It isn't.

As someone who has made hiring and firing decisions at the Board level, the people who are the most severely affected were either (in no order):

1. Working remotely in North America but demanding Bay Area salaries without the chops to justify it.

2. Working in Western Europe (they complain more about stuff irrelevant to the business but shy away from business critical decision making when offered the opportunity, unlike their Czech, Polish, Romanian, and Bulgarian peers despite us paying €90k-150k TCs across the EU, and Warsaw+Prague becoming Berlin level expensive).

3. Bootcamp grads who never fixed skills issues (foundational knowledge is foundational for a reason).

4. Getting paid Bay Area or Seattle salaries while living in LCOL regions like RTP. The whole point of a Cary office was inshoring - the talent was meh but if we needed a cheap QA engineer or move ops for a stagnant part of our business in 2019 we'd move that job and BU there. They didn't realize they were viewed as at the bottom of the totem pole skills wise.

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So long as you keep your skills sharp, have foundational computer science and engineering knowledge, and live in the primary tech hubs globally, it's a pretty good market.

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Edit: can't reply

> What, in your opinion are the “foundational” CS skills the #3 people are missing

If you've survived this long, I think you will be fine. But I'd recommend anyone from a bootcamp to take an OS course comparable to CS61 [0], an algos course comparable to CS170 [1], and a programming language design course comparable to CS421 [2].

There is foundational design and architectural patterns and knowledge that are taught in OS, Programming Language Design, and Algos classes that cannot be taught in a bootcamp.

My recommendation for people in your shoes is to do GATech's OMSCS or UPenn's online MCIT to learn some of the foundational stuff you were never introduced to at a bootcamp.

[0] - https://cs61.seas.harvard.edu/site/2025/

[1] - https://cs170.org/

[2] - https://cs421-sp26-web.pages.dev/

I feel so much disdain for workers coming from your words. I hope to never work for someone like you

I’m a bootcamp grad (although it was an intense 5-night a week, year long bootcamp, not some 6-week build-a-demo class). I have a college degree but it’s in the arts.

I do try to continually improve my skill set, refresh on design patterns, etc. I’m currently employed and have been for the last six years. I don’t really know if I fall in category 3 or not.

What, in your opinion are the “foundational” CS skills the #3 people are missing?

As someone maybe in group (2). What kind of stereotyping is this? And why do you want to have non-complaining worker drones? Maybe older people from those countries are good at keeping their head down in soviet style work configurations, but is this the kind of company you want to have?

I'd more guess it is that there is a severe income tax advantage, B2B contracts are also easier in eastern Europe.

Translation: for almost everyone not living in a major tech hub, it's not a good market.

lol you might work for my company re: point 4

Why do you even hire in Europe when the smartest people are in the Bay Area?