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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

#221

Post by HumblyTossed »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #212

> Based on analysis of US Bureau of Labor Statistics data by Janco, news that the IT industry added just 700 jobs following an estimated 262,242 jobs lost amid mass layoffs is shocking, but not surprising. So it isn't that only 700 jobs were created, it's that despite the massive layoffs everyone is reporting on and focusing on, there was actually a small net positive in job growth. > Currently, there are almost 100K…

> Staying current with skills is always part of an IT professional's job.

Gotta love capitalism. CEO sees some shiny new thing and all the sudden some poor shlub's entire livelihood is fucked.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#222

Post by closeparen »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #182
huytersd wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Anyone who has been employed in Big Tech should have no problem self-funding a few hundred dollars a month for small-scale server infrastructure. The problem is you gotta keep paying your $3500 rent or $9000 mortgage in San Francisco. Most of us need to work at a profitable company or funded startup to manage that.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#223

Post by tootie »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #212

> Based on analysis of US Bureau of Labor Statistics data by Janco, news that the IT industry added just 700 jobs following an estimated 262,242 jobs lost amid mass layoffs is shocking, but not surprising. So it isn't that only 700 jobs were created, it's that despite the massive layoffs everyone is reporting on and focusing on, there was actually a small net positive in job growth. > Currently, there are almost 100K…

It's 700 net, but that's generally how numbers are reported. When we get the national BLS numbers of "178,000 jobs created in October" that number is always net. In reality, most months you'll see a few million jobs created and a few million terminated.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#224

Post by ptero »

closeparen wrote: post #215
ptero wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many large, stable, profitable companies that are hiring software engineers. They are not software houses, but they pay well for a comfortable life (outside of NYC and Bay Area) and offer good work-life balance. For some examples you can look at medical devices, utilities, manufacturing, IBMs and Walmarts and R&D departments of virtually any large non-software company. But there are frictions, too. Unless y…

Absolutely. It’s weird though that tech focused companies with Silicon Valley style cultures who are looking to cut costs are completely uninterested in those regions. With more developer-friendly working conditions, they wouldn't have to compete as aggressively on TC. And with more normal cost of living, it could be sustainable for senior people who are not independently wealthy to have long tenures there.

I think you are absolutely right that there appears to be some low hanging fruit for tech companies to pick by looking to "second tier metros". But I inertia and (lack of) critical mass play a big role.

In the past decade (i.e., when the money was plentiful) when a startup is young, the TC of its engineers rarely makes or breaks the startup. Being able to get an MVP out and iterate quickly is more important, so it was a rational choice to stay in the Bay Area even if it means 30% inflated TC. And after that moving is expensive in both time and money and risky (e.g., a key engineer might not want to go).

And having a critical mass of tech companies helps attract talent: if a company goes under or has large layoffs it is perceived to be easier to find a new job in the center of the tech hub.

I think covid helped nudge along the process of moving tech development out of SV, but it is a slow process. My 2c.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#225

Post by psunavy03 »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #221
thomascgalvin wrote: post #212

> Based on analysis of US Bureau of Labor Statistics data by Janco, news that the IT industry added just 700 jobs following an estimated 262,242 jobs lost amid mass layoffs is shocking, but not surprising. So it isn't that only 700 jobs were created, it's that despite the massive layoffs everyone is reporting on and focusing on, there was actually a small net positive in job growth. > Currently, there are almost 100K…

> Staying current with skills is always part of an IT professional's job. Gotta love capitalism. CEO sees some shiny new thing and all the sudden some poor shlub's entire livelihood is fucked.

Pour one out for the buggy whip manufacturers . . .

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#226

Post by psunavy03 »

deathpanels wrote: post #213
deadghost wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worki…

Now that's problem solving!

[little_bobby_tables.png]

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#227

Post by jstarfish »

itsoktocry wrote: post #47
DebtDeflation wrote: post #9

That 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.

> 2021 and 2022 felt like great years in terms of the job market. 2023 felt horrible. Well, we had people bragging about working 2, 3 or more remote jobs in 2021/2022, so I'm not sure that should be the expectations anchor. 2023 reversed some of that. We're in a lull, no doubt. But there's still a lot happening.

I now question how many of these cases were legitimate and/or sustainable.

Coincidental to the overemployment stories, there was a trend of entry-level workers taking jobs and abandoning them at the end of the training period. They'd work a series of short-term "jobs" concurrently in which they collected pay for the time period in which nobody had any real expectations from them, and left when that changed.

Overemployment candidates don't hide it well, or the media was making news up based on viral bullshit someone exaggerated on Reddit based on the above trend. I figured someone would try this shit so I kept an eye out; we only ever caught two OE cases arising from unresponsive remote employees with low output. (One confessed.)

There's not exactly any mystery to catching this, and there's a ton of ways to get caught (as repeatedly reported by Redditors). I have a hard time believing this narrative was ever real for more than a handful of people. The story mainly seemed to serve as astroturf citable in support of eventual RTO mandates.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#228

Post by closeparen »

ptero wrote: post #224
closeparen wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. It’s weird though that tech focused companies with Silicon Valley style cultures who are looking to cut costs are completely uninterested in those regions. With more developer-friendly working conditions, they wouldn't have to compete as aggressively on TC. And with more normal cost of living, it could be sustainable for senior people who are not independently wealthy to have long tenures there.

I think you are absolutely right that there appears to be some low hanging fruit for tech companies to pick by looking to "second tier metros". But I inertia and (lack of) critical mass play a big role. In the past decade (i.e., when the money was plentiful) when a startup is young, the TC of its engineers rarely makes or breaks the startup. Being able to get an MVP out and iterate quickly is more important, so it wa…

Tech is moving rapidly out of Silicon Valley... but strangely, straight to the developing world, skipping second-tier metros.
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