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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?

#31

Post by RandomCitizen12 »

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?

We're unlikely to see another 0% interest era, so that's effectively a fundamental change. The changes to Section 174 are fundamental, but likely to be repealed.

I think things will get better, the effects of the above will lessen with a rate cut and probably a repeal, but the golden era is past.

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

#32

Post by PaulHoule »

mempko wrote: post #27
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.

Yes! And so few people are talking about this one.

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

#33

Post by philipov »

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…

I have been hanging out in a game dev forum where you've got people asking coding questions as if it's chatgpt, except to real live humans who are able to understand and explain exactly what the person needs to do to implement a feature. And they still can't handle it. No amount of handholding can substitute for knowing what you're doing.

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

#34

Post by lukan »

pjc50 wrote: post #18

There'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).

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

#35

Post by jacknews »

antisthenes wrote: post #8

It's interesting that finally US techies begin to understand what the job market is like for the average person since the 2009 recession. And I mean the desirable, well-paying jobs, not the $20/hr service/food jobs that anyone can get.

Actually I think the reverse is the case, now.

If you're a doctor, and you apply for a hospital job, do they at least reply to acknowledge your application? Do they then send a rejection letter if you're simply 'not what they're looking for'? If they then start to consider you as a candidate, do you have to 'trial cure' a couple of patients, take a cell-function exam, and endure 6 rounds of other interviews and screens before getting on the final shortlist?

Tech applications mostly just go into the void (sometimes there's an autoresponder to at least say your application has been received into their system, but often not even that), occasionally they'll give you a rejection letter if you're not suitable, but often they won't bother, and then at any time during the arduous rounds of tests and screenings you may be ghosted; just they can't even be bothered to tell you you're no longer in the funnel.

I really don't believe this hiring experience is something inherited or 'caught-up' from other industries.

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

#37

Post by dathinab »

nottorp wrote: post #11
underseacables wrote: post #5

I think conditions for older employees are getting worse. Teams are outsourced, either to younger people who work from home, or to other countries, making older remaining employees seem like an unnecessarily high cost.

> either to younger people who work from home What, older people aren't allowed to work from home?

I don't know about in general, but in my environment people in the 25-40 range are the most common to work from home, and the most common to majorly profit from it.

Like the benefits you can get with working from home if you e.g. have a partner and children are much much larger in practice then when you are a single student. Through also the challenges you have to overcome to make working from home viable. With the main challenge being proper working from home needing more space (in general) at home which with high apartment prices isn't always easy.

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

#38

Post by patrulo »

I'd wage it's the post-mania return to median. This is how job markets tend to look outside of our comfy tech bubble.

Even assuming rates will start to drop H2 this year and cost of capital will be lower, some of the new-found productivity demand will be consumed by maturing AI tools.

tl;dr this looks like the new normal.

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

#39

Post by lukan »

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

That is an interesting graphic. Maybe one cannot use it to say things about the global economy, but definitely about the software economy (in the western hemisphere).

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

#40

Post by lawgimenez »

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.

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