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Job trends of HN Who Is Hiring?

by awll on 1/28/25, 10:28 PM with 89 comments

• by lolinder on 1/29/25, 3:12 AM

  I know this doesn't make things better, but it bears repeating: much as the media would like it to be, this is not caused by AI. Two major things happened in 2022 that everyone knew would cause this if they stuck around:

  * The Section 174 changes went into effect, requiring all software to be expensed as R&D, which means it can't be deducted from profits directly and instead has to be amortized over 5 years [0].

  * Interest rates went back up starting in Feb 2022 and continuing through Aug 2023. This chart [1] is a near-perfect mirror of the job trends.

  I know this doesn't help anyone who's struggling right now, but it does serve to emphasize that this didn't just happen, and it wasn't the result of technological advances making us obsolete. Federal policy was set up to encourage an enormous amount of investment into software development, and it's now... not. Turns out politics matters.

  [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34627712

  [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1DfOX

• by OptionOfT on 1/29/25, 12:49 AM

  It's been really quiet. I was laid off twice in 2024. First in April after 10 years at the same place. There wasn't a lot. Got a new great opportunity, but restructurings happened, I was the last to join and... again laid off.

  But now it feels even more quiet than April-May-June. I've been debating cutting down my cover letter into a couple of lines just telling the company why I find the role interesting, and removing the rest.

  But it's hard.

• by scoperesolution on 1/28/25, 10:57 PM

  Trends? Start your own business because nobody is hiring. That's the trend i'm seeing... sigh.

• by askonomm on 1/28/25, 11:00 PM

  Looks like the downtrend has slowed, and almost stopped. This aligns with my observations on local job boards to me, and some programming language specific Slack channels I'm on that have #jobs boards, in that there's a slight uptick in jobs right now. This is good news, it seems.

• by mttpgn on 1/29/25, 1:56 AM

  What a great reply this graph can make the next time we see VCs on X complaining how, "Everyone I talk to has so, so many engineering positions they just can't fill". By these measurements, the job market looks worse now than it did at the troughs of lockdown.

• by harimau777 on 1/29/25, 1:59 AM

  Personally, I'm getting close to just giving up. I've completed hundreds of applications, contacted hundreds of recruiters, and spent hundred of hours studying. All with nothing to show for it. Every single job I see has hundreds of applications. I have no idea what to do.

• by dartos on 1/29/25, 1:55 AM

  As someone who’s been in the industry for 15 years and got laid off just today for the 2nd time in the past year.

  This is depressing.

• by phyzix5761 on 1/29/25, 4:51 AM

  As lolinder stated, one of the main causes of this is Section 174 where software is now amortized as R&D over 5 years which means companies can't treat is as a regular expense. This leads to companies hiring less.

  There is a bill that is stuck in the Senate which aims at reversing this (among other things): https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7024

  Please reach out to your senators and tell them to support this bill so our job prospects can return to normal.

• by Trasmatta on 1/29/25, 1:39 AM

  2021 was such a bizarre year in so many ways. It feels like a post COVID fever dream in retrospect, and seeing that massive jump in job listings that year is a reminder of how weird it was.

• by ProjectArcturis on 1/28/25, 11:07 PM

  Anecdotally, I've been getting a lot more recruiter spam lately.

• by belter on 1/29/25, 8:55 AM

  The chart correlates well, with similar references from the US and similar related markets (see [1], [2], [3] and [4] ).

  At a more macro level, for the United States, I looked at U.S. unemployment data, for the last 80 years. Starting from 1945 until today Jan 2025. All jobs, not only Technology. What jumped out immediately is a clear cyclical pattern: Unemployment peaks occur, on average, every 7–8 years, with some variability.

  - Shorter Gaps (3–5 years) showed up in the 1950s and early 1960s, often tied to small recessions.

  - Longer Gaps (10–11 years) happened before the early 1990s recession, again around the early 2000s, and more recently between 2009–2010 and 2020.

  - Outliers include the early 1980s (double-dip recession pushing unemployment above 10%) and, the 2020’s pandemic spike, which briefly soared past 14%.

  Overall, the business cycle hasn’t radically changed over 80 years: Expansions that push unemployment down to historic lows, followed by recessions that create sharp spikes in unemployment.

  Assuming 7–8 years is a decent rule of thumb, and based on US history of the last 80 years, we are in for a next continued peak into growing unemployment, until at least 2027–2028.

  At a smaller scale, local trends in geopolitics, tariffs, AI adoption, and political dysfunction reflect (or confirm) the broader macro trend.

  Plan accordingly...And hope I am wrong...

  [1] Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

  [2] Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in Canada: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXCATPSOFTDEVE

  [3] Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in Germany: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXDETPSOFTDEVE

  [4] Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United Kingdom: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXGBTPSOFTDEVE

• by jonshariat on 1/28/25, 10:59 PM

  Thanks for putting this together. Curious if HN traffic is also down but intuitively this feels right.

• by devKnight on 1/28/25, 10:37 PM

  everything is trending down. is that because there are fewer job posts over all?

• by rr808 on 1/29/25, 3:03 AM

  IPO market is still dead. VC companies are all stuck in PE purgatory. AI was a bright spark but now Deepseek is killing that dream too.

• by vipartX on 2/2/25, 5:07 PM

  CTO para revolución musical. 0 cash, 10% equity. Si puedes codear más rápido que un tweet de Musk, DM.

• by rossdavidh on 1/28/25, 10:53 PM

  So, thank-you for confirming that it's not just me. :)

• by CoastalCoder on 1/28/25, 11:23 PM

  Very cool.

  Probably not so easy, but I'd be really interested in seeing the relative trends of (related to AI) vs. (not related to AI) job posts.

• by lgleason on 1/29/25, 3:18 AM

  Basically the entire market is dead right now.

• by dom96 on 1/29/25, 1:04 AM

  Great graph, crazy that we still haven't recovered to 2018/2019 levels

• by cryptoz on 1/29/25, 12:28 AM

  Remarkably consistent downward trend for Android :(

• by worik on 1/28/25, 11:45 PM

  What a dreadful graph on the front page

  y-axis has no units.

  x-axis has no years

  Two many data to be able to follow it

  Sigh

• by notatoad on 1/29/25, 3:04 AM

  does this account for all the listings? or is there a mystery "other" category that's rising as these ones fall?

• by joshdavham on 1/29/25, 1:52 AM

  Nice timing with this post! I guess there will be another new HN Who is Hiring? in a couple days