Yeah, same for me. H1B hires should not be approved under these conditions. That was allowed because there was a shortage of eligible citizens with these skills. There's now a glut and people with these skills are needing to take jobs they are overqualified for if they're lucky.
Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?
41–50 of 120 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?
#42Yes, it is bad. The first reason is because of the many layoffs that started after Twitter laid off more than 50%. Many companies over hired during covid and CEOs felt it's OK to lay off 10-20%. So now the market has a lot of developers looking for jobs.
The second reason is AI. The biggest use case for LLMs is writing. They are really good at writing, including writing code. Developer are more productive as a result and companies can do more with less people.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?
#43Earlier 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 assumes people are being more productive on net. I suspect generative AI is still a net negative in terms of productivity overall. Lot’s of time spent playing with it and tracking down bugs more than offsetting what little benefit it’s providing people.
I’ve heard people on HN suggest it’s definitely helping them, but I’ve yet to see it in person. So ehh maybe they are just working on very different things.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?
#44Earlier 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
It pushes pro-Russian disinformation: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-coronavirus-pandem...
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?
#45This 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.
Wait... how can I learn more about how this affects engineers?
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?
#46It is indeed, judging by the HN Who Is Hiring / Wants To Be Hired comment ratio [1]. [1]: https://github.com/bilbof/whoishiring-ratio
Just commenting to say that is awesome (both idea and execution).
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?
#47There's been a lot of redundancies. Games industry hit particularly badly. I'm not sure how much of it is "real" and how much is sentiment; personally, I think profitable companies having layoffs is always "sentiment". The interest rate rises were intended to contract the economy and reduce wage inflation pressure by increasing unemployment, and they seem to have had that effect. The AI bubble is also causing a lot o…
Unemployment is very low (in N.A.).
What changed is remote work. My company got rid of US/UK based employees and only hires LATAM contractors by the hundreds.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?
#48This 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.
Would like to hear more about this. I thought there was an effort to adjust this...did that fail?
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?
#49Yeah, same for me. H1B hires should not be approved under these conditions. That was allowed because there was a shortage of eligible citizens with these skills. There's now a glut and people with these skills are needing to take jobs they are overqualified for if they're lucky.
They will continue to approve H1B hires because the whole point of the program is to keep costs down for the businesses that fund campaigns.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?
#50There's been a lot of redundancies. Games industry hit particularly badly. I'm not sure how much of it is "real" and how much is sentiment; personally, I think profitable companies having layoffs is always "sentiment". The interest rate rises were intended to contract the economy and reduce wage inflation pressure by increasing unemployment, and they seem to have had that effect. The AI bubble is also causing a lot o…
"The AI bubble is also causing a lot of companies to believe in the idea of replacing their staff with AI." Replacing generic slogan writers with AI might work, but replacing IT workers with AI at this point will be funny to watch (from a distance).
The worst IT professionals, like bottom 10% (which seem to be in the top .01% for getting hired and holding a job, somehow), are about on par with AI in my experience. At least with Health care IT professionals, which might be a huge selection bias. I am just about as likely to see complete nonsense suggestions or a complete misunderstanding of the problem from either.