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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

#181

Post by linuxftw »

orochimaaru wrote: post #150
yesdocs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s time we unionize as software developers. You saw what the UAW achieved, Software Engineering needs the same type of protections

How would unionizing help stop a company from setting up an offshore subsidiary? It may prevent layoffs in the short term - but even with big3 auto manufacturers it hasn’t prevented a move in manufacturing to Mexico and Canada. I think the solution here has to come from the federal government to explicitly increase sw development employment in the US. Just like we find ourselves in a bad place with scaling chip manuf…

Easy: The union can negotiate they don't have to train or work with anyone overseas (or non-union members generally).

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#182

Post by coolThingsFirst »

huytersd wrote: post #148
coolThingsFirst wrote: post #101

So if talent is cheap and we have many smart people unemployed why don’t we get organized and experiment on startup ideas we always wanted to build?

Because it coincides with there being no VC money and it’s hard to build something without funding.

Opinion and not a fact, have you heard of bootstrapping and using old computer as server

We used to be dreamers now is like cant do

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#183

Post by manuelabeledo »

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.

Unrelated in the short term. In the long term, I disagree.

Twitter is not that interesting of an app that users are flocking to it, nor it is so fundamentally different from any of its competitors and essential as a social network, that it would have a captive audience.

Twitter user base peaked in 2022. There haven't been any new major features, no concrete plans, but regardless, they have not enough manpower to implement them even if they wanted to.

> 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.

Good luck with that. People in the US, and especially the EU, don't like to have their payment apps linked to their social media. It's not like big tech hasn't tried already, e.g. Google Wallet, Facebook Pay, SnapCash, etc.

East Asia runs on a different gear. They have their own "everything apps", e.g. Kakao, Line, WeChat. Musk is not going to convince them to switch, that's for sure, and I highly doubt he would succeed where so many others have failed, definitely not with a withering platform like Twitter.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#184

Post by giantg2 »

linuxftw wrote: post #181
orochimaaru wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would unionizing help stop a company from setting up an offshore subsidiary? It may prevent layoffs in the short term - but even with big3 auto manufacturers it hasn’t prevented a move in manufacturing to Mexico and Canada. I think the solution here has to come from the federal government to explicitly increase sw development employment in the US. Just like we find ourselves in a bad place with scaling chip manuf…

Easy: The union can negotiate they don't have to train or work with anyone overseas (or non-union members generally).

Then they just hire consultants for overseas training.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#185

Post by deadghost »

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.

My previous company was doing this. I basically quit out of frustration. They weren't much better than picking random people off the street and pointing them at code. It bled into my work life when they took over a project I was on and was pinging me constantly with "hello" and "good morning" expecting to jump on calls with their teams to explain exactly how to do their jobs.

An example to illustrate what I was working with:

Problem: input validation is too restrictive

Their solution: remove all input validation

For my mental well-being, I couldn't stay on.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#186

Post by deathpanels »

giantg2 wrote: post #42
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.

Same. My "team" is doubling in size, but all the hires are international.

I bailed on a small local company in early 2021. I checked in with how they were doing recently. They laid off all the local developers, minus management (of course). They're hiring exclusively in Africa, the Middle-East, and South America. My current company has done the same thing by emphasizing that we're only hiring in our EU office. I've not seen many US based roles unless they are customer support related.

It is predictable that remote work would lead to another wave of off-shoring. The question now is whether or not these companies can actually innovate with a remote, largely foreign workforce. We've all seen the abominations produced by offshore teams. Moving to a fully remote foreign workforce may be short-sighted.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#187

Post by clusterhacks »

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.

Honest question: What changed? A few months ago you commented on HN and said you made $190K on a 4-day work week? Did your company do a lay-off? Freelance dry up?

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#188

Post by giantg2 »

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?

I think many well-off people just don't care. They might support them in a poll but question their utility in a specific sector like software. Or how another commentor said they weren't concerned about competing with people writting c grade code in India since they have been writing software for 20 years.

I don't think unionizing will help with off-shoring for development. I do think unionizing could bring about more equal treatment though. It seems most companies ignore their own policies when it comes to ratings, work assignment, hours, etc. Devs have very little recourse. Of course the assholes that do well and aren't afraid of c grade coders are the ones who don't want unions since they might loose their edge over others comp-wise.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#189

Post by acdha »

giantg2 wrote: post #184
linuxftw wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy: The union can negotiate they don't have to train or work with anyone overseas (or non-union members generally).

Then they just hire consultants for overseas training.

That would certainly make the union workers more attractive given the average consultant’s experience, teaching ability, and understanding of the business.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#190

Post by ctvo »

lhnz wrote: post #160
ctvo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2023, I practiced ~200 leetcode problems and learned how to create an LLM but I felt like I was the least employable I'd ever been. You did two superficial things and are surprised you didn't feel more qualified? Practicing / memorizing leetcode and having a rudimentary understanding of LLMs (if I were hiring, we're targeting advanced degrees with a focus in the space) -- yeah, probably not sufficient. This is a…

I think this is very unfair. In the few months that I was looking, I put in more than 300 hours of study. It wasn't superficial and I didn't attempt to memorize anything — I wanted to understand fundamental techniques, and put a considerable amount of effort in to doing this, treating it as if it were my job. Nobody owes me anything but that doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to point out that this is the weakest I've…

> I put in more than 300 hours of study. It wasn't superficial and I didn't attempt to memorize anything — I wanted to understand fundamental techniques, and put a considerable amount of effort in to doing this, treating it as if it were my job.

If you landed a job, do you think this new ability to implement a CS 101 data structure would let you keep it? Help in your performance in a measurable way? This is what I mean by superficial. The same applies to the LLM work. You studied enough to where you could buzzword it in a 45 minute interview.

My response, which I'll be more clear with: Maybe it's not that bad that we're more careful and these superficial techniques are no longer adequate to get someone a job in this industry.

> I'm not allowed to point out that this is the weakest I've ever seen the market in my decade or so of experience of it.

Don't think anyone is preventing you from doing anything.

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