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IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

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Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#161

Post by arp242 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #77
arp242 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't age discrimination literally illegal pretty much everywhere? Proving it is always hard, but "they hang up on me as soon as I tell them my age" seems pretty clear-cut. It's probably not even legal to ask in some jurisdictions.

I suspect that it's not so easy to prove with external recruiters, and that may explain the difference in demeanor between the two types of recruiter. The standalone ones aren't on the hook for $MEGACORP's brand and legal. They just start saying "Hello?, Hello?, Are you there?," etc. It's a convenient way to hang up on people.

That's why I like the "make it illegal to even ask"-type of policy. At some of these American firms they asked me things like my sexual orientation and religion, aspects you often can't infer from appearance, and that always seemed rather odd to me – I'll just have to trust it won't be used to discriminate. If I don't tell this information I know they can't.

Things like age, gender, and ethnic group are harder because you can't always conceal that. Still, "don't ask, don't tell" during the hiring process seems like the best option here.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#162

Post by pc86 »

giantg2 wrote: post #143
pc86 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 try…

Just in general, what do you think an alternate job would be for an ex-dev (without spending 10s of thousands on reschooling)? Seems like retail, warehouses, and other unskilled labor are the main options. Even something like teaching would require a certification.

Basically anything tech-adjacent - product, "business analysts," management. Maybe something like tech writing but there are going to a lot of decent devs who make terrible tech writers so that's much more on an individual basis. And then there's the devs who still code but that's not their focus - SDET, devrel, that sort of thing.

Devrel would actually probably be the easiest thing to get into with a few years' foresight. Building a following on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter/X, etc. will make it infinitely easier to land that first devrel role.

You bringing up teaching is a good point - I'm not sure about where I currently live but where I used to live you could get a substitute teaching cert basically by just passing the background check and having a college degree. It was pretty easy to get an add-on certification as well to teach your subject or closely related ones. I can't say what it's like everywhere though, and to be honest most of the people I know who have teaching degrees have left or wished they could. But if you can get a job and can deal with the bullshit you're basically set from a put-food-on-the-table standpoint.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#164

Post by gedy »

mk89 wrote: post #30
gedy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah in past 20 years I would receive a job offer from nearly every company I interviewed with. Past few months have been really disappointing with rejections after interviews that I'd normally have said went great.

It's also true that you have now 20+ years of experience. The higher you go, the harder it gets - you might want a different role, etc etc. If on the other hand you're competing with senior sw devs with 5+ years of experience, there could also be other factors to keep in mind (age, ability in very specific tech stacks, etc). I think companies are still hiring, but more focused, unlike in 2021-2022 when they over-hire…

I'm actually aiming lower in role and salary due to more senior roles being very sparse in my network.

I'm not disagreeing with you per se, but the tech economy seems much worse recently and I don't think I'm suddenly worse, stale, or less productive.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#165

Post by niyikiza »

eek2121 wrote: post #152
frankbreetz wrote: post #88

Considering 262k were laid off in 2023. Compared with 165k in 2022. The beginning of 2022 also included the over-hiring phase of the COVID Era[0]. You can see a clear sign of the worst being over and I would expect 2024 to start a return to normalcy again, maybe people will even start hiring again 2022 was not a good time to be entering the industry, but I think for people with 5+ years experience it was not so bad.…

I have 20 years experience and I have not had a job in 6 months.

where are you based? What's your specialization?

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#166

Post by lhnz »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #134
lhnz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

You are right in theory. But instead of trying to predict the future I'm trying to be descriptive about what has changed so far (very little) and why (mostly advertisers + debt driven by buy-out).

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#168

Post by digital_sawzall »

syspec wrote: post #118
manuelabeledo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He laid off 90% of the staff and still the website is doing alright (at least engineering wise). This is debatable. Twitter hasn't added any meaningful functionality in recent years, which is fine if you think your product can survive stagnation for the foreseeable future. I wouldn't think so, but who knows. Also, random Twitter functionality seems to be broken once a month, more or less. Last time I checked, new s…

I think to most people, twitter is fine and was fine with only its core product.

The core products of social media platforms are the advertising systems!

After telling the advertisers to go 'F themselves', those paying customers are leaving in droves plus the ad ecosystem is one of the worst in the industry.

The only alternative is to get enough paying users. Good luck.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#169

Post by lhnz »

mywittyname wrote: post #125
itsoktocry wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP also had multiple offers they would "not normally accept". We are spoiled in this industry.

There's no enough information to extrapolate that fact. Were these offers median salaries? Bottom 25th percentile? Lots of companies low-ball candidates because they are happy with Harbor Freight quality candidates, so long as they will work for Harbor Freight prices.

I'm the OP (of this thread). The main issue caused by the industry-wide hiring freezes wasn't necessarily income but work/team quality. I've been in the top-10% of incomes in my country for more than 5 years and the top-1% of incomes for a lesser period of time.

I was able to get offers in this percentile but the companies making these offers didn't usually hire at this level. If anything, I want to be around people that are more competitive than me, that put a lot of effort into what they do and that can easily walk into high paying roles. I definitely don't want to be the highest paid engineer in the room at a company that frankly doesn't need this.

I know this can be seen as entitled but I'm the sole provider of a 4-person family and willing to work hard and prove myself. I'm happy to say that I now have a higher income than I did before being laid off and at a company with more successful people than me and a higher ceiling, however, that doesn't mean I didn't find it significantly more difficult to get a job this time around than I have in the last decade.

There are people that are going to have a much harder time than I have.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#170

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

mywittyname wrote: post #163
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #100

95% sure that this is my last job in IT. after 17 years or so. not enough jobs. too many applicants. interviews too damaging.

If I may ask, what's next for you?

hopefully as a disability support worker.

I'd like to spend the next 17 years doing something more personally meaningful as i'm quite jaded on tech now.

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