Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by SirensOfTitan » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

crystal_revenge wrote: post #92

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…

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 don’t see this reality in the style of interview being performed at all.

Everyone has seemingly adopted the FAANG playbook for interviewing that doesn’t really select for people who like getting their hands dirty and building. These kinds of interviews are compliance interviews: they’re for people who will put in the work to just pass the test.

There are so many interviews I’ve been in where if I don’t write the perfect solution on the first try, I’ll get failed on the interview. More than ever, I’m seeing interviewers interrupt me during systems or coding interviews before I have a chance to dig in. I’ve always seen a little bit of this, but it seems like the bar is tightening, not on skill, but on your ability to regurgitate the exact solution the interviewer has in mind.

In the past I’ve always cold applied places and only occasionally leaned on relationships. Now I’m only doing the latter. Interviewees are asked to risk asymmetrically compared to employers.

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

#182

Post by fred_is_fred » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #100

fred_is_fred wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There's a dozen different angles all coming out at once. I'll try to summarize some. - really wants to hire H1B, but needs to pretend to interview first for compliance. These usually have absurd requirements to make it viable to reject anyone. - really wants to do an internal or referral hire or promotion, but needs to interview for HR compliance. These usually have such specific requirements that only the person the…

Thanks for that. I have seen internal hire before or even "we know who we want but legal makes us post it for 7 days".

The comp technique you mentioned though seems like a lot of work for price discovery, surely there are data sets out there?

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

#183

Post by game_the0ry » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

mlsu wrote: post #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?

Near zero interest rates + COVID remote work + PPP loans = Booming economy

What is happening now is the unwinding of the above. Now its:

Higher rates + AI + too many SWEs (bootcamps and over-hiring) = Busting economy

I think what we are in right now is more the norm and the post covid boom was an exception.

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

#184

Post by Aurornis » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #142

Aurornis wrote: post #112

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.

> If you need to wait YEARS to hire someone with some specific experience, I can guarantee that you really didn't need that person.

I've worked in specialized fields where it takes YEARS for the right candidate to even start looking for jobs. You need to have the job listings up and ready.

This was extremely true when we were working on things that could not be done remote (literal physical devices that had to be worked on with special equipment in office).

Engineers aren't interchangeable cogs.

> I can guarantee that you really didn't need that person.

So what? There are many roles where we don't "need" someone, but if the right person is out there looking for a job we want to be ready to hire them.

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

#185

Post by Xenoamorphous » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

crystal_revenge wrote: post #92

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…

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 very much a "builder" type dev that has more fun going from 0-v1 than maintaining and expanding scalable, large systems.

Most prefer a greenfield project.

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

#186

Post by kakacik » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

sam0x17 wrote: post #71

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…

I see it the opposite way actually with respect to the CS degree. If you earned your CS degree (or any degree) before 2022 or so, the value of that degree is going to grow and grow and grow until the last few people who had to learn before AI are dying out like the last COBOL developers AI has fundamentally broken the education system in a way that will take decades for it to fully recover. Even if we figure out how…

That's not something enthusiasts here and elsewhere want to hear, that's pretty obvious also in this discussion. People seems extremely polarized these days.

AI is either the next wheel or abysmal doom for future generations. I see both and neither at the same time.

In corporate environment where navigating processes, politics and other non-dev tasks takes significantly longer than actual coding, AI is just a bit better google search. And trust me, all these non-dev parts are still growing and growing fast. Its useful, but not elevating people beyond their true levels in any significant way (I guess we can agree ie nr of lines produced per day ain't a good idea, rather some Dilbert-esque comic for Friday afternoon).

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

#187

Post by markus_zhang » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 7:59 PM UTC

mariopt wrote: post #171

For the last 2 years I can't even get an interview despited having 14 years of experience and being up to date with development trends, libraries, languages, AI tooling, etc. I don't think the market is flooded with new devs as many state, I think we are in a deep silent crisis

IMO it’s just depression for tech. Back then 33% of total employment got gutted, which is probably better than tech today or in a few years when big techs start AI gut.

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

#188

Post by jjmarr » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 7:59 PM UTC

sam0x17 wrote: post #71

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…

I see it the opposite way actually with respect to the CS degree. If you earned your CS degree (or any degree) before 2022 or so, the value of that degree is going to grow and grow and grow until the last few people who had to learn before AI are dying out like the last COBOL developers AI has fundamentally broken the education system in a way that will take decades for it to fully recover. Even if we figure out how…

> If you earned your CS degree (or any degree) before 2022 or so, the value of that degree is going to grow and grow and grow

In my experience, target schools are the only universities now that can make their assignments too hard for AI.

When my university tried that, the assignments were too hard for students. So they gave up.

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

#189

Post by foldr » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 7:59 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #27

chillacy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

I don't claim to have any special skill at AI, but as a 'senior' dev, my strategy is exactly the opposite. I try to be as lazy, dumb and concise as I can bring myself to be with my initial prompt, and then just add more detail for the bits that the AI didn't guess correctly the first time around.

Quite often the AI guesses accurately and you save the time you'd have spent crafting the perfect prompt. Recently, my PM shared a nigh-on incompressible hand-scribbled diagram on Slack (which, in fairness, was more or less a joke). I uploaded it to Gemini with the prompt "WTF does this diagram mean?". Even without a shred of context, it figured out that it was some kind of product feature matrix and produced a perfect three paragraph summary.

I've never really seen the value in the planning phase as you're free to just throw away whatever the AI produces and try again with a different prompt. That said, I don't pay for my tokens at work. Is planning perhaps useful as a way of reducing total token usage?

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

#190

Post by ryandrake » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 8:00 PM UTC

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…

> 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 all know that revenue going up 23% YoY was not attributable to this single programmer doing anything at all.

This is the "quantify everything" mantra career coaches have been repeating for decades. As the story goes, no company is going to care that you refactored the FooBar library in order to make bugs in the DingDang module easier to fix. You have to only write down things that moved some quantifiable business needle like revenue or signups, even if the link to that needle is tenuous. Obviously, this ends up penalizing hard working, talented devs who don't happen to be working in areas where wins are easily quantifiable.