five years of experience at decent companies recalls receiving an average of three job offers per week for four consecutive years; now they get one a month, with conditions that, according to their own summary, invite staying on unemployment benefits rather than signing a contract. That is the prevailing thesis in the sector: fewer offers, lower entry salaries, and selection processes that have become, directly, absurd. The rest of the diagnosis admits nuances, but the starting point is hardly disputed.

The collapse is not measured only in the volume of vacancies. It is measured by what is paid to enter, and the circulating figures bear little resemblance to what was promised to bootcamp or engineering graduates.

How much does an IT junior earn in Spain today?

Less than they were told. A forum user reports that in Valladolid, Renault hires via temp agency for €20,000 2022 and 2023 graduates with degrees; to other profiles in the same environment, with better records, they have been hired for €33,000, and there are those working remotely for €30,000 still waiting for tasks to be assigned. These are starting salaries, almost intern-level, according to these accounts, but jobs are not lacking: the problem is the price and the quality of the contract.

Five or six years ago, the first step was different, according to a senior sector worker. A junior vocational training graduate entered with €40,000 just for not spoiling it in a couple of calls, and with two company changes, they reached €50,000 or €60,000. That ladder has broken. The mismatch is so abrupt that much of the discouragement comes not from finding nothing, but from finding things that do not compensate.

From three weekly offers to one per month

The funnel has narrowed at all levels. University graduates who left after 2022 live, in the words of the opening statement, dead alive with some remote possibility. Those from bootcamps who have not yet worked in this field face the non-rhetorical possibility of never doing so. And those with one or two years of employment face a slow death scenario: only a minority, estimated at 10%, will retain something resembling a career, and without great aspirations.

The breathing segment is those who entered before the pandemic. They still receive offers, though fewer, and should already be around €50,000 if they have moved minimally. Even there, the advice is defensive: hold the position, and if it comes to that, take the severance pay. According to the thread peine, veteran profiles tied to old systems are the worst off for relocation outside, and the best off for not moving, because no one wants to touch certain things.

Is artificial intelligence to blame for the slaughter?

No, or not primarily. Someone who programs something more complex than a button argues that generative AI does not explain a collapse of this magnitude, and attributes the adjustment to something else: years of skyrocketing hiring to meet internal goals, interest rate hikes, and a wave of outsourcing that accelerated after the pandemic. The most critical version within the sector points to inflated headcounts of profiles that produced nothing, and who became the first exits at the first sign of trouble.

The experience recounted by major tech companies fits this: six months of bureaucracy without an assigned project and another six to get approval for initial changes, all with salaries above €60,000 in Spain and $100,000 in the United States. Those leaving now have passed extremely tough filters and compete against less prepared candidates, in a context where several forum users point out that outsourcing to Latin America has accelerated and juniors from there are used to cover technical positions.

Eight hours of free interviews for a small company

If anything has changed more visibly than salary, it is the gateway. Modest firms ask for high-level leetcode exercises and advanced system design for positions that do not require it, and some report between eight and twelve hours of unpaid tests to be rejected. Two years ago, a bit of charm and not failing too much was enough; today the bar has risen to match that of the big ones.

The complaint is not just aesthetic. It is criticized that technical selection has replaced on-the-job training, when in other trades —plumbing, electricity, guasonry— one learns by working alongside someone. No one asks a new accounting graduate to set up a company before giving them their first contract. In programming, however, it is taken as normal.

What profiles survive the filter?

Specialists in niches the tool does not touch, systems personnel, and cybersecurity staff, where it is said there is a shortage of people to analyze an uncapped volume of alerts. Also those who know how to assemble products instead of custom programming: software resold to thousands of customers multiplies the permissible cost per line of code, while custom development is charged only once and no one pays the difference between a functional hack and a masterpiece.

That is, perhaps, the most interesting twist in the whole matter. Those who understand the other's business survive, not just the framework. And those who know how to sell, which is exactly what the guild despises.

Where is this going?

Nothing points to a quick return to the 2021 market. The combination of high interest rates, outsourcing, and candidate oversupply will keep the funnel narrow, and with AI as the perfect excuse to cut without explanation. That those handpicked during the fever were the first to fall does not miccionan the fever will repeat: it will likely miccionan that the entry level remains much lower for years. Although it is wise not to take it for granted: the same market that today has a surplus complained of scarcity three years ago.