UK IT job searching broken

> is it just interest rates causing this?

Partly. It's mostly poor decision making. Those that thought it was a good idea to massively over hire during COVID (a likely temporary event) caused this. There was a surge in salaries across the board and huge confusion as teams tried to scale.

The hiring criteria dropped. A lot of people that otherwise wouldn't have made it got hired.

Many large companies today are still not yet down to below COVID levels in employees.

Listen.

Leave the UK.

There is nothing here and no tech jobs at all.

Nothing will change unless you leave the country and search for other opportunities.

Hardly better here. A few years ago recruiters were begging me to go on interviews and ... sometimes providing recordings with the interview questions, wink wink :) Well OK, it didn't happen for serious "product" companies, but outsourcing was largely a scam where all the company cared was showing headcount, I honestly don't know how the whole system worked and mostly why, never did outsourcing, only "product". At least we're getting rid of those leeches now.

Two years ago shit hit the fan here too, I was laid off along with the entire team (some 150 people) when the US company closed the office. Without wasting a second I applied to jobs on LinkedId and sure enough I got a few interviews. Got an offer, was contemplating "should I take it or not.." when the hiring manager told me, "better hurry up coze it's not like we have a lack of candidates". Again, a few years ago there 2-3-10 people applying for a job. So I took a look on LinkedIn and saw "100 people already applied for this job", therefore I made my mind in an instant and accepted the offer.

Ever since I haven't seen anything but "100 people already applied for this job", with layoffs left and right (those who outsourced for German companies are hit the worst). We got two people leave to other companies (it still happens), so they posted job openings, interviewed people, chose the candidates to be hired but ... waiting approval for sending the actual offer. It's been a month and still waiting ... imagine what the candidates on the receiving end feels. Those who got the "you're great, we're hiring you!" message post-interviews.

It's a shit market and I don't expect it to recover anytime soon.

I think there's a lot of things that's hurting the job market for tech workers right now (the large influx of code camp and sci-comp graduates being a big one), but in my opinion the main thing is this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/255146/number-of-interne...

The number of people from poorer countries who are now on the internet has grown at an astounding rate of the last few years. Many of these people have been acquiring IT skills in recent years and they're now competing with Western tech workers.

Most tech jobs are just digital IO and the pandemic proved to us that you don't need to find tech workers from the local area to get things done. In theory tech jobs should be far easier to outsource than manufacturing job since you don't need build factories abroad, nor do you need to ship products around the world And since most processes are digital so there's little to no friction in outsourcing.

Economists largely agree that well paid manufacturing jobs going abroad where wages were "more competitive" was good for Western economies because we got cheaper products. Presumably they'll say the same about todays well paid digital jobs. Going forward it's going to be much cheaper for companies build apps and websites if they use foreign labour.

Personally I suspect that economists are wrong and their theories only work when you assume labour competition is happening within an even playing field, but I guess we'll find out.

AI and SaaS products are also eroding the demand for tech workers to some degree. It's become relatively easier for someone with limited tech skills to create websites, mobile apps and launch ecommerce stores than it used to be. Again, I hear this is also going to be good for workers somehow. It's certainly good for Shopify anyway.

Imo tech workers should look to reskill ASAP. It's fairly obvious where this is going and I'd bet on the Western tech job market entering a sustained secular decline. I see no reason to believe there's any alternative.

My family are poor and from a ex-industrial town. If you think anyone here is better off today because all the factories have closed and have replaced with restaurants and flats then you're kidding yourself. The only people who have won in recent decades are those whose jobs avoided outsourcing (mainly upper-middle class people with university degrees, many of whom work in tech) and it seems to me that even this cohort is about to get hit by outsourcing and AI now.

I'm not going to spin you a positive narrative because you can't help people by lying about reality. I think if you're struggling to make ends meet you need to start to consider a different career. I'm sorry.

I’m sorry friend but reading to the end of your post I hope you are ok. Please take care of yourself.