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Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

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Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#21

Post by chillacy »

electronsoup wrote: post #18
mjr00 wrote: post #15

In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an "average" developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position. Contrary to what many say, I don't think it's simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren't. Juniors are still getting hired because they're still way cheaper and they're just as capable as using AI a…

> and they're just as capable as using AI as anyone Wouldn't the assumption be the opposite, in that AI is magnifying the decision making of the engineer and so you get more payback by having the senior drive the AI?

I've found this to be true so far, junior engineers with AI can be super productive but they can also cause a lot of damage (more outages than ever) and AI amplifies the sometimes poorly designed code they can generate.

I suspect a lot of it best practices will be enforcing best practices via agents.md/claude.md to create a more constrained environment.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#22

Post by QuercusMax »

kaeruct wrote: post #6

https://xcancel.com/JosephPolitano/status/202991636466461124...

What that graph looks like to me is that there were a ton of marginal folks hired during COVID, and we're shedding a lot of those folks who probably shouldn't have been hired anyway.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#24

Post by roxolotl »

How’s it compare to 2000 though? Tech was ascendant in 2008 so not surprised to hear it didn’t do too badly then and in 2020 while people panicked tech again had a much easier time keeping people on remotely.

EDIT: posted below as well https://xcancel.com/JosephPolitano/status/202991636466461124...

There’s a longer term graph in the thread. We’ve got a long way to go before we hit 2000 numbers which is what I’d expected.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#25

Post by fred_is_fred »

ICantFeelMyToes wrote: post #16
RivieraKid wrote: post #9

Interesting, this shows growth in open positions: https://www.trueup.io/job-trend

True but there is also a massive proliferation of ghost jobs. Dirty secret for a bunch of Series A places

I see everyone say this but what is the point of making a fake job opening? Are companies just doing that to see if a unicorn applies?

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#26

Post by ppeetteerr »

Those are raw numbers. I would look instead at the job changes over total employment numbers. I don't have the numbers but I would wager we have many more people working in tech today (overall) than we did in 2008.

Also, that spike in 21/22 really did a number on people's expectations. The one constant in this industry is its cyclical nature.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#27

Post by lumost »

chillacy wrote: post #21
electronsoup wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and they're just as capable as using AI as anyone Wouldn't the assumption be the opposite, in that AI is magnifying the decision making of the engineer and so you get more payback by having the senior drive the AI?

I've found this to be true so far, junior engineers with AI can be super productive but they can also cause a lot of damage (more outages than ever) and AI amplifies the sometimes poorly designed code they can generate. I suspect a lot of it best practices will be enforcing best practices via agents.md/claude.md to create a more constrained environment.

I’ve observed radically different workflows amongst senior candidates vs junior candidates when using an ai. A senior candidate will often build an extremely detailed plan for the agent - similar to how you would do a design for/with a junior engineer. Then let the agent go full throttle to implement the plan and review the result.

Juniors seem to split into the category of trust everything the ai says, or review every step of the implementation. It’s extremely hard to guide the ai while you are still learning the basics, opus4.6 is a very powerful model.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#28

Post by alephnerd »

As I previously mentioned, based on person experience assumptions around hiring have changed due to the Twitter layoffs, demands for FCF positivity, and WFH inadvertently justifying offshoring [0], not necessarily due to interest rate changes.

---

As I also mentioned, the only way you can survive in American tech at this point is to:

1. Move to a Tier 1 tech hub like the Bay and NYC. If you get laid off, you will probably find another job in a couple of weeks due to the density of employers. Seattle used to be a good option, but WA's norms around noncompete clauses incentivize larger employers which reduces the ability for startups to truly scale.

2. Start coming into the office 2-3 days a week. It's harder to layoff someone you have had beers or coffee with. Worst case, they can refer you to their friends companies if you get laid off

3. Upskill technically. Learn the fundamentals of AI/ML and MLOPs. Agents are basically a semi-nondeterministic SaaS. Understanding how AI/ML works and understanding their benefits and pitfalls make you a much more valuable hire.

4. Upskill professionally. We're not hiring code monkeys for $200K-400K TC. We want Engineers who can communicate business problems into technical requirements. This means also understanding the industry your company is in, how to manage up to leadership, and what are the revenue drivers and cost centers of your employer. Learn how to make a business case for technical issues. If you cannot communicate why refactoring your codebase from Python to Golang would positively impact topline metrics, no one will prioritize it.

5. Live lean, save for a rainy day, and keep your family and friends close. If you're not in a financial position to say "f##k you" you will get f##ked, and strong relationships help you build the support system you need for independence. The reality is the current set of layoffs and work stresses were the norm in the tech industry until 2015-22. We live in a competitive world and complaining on HN does nothing to help your material condition.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47174561

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#29

Post by mamcx »

ICantFeelMyToes wrote: post #16
RivieraKid wrote: post #9

Interesting, this shows growth in open positions: https://www.trueup.io/job-trend

True but there is also a massive proliferation of ghost jobs. Dirty secret for a bunch of Series A places

I'm looking for job (in Rust) now and is absurd how many positions are for training LLMS -in Rust!- (yeah, lets help the people that wanna put everyone out of jobs)

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#30

Post by mjr00 »

electronsoup wrote: post #18
mjr00 wrote: post #15

In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an "average" developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position. Contrary to what many say, I don't think it's simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren't. Juniors are still getting hired because they're still way cheaper and they're just as capable as using AI a…

> and they're just as capable as using AI as anyone Wouldn't the assumption be the opposite, in that AI is magnifying the decision making of the engineer and so you get more payback by having the senior drive the AI?

For a good senior, yes you get massive returns, which is why those good seniors are in incredibly high demand right now.

For average to low-performing intermediates/seniors... there's not much difference in output between them and a good junior at this point. Claude really raised the skill floor for software development.

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