In other parts of the world IT employment is still at good levels.
It’s probably a sign that IT skills are no longer only relevant in the most powerful economies.
IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
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Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#22That confirms my anecdotal experience. At times I felt I was losing my mind with all the "record low unemployment" and "soft landing" stories in the press. 2021 and 2022 felt like great years in terms of the job market. 2023 felt horrible.
IT jobs are only a part of the total jobs picture.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#23That confirms my anecdotal experience. At times I felt I was losing my mind with all the "record low unemployment" and "soft landing" stories in the press. 2021 and 2022 felt like great years in terms of the job market. 2023 felt horrible.
It’s still horrible and lots of people at large companies are worried of getting laid off any second.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#24Honestly, I could feel it. 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. It was very difficult to get interviews, and even though I managed to get multiple offers, many of these were at companies I'd not normally have accepted offers from. It took a long time to find a job offer I wanted to accept. I do feel that there are signs…
I have never had problems finding work, until now. It used to be easy. Recruiters used to call me at night. Now they ghost me.
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.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#25Everyone 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 conditions deteriorating.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#26That confirms my anecdotal experience. At times I felt I was losing my mind with all the "record low unemployment" and "soft landing" stories in the press. 2021 and 2022 felt like great years in terms of the job market. 2023 felt horrible.
It’s still horrible and lots of people at large companies are worried of getting laid off any second.
Lots of risk taking behavior is gone and focus has shifted to saving the company money.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#27Don't worry, the U.S. government will respond by increasing the H1B visa cap as they always do.
> as they always do
The H1B visa cap has been 65000 since the day it was introduced in 1990.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#28Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#29Elon 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.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have never had problems finding work, until now. It used to be easy. Recruiters used to call me at night. Now they ghost me.
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-hired "just in case".