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Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

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Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#251

Post by dragonwriter »

tqi wrote: post #250
dragonwriter wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FRED wants the implication to be AI related, Where is there any indication that FRED wants this?

Wants is maybe too strong, but I've seen this chart in a couple of different substacks / editorials, which I assumed is the fed's press office shopping this story around because "AI taking jobs" is zeitgeist-y right now.

It's more likely that it became popular to use in commentary because this chart from FRED (both the software dev postings on Indeed chart, and, in the comments, the comparison to the overall job postings on Indeed chart) got attention on a certain orange-tinted site that is popular with people in and around and commenting on the software development field a few months ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41409006

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#252

Post by sn9 »

andro_dev wrote: post #241
senordevnyc wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't pass the smell test since the chart for government employees clearly includes more than just Federal. The Federal workforce is about 3mm, but that graph shows 23mm [1], so it clearly can't just be Federal employees. EDIT: here you go, just looking at Federal employees [2]: Jan 2021: 2.89 million Jan 2025: 3.02 million The Federal government added ~130k employees over the four years that Biden was in office, a…

Thanks for the additional information. The thing is the Trump administration is about to fire 200k probationary federal employees meaning they were hired within in the last year or so. These numbers don't add up either.

"A probationary employee is often a recent hire to the agency or *a long-serving employee who was moved or promoted into a new position*. They are put on a "probationary" period that typically lasts for one or two years, though it can be longer at some agencies. It's like a trial period during which the worker and their performance are under heightened scrutiny."

source: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/15/nx-s1-5298182/trumps-probatio...

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#253

Post by fieldcny »

dragonwriter wrote: post #142

The charts show software dev gaining more jobs under the COVID demand and stimulus swing, and then losing more as those went away and monetary policy got tighter than even it had been even before the COVID stimulus. The easiest explanation for the whole chart is "Software dev is more reactive to the monetary policy environment than most other industries, because more of it is funded by new capital investment -- wheth…

The most likely explanation is fraud

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#255

Post by mattkw »

jfasi wrote: post #58
mattkw wrote: post #50

This analysis is more of an excuse for speculation about applications of LLMs in software engineering, than an analysis of the factors leading up to this. The headline doesn’t tell the whole story. SE openings precipitated in the year that followed the peak. Compared to that massive decline, openings over the last year have been relatively stable but on a downward trajectory. Most of us are personally familiar with t…

> Right now Netflix is only hiring engineers in Poland This is patently false. Source: I’m an engineering manager at Netflix who’s hiring in the US and whose peers are all doing the same.

I apologize, and I'm embarrassed, I thoughtlessly repeated what my friend from Netflix said in a casual conversation. He specified that his larger org at netflix is hiring only engineers from Poland. That said, I believe the point I made stands.

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#256

Post by dumbledoren »

jjeaff wrote: post #103
tqi wrote: post #60

FRED wants the implication to be AI related, but it seems pretty clear that all/most of this decline is related to their interest rate policies creating a raft of bullshit companies funded by too many dollars chasing ever more far-fetched returns...

Returns are no longer the actual goal. The actual goal is the perception of far reaching future returns. The perception of those returns is much more valuable than the actual returns. Because the wealthy don't want profits and dividends that get taxed. They want ever increasing stock prices so they can continuously grow their asset base to borrow against so they can never sell said assets this triggering capital gain…

Too bad that business model ended with the collapse of ZIRP economy...

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#257

Post by Izkata »

datpuz wrote: post #126
vonzepp wrote: post #116

If AI makes a programmer say 25% more productive. Then a team of 4 can do the workload of a team of 5.

That's a big, massive if. I think the more experienced you are, the less net productivity you gain. If you're more senior, is probably very low or even negative. I use ChatGPT every day pretty much, but it has wasted quite a bit of my time. When it does save me time, it's almost just some boilerplate I didn't have to Google or type out. Honestly, I feel like gen AI pleataued a year or more ago. LLMs are just really c…

One of my co-workers is going all in with one of them in his IDE, as part of a pilot program for using it at our company, and ever since it seems like he's gotten dumber, but by outside metrics he's probably "more productive": Merge requests that don't work (in a whole variety of ways), going really fast by opening new merge requests without fixing the old ones, local changes with no thought to the larger structure, and so on. About half the time I feel like I'm spending more time commenting on these merge requests than if I'd just done it from scratch.

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#258

Post by lazide »

crooked-v wrote: post #104
lazide wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really hard to see what a team/people on it is actually doing if people are remote. It’s also much harder in general to communicate less formally and form deep relationships. For execs and managers, this can be a big problem. If it isn’t possible to do it the ‘old way’, remote work can and does work (albeit in different ways and with different constraints). But if doing remote work, why not do it somewhere else?

> It’s really hard to see what a team/people on it is actually doing if people are remote. If you're totally disconnected from the work, sure. But for someone actually paying, it shouldn't be that hard to see whether the list of priorities for this month is actually getting finished or not.

Beyond the most trivial work, that really isn’t simple or straightforward without watching everything like a hawk.

Outsourcing manufacturing had the same problem - people thought they could send drawings to China, and with some straightforward checks, could get what they wanted cheaper. That was not at all the case, however, and there is a LOT of QA, additional checks, additional data leakage and competitive risks, etc.

For instance, if in the US people might actually follow the law around things like NDAs and non-competes most of the time, what about the jurisdiction you’re outsourcing too? How would you even know? How would you enforce consequences? How about data security?

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#259

Post by lazide »

ben_w wrote: post #99
lazide wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax changes in Section 174 (both advantageous years ago, and terrible recently) also play a huge part. That interest rates started to rise right when the tax changes to make it less advantageous happened? 1-2 punch.

Article covers that, 174 is US, changes are worldwide.

The US is the largest software dev market by far, and these changes ripple out. Outsourced dev costs still get the same tax treatment for US companies, so while reducing the costs reduces the problem for US companies, it doesn’t change that the problem exists.

This impacts all other markets.

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#260

Post by Arisaka1 »

jjeaff wrote: post #103
tqi wrote: post #60

FRED wants the implication to be AI related, but it seems pretty clear that all/most of this decline is related to their interest rate policies creating a raft of bullshit companies funded by too many dollars chasing ever more far-fetched returns...

Returns are no longer the actual goal. The actual goal is the perception of far reaching future returns. The perception of those returns is much more valuable than the actual returns. Because the wealthy don't want profits and dividends that get taxed. They want ever increasing stock prices so they can continuously grow their asset base to borrow against so they can never sell said assets this triggering capital gain…

This reasonably explains ghost jobs by companies willing to make themselves show like they're constantly growing for positive signal.
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