Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What do you guys think of the current job market in tech?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 96 posts

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys think of the current job market in tech?

#61

Post by n_ary »

nopelynopington wrote: post #31

I'm in the EU, I just picked up a new job as a senior dev. I had been a team lead / manager but struggled to find another role as I only have two years experience in management. Picking up a dev role was easier. Things I've learned in the process (and from being on interview panels myself) 1) I tend to stay in a job a long time (5 years plus) and this is highly valued by interviewers 2) in tech interviews you need to…

> 1) I tend to stay in a job a long time (5 years plus) and this is highly valued by interviewers

I believe this is an EU thing for us. I had informal discussion with friends from US/CA, and there, it is somehow seen as stagnation and something something about pay not improving.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys think of the current job market in tech?

#62

Post by realusername »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #53
realusername wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it means we are building even more stuff with the same developers. The limiting factor still is the number of software developers, not the software demand.

What stuff are you building? Everything is falling apart. I can't read without an account most of the sites that were accessible just a year ago: twitter, reddit, youtube etc.

I'm in some B2B business. I don't know a single company where the limiting factor is the roadmap. Everybody is using AI to push even more stuff out.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys think of the current job market in tech?

#63

Post by akmarinov »

nopelynopington wrote: post #54
Andaith wrote: post #24

It's pretty brutal here in Australia. Higher interest rates mean companies are aggressively reducing headcount. Insanely high immigration means statistically for every 1 job being created we're importing 1.4 workers. Job vacancies across the economy are down 16.4% yearly change according to ABS. Also according to ABS, Job vacancies, change from February 2020 to May 2024, for IT is an increase of just 1.8%. In summary…

This seems like a highly politicised answer Australia has 1/3rd the population of the UK on a literal continent. In Ireland we also have a housing crisis, because ironically all of our young construction workers have emigrated to Australia because there's a huge construction boom there. If you restricted immigration you'd have a bigger housing crisis

Not only that, but Australia has about as much population as Romania (26 vs 20 million)

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys think of the current job market in tech?

#64

Post by 727564797069706 »

emseetech wrote: post #57

I'm getting 3-4 recruiter emails a week, which is much less than a few years ago. I've noticed an uptick recently. There certainly was a period where I didn't get any for weeks on end. I'm a generalist with 25+ years experience. I'm on the more employable end but I can't command as much salary as a specialist. I've been moving back into contract work though, which is different than the salary world.

As a generalist with half the years of experience you have, I'm looking to get into contract work, too.

Do you have any tips on how to pull it off successfully?

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys think of the current job market in tech?

#65

Post by MrSS »

defrost wrote: post #59
MrSS wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

To clarify the comment made by another, they're not hating on immigrants neccesarily, modern Australia is built on immigration. The sentiment is that right now things are tough and current immigration adds to current pressures. See Graph 1.1: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas... Australia has had steady net immigration for quite some time .. that fell in a hole during the pandemic and right…

It would be great, if we talk about a topic like this, to give more insight why they think to simplify complex problems with the word immigrants.

I'm also pretty sure that people on hn are people who generally work globally (take opportunities remotly without even immigrating anywere), travel and or consider moving around the world as they see fit.

And your statistic is really interesting (pure curiosity) but most immigrants are coming on a temp visa. How much impact have 80.000 permanent visa immigrants in a year for one specific industry?

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys think of the current job market in tech?

#66

Post by kapitanjakc »

n_ary wrote: post #56

/u/kapitanjakc, are your friends in US or EU or APAC? The market is reacting to global events, as we live in an uncertain time after a full and half decade of unprecendented innovation and prosperity. If I understood my parents correctly, this is just the economic cycle. However, the massive global scale pandemic, immediately followed by mass inflation, wars, rapid rise in living cost, anticipation of a massive gener…

Hey, yeah, I get the cycle thing, it's just that I was generally wondering if it's the same around the globe or is it just few places.

They are from US, UK, Germany, India and Australia.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys think of the current job market in tech?

#67

Post by cbg0 »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #53
realusername wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it means we are building even more stuff with the same developers. The limiting factor still is the number of software developers, not the software demand.

What stuff are you building? Everything is falling apart. I can't read without an account most of the sites that were accessible just a year ago: twitter, reddit, youtube etc.

> Everything is falling apart.

This is an overly dramatic take.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys think of the current job market in tech?

#68

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

cbg0 wrote: post #67
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What stuff are you building? Everything is falling apart. I can't read without an account most of the sites that were accessible just a year ago: twitter, reddit, youtube etc.

> Everything is falling apart. This is an overly dramatic take.

In my experience there is way more work than you can conceivably get done. There is no way the work is running out.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys think of the current job market in tech?

#69

Post by trog »

MrSS wrote: post #65
defrost wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify the comment made by another, they're not hating on immigrants neccesarily, modern Australia is built on immigration. The sentiment is that right now things are tough and current immigration adds to current pressures. See Graph 1.1: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas... Australia has had steady net immigration for quite some time .. that fell in a hole during the pandemic and right…

It would be great, if we talk about a topic like this, to give more insight why they think to simplify complex problems with the word immigrants. I'm also pretty sure that people on hn are people who generally work globally (take opportunities remotly without even immigrating anywere), travel and or consider moving around the world as they see fit. And your statistic is really interesting (pure curiosity) but most im…

In Australia we had over 500,000 immigrants in 2023. Much higher than usual to account for decreased numbers in prior years due to COVID.

We only have 6 cities with populations bigger than 500k. We let in a number of people greater than the population of our capital city in one year.

I am not anti-immigration (I have two people in my team I've helped arrange visas for). But this insane number has seriously changed the fabric of our society in real, tangible ways, purely from the pressure it has put on the housing market.

We are already seeing anti-immigration rhetoric from the usual suspects and its only going to get worse.

A few weeks ago there were stories about recent immigrants heading back home because the opportunities here are few and the cost of living is so high there's no way they can live here (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-08/why-these-immigrants-...). (I had an Uber driver tell me he's going back to India to open a gym because he can't afford to live here in Brisbane any more.)

And now literally today we're getting early warning signs of stress in the employment market, which is going to hurt the new immigrants the most (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-23/economists-warn-unemp...).

Again - not anti-immigration. We /need/ it in Australia. There are many reasons why we're in the mess we're in and not all of them are immigration. But at the end of the day our housing market is completely fucked and the flow on effects from this are dramatic. I don't think we're simplifying the problem down to "immigration" but it's simply undeniable that it is a factor in our current situation.

Re: Ask HN: What do you guys think of the current job market in tech?

#70

Post by hawski »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #19
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no way you can replace competent programmers with ChatGPT. I still have to check the output all the time and it’s often wrong or just doesn’t even know what I’m asking about.

But many people are claiming that chatgpt increases their productivity by 50-100%. Doesn't it mean we need less programmers now?

Entertaining the thought that it is indeed the case maybe it would make late projects (IMHO most of them) less late.
Post reply on HN