Right there with you. Small manufacturing company, been going steady for 51 years, boring as can be (20 year old PCB layout software and straight C on bare metal Arm Cortex), but we've found a good niche solving problems for customers that nobody else will. Being able to attract workers is definitely difficult though, as we cannot pay what the big guys around here can.
There are an incredible amount of jobs, niche jobs, that exist at companies like this all over. Small companies, in great niches, that have good industrial customers, that will continue to exist and will not be easily optimized away by some SaaS startup.
There's also good existing small companies that are in more exciting tech spaces, that are hiring, that are not startups.
Shout out to Fastmail, my former employer, as they are one of those nice small companies, seem to get lots of love here, and they're lovely people. And last I checked, they're hiring as well.
Even in the 'SaaS' space there are boring but profitable small comapnies that fulfill automation for niche use cases. I just picked up on that we are using for our CDN that cloudfront doesn't being to cover. The pricing is good, the company is small, stable, and I'll continue to use them as long as I can.
So... they're out there, but they certainly aren't FAANG and a lot of times, they aren't wild startups either.
Part of this leads to less "popularity" for potential employees. You've never heard of ABC Bearings & Co, and they haven't manufactured Bearings in 100 years, but they fulfill important roles in the roller industry. Not Boeing, but just as important.
I think this is because startups spend incredible amounts of time trying to grow and to find customers, so naturally they advertise, are in the news, on HN, etc. In a more boring economic sphere (IE: no exponential growth, a few solid players that often times are more cordial than cutthroat competitive) you may never hear of these places.
> Being able to attract workers is definitely difficult though, as we cannot pay what the big guys around here can.
Maybe visibility is an issue, too? I like boring work for a decent (not excessive, stable) wage. But finding these companies is difficult. Most of the ones I come across are rarely ever hiring because their turnover is low.
