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IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

wsj.com

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Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#251

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

obscurette wrote: post #45
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.

If the opinion from old guy matters - 2021 and 2022 weren't great, these were insane and it wasn't sustainable. And it's completely normal that hangover after such years feels horrible.

Exactly. To me this felt extremely similar to the post-dot-com bust. Back then, the joke was that anyone who could "fog a mirror" could get hired in tech. While the mechanics this time around are a bit different (we didn't have TikTok back then to chronicle "A day in the life at a FAANG food court..."), the outcome is very much the same: lots of easy money led to over-hiring, and when that spigot turns off, there are lots of layoffs, which (if you got laid off) feels like an outright depression because you have a huge number of laid off people now going after a much smaller pool of job openings.

Also, just like in the dot com bust, companies really start laser focusing on roles that are directly tied to revenue, but anything that is even slightly tangential/"a luxury" gets cut. In a non-scientific perusal of my LinkedIn connections, most of the software devs and sales people I know who were laid off found work relatively quickly, but I've seen people in roles like recruiting, content marketing, UX research, and product managers that have in some cases been unemployed for over a year. Middle management also definitely had a major thinning out.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#252

Post by yesiamyourdad »

lgleason wrote: post #113

Yet many still deny there is an issue with jobs and keep asking for more lenient immigration policies. There is no shortage of IT workers. There is/was a shortage of workers who were willing to work for peanuts.

This is the part that's left out of every statement that starts with "There's a shortage of workers in industry X" ... "willing to accept the current wages / working conditions".

Similar for "jobs Americans won't do"... "at the wages being offered".

It drives me insane that people freely accept the concept of supply and demand, except when it comes to labor.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#253

Post by CoastalCoder »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #218

So if it wasn't for jobs added in December it would've been negative. On the bright side, given the large number of tech jobs added in December, maybe things are starting to picking up again? (seems a bit odd as usually there's not much hiring going on around the holidays, yet in 2023 December had the highest hiring numbers according to that data)

I've been out of work for about 9 months.

Anecdotally, my job search started feeling more promising around mid-December.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#254

Post by Natsu »

hattmall wrote: post #122
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a manager. That's actually a problem. I don't lie; especially in my profession. It's a thing. I know that personal Integrity is considered a "quaint anachronism," in today's world, but I won't compromise on that.

You certainly don't have to lie, but there's no reason you can't simply calculate your age differently. The common 365 days to a year for age isn't a universal given.

You'll be a little less than half as old if you pretend to be a Martian with their 687 Earth days per Martian year.

Just don't go with Neptune, it takes almost 165 years before you turn 1 there.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#255

Post by tharkun__ »

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…

Canada (close to Detroit) has always been part of the US auto manufacturing scene. In fact you could take what you write and replace the US with Canada and you have what people (and unions) in Canada are complaining about. Not sure what to replace Canada with in your text though. Maybe Mexico a second time?

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#256

Post by epolanski »

spacemadness wrote: post #146
Workaccount2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am dumbfounded this idea gets trotted around HN so freely. I’ve met nobody like this in the industry. Most people I know are burnt out from many years of having to work over 40 hours.

Which one?

A large part of the IT community does indeed very little work.

As for having to work over 40 hours and being stressed, I guess there's a price to having to work in US under such lax worker's rights and benefits, in Europe you just say no thanks boss see you on Monday.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#257

Post by epolanski »

gabrieledarrigo wrote: post #211
Workaccount2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Many may forget, or not have been there, but 10-15 years ago tech jobs were notorious for ridiculous workloads/long hours. And I can't understand sorry, why should we go back to this scenario, exactly?

The implication isn't that we should, rather that IT sector is reverting to some saner curve of compensation vs skills and effort.

It will still be insanely cushier and well paid than other jobs.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#258

Post by jncfhnb »

deadghost wrote: post #185
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.

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…

Good news, I got rid of ALL the tickets!

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#259

Post by dleink »

itsoktocry wrote: post #81
wbshaw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not entirely true. Whereas a company will likely bank that profit, employees are more likely to put that income back into the economy which provides a multiplier effect of the income in overall economic growth.

> That is not entirely true. No, it's entirely true. The economy is a closed system. Employees can't "put that income back into the economy", because it has never left. How it gets redistributed will vary, and you can make normative arguments about spending the money at the local coffee shop. But the net effect on the economy is the same.

Even if it's a closed system (I'm not sure it is), it's definitely not a zero-sum system.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#260

Post by throwup238 »

psunavy03 wrote: post #226
deathpanels wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that's problem solving!

[little_bobby_tables.png]

At the very least it makes pivoting from mediocre engineer to ransomware kingpin much easier.

Pivot! Lean startup! Four hour workweek!

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