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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

#161
I just can't get over how short and intense the period between 2021 and 2023 was. There was SO much hype, such stupendous hiring, in such a compressed timeframe. Within the span of like 9 weeks it went from full steam ahead to completely seized.

At the same time, the economy at large didn't seem to change very much.

Why did this happen?

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 car…

I think some of this is probably attributed to being maintenance devs who don't build a lot of greenfield stuff. I got this way in one of my past jobs. I think us as devs really need to practice creating things from scratch from time to time. Working out those kinks is a good skill (less with AI) but also good practice for those baby components you'd need to make in an interview.

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

#163
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…

I'm seeing a lot of specialization. For the past 11 years I've marketed myself as a frontend engineer. I got laid off last year and the job search was largely similar to my previous job search 4 years prior.

I've been looking again this year and the landscape has changed drastically. Specialization is the name of the game, I have a good amount of experience working with Growth initiatives and I've been getting good responses from roles that are looking for either Growth or Design engineers, roles that were not as prevalent years ago.

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

#164
post #46

Anyone else's inbox slammed with recruiters, more than it ever has been in the past? Feels like there's 10x the jobs available, but perhaps it's just that LLMs have automated a recruiter's job and they're letting the slop fly

No, but it used to be.

What mediums are you using for recruiters to contact you? Do you have a linked-in or are you applying directly to recruiting companies? Are you active anywhere else?

Genuinely interested in how you're receiving so many recruitment emails. That used to be my go to way to hit the job market.

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

#165
post #116
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…

Juniors from non target schools are getting pushed out since the skill floor is too high. I graduated 9 months ago. In that time I've merged more PRs than anyone else, reduced mean time to merge by 20% on a project with 300 developers with an automated code review tool, and in the past week vibe coded an entire Kubernetes cluster that can remotely execute our builds (working on making it more reliable before putting…

Can I ask what you and others that posts things like this here -"What are you actually developing?"

People are posting about pull requests, use of AIs, yada yada. But they never tell us what they are trying to produce. Surely this should be the first thing in the post:

- I am developing an X

- I use an LLM to write some of the code for it ... etc.

- I have these ... testing problems

- I have these problems with the VCS/build system ...

Otherwise it is all generalised, well "stuff". And maybe, dare I say it, slop.

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

#166
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…

> 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.

This is the K-shaped economy playing out. Its a signal that the american middle class is hollowing out. Bad, very bad.

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

#167
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…

Yep - the dual economy has moved into tech itself.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I assume that this means you're sending out rejections that include a mention of "we've hired someone else for this role". If your hiring model is hiring multiple people through one posting, then you will probably get a lot fewer angry ex-candidates being weird (because they think you've lied to them since the posting is still up) by just sending out rejections that don't say that and just get the "we're no longer in…

> I assume that this means you're sending out rejections that include a mention of "we've hired someone else for this role".

No, this isn't possible unless you delay rejections letters until you hire someone.

We send letters as soon as the decision is made not to continue with that candidate.

Honestly it would be cruel to string them along any longer.

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

#169
I have been getting automated emails from a slew of different recruiters now. Usually one or two per day. I believe they are LLM generated. However, I usually don’t respond.

The next step is for me to respond with an LLM. Maybe if my LLM is good enough it’ll convince their LLM to skip the interview and just offer me a job.

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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