Reading this, I wonder if the problem is AI or the remote market. From what I've heard, here in Sydney the market is pretty hot, at least for experienced folks. My experience matches that. That said I know that remote jobs are uncommon.
> I know I can work remotely effectively because I did it for the last 6 years.
6 years means that Ryan started right around COVID. Looking back I don't think COVID was the remote renaissance that it appeared at the time, I think it was a temporary blip. That sucks, I'd much rather it was permanent, and some things have changed for the long run, but unfortunately I think this is likely a much bigger factor. Remote jobs have always been few and far between, and super competitive.
Honestly, one of the largest expenses most companies carry that’s optional is occupancy. The next big downturn I suspect the RTO mandates based cultural vibes will look a lot less attractive when the director of finance looking for a promotion proposes to the board eliminating offices. They will point to the productivity gains during remote work, the overhead of facilities, how many people they can not lay off by eliminating overhead. All of this is very easy to wave a hand at mumbling about serendipitous moment when profits are rising, hard to ignore when losses are mounting.
To Ryan, I don’t think your frustration with the tech industry at the moment is lone. I don’t know of any one super happy right now, and I know too many people under / unemployed for long stretches. Even when you land something it’s just a miserable slog of political wrangling to erect enough body shields to protect yourself during layoffs. It’s not what it used to be.
Myself I bailed and started something with friends. We took no outside money and have a slow but growing client base that seems to value what we offer. It’s the first time in a long time I can actually do something worth while. I’ve considered teaching, or even finding a job at the library. I’m lucky enough to have been well employed for a long time now so it’s more about health insurance (thanks US health care work slave system!). But for the moment I’m enjoying building things and solving problems which is what I enjoyed anyways.
Remote is absolutely making things harder. From what I've seen in Melbourne, most jobs on paper require you to come to the office 2 or so days a week. Even if in reality people still work fully remote, in the interview process if you want 100% never come to the office written in to the contract they will probably pass you up for someone else.
Lot of people moved out to the regional areas during covid and plentiful remote jobs but those jobs have mostly been reeled back to the CBDs again.
It does feel like there's been a big over-correction towards on-site --- or at least the places that want remote haven't felt the need to hire much. What's driving it? I don't get it: now that we have AI for everything, wouldn't real-time collaboration on code matter even less than it did before?
> The industry at the moment wants people who know how to use AI to further the business goals but here’s the thing nobody wants to admit: not one person knows how to use AI to actually do that.
Of course there are people that know how to do that. If you work an office job and don't know how to do that, you'd better learn to do it fast or start learning to weld or something.
I understand the stated feelings of indignation and resentment toward a process that was broken well before the current market conditions, but given the current conditions, isn't applying to 36 jobs and deciding to back out a bit hasty?
Highly experienced people in tech centers like SF, NYC, Boston are struggling so I can't imagine anyone would be looking to hire in a small city in Australia.
Add to that time-zone issues and a very small local market.
I wish you the best but in the nicest way possible, insisting on fully remote work in a random city in Australia will likely narrow your options and make you less attractive to potential employers.
You will find something, I really hope so, but it will just take a lot longer.
I am pretty torn on remote work and I say that as someone that benefits pretty greatly from it. Between remoteness and the rise of AI, I feel like there is basically no social interaction anymore, and I would be curious to see what an in person environment with AI looks like. It may be awful, but I am just curious. I know it won’t be a popular opinion.
> The industry at the moment wants people who know how to use AI to further the business goals but here’s the thing nobody wants to admit: not one person knows how to use AI to actually do that. I use it to write a lot of my code and then I critically review that code before it reaches production.
Unfortunately I think the real sentiment here is "here's the thing I don't want to admit: I don't know how to use AI to actually do that." It's not at all clear to me that nobody knows how to utilize AI practically. It's more clear that you have to be working in an environment that values developing this capability enough to pay a lot for tokens and let employees be free to explore, within reason. Or, you have to be willing to spend a lot of free time and cash doing that yourself.
If the author had this developed this level of certainty in the face of profound gaps of information, they might as well just apply to jobs disguised as a post-singularity AI escaping their sandbox exclusively to remotely co-work with you in particular!
With programming becoming boring and AI looming, my almost finished electricians' education from high school does come to mind from time to time.
A friend of mine ended up actually becoming an electrician, and its clear there's a shortage of able-minded people in that industry. In Norway electrician is one of those "never amounted to anything so this is the last resort" jobs, even if it shouldn't be. Simply by being able to follow instructions you beat most of the competition. The pay isn't half bad (around average national pay) and there are plenty jobs that require you to use your brain and vary wildly in what you do from day to day. Sounds like a lot of fun.
Getting a 24 out of 36 response rate on your applications is an S tier level response rate. I mean, the news is bad (rejection), but that is pretty incredible.
I can't make up my mind if that means he is so good that actual human beings look at his profile, or some sort of ATS filtering system just hard rejects him with prejudice.
I'm at 33 rejections 7 ghosts in my currents job search, is getting a rejection abnormal? I haven't really ever done a high volume search like I am currently doing so I have no context.
> I’ve now applied for over 3 dozen jobs and I’ve heard back from 24 of them with a rejection.
I wouldn’t encourage anyone who wants to do something else to stay, this just read as strange to leave to me. If he wants to find a job in tech surely he could reach to many of the people he’s worked with in the past or connected with at various events before throwing in the towel.
> I’ve now applied for over 3 dozen jobs and I’ve heard back from 24 of them with a rejection
> I cannot continue to put myself through this process of rejection
Need to pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers. Just kidding, but coming from India, that seems a really small number. We probably have a lot more competition, though, so maybe my views are skewed. I'm also surprised that they haven't even mentioned their network... someone with that amount of experience must be knowing people who can help out.
I applied for more jobs, have heard radio silence more than rejections (forget acceptances), and am still somehow in tech, whatever it means these days.
I keep seeing people pining for the old days. Those days are gone. And even if they came back, it's unlikely that life will be as good, because the entire world economy is in a different state than it was before. The only thing one can do is adapt.
I quit a full-time job a few years ago, took a long break which my accelerated savings helped me easily afford, and now I'm having a ball freelancing despite being a veritable cave-dweller, because everyone wants to AI, but doesn't have the setup to make the AI effective.
Even before that, the vast majority of companies first need to have their automation and data processes in order. You cannot just get some LLM API keys and expect medium/long-running businesses to be able to fully leverage them. People want to hop on to the AI bandwagon, but are realizing that their software processes need to be good enough first. For me, this means a mixture of regular best-practices software dev, and adding some AI on top of that.
> And how do you get freelance clients?
Word of mouth, regular applications, cold calling. There's nothing new here.
I've met a guy who went from software into being a sherpa. Taking people up the mountain for hikes. Kinda fascinating.
But this post is not representative of the state of the market. The market for tech talent is still very hard/scarce. Finding good people is very difficult. You can validate that by seeing the trend of software salaries. It's not coming down.
I'm really sorry to hear that you're going through this. Any company would be lucky to have you on their team.
My strong suggestion to you: pivot to hardware. I still use Ruby but most of my development efforts are ESP32-P4 and RP2350-based these days.
Learning CAD and mastering various additive and subtractive fabrication techniques, getting PCBs made to make ideas real... it's been a roller coaster but LLMs are remarkably good as engineering mentors these days.
And yes, as several others have already said, this might be the time to learn woodworking and/or video production skills.
You'll find that you still need your programming brain, instincts and intuitions. You just deploy them in a different way in support of creating a device instead of an experience [or yet another CRUD form].
Writing is the time-honored and original work-from-anywhere profession. Hemingway famously worked from his fascinating, weird house in Key West. I suppose the creative professions in general qualify nowadays.
But historically, these WFH vocations were solitary affairs. The great literary authors didn't exactly have the ability to VC to a daily standup and wouldn't have needed to do it anyway.
What seems odd to me is a fresh wave of companies deciding, out of the blue, that remote collaboration doesn't work. That's a strange conclusion to draw given that it's worked fine for years now and we have the technology to make it better than ever.
at my last job I joined in 2022 and was one of the last to get an allowance to pay for most of a nice desk. the policy stopped soon after. meanwhile my current role I began this year has no policy whatsoever.
"Applied to 36 and been rejected by 24" as in interviewed with 24 (which would be incredibly good) or been passed on by 24 which is frankly totally normal?
What we're getting now is small potatoes compared to the job market apocalypse of 2007-2009, and before that, of 2000-2003. What's different is that back then, I think you could blame the downturn on external factors outside our control and still have plenty of faith in the future of software engineering.
Now, we only have ourselves to blame: we built this technology, we enthusiastically embraced it and one-upped each other by showing how much we can vibecode. And now, we're queasy about what comes next.
In my view, probably nothing pretty. I suspect we might wake up in a society that looks much like how it used to: cancer still not cured, poverty and hunger not solved, but now with tech jobs that pay less and suck more because you're just thoughtlessly babysitting agents and are a lot more replaceable in that role.
In other professions, workers protect their own. Doctors are the best example of this. They have regulatory agencies that ensure the supply of doctors is always kept artificially low hence why there always appears to be a shortage of doctor while at the same time med school has a very high barrier to entry, it's all by design.
Software devs are the polar opposite of this.
- We have the most gruelling interview process.
- We normalize working over time with no pay (oncall).
- We openly invite people from all walks of life to join this career. To suggest any sort of minimum standards is viewed as gatekeeping. Learn to code even became a meme at one point.
- We are supposed to sound like our work is our life and even outside of working hours we're busy with side projects.
I don't know of any other career in which the workers are so brutal to each other.
I hope the current AI revolution is a wake up call.
It's a bit odd, isn't it? To see people who literally work in the field of automating almost everybody else out of their jobs, complaining that our field isn't run like the East Coast Dockworkers unions. It's absolutely true that doctors have rigged medicine! It's one of the biggest social problems in the United States. You'd think the wakeup call would be: don't do that.
I will never understand how so many intelligent people in the software industry, programmers, my colleagues, were/are so short sighted, and... perhaps selfish.
Every time I have brought up unions for the past 25 years, you get this prevalent attitude that "we" programmers have it great. Do not rock the boat.
I do not mean to pick on any one individual, but look at this comment thread from just 1 year ago.
"Yeah, look at union successes like dockworkers holding economy hostage via a legalized monopoly, while having more striking non-working members long useless due to automation than actual workers! I sure aspire to work in an industry like that." -- some hackernews user
What?
"There is not a single problem competent developers have that unions would solve" -- some hackernews user
What?
Well. Now we will all suffer. I am bitter. I will suffer because of years of shortsightedness and stubbornness and some kind of "we are ubermensch" and above all the little people who need silly little crutches like unions.
> Now, we only have ourselves to blame: we built this technology, we enthusiastically embraced it and one-upped each other by showing how much we can vibecode.
Speak for yourself. I have never done any of this and I don't want to be associated with the people who do.
The Indians and the eastern Europeans are going to be the ones babysitting agents. There is no way in hell the companies are going to continue to pay US salaries for any of this within a few years.
I think that argument made way more sense back when people were manually programming. Considering how small a delta staff cost will be compared to token cost, it makes way more sense in the new world to hire more expensive staff who better understand the nuance of your requests imo
seasoned software engineers are experimenting with using AI to ship actually maintainable software with varying degrees of success (i am doing it, my peers are doing it. it actually can work. it requires immense budget and organizational support for experimentation)
patterns and best practices will emerge. old stuff will be rediscovered. some hard earned wisdom and knowledge will become obsolete while other hard earned wisdom and knowledge will be more valuable than ever.
some good "traditional" software engineers make terrible "AI-engineers" (or whatever the term will be) and will either grow and learn, try to fake it as long as they can, or leave.
lots of us will leave the industry because we're tired. we don't want this new thing. our work was fulfilling because reading and writing helped us learn and grow and become better. asking an LLM to "figure it out" followed by "ok, do it" (or, if you're company is actually funding you, creating loops that do that) robs you of the joy you used to feel.
we will realize that our passion and pride in our work was not really valued by employers. the value was us shipping shit that generates revenue for them.
the interview treadmill is fucking soul crushing.
we will leave and take 75% pay cuts. but our mindspace will belong to us again. we will struggle, but we will be happier.
While I agree the job market is tough right now, for context OP is living in Australia in what looks like a regional town, so set expectations accordingly.
Software development is indeed “cooked”, other tech industries are soon to follow, unfortunately, developers or engineers shot themselves in their foot and failed to guard their profession the same way how healthcare and legal ones did (other white collars jobs). They were too obsessed with automating (and then later AI) their jobs that the decision makers had an aha moment and realized that they don’t even need them anymore. Honestly, I am not so sure why, is it short sighted vision and just focus on the process? Is it too passionate about their work? Or just sheer stupidity? No idea, but years ago I was in a family gathering and a 19yo relative just started her receptionist job, she was excited about it and after knowing what she actually does, I suggested that most of her job can be done through a google form where customers fill it before they call, to make it easier on her, and I remember her saying: yes, but then they will fire me!!
I have well over 1,000 applications I tracked over the years I've worked in the industry. (Started keeping track in 2014) I've interviewed at hundreds of places. I don't think I've ever interviewed at less than 50 places before getting a reasonable job offer. I have to study leetcode and system design religiously (I've solved over a thousand over the years) before I even apply for one job.
You're telling me you applied for 40 jobs and gave up? Maybe this industry isn't for you then. Have fun in retirement.
All 24 of those jobs the author was rejected from likely went to 24 other people who just got hired. I doubt they'd be saying the tech market is cooked. It's more competitive than ever, but that's not the same as cooked.
Looking over the author's achievements, they are great but it's not clear for instance how those kind of things would help at our company, and I'm sure other companies would think the same. We don't care about Ruby or even Javascript... AI has made experience with programming languages more as a footnote rather than a core feature of a resume.
I hope the author will rebrand themselves for the AI era rather than just leave the tech industry entirely. Times are changing, we need good people.
I don't know this person, so maybe there's a greater embarrassment to him getting rejected based on his previous experience, but this is kind of a puzzling read.
He applied for 36 jobs and he cannot take the rejection? Isn't that an extremely modest amount of applications to already be claiming mental anguish? This seems like a lot of doomerism for not that much effort wasted.
Ryan is a big deal in the Ruby community. He's not imagining his accomplishments and not long ago it's reasonable to say there would have been several companies fighting for the opportunity to have him on their team.
As far as I'm concerned, that supports the authors point rather than making him a troll. It's not normal for someone who can demonstrate competence in a technical field to need to send out thousands of applications. It's not normal for someone who has published books in the field to have a majority of their applications rejected.
For someone with 20 years experience who has written a bunch of books, I think that's a lot. I'd expect someone in this position to not really apply/interview in the normal sense anymore and to be able to hop around via their network.
The 1000s of applications folks are doing on the SWE subreddits are mostly juniors (or over titled seniors) with not much experience.
Maybe this guy is in that latter category, but it seems unlikely. I think this is just an issue of remote jobs being scarce.
the higher, better, more up you go, the fewer jobs there are. that's why big league people at normal (not fang) ask for parachutes. there's not that many XYZ companies in XYZ area that need a CFO, CTO, Head of ABC. Anyone can get an entry level job, but the higher you move, the harder it is.
Also - do people who write ruby books make companies more money?
If you plan to stay in tech.. but it's a great time to make alternative plans if you aren't committed to adapting to the changes the industry is going through. The day-to-day of tech work could be unrecognizable in 5-10 years
> I know I can work remotely effectively because I did it for the last 6 years.
6 years means that Ryan started right around COVID. Looking back I don't think COVID was the remote renaissance that it appeared at the time, I think it was a temporary blip. That sucks, I'd much rather it was permanent, and some things have changed for the long run, but unfortunately I think this is likely a much bigger factor. Remote jobs have always been few and far between, and super competitive.
To Ryan, I don’t think your frustration with the tech industry at the moment is lone. I don’t know of any one super happy right now, and I know too many people under / unemployed for long stretches. Even when you land something it’s just a miserable slog of political wrangling to erect enough body shields to protect yourself during layoffs. It’s not what it used to be.
Myself I bailed and started something with friends. We took no outside money and have a slow but growing client base that seems to value what we offer. It’s the first time in a long time I can actually do something worth while. I’ve considered teaching, or even finding a job at the library. I’m lucky enough to have been well employed for a long time now so it’s more about health insurance (thanks US health care work slave system!). But for the moment I’m enjoying building things and solving problems which is what I enjoyed anyways.
It’s a 2020 anomaly that’s gone. You need a relationship developed from in person working years to get it.
Lot of people moved out to the regional areas during covid and plentiful remote jobs but those jobs have mostly been reeled back to the CBDs again.
Of course there are people that know how to do that. If you work an office job and don't know how to do that, you'd better learn to do it fast or start learning to weld or something.
Add to that time-zone issues and a very small local market.
I wish you the best but in the nicest way possible, insisting on fully remote work in a random city in Australia will likely narrow your options and make you less attractive to potential employers.
You will find something, I really hope so, but it will just take a lot longer.
It didn’t work out, another job I decided to not proceed with because it’s DoD related.
Had a recruiter cancel the call because she had a personal emergency. Just ghosted me after that , no explanation.
Friday I had a promising call, but I’d have to move again.
I’m not sure what alternative the author proposes to working in tech.
I make music , but I can’t imagine sending a demo to Universal working out.
Unfortunately I think the real sentiment here is "here's the thing I don't want to admit: I don't know how to use AI to actually do that." It's not at all clear to me that nobody knows how to utilize AI practically. It's more clear that you have to be working in an environment that values developing this capability enough to pay a lot for tokens and let employees be free to explore, within reason. Or, you have to be willing to spend a lot of free time and cash doing that yourself.
If the author had this developed this level of certainty in the face of profound gaps of information, they might as well just apply to jobs disguised as a post-singularity AI escaping their sandbox exclusively to remotely co-work with you in particular!
A friend of mine ended up actually becoming an electrician, and its clear there's a shortage of able-minded people in that industry. In Norway electrician is one of those "never amounted to anything so this is the last resort" jobs, even if it shouldn't be. Simply by being able to follow instructions you beat most of the competition. The pay isn't half bad (around average national pay) and there are plenty jobs that require you to use your brain and vary wildly in what you do from day to day. Sounds like a lot of fun.
It's not a bad plan B.
I can't make up my mind if that means he is so good that actual human beings look at his profile, or some sort of ATS filtering system just hard rejects him with prejudice.
I wouldn’t encourage anyone who wants to do something else to stay, this just read as strange to leave to me. If he wants to find a job in tech surely he could reach to many of the people he’s worked with in the past or connected with at various events before throwing in the towel.
One idea would be for the author to ask questions here that they think the answers of will be good input into their reasoning process.
> I cannot continue to put myself through this process of rejection
Need to pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers. Just kidding, but coming from India, that seems a really small number. We probably have a lot more competition, though, so maybe my views are skewed. I'm also surprised that they haven't even mentioned their network... someone with that amount of experience must be knowing people who can help out.
I applied for more jobs, have heard radio silence more than rejections (forget acceptances), and am still somehow in tech, whatever it means these days.
I keep seeing people pining for the old days. Those days are gone. And even if they came back, it's unlikely that life will be as good, because the entire world economy is in a different state than it was before. The only thing one can do is adapt.
I quit a full-time job a few years ago, took a long break which my accelerated savings helped me easily afford, and now I'm having a ball freelancing despite being a veritable cave-dweller, because everyone wants to AI, but doesn't have the setup to make the AI effective.
One needs to be flexible and stop reminiscing.
Can you tell more about what is your freelance work about?
Implementing AI solutions for companies?
And how do you get freelance clients?
Even before that, the vast majority of companies first need to have their automation and data processes in order. You cannot just get some LLM API keys and expect medium/long-running businesses to be able to fully leverage them. People want to hop on to the AI bandwagon, but are realizing that their software processes need to be good enough first. For me, this means a mixture of regular best-practices software dev, and adding some AI on top of that.
> And how do you get freelance clients?
Word of mouth, regular applications, cold calling. There's nothing new here.
But this post is not representative of the state of the market. The market for tech talent is still very hard/scarce. Finding good people is very difficult. You can validate that by seeing the trend of software salaries. It's not coming down.
My strong suggestion to you: pivot to hardware. I still use Ruby but most of my development efforts are ESP32-P4 and RP2350-based these days.
Learning CAD and mastering various additive and subtractive fabrication techniques, getting PCBs made to make ideas real... it's been a roller coaster but LLMs are remarkably good as engineering mentors these days.
And yes, as several others have already said, this might be the time to learn woodworking and/or video production skills.
You'll find that you still need your programming brain, instincts and intuitions. You just deploy them in a different way in support of creating a device instead of an experience [or yet another CRUD form].
I’m all ears, so please let me know
But historically, these WFH vocations were solitary affairs. The great literary authors didn't exactly have the ability to VC to a daily standup and wouldn't have needed to do it anyway.
What seems odd to me is a fresh wave of companies deciding, out of the blue, that remote collaboration doesn't work. That's a strange conclusion to draw given that it's worked fine for years now and we have the technology to make it better than ever.
Now, we only have ourselves to blame: we built this technology, we enthusiastically embraced it and one-upped each other by showing how much we can vibecode. And now, we're queasy about what comes next.
In my view, probably nothing pretty. I suspect we might wake up in a society that looks much like how it used to: cancer still not cured, poverty and hunger not solved, but now with tech jobs that pay less and suck more because you're just thoughtlessly babysitting agents and are a lot more replaceable in that role.
Software devs are the polar opposite of this.
- We have the most gruelling interview process.
- We normalize working over time with no pay (oncall).
- We openly invite people from all walks of life to join this career. To suggest any sort of minimum standards is viewed as gatekeeping. Learn to code even became a meme at one point.
- We are supposed to sound like our work is our life and even outside of working hours we're busy with side projects.
I don't know of any other career in which the workers are so brutal to each other.
I hope the current AI revolution is a wake up call.
Every time I have brought up unions for the past 25 years, you get this prevalent attitude that "we" programmers have it great. Do not rock the boat.
I do not mean to pick on any one individual, but look at this comment thread from just 1 year ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44485959
"Yeah, look at union successes like dockworkers holding economy hostage via a legalized monopoly, while having more striking non-working members long useless due to automation than actual workers! I sure aspire to work in an industry like that." -- some hackernews user
What?
"There is not a single problem competent developers have that unions would solve" -- some hackernews user
What?
Well. Now we will all suffer. I am bitter. I will suffer because of years of shortsightedness and stubbornness and some kind of "we are ubermensch" and above all the little people who need silly little crutches like unions.
Who's "we"? I'm a software engineer and I sure didn't
Speak for yourself. I have never done any of this and I don't want to be associated with the people who do.
patterns and best practices will emerge. old stuff will be rediscovered. some hard earned wisdom and knowledge will become obsolete while other hard earned wisdom and knowledge will be more valuable than ever.
some good "traditional" software engineers make terrible "AI-engineers" (or whatever the term will be) and will either grow and learn, try to fake it as long as they can, or leave.
lots of us will leave the industry because we're tired. we don't want this new thing. our work was fulfilling because reading and writing helped us learn and grow and become better. asking an LLM to "figure it out" followed by "ok, do it" (or, if you're company is actually funding you, creating loops that do that) robs you of the joy you used to feel.
we will realize that our passion and pride in our work was not really valued by employers. the value was us shipping shit that generates revenue for them.
the interview treadmill is fucking soul crushing.
we will leave and take 75% pay cuts. but our mindspace will belong to us again. we will struggle, but we will be happier.
Most of those employers are not valued by anybody... The big secret is they (mgmt) are the most replaceable here...
Of course they will say, well they have the money, and I suppose that is true, for now...
No more of this, please.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Also 36 jobs isn’t that much
You're telling me you applied for 40 jobs and gave up? Maybe this industry isn't for you then. Have fun in retirement.
All 24 of those jobs the author was rejected from likely went to 24 other people who just got hired. I doubt they'd be saying the tech market is cooked. It's more competitive than ever, but that's not the same as cooked.
Looking over the author's achievements, they are great but it's not clear for instance how those kind of things would help at our company, and I'm sure other companies would think the same. We don't care about Ruby or even Javascript... AI has made experience with programming languages more as a footnote rather than a core feature of a resume.
I hope the author will rebrand themselves for the AI era rather than just leave the tech industry entirely. Times are changing, we need good people.
He applied for 36 jobs and he cannot take the rejection? Isn't that an extremely modest amount of applications to already be claiming mental anguish? This seems like a lot of doomerism for not that much effort wasted.
Sorry is this a troll? Go check out the SWE subreddits, people are sending out 1000s of applications before they get something.
The 1000s of applications folks are doing on the SWE subreddits are mostly juniors (or over titled seniors) with not much experience.
Maybe this guy is in that latter category, but it seems unlikely. I think this is just an issue of remote jobs being scarce.
Also - do people who write ruby books make companies more money?