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Ask HN: Is the job market is bad as everyone claims it is?

by bluedays on 1/31/24, 2:08 PM with 53 comments

• by ozten on 1/31/24, 7:39 PM

  Dot com bubble burst - In 2002 I had a job interview and the lunch portion was at an outdoor BBQ place. A construction worker was listening to our interview. When we got up to leave, he asked my interviewer for a job interview. He said he was an out of work Solaris sys-admin.

  Things seem pretty bad right now. It seems like 2023 created fewer new tech jobs. But mostly it is a gut feeling based on anecdotes and news stories w/o hard numbers.

• by jake_morrison on 1/31/24, 11:32 PM

  It's a bad market, probably the worst since 2000. Some of this is overhiring and zero interest rate behavior coming to an end. Companies are shifting from prioritizing growth to profitability. There is also a lot of asshole behavior. They are laying people off to please Wall Street, not because they need to for financial reasons. And they are doing layoffs in extremely callous ways, e.g., right before Christmas.

  My daughter's data engineering team in finance was reduced from five to two, and they are not giving raises that match inflation. She is almost singlehandedly responsible for servicing million-dollar accounts. It's not like there isn't money.

  There is also a lot of hiring of remote people outside the US. The companies figured out how to do remote work during Covid, and they are using it to reduce costs.

  Things will probably improve in the next year, but it will be rough for a while.

• by kody on 1/31/24, 7:04 PM

  Anecdotally, I received 2-3 messages from recruiters almost daily during 2020-2021 (ended up taking a job from one in 2021). I didn't hear anything from recruiters from 2022 until about 2 weeks ago -- now they're starting to trickle back in. I don't know if that indicates that hiring is picking pack up; just wanted to share my perspective.

• by didgetmaster on 1/31/24, 3:24 PM

  There is an old saying that a recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. Nearly everyone could have an anecdote that might point to a strong job market or one that points to a weak one.

  There are definitely many tech workers out there struggling to find gainful employment based on their current skill set and/or local conditions. There seems to be enough of them that things are not looking particularly rosy at the moment.

• by solardev on 1/31/24, 3:41 PM

  It's the worst I've ever seen it. It's a generational downturn, a major bubble burst. Feel free to look but don't quit until you find something else. I doubt we've seen the end, either. It's probably going to get worse before it gets better.

• by hasty_pudding on 1/31/24, 7:59 PM

  Companies have gone super saiyan on outsourcing.

  Its a nightmare for generalists, newbies, web devs, front end, run of the mill cloud and sysadmin.

  Literally worst in history possibly.

  Anything that can be easily outsourced to an Indian or Latam candidate

  If you have a security clearance that cant be outsourced or use pytorch everyday youre prob fine.

  If youre a specialist on some field its never been better. I think ML people are getting 1M comp at OpenAI.

  What kind of tech person are you?

• by jf22 on 1/31/24, 6:05 PM

  In the past few years, the software job market went from hot, to red-hot, to even hotter than that, back down to hot.

  I think people are comparing the current market to previous boomtimes which we all knew couldn't last.

• by Tiktaalik on 1/31/24, 8:29 PM

  I think from a games industry POV it's worse than 2008 right now.

  Beyond the raw numbers of layoffs, there's clearly a great number of other companies currently have hiring freezes on.

  There's simply little to no job postings on right now. Of course it's the worst time of year for listings, and things usually improve in Spring, but it's hard to be optimistic.

• by seattleman12345 on 1/31/24, 8:35 PM

  It's bad. Between H1B workers taking all the jobs, AI, seasonal slows, and the economy collapsing, it's rough out there. I have friends that are 100's of applications deep without a peep. Easier if you're not white, but hard regardless

• by morpheos137 on 1/31/24, 11:39 PM

  Contrary to what most people on this site would say, for many, many years society has overproduced and overcompensated software developers for what they actually do. No other profession, besides maybe Law or Accounting gets higher compensation for making their work less efficient. We have frame works stacked on top of frame works when in many cases we could accomplish the same function, maybe faster 10-20 years ago, with fewer compute resources. As the field matures and becomes more efficient, which is bound to happen some day, I expect relatively static industry standards to overtake the continuous churn of abstractions with dubious value added.

  Additionally I would say you can't build an economy on advertising alone. I over the past 20 years too much time and money has been invested in advertising which doesn't really make anything. I suspect many businesses purchasing online advertising are basically getting ripped off. A decade ago when search worked effectively you could find the product or service you wanted with a simple Google search. Now you get served a bunch of semi relevant or irrelevant ads cloaked as search results. So there is a big disruption opportunity for someone who can re-invent search to connect people to what they actually want. I can imagine a search or directory device that connects people and businesses to manufacturers, marketers and service providers...both sides could pay for use directly connecting the revenues of the directory operator to its performance. Even today I know in the manufacturing and engineering space I would rather look at McMaster-Carr or Grainger catalogue than Google Spam or look at the website of a still going business I know from 15-20 years ago that doesn't even show up in search results today.

• by pelagic_sky on 1/31/24, 2:33 PM

  Yes. It is brutal. Any position posted is swarmed with applicants. You’ll need some serious networking to get in the door. And even then, there’s already a line of equally capable people vying for the same roll.

• by softwaredoug on 1/31/24, 2:48 PM

  Companies seem to be hiring and focusing on the short term, that is focused expertise that can hit the ground running, on a hard problem, right away. Certain fields seem to be more in demand than others (ML, infra, etc) - but to me the main pattern is companies caring more about short term gains than long term growth potential.

  So I think it sucks to be relatively junior right now.

  To me its sad as I think how well you onboard other team members is one huge differentiator in your dev culture, and points at a healthy team that can readily share knowledge. How its setup now may work for short term problems, but also creates a lot of "bus factors" where crucial functionality depends on 1-2 skilled people.

  I also see a bit of getting rid of middle management / product management type layers lately. A sense of wanting to streamline / eliminate alleged "bureaucracy"

• by fl0ki on 2/1/24, 3:57 PM

  The US market in particular seems to be the worst in decades, but I'm not seeing the same in other markets. Friends in Australia hopped around in the last couple of years and are very happy with their conditions and total comp.

  It doesn't help that Google fires several companies worth of people sometimes, and they flood the market, and most of them are good at being hired.

  As always, the best thing you can do is be the best engineer you can be. Companies are still hiring, and while supply outstrips demand more than usual, you should always try to be the best unit of supply you can be.

• by tlivolsi on 1/31/24, 2:35 PM

  I'm not sure about other niches, but it seems to be fine in HPC. I'm getting more recruiters messaging me on LinkedIn than ever.

• by romanhn on 1/31/24, 3:51 PM

  Not only is it a very tough time to be looking for a job, junior positions are particularly difficult (this is generally the case when hiring slows down and companies can buy more experience for less). Doesn't mean you shouldn't look, but definitely set your expectations appropriately. Might be a while before things get better.

• by w10-1 on 1/31/24, 8:27 PM

  What I would tell my younger self: above all, make good decisions: based on facts and solid reasoning grounded in a range of models of how the world is, paying particular attention to the magnitude of forces: respecting and using forces beyond your control, but always aiming to change the world around you to make you --us-- better.

  Not deciding based on feelings or opinions or votes, or on chasing opportunities or shirking danger, etc. Practice daily in small decisions, and the big ones will come more easily.

• by coolThingsFirst on 1/31/24, 8:43 PM

  Yes months and months to get an interview.

• by morphicpro on 1/31/24, 8:39 PM

  Food for thought:

  * Big investors almost never invest the year leading into a general election. They already spent all that money on bribes and lobbying.

  * So much of the US had already outsourced a great part of their manufacturing.

  * Much of that manufacturing went to china. (be sure the check the news that china is making in the US today)

  * We are more politically divided than ever before (I don't think this is mutually exclusive to the US)

  * We are experiencing (in the US) the largest cost burdens ever seen for renters source: https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/reports/fil...

  * There have been many reports of large lay offs in not just the tech sectors.

  * Most of our current employment numbers are politically motivated lies or exaggerations

  * AI has pushed a 6% increase requirement on development productivity

  * There are vastly more boot camps and junior and mid level developers available in the market.

  * Remote work make the market global when it was still very local for many.

  I feel like there are many more bullet points to add.

• by cranberryturkey on 1/31/24, 2:31 PM

  its the worst i've seen since 2000

• by paulddraper on 1/31/24, 8:32 PM

  Well, you don't have to quit to apply, right?

  But, it's a bad market, especially for junior.

• by karpatic on 1/31/24, 7:37 PM

  There are 2-3x more applicants per job posting now than last year. I'd say yes.

• by cultofthecow on 1/31/24, 3:03 PM

  no it’s not.

  commenters are wrong and I know no one who were not able to find a job.

  Current rates - is another question. They are not that high.

  long story short: if you’re a good specialist, you will be good.

• by sloaken on 1/31/24, 2:33 PM

  It is all relative. Different skills are in demand at different times.

  What is the unemployment level in your particular skill set or desired profession?

  Smart and ambitious people, always have their resume up to date, and are looking. Although this is good advise I do not follow it as I am always delusional and think my current job is the best and no need to look.

  My biggest regret looking back, was not changing jobs early when I first started. With 2 years in, I would recommend you look, but be selective.

  Remember, you are, from an employer perspective, significantly better if you currently have a job, as opposed to unemployed. So be wary of possible layoffs.

• by patientzero on 1/31/24, 9:30 PM

  In a boom time there are almost no regret hires, every organization basically needs estimated future capacity that is supposed to work out sometime and to maintain a delusional prognosis..

  In some of the downturns that unlikely capacity keeps getting new jobs simply by having been the excess capacity at the right places.

  I think we are we are deeper into a downturn where almost everyone is seriously trying to filter to capable in the near term and that is extremely hard given that you almost always need actual time at an organization so a measure of useful on day one filters everyone but returning employees.

• by giantg2 on 1/31/24, 3:20 PM

  I wouldn't move. But then again I'm a low performing piece of shit with a disability.