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Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?

#21

Post by ragnese »

mongol wrote: post #14

What interests me is if this is a natural dip that will be followed by an upturn, or if something fundamentally has changed, and it will remain lower demand. Perhaps the AI boom will decrease the demand from now on. Waiting for better times may be futile?

> Perhaps the AI boom will decrease the demand from now on. Waiting for better times may be futile?

I'm not claiming to be very knowledgeable about AI/LLMs or the job market or "the economy" in general, but I'd be absolutely shocked to find that the AI stuff has any impact on the current IT job market.

I know that some people are using AI tools to help generate code and stuff, but it seems like those tools can't even generate correct code a lot of the time- and that's with a professional human programmer asking it to. I can't imagine that these tools are increasing productivity so much that it could actually reduce hiring.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?

#23

Post by Mc91 »

November of 2022 is when the Facebook and Amazon had their big layoffs, and Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce etc. followed in the two months after.

I haven't had a recruiter contact me on Linkedin for over a year, in 2022 and before I was being contacted by recruiters on Linkedin all the time.

Companies have different modes - mass layoffs, small layoffs, no hires, only hiring replacements, a few new slots open, many slots open. In early-mid 2022 we were in the last category and it's moved to one of the other modes for most companies, except for LLM hires.

There are different sources of information, I found this helpful ( https://interviewing.io/blog/when-is-hiring-coming-back-pred... ) from a company with some insights into tech hiring.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?

#24

Post by afpx »

In the late 90s, early 00s I would submit 5 resumes, get interviews from 4, get offers from 3. The whole process would take a few hours - no studying, no projects, no indefinite rounds of interviews. I could actually talk to the hiring manager and get a sense for my odds of getting the job before putting the effort in.

Now it's like submit 1000 resumes, get interviews from 4, spend 20+ hours preparing and doing interviews, get ghosted at the end.

I have a friend who works for local government. They have an open GIS programmer position. I've done GIS programming for government (as a contractor), and it's not hard stuff. She says they received many 100s of resumes and are currently interviewing 30 people. They had so many people apply that they required each applicant to submit a very involved project beforehand just to weed people out. So, there are literally 30 people out there right now, putting in 20+ hours to complete a project just to get a job that pays probably $110k / year.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?

#25

Post by toomuchtodo »

achileas wrote: post #15
Jeremy1026 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 'article' is taking a lot leeway from the following 11 words, "there is an argument that they may be a bit overstated." This whole thing reads like it belongs on OAN.

ZH is like a less-respectable OAN

Doom porn for the economically unsophisticated.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?

#26

Post by bongodongobob »

ragnese wrote: post #21
mongol wrote: post #14

What interests me is if this is a natural dip that will be followed by an upturn, or if something fundamentally has changed, and it will remain lower demand. Perhaps the AI boom will decrease the demand from now on. Waiting for better times may be futile?

> Perhaps the AI boom will decrease the demand from now on. Waiting for better times may be futile? I'm not claiming to be very knowledgeable about AI/LLMs or the job market or "the economy" in general, but I'd be absolutely shocked to find that the AI stuff has any impact on the current IT job market. I know that some people are using AI tools to help generate code and stuff, but it seems like those tools can't even…

How would it not have any impact? If it allows people to be 10% more productive, you need 10% less people to accomplish the same amount of work.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?

#27

Post by mempko »

akerl_ wrote: post #2

This doesn’t seem shocking. We just had a year or two of rolling layoffs across major tech companies, interest rates are high, the market is fluctuating, and all of that is affecting hiring pipelines.

Most people are missing is that there was a tax code change as part of the Trump tax cuts that made engineers much more expensive in the short term. Companies, especially startups, were hit with a high tax bill. The layoffs are, I believe, a direct result of this tax change.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?

#28

Post by 101008 »

bongodongobob wrote: post #26
ragnese wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps the AI boom will decrease the demand from now on. Waiting for better times may be futile? I'm not claiming to be very knowledgeable about AI/LLMs or the job market or "the economy" in general, but I'd be absolutely shocked to find that the AI stuff has any impact on the current IT job market. I know that some people are using AI tools to help generate code and stuff, but it seems like those tools can't even…

How would it not have any impact? If it allows people to be 10% more productive, you need 10% less people to accomplish the same amount of work.

That's considering production stays constant, which shouldn't be the case since new companies are being created all the time.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?

#29

Post by PaulHoule »

bongodongobob wrote: post #26
ragnese wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps the AI boom will decrease the demand from now on. Waiting for better times may be futile? I'm not claiming to be very knowledgeable about AI/LLMs or the job market or "the economy" in general, but I'd be absolutely shocked to find that the AI stuff has any impact on the current IT job market. I know that some people are using AI tools to help generate code and stuff, but it seems like those tools can't even…

How would it not have any impact? If it allows people to be 10% more productive, you need 10% less people to accomplish the same amount of work.

What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox ?

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?

#30

Post by bongodongobob »

dathinab wrote: post #12

I wouldn't say it is bad or getting bad. But for a long time it had been really really good to a point that even people which fairly lacking qualifications could often easily get a job in a very short time frame (through also with some common biases/discrimination e.g. against age, and some positions, like very very well paying ones are still not easy to get). And I would say that times are about to be over soon. Hon…

Yeah don't let the HN bubble make you think that companies want the newest best tech. That's for startups only. The bigger the company, the slower they move. The company I work for retired tape backups a few years ago and Lotus Notes around the same time. The Lotus notes servers are still running. Our user names are based on an old IBM system etc. There will always be jobs in "old" tech and it usually pays pretty well.
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