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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

#171

Post by linuxftw »

lesuorac wrote: post #137
linuxftw wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Facebook's features really don't have much to do with advertisers leaving due to twitter firing a bunch of employees.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#172

Post by giantg2 »

pc86 wrote: post #131
toomuchtodo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"and the people are better off with free, open markets long term."

Eh, maybe not. It depends on the demand and availability of skill/labor. If you have a high percentage of low skill labor and you can outsource low skill labor to cheaper markets, then what are the current low skill citizens going to do? Surely the rust belt is not better off now than when coal and steel (and other manufacturing) were still a domestic thing. Maybe other areas of the county faired better, but with median wages dropping over the past 50 years, it doesn't seem like a strong case.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#173

Post by closeparen »

orochimaaru wrote: post #36
deathpanels wrote: post #25

Everyone is talking about layoffs and lack of hiring, but I've found the problem to be that companies are cutting costs by silently increasing workload on existing employees. Everyone is getting burnt out trying to keep a 300-person engineering team running on only 100 head count. That leads to more incidents, slower delivery, less innovation, longer hours. Even those who are still employed are seeing working conditi…

I think a lot of big-co are setting up subsidiaries overseas and hiring there. It's different from the contract based offshoring model that happened in 2007 or so which had rather disastrous results. I know my company has and plans to have almost 1/2 its IT workforce as direct employees overseas.

At the same time, US salaries are either $300k+ in the Bay Area or $0 and unemployed, there's still no appetite to let someone work for e.g. $150k in a normal metro area.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#174

Post by closeparen »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #43
deathpanels wrote: post #25

Everyone is talking about layoffs and lack of hiring, but I've found the problem to be that companies are cutting costs by silently increasing workload on existing employees. Everyone is getting burnt out trying to keep a 300-person engineering team running on only 100 head count. That leads to more incidents, slower delivery, less innovation, longer hours. Even those who are still employed are seeing working conditi…

To me it looks like tech is just falling more in line with other industries pay/workload. I think there are many who joined the tech workforce during the pandemic thinking the norm was to make $135k while doing 10 hours of real work a week from home, twiddling a few lines of bootcamp level javascript to appease your largely absent boss. Many may forget, or not have been there, but 10-15 years ago tech jobs were notor…

Jaw dropping pay is inextricable from the jaw dropping Bay Area housing market. Standard white-collar pay for Bay Area-only roles is a pretty bad deal, and most tech workers would be better off learning something else. But standard white-collar pay with the geographic distribution of other white-collar work (i.e. any mid-sized and up metro is fine) would be a perfectly good equilibrium.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#175

Post by giantg2 »

pc86 wrote: post #162
giantg2 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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' fore…

Most of those roles you list require strong interpersonal skills. That's usually not something an autistic person is strong at. Not a big market for many of those either (dev rel, tech writer).

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#176

Post by closeparen »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #115
Pepe1vo wrote: post #57

The cognitive dissonance I'm getting from reading the comments here is pretty staggering. Where I live (The Netherlands) me and every IT person I know is getting absolutely hounded by recruiters. As an additional anecdote I'll add that I've just switched jobs to a start-up on very favorable terms and the recruitment process basically amounted to being cold called and asked "hey you wanna work here?". Can anyone here…

A bartender makes same as a software engineer in NL

Yes, that's what economic equality means.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#177

Post by bequanna »

Podgajski wrote: post #76
mc32 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT is one of the easiest to off-shore; how would a union help?

Unions can make deals as part of the labor contract that they will not offshore their jobs. https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2017/03/03/wi...

Ok, so forcing a company to lock in high costs while non-union competitors can use offshore.

Can you explain how this would even work? Why would any company agree to this?

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#178

Post by yesdocs »

badpun wrote: post #158
pc86 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and the people are better off with free, open markets long term. The theory only says that all the people globally will be better off. It does not say anything about citizens of a specific country that is applying protectionism. They may be better off for it, they may be worse - it depends on the particulars and, as most economic interventions, can only really be judged post-factum.

Do people forget that a 40 hour work week exists because of unions? Did we forget that having weekends off and holidays off was not a thing until unions? Did we also forget that children were put to work at a young age until unions?

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#179

Post by [deleted] »

yesdocs wrote: post #178
badpun wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the people are better off with free, open markets long term. The theory only says that all the people globally will be better off. It does not say anything about citizens of a specific country that is applying protectionism. They may be better off for it, they may be worse - it depends on the particulars and, as most economic interventions, can only really be judged post-factum.

Do people forget that a 40 hour work week exists because of unions? Did we forget that having weekends off and holidays off was not a thing until unions? Did we also forget that children were put to work at a young age until unions?

[deleted]

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#180

Post by deathpanels »

closeparen wrote: post #173
orochimaaru wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of big-co are setting up subsidiaries overseas and hiring there. It's different from the contract based offshoring model that happened in 2007 or so which had rather disastrous results. I know my company has and plans to have almost 1/2 its IT workforce as direct employees overseas.

At the same time, US salaries are either $300k+ in the Bay Area or $0 and unemployed, there's still no appetite to let someone work for e.g. $150k in a normal metro area.

Those companies exist but they are being squeezed by borrowing costs so they're either not growing or are cutting staff.
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