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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

#141

Post by klooney »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #128
teagee wrote: post #10

The chart in the tweet represents year-on-year growth. Based on these figures alone the actual number of people employed in tech is still really high, and the numbers can't just go up forever. Also this only captures 6 industries, which is a narrow view of what would define "tech" these days. Not to say that the job market isn't tough but this graph is a very narrow view

The chart shows devs still growing, and "Computer System Design SERVICES" getting hammered (most of the total loss). I'm not even sure this chart tells the story of the title.

Is this WITCH companies?

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

#142

Post by coliveira »

Aurornis wrote: post #112
overfeed wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month. How many offers did you receive? Companies have also adopted your strategy: interviewing candidates "to see what's out there" - there's a job I interviewed for that's still open after 10 months.

> Companies have also adopted your strategy: interviewing candidates "to see what's out there" - there's a job I've interviewed for that's still open after 10 months When I was doing a lot of hiring we wouldn't take the job posting down until we were done hiring people with that title. It made a couple people furious because they assumed we were going to take the job posting down when we hired someone and then re-pos…

> some specific job listings we had open for years

If you need to wait YEARS to hire someone with some specific experience, I can guarantee that you really didn't need that person. You're doing this just to check some specific artificial goal that has little to do with the business.

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

#143

Post by tylervigen »

overfeed wrote: post #105
crystal_revenge wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally tend to interview every year to see what's out there in the world (sometimes I find something worth switching for, other times not). I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month. Personally I think it's a bit more nuanced than senior vs junior (though it is very hard for juniors right now). What I've seen a lot of hunger for is people with a track record of getting their hand…

> I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month. How many offers did you receive? Companies have also adopted your strategy: interviewing candidates "to see what's out there" - there's a job I interviewed for that's still open after 10 months.

What a time to be alive: Companies post roles that don't exist to interview candidates who don't plan to switch.

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

#144

Post by bayarearefugee »

stanleykm wrote: post #106
tracerbulletx wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming the employees is BS. A pretty large % of the people losing their jobs are also high performing excellent people. I feel like anyone who worked at one of these companies doing lay offs knows this.

The layoffs are not necessarily executed in a way that takes performance into account, but that doesn’t mean that the industry overall doesn’t have too many people for the amount of work that needs to be done.

> that doesn’t mean that the industry overall doesn’t have too many people for the amount of work that needs to be done.

Not that I disagree with you here, but it is hard to square this with people who are also saying not to worry about AI displacement because there's limitless demand for software.

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

#145

Post by Gigachad »

Aurornis wrote: post #126
sanufar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your experience, what’s the best way to increase signal? I feel as though a lot of devs struggle with the initial process of getting past screening, drawing attention to projects, etc.

Not the parent commenter but I've performed a lot of resume reviews for people and also done a lot of hiring. Most resumes are not very good. Beyond the obvious problems like typos, there is a lot of bad advice on the internet that turns resumes into useless noise. Screen a lot of resumes and you'll get tired of seeing "Boosted revenue by 23% by decreasing deploy times by 64%." This communicates nothing useful and we…

At least in my experience, applying at jobs online has been entirely useless for the last 5 years. No company ever contacts you after using the online application forms. And the only way I’ve got interviews is from recruiters contacting me.

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

#146

Post by dolebirchwood »

weatherlite wrote: post #99
lowkey_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on the bimodal, but I don't think this is junior vs. senior - I think it's just competence being rooted out. The majority of engineers, in my hiring experience, failed very simple tests pre-AI. In a world where anyone can code, they're no better than previously non-technical people. The CS degree is no longer protection. The gap between average and the best engineers now, though, is even higher. The best engin…

> The majority of engineers, in my hiring experience, failed very simple tests pre-AI Did you consider tech whiteboard / leetcode interviews are unnatural stressful environments ? Have you gone through a mid/difficult technical appraisal yourself lately ? Try it out just to get an idea how it feels on the other side...

> mid/difficult

You're assuming the question has to even be that difficult. I've proctored sessions for senior-level webdev roles where the questions were akin to "baby's first React component" -- write a component that updates a counter when you click a button. So many candidates (who purported to be working with React for years) would fail, abysmally. Not like they were just making small mistakes; I didn't even care about best practices -- they just needed to make it work. So many failed. Lot of frauds out there.

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

#148

Post by no_wizard »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #125
no_wizard wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High performer is so subjective too. You can be a great unblocker, team lead, and work well within cross cutting areas and with interdepartmental stake holders, have a history of strong technical performance. and yet its nebulous if that means you're a high performer or not to those hiring. It seems I'm seeing 'culture fit' as a common reason people aren't getting hired again. That was out of vogue for a good while.

In tech 'culture fit' is generally a dog whistle for ageism in my experience.

I also think its being used to filter out people that aren't basically a mirror for the interviewers in many instances.

I've noticed a huge tightening of the rope around that sort of thing.

I can't tell you how many times I've passed all the tests, all the interview things, get to the final round with the team and the rejection email comes in despite having good conversations. By all accounts, I believe any person would say the interview went well.

my peers are reporting the same things.

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

#149

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

tunesmith wrote: post #73
roxolotl wrote: post #24

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 expec…

In Portland, there was a time in 2000-2002 where Nike and Intel had contract offers out to SW developers for $12/hour, and were getting slammed with applications.

In Atlanta in 2000, I was making $52K a year working for a medium size company that printed bills. By 2002 I was making $65K at the same company.

For context, I had my 2600 square foot 3.5/2 bedroom house built that year for $175K.

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

#150

Post by overfeed »

Aurornis wrote: post #112
overfeed wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month. How many offers did you receive? Companies have also adopted your strategy: interviewing candidates "to see what's out there" - there's a job I interviewed for that's still open after 10 months.

> Companies have also adopted your strategy: interviewing candidates "to see what's out there" - there's a job I've interviewed for that's still open after 10 months When I was doing a lot of hiring we wouldn't take the job posting down until we were done hiring people with that title. It made a couple people furious because they assumed we were going to take the job posting down when we hired someone and then re-pos…

> When I was doing a lot of hiring we wouldn't take the job posting down until we were done hiring people with that title

It's a small engineering org, allegedly head-hunting one principal engineer for the whole org, so it's a single opening. 10 months later they are still hunting for their special snowflake.

> I can recall some specific job listings we had open for years because none of the people we interviewed really had the specific experience we needed

This is exactly what I mean. If you can go for years without filling a role, it's non-essential , and are in effect, "seeing what's out there". More and more companies are getting very picky on mundane roles, such as insisting on past experience in specific industries: "Oh, your extensive experience in low-latency comms is in telecoms? We prefer someone who's worked in TV broadcast, using these niche standards specifically, even though your knowledge is directly transferable. We don't want to waste 5 days on training"

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