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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?

#81

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Looking for a job with 20 years of experience is not like looking for a job with 2 years experience.

You want to be paid like you have 20 years. The experience should make you worth that. That is, you should be more productive than someone with 2 years of experience.

But not every company understands that. And even, of the companies that do understand, not every one of them needs that. Some just need a junior that they can plug in.

And, of the ones that are looking for someone of your level, most of them understand that this is a hire that is somewhat more important to get right.

The net result is that this is a slower process than it was for you 20 years ago. You need to adjust your expectations. But jobs are still there - they just take longer to find.

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

#82

Post by xnx »

handzhiev wrote: post #79
BillFranklin wrote: post #6

It is indeed, judging by the HN Who Is Hiring / Wants To Be Hired comment ratio [1]. [1]: https://github.com/bilbof/whoishiring-ratio

Thanks for doing this! I'm a bit confused by the readme: "This script outputs how many job seekers there are vs how many jobs." Isn't it actually showing the ratio of jobs / job seekers? It does seem so by the chart and the code but the text makes it sound the opposite. (Or is it my wrong reading?)

"vs" doesn't specify any numerator/denominator relationship, just that two things are being compared.

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

#83

Post by sumuyuda »

oidar wrote: post #78
lawgimenez wrote: post #40

As a native mobile developer I just noticed a new trend called fullstack mobile developer (web and mobile), it seems most companies prefers cross-platform frameworks nowadays. One company wants me to develop their mobile app on iOS and Android while also help manage their AWS backend. I’m not looking for new mobile dev jobs soon but the market for native looks like shit.

What is this magical ios/android/web full stack called?

I think this makes no sense, as web development is not the same as mobile app development.

I always thought fullstack meant front end and backend, not front end across multiple platforms.

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

#84

Post by lawgimenez »

sumuyuda wrote: post #83
oidar wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this magical ios/android/web full stack called?

I think this makes no sense, as web development is not the same as mobile app development. I always thought fullstack meant front end and backend, not front end across multiple platforms.

It’s mostly called full stack [app] developer, app is optional. It is mostly prevalent in internet of things jobs.

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

#85

Post by giancarlostoro »

filoleg wrote: post #71
giancarlostoro wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might as well pick a name from a hat and hire someone out of those 30 people, and just tell no one that's how you picked them. At least then you wouldn't be wasting their precious time they could be looking at other jobs for.

Reminds me of the old joke about shuffling the stack of candidate resumes multiple times and then picking the top 3 (and throwing away the rest), because you wouldn’t want to hire unlucky people.

Hah that's great, I'm mostly joking, but like, at the same time, having spent months not finding anything, I'd rather hear that it's not happening sooner than be strung along. Don't make me do a project if I'm not getting any compensation for my efforts. Time is money, and some of us are not making any whatsoever when job hunting.

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

#86

Post by BiteCode_dev »

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?

As Nassim Taleb said: "I've seen gluts not followed by shortages, but I've never seen a shortage not followed by a glut."

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

#87

Post by BiteCode_dev »

afpx wrote: post #24

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 inter…

Strangely I'm more comfortable with this kind of market.

I was fed up to see entitled wannabees be paid a lot of money to slow me down by forcing me to do some parody of scrum that they learn at one bootcamp, feeling they were in any way important as they drank they in-house latte during multiple remote meetings a day.

I much prefer a market where people I work with are actually paid according to their skill and ship code rather than power point or worse, an update to the code of conduct to include some inclusive edge case.

I would prefer a balance of all worlds, that would be fairer. But you can never quite reach it, because you pass it on the way up or down quickly as the pendulum swing.

So if I have to choose, I prefer a hard market.

I understand that people need to eat and that it's not everybody's preference, though.

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

#88

Post by OptionOfT »

Mc91 wrote: post #23

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…

I have gotten requests on LinkedIn, but they're all automated about how awesome my experience is and how this job would match.

My profile is marked as remote only. The offers are all on-site.

So I have my doubts that it is a match.

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

#89

Post by withinboredom »

BillFranklin wrote: post #6

It is indeed, judging by the HN Who Is Hiring / Wants To Be Hired comment ratio [1]. [1]: https://github.com/bilbof/whoishiring-ratio

It would help to explain what the axis is. Is higher more seekers or more jobs?

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

#90

Post by dexwiz »

gilbetron wrote: post #77

You can see from this graph that IT peaked at the end of 2022, and has stabilized at about 80k less positions since then. That means there are roughly 80k people around that could still be looking for IT jobs. Some of them probably have switched to other fields, but it still a lot of people sloshing around and jumping at job openings. I don't think there's an end in sight for that issue, and it likely could get worse…

I wonder how many of those positions were filled by people taking multiple jobs. While I don't think its common, I have heard enough stories. And 80k is roughly 2% of the total 3.1 million on that graph. I wouldn't be surprised if 1 out of 50 people were double dipping. Of the engineers I know, and the ones I know who were doing this, this seems about the correct magnitude.
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