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IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

wsj.com

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Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#481

Post by madsbuch »

nightski wrote: post #285
madsbuch wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am realising that this is what taxes pays for in Denmark. I have a masters in computer science (5 year, postgraduate + thesis, Aarhus University which is top 100 and even higher for PL + semantics, which is my thesis subject) that I received tuition free and I am continuing with a professional degree in business at a reasonable tuition at 10k USD for the entire degree . It appears like continual learning should be…

I don't necessarily think it needs to be government run. The best schools in America are private. Ironically government support (the federal student loan system) is imo largely responsible for crazy high tuition in the U.S. Maybe there is just less demand in Denmark? But I feel like demand surged here, and with easy access to capital it drove prices to absurd levels.

This is and interesting, and very American, point of view.

In Europe all countries have tuition free universities, in Denmark people even get a government stipend of ~1000 USD/month by the government. And yet, there is availability on most programmes (like computer science)

It seems like the market powers do not apply for American universities? When tuition (demand) surges, it should be profitable to expand supply (new unis, added seats on programmes, hire more staff).

Regardless, the supply seems quite inflexible?

Though it is convenient to blame the government for supporting the ones most in need (young people starting their careers) it seems to be more appropriate to blame structural issues that inhibit the creation of supply – which is also very anti-American.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#482

Post by benterix »

paxys wrote: post #41
deathpanels wrote: post #25

Everyone is talking about layoffs and lack of hiring, but I've found the problem to be that companies are cutting costs by silently increasing workload on existing employees. Everyone is getting burnt out trying to keep a 300-person engineering team running on only 100 head count. That leads to more incidents, slower delivery, less innovation, longer hours. Even those who are still employed are seeing working conditi…

Those are two parts of the same problem. If a company is doing layoffs and refusing to hire more who is going to take on the work burden? Obviously existing employees.

> Those are two parts of the same problem. If a company is doing layoffs . . .

Sometimes, yes, but not always - if the load is high enough, employees are overworked even if headcount increases.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#483

Post by benterix »

delphico wrote: post #418
osigurdson wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought offshoring happened 20 years ago. I think today, it is more about aishoring, or the dream that it will be possible to do a lot with very few people.

Oh absolutely. The term is new (aishoring). There is chaos though (initial days of aishoring ?) The challenge I see is the following (or the management thought I see is the following) a) Hire some Junior devs, track them through spyware on the laptops b) Enterprise ChatGPT, Bard, c) CoPilot d) Spin features out Some senior folk reviews the code (we pay him top dollar, so 18 hours is reality he/she has to wake up to)…

> As someone to whom this happened

Happened to me too - I just said this shit is generated by ChatGPT and I won't be reviewing it. They didn't insist.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#484

Post by gedy »

boplicity wrote: post #325
yesiamyourdad wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the part that's left out of every statement that starts with "There's a shortage of workers in industry X" ... "willing to accept the current wages / working conditions". Similar for "jobs Americans won't do"... "at the wages being offered". It drives me insane that people freely accept the concept of supply and demand, except when it comes to labor.

There's a second part to this argument. There would be riots, for example, if agricultural workers were paid rates that would make Americans willing to do this. If you think food inflation is bad now, that would be off the charts. Like it or not, we benefit from cheap labor, across many, many different industries.

> If you think food inflation is bad now, that would be off the charts.

I don't have a stat but looking in past the manual labor costs of food is very small percentage.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#485

Post by benterix »

osigurdson wrote: post #399
piskov wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the article is about Pax Americana. Anywhere else — like Russia, Asia, Africa — IT is booming with stronger demand than ever. Probably, one of the main reasons for layoffs in “US and what have you” is new wave of deglobalization and having your own google, visa, etc. “just in case”. This way possible markets shrink and big “IT troops” become less economically feasible. We may even see in the not so distan…

Russia?

This would make sense - most of top talent left when they realized what can happen to them and those who decided to stay did it mostly for family reasons. So someone needs to fill in this hole.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#486

Post by tonyedgecombe »

madsbuch wrote: post #481
nightski wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily think it needs to be government run. The best schools in America are private. Ironically government support (the federal student loan system) is imo largely responsible for crazy high tuition in the U.S. Maybe there is just less demand in Denmark? But I feel like demand surged here, and with easy access to capital it drove prices to absurd levels.

This is and interesting, and very American, point of view. In Europe all countries have tuition free universities, in Denmark people even get a government stipend of ~1000 USD/month by the government. And yet, there is availability on most programmes (like computer science) It seems like the market powers do not apply for American universities? When tuition (demand) surges, it should be profitable to expand supply (n…

>In Europe all countries have tuition free universities

The UK doesn't (and didn't before Brexit either).

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#487

Post by madsbuch »

yesdocs wrote: post #98
giantg2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. My "team" is doubling in size, but all the hires are international.

It’s time we unionize as software developers. You saw what the UAW achieved, Software Engineering needs the same type of protections

I now understand why American unions have such a bad name.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#488

Post by gumballindie »

pram wrote: post #262
deadghost wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My previous company was doing this. I basically quit out of frustration. They weren't much better than picking random people off the street and pointing them at code. It bled into my work life when they took over a project I was on and was pinging me constantly with "hello" and "good morning" expecting to jump on calls with their teams to explain exactly how to do their jobs. An example to illustrate what I was worki…

Pro tip: just don’t respond to the “good morning” messages. If they don’t follow up it wasn’t important anyway.

Imagine being this guy.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#489

Post by siquick »

Gigachad wrote: post #275
Pepe1vo wrote: post #57

The cognitive dissonance I'm getting from reading the comments here is pretty staggering. Where I live (The Netherlands) me and every IT person I know is getting absolutely hounded by recruiters. As an additional anecdote I'll add that I've just switched jobs to a start-up on very favorable terms and the recruitment process basically amounted to being cold called and asked "hey you wanna work here?". Can anyone here…

I'm in Australia and I get recruiter calls all the time. I've said I'm interested to all of them, and then they just stop talking to me. No idea what's going on. Seems like recruiters are just spamming out first contact messages and then selectively picking the replies they want to respond to.

They’re gathering data points for their “Robert Half IT Job Market Q4 2023” report and also keeping their call quotas up.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#490

Post by sureglymop »

wyclif wrote: post #397
rr808 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably more relevant is how many over 40 give up coding because they're bored and/or employers dont want them any more. (I'm over 50 and finding it much harder to get piad compared to when I was younger despite kids moved out and I have lots of time to dedicate to working)

Ageism is one of the bad things about our industry. It's the last accepted form of discrimination. The irony is that when you're young and starting a family, you feel guilty about working crazy hours because you're not spending time with your wife and kids. Then when the nest is empty you've got plenty of free time to work hard and even learn some new things, languages, frameworks, &c. but at that point a lot of clos…

There are definitely many more forms of discrimination. Think about neurodiverse people, e.g. with autism. Reardless of skill, knowledge, degree, age etc. it may be much harder to acquire a job for social reasons.
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