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Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

economist.com

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Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#151

Post by QuiEgo »

echelon wrote: post #115
markus_zhang wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but I forgot to mention that in the original reply I meant to say that "After the economy turns around, there is no point to hire me, an older guy with maybe a couple of gap years, who worked as a Uber driver for the last two years and can't leetcode". But yeah, new graduates is going to suffer anyway. And I'm scared of the collapse of the existing world order. Maybe we won't see a turn around for m…

New folks will never be hired. RIP to the CS degree. Old staff will be exited. Especially senior and mid level management. If you lose your job, you won't get the same comp again. The days of $500K TC are long behind us. It's the era of downsizing and outsourcing while blaming AI. None of this has anything to do with AI. That's just a scapegoat. Google and Amazon are culling entire US teams and rebuilding them in Asi…

I’ve been told for 20 years that in 5 years my job is going to be offshored. If they could have they would have long ago.

My theory: We had a crazy bubble of hiring during zero rate interest. We are living through a nasty correction. AI is moving the needle too, but it’s mostly being used as a scapegoat to save face and explain away cleaning up failed ZRIP yolo plans that didn’t pan out.

We’ve also haven’t had a serious recession since 2009. It feels like it’s only a matter of time :(

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#152

Post by untwerp »

chasd00 wrote: post #4

Ftfa (the part I could read) “ growth is buoyed by an exuberant stockmarket and artificial-intelligence investment, while ordinary Americans languish” Black Friday sales set records and it not even cyber Monday. If Americans are languishing then shouldn’t holiday spending be down?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipstick_effect

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#153

Post by johnnyanmac »

tibbar wrote: post #130
echelon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New folks will never be hired. RIP to the CS degree. Old staff will be exited. Especially senior and mid level management. If you lose your job, you won't get the same comp again. The days of $500K TC are long behind us. It's the era of downsizing and outsourcing while blaming AI. None of this has anything to do with AI. That's just a scapegoat. Google and Amazon are culling entire US teams and rebuilding them in Asi…

This is not the picture I'm seeing on the ground. AI is eliminating certain classes of junior software positions. (Roughly: jobs where explaining a task to junior engineer is more work than asking Cursor/Claude Code/Codex to do it.) Junior engineers can fight back against this by a) getting really good at clarifying requirements b) learning quickly, so their work quality is eventually higher than Cursor can work out…

>Junior engineers can fight back against this by

Many juniors can't even meet with a human interviewer. There's no point maximizing for interviews that never come. That's the issue.

>This is also a pressure against hiring teams overseas:

This seems to agree with the issue. a team of 100 becomes a team of 5 locals and 95 outsourced work. Maybe those 5 managers are better off, but we're still reducing the local workforce by 95%.

And I doubt the conditions of the remaining 5 are better than pre-outsourcing. You can't out-compensate burnout and QoL. Gen Z in particular seems to really be pushing against this mentality, so this strategy is limited in time even if it's working on Gen X/Millenials.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#154

Post by lesuorac »

mullingitover wrote: post #69
arnonejoe wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t know until unemployment and GDP numbers are released. Generally when the fed starts making successive rate cuts, the economy is doing poorly. Since 1953 10 out of 11 recessions happened when republicans held power. So maybe that is also why I think we have a little way to go before things get better. I’m not sure why that is and I don’t want to start a political debate. Things will get better. They always d…

> Since 1953 10 out of 11 recessions happened when republicans held power I used to think this was because the party that represents the ruling class didn't know what they were doing. Now I think these economic collapses and ensuing fire sales are not accidents, they know exactly what they're doing.

Recession are a natural part of the business cycle though. Like it's good to have them, Democrats not allowing a recession to occur just makes the next bubble even bigger. And all kinds of inefficient businesses are allow to zombify when the resources could be used elsewhere.

Now, the bigger problem is that you're supposed to raise taxes during the boom so that you can run deficits during the recession to recover quickly. Unfortunately we run deficits during the boom so that the crash is even bigger as well ...

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#155

Post by echelon »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #149
echelon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New folks will never be hired. RIP to the CS degree. Old staff will be exited. Especially senior and mid level management. If you lose your job, you won't get the same comp again. The days of $500K TC are long behind us. It's the era of downsizing and outsourcing while blaming AI. None of this has anything to do with AI. That's just a scapegoat. Google and Amazon are culling entire US teams and rebuilding them in Asi…

Yeah pretty much. Engineers are going to be at a crossroad where they either turn to the government to finally build in some proper labor laws and other obvious controls (how about re-banning stock buybacks?) or go out to the Wild West and hope they idea can sustain their livelihood. Given the vibes of the community here: I guess I'll look for a Mad Max mask (I'll ofc keep performing my civic duties, though).

A big tech breakup needn't be anti-capitalist. In fact, it might be the most pro-capitalist move.

If you're an entrepreneur or VC, you want big tech broken up because they can put serious price pressure on your exit.

Trillion dollar companies can easily spin up a team to copy you, with no incentive to stay alive. They can threaten you with all kinds of leverage - access to customers, patents, legislators. They can give you an ultimatum to sell for cheap, go to your competitor, etc.

Their scale and reach is additional unexpected gravity on your delta V.

Capitalism is supposed to be hard. It isn't supposed to support invasive species that can graze anywhere they please and kill ecosystems of diversity and innovation. These mega conglomerates can just throw themselves into markets using unrelated business unit profit and suffocate real companies.

Breaking up Google and Amazon would be good for everyone, perhaps even shareholders and ICs at those companies themselves if value is unlocked. Let alone all of the other companies and entrepreneurs in the market.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#156

Post by johnnyanmac »

bluGill wrote: post #105
markus_zhang wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK. If I lose my job, I wouldn't be super surprised that I might never get a similar job for the rest of my life -- it is not that I do not have the skills, but 1) the amount of time for a laid off SDE to get a new job could reach to years, not months, so I need to do something else to earn $$$, and 2) why are companies going to hire me, who have gap years and are…

I have heard that story every few years for the last 30. I know when it is your personal situation things are hard, but your story is nothing new and people recover. Some get back into whatever their degree was, others start a new career and never do. this will happen again.

>and people recover.

So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers?

They aren't put on the streets, but it's clear some very long term damage is being done to people simply as a matter of bad luck.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#157

Post by johnnyanmac »

reactordev wrote: post #110
bluGill wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that story every few years for the last 30. I know when it is your personal situation things are hard, but your story is nothing new and people recover. Some get back into whatever their degree was, others start a new career and never do. this will happen again.

I was going to say this. Money comes, money goes, that’s life. Ideally you’re smart enough to save and invest to weather these storms but for those (like myself) that are still working hard post 40, we know it’s all part of the game. I tell the younger generation the same thing. Save, invest, max 401k, before you go off and party. Your older self will thank you.

You telling someone with 50k in debt, turning in 1000's or job apps struggling to find a job they studied 4+ years for and not being able to even pay rent to "just save"... is exactly how we got into this situation to begin with.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#158

Post by ux266478 »

krackers wrote: post #54
aorloff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta tell you man, if you can find someone in charge at the backend of the Home Depot and let them hire you as a systems uptime troubleshooter you would easily make any salary you could name for them tenfold. I at at a Home Depot like 10 times a week and let me tell you, they have a major systems problem that is making their operations look like a joke

>you would easily make any salary you could name for them tenfold. >I at at a Home Depot like 10 times a week And yet you still go to Home Depot, so from their perspective it's not an existential issue. Probably the biggest thing companies have learned recently is that they don't need 99.99% uptime, people will accept degraded performance because "that's just how technology works".

I don't think that's an appropriate conclusion to draw from a single point of data.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#159

Post by dilyevsky »

itake wrote: post #77
cute_boi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is all due to outsourcing. AI/H1B isn't taking that much job. Unless government put penalties on outsourcing market isn't going to improve.

yep. Trump added tariffs on physical goods, but there are no taxes on service imports.

Wait until you hear what he did to h1b program!

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#160

Post by goodolddays9090 »

reactordev wrote: post #110
bluGill wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that story every few years for the last 30. I know when it is your personal situation things are hard, but your story is nothing new and people recover. Some get back into whatever their degree was, others start a new career and never do. this will happen again.

I was going to say this. Money comes, money goes, that’s life. Ideally you’re smart enough to save and invest to weather these storms but for those (like myself) that are still working hard post 40, we know it’s all part of the game. I tell the younger generation the same thing. Save, invest, max 401k, before you go off and party. Your older self will thank you.

I'm a bit over 40, not liking parts of my FAANG job, worried I'll lose it, and worried no where in the industry is as fun as 12 years ago, but being on the low end of Fat FIRE makes it a lot easier.
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