IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023 • Hacker News Board

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#131

Post by pc86 » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 4:38 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #116

pc86 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protectionism doesn't work beyond selfish short-term interests. American cars are not exactly paragons of technical or mechanical prowess compared to their Japanese or German counterparts. I've been a software developer for the better part of two decades, I'm not worried about the C-tier code coming out of rural India. You shouldn't be either unless you're a really bad dev.

I’m okay with my fellow citizens being selfish and protecting their livelihood. No one else will. “Whose interests?” You’re advocating for shareholder returns (labor arb savings->profits). Ain’t nobody coming to save us. If we can mandate EV batteries be built in the US to get subsidies (Inflation Reduction Act), other protectionism mechanisms should be on the table. Otherwise, businesses will do their best to maximi…

I appreciate you telling me what I'm advocating for. Any basic macroeconomics class covers the effects of protectionism. Yes, in the short term wages may be artificially propped up, industries may be (temporarily) saved, but you do long-term damage to the economy, and the people are better off with free, open markets long term.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#132

Post by paxys » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 4:44 PM UTC

taude wrote: post #83

paxys wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as they always do The H1B visa cap has been 65000 since the day it was introduced in 1990.

They added 20K in 2004 [1], for those with high-level degrees, possibly. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_Visa_Reform_Act_of_2004

Yep, although this act drastically reduced the total number of work visas issued. There was a 20K addition for people with advanced degrees/PhDs, but only because nonprofit & research work was no longer exempt from the visa cap.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#133

Post by lesuorac » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 4:44 PM UTC

frontman1988 wrote: post #29

Elon showed with Twitter how you don't need hordes of engineers to run a company. He laid off 90% of the staff and still the website is doing alright (at least engineering wise). More engineers lead to more useless bullshit being created(like at Google). A lean mean team seems the way to go.

> still the website is doing alright (at least engineering wise)

It's not though. I assume you're trying to claim Twitters only problem is the Advertisers leaving and that the platform is fine but that's not the case.

Lets ignore all visible technical problems such as outages or broken features that have happened since the purchase.

You have to compare Twitter to FaceBook. Both of them have had similar outrage by Advertisers for the respective companies actions. However, Advertisers keep coming back to FaceBook because of the engineering. FaceBook has much better targeting and also staff that interacts with the Advertisers. Twitter has absolutely horrendous targeting; Jews don't want their 'buy a Torah' ad next to a pro-gaza post not just because they disagree with the post but also because that somebody isn't their target audience. This is an engineering problem; if Twitter had better engineering the Advertisers wouldn't be leaving.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#134

Post by thinkingtoilet » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 4:47 PM UTC

lhnz wrote: post #69

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is facing mounting debt, large quarterly loses, and lost tens of billions of dollars in valuation. I wouldn't use that as a success story. From the WSJ, so no complaining about liberal bias. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-elon-musks-twitter-faces-mo...

These issues are caused by (1) the buy-out by Elon Musk involving a large amount of debt, and (2) Elon Musk annoying "woke" advertisers who have subsequently deserted the platform. The actual engineering hasn't been as affected or rather while it has been affected it hasn't been affected to the magnitude that you might expect given the size of the lay-offs.

I wouldn't expect too much change right away after a lay off that size. Any decent engineering team will have processes, workflows, CI/CD, etc... in place and if all the engineers went away today, most places would still run just fine for a while, maybe even a long time if the systems are set up correctly. The question becomes what happens next? How quickly will they be able to leverage new advantageous technologies? What happens when that rare thing breaks and you have no institutional knowledge? How do you solve difficult problems like content moderation? I'm curious to see where Twitter will be a couple years from now in terms of how it's engineered. I would expect a slow decline in expectations and results.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#135

Post by jewayne » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 4:49 PM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #81

wbshaw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not entirely true. Whereas a company will likely bank that profit, employees are more likely to put that income back into the economy which provides a multiplier effect of the income in overall economic growth.

> That is not entirely true. No, it's entirely true. The economy is a closed system. Employees can't "put that income back into the economy", because it has never left. How it gets redistributed will vary, and you can make normative arguments about spending the money at the local coffee shop. But the net effect on the economy is the same.

If that were true, then recessions and depressions would be impossible. The velocity of money moving through the economy would be a constant, like the speed of light. But recessions and depressions happen, so we know that the disappearance of certain transactions from the economy can have a negative macroeconomic effect.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#136

Post by pc86 » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 4:49 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #124

pc86 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protectionism doesn't work beyond selfish short-term interests. American cars are not exactly paragons of technical or mechanical prowess compared to their Japanese or German counterparts. I've been a software developer for the better part of two decades, I'm not worried about the C-tier code coming out of rural India. You shouldn't be either unless you're a really bad dev.

The downside is for people disabled. Maybe they aren't a terrible dev but they aren't a great dev either. If they're on par with outsourced labor, they aren't so safe. But what else can they do? If I lost my job right now, I'd be totally fucked. I'd end up working at Walmart. Masters degrees might as well be toilet paper.

I remember driving through West Virginia with my parents to visit family as a kid, and my dad was lamenting the fact that its full of the haves and the have nots, with the distinct implication that the haves did something wrong to end up there, and the have nots would be just fine if it wasn't for those pesky rich people. I was just left thinking that if life was haves and have nots, shouldn't you spend your time trying to be one of the haves rather than lamenting the way reality was? But in reality, both those views are overly simplistic.

It's a pretty big leap to go from a software engineer to Walmart. The median software developer (~$110k/yr last I checked but could be outdated) is somewhere in the upper teens as far as income percentile (20% being around $100k and 10% being around $150k[0]). Pretty much any non-management role at Walmart is going to land you in the bottom half.

I'd be curious (but it's none of my business) what about your situation makes that the most likely outcome. I'd bet there are ways to head that off.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#137

Post by lesuorac » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 4:50 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #130

manuelabeledo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... now they just have fewer employees to pay, so if they can turn the advertising back around, they'll be in a better cashflow situation They cut ~$1B in operating expenses, to go from $4.73B to $3.31B in advertising revenue, and forecasts don't look much better [0] What has Twitter left to offer? They don't have the manpower to add new functionality, and they are bleeding advertising money. [0] https://www.statis…

Twitter could have fired nobody and the advertising revenue would have still declined, those two things were mostly unrelated. I've never personally believed in Twitter as a business model, so you're preaching to the choir there. As far as innovation, though, Elon has stated he wants X to be the 'everything app' similar to whatever it is they use in China, in particular payments.

> Twitter could have fired nobody and the advertising revenue would have still declined, those two things were mostly unrelated.

They're not unrelated. Advertisers like to know that their ads work; you need staff to do that.

Look at how much tailored the FaceBook ads were vs Twitter [1]. Advertisers would be sticking with Twitter if they thought the ads were worth it.

> Facebook targeting allows advertisers to drill down, ensuring your ad is targeted at those most interested in your ads’ content.

> The Facebook ad targeting based on interests looked like this:

> Science > Mari Smith > Joel Comm > Social science > HootSuite > Post Planner > Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn > Kim Garst > Sprout Social > Social Media Examiner > Buffer

> Twitter’s targeting is not quite as refined, but we targeted these keywords:

> instagrammarketing > socialmediamarketing > socialmediaexaminer

[1]: https://www.agorapulse.com/social-media-lab/twitter-ads-cpc-...

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#138

Post by milesvp » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 4:50 PM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #81

wbshaw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not entirely true. Whereas a company will likely bank that profit, employees are more likely to put that income back into the economy which provides a multiplier effect of the income in overall economic growth.

> That is not entirely true. No, it's entirely true. The economy is a closed system. Employees can't "put that income back into the economy", because it has never left. How it gets redistributed will vary, and you can make normative arguments about spending the money at the local coffee shop. But the net effect on the economy is the same.

>The economy is a closed system

This is sort of not true. The biggest example of why is the concept of the velocity of money. If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, it’s the idea of of how many times a single dollar is used in a given time period. It’s a very important measure, and it’s historic low at the start of the lock downs was why the fed dumping so much money into the economy was not a mistake (at the time). It’s an effective multiplier, and has very real impact as to the total utils that everyone in the spending chain collect.

What this means, is that when money is spent outside a country, there is a very real risk that that the local velocity of money goes down, even though the gdp of the global economy is going up.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#139

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 4:52 PM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #81

wbshaw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not entirely true. Whereas a company will likely bank that profit, employees are more likely to put that income back into the economy which provides a multiplier effect of the income in overall economic growth.

> That is not entirely true. No, it's entirely true. The economy is a closed system. Employees can't "put that income back into the economy", because it has never left. How it gets redistributed will vary, and you can make normative arguments about spending the money at the local coffee shop. But the net effect on the economy is the same.

> The economy is a closed system.

No, its not; value (and, separately, money) can both be created and destroyed. And, when examining any scale smaller than the global economy, value and money can each enter or exit the universe of analysis from or to the outside, as well.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#140

Post by pc86 » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 4:54 PM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #127

pc86 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody at the beginning of the industrial revolution could have imagined the types of post-revolution jobs we have now. So "tell me what job to get then" is the wrong mindset.

Will I need to go to college for a few years to get this theoretical new job? Will my health insurance be covered if I do? As ever, I'm glad I never wanted children because just keeping my own ass sheltered, fed, and well(ish) is hard enough.

Maybe? Probably?

It sounds like your problem is less with your specific job being obsoleted (or made less lucrative to you) by AI and more with just having to work in the first place. I can't really help with that.