Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 693 posts

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#251

Post by pyuser583 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #197
johnnyanmac wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and people recover. So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers? They aren't put on the streets, but it's clear some very long term damage is being done to people simply as a matter of bad luck.

> So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers? Myself included. Graduated in '08, had to work various minimum wage jobs in retail for several years because no one was hiring. I'm just now at a point in my career, nearing 40, where I should have been at 28. Degree doesn't matter much when your only work experience is 5 years of working at Starbucks, and you barely have p…

sorry your math seems strange. You graduated from college in ‘08 - 17 years ago. You’re nearing 40. So let’s say you graduated at 23 … you’ve only had a college level job for five years?

The economy has been moving upward since 2013 - 12 years ago. What were you doing from 2013 to 2020?

I ask because I also graduated around ‘08. I’ve been a software developer since 2016. I’m currently a senior dev with almost a decade of experience.

There were really crappy years to start with, but I feel I’ve made up for it substantially.

My own parents graduated in the late 70s during a terrible economic recession.

It seems weathering economic recessions have been a tradition for several generations.

I still remember articles almost identical to the ones I see now; “this generation is screwed and there is no possible salvation.”

It’s getting old.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#252

Post by defrost »

mbfg wrote: post #221
ac29 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you waste half your groceries its still cheaper than eating out. And wasting that much is difficult to do, most staples will last weeks to years without risk of spoilage. There are some fresh fruits and vegetables that are exceptions because they dont take well to refrigeration or freezing but really not much.

also, there is the case of the mismatched quantities for shopping, ie, the old hot dogs come in 10 packs, and rolls in 8 backs, etc.

Good grief .. you're serious?

Flour comes in sacks, meat comes in cuts - we've a quarter lamb in the freezer, part of that in the fridge, and yeast and flour enough for bread for the next six months.

We shop cheap, like the family has done for the past 100+ years, much of our food comes from the garden - our excess gets swapped with others excess (we have a lot of fruit, we never buy eggs, they come from people that can be bothered to run chickens).

It's a bit of work, we save money by not going to a gym and our life expectancy and cancer survival rates are much better than, say, middle north America.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#253

Post by onion2k »

bluGill wrote: post #105
markus_zhang wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK. If I lose my job, I wouldn't be super surprised that I might never get a similar job for the rest of my life -- it is not that I do not have the skills, but 1) the amount of time for a laid off SDE to get a new job could reach to years, not months, so I need to do something else to earn $$$, and 2) why are companies going to hire me, who have gap years and are…

I have heard that story every few years for the last 30. I know when it is your personal situation things are hard, but your story is nothing new and people recover. Some get back into whatever their degree was, others start a new career and never do. this will happen again.

In all the previous job market contractions the root cause has been money - increasing costs, less investment capital, etc. This is the first time the root cause appears to be tech (if you believe the announcements about layoffs). That makes it different.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#254

Post by pyuser583 »

kortilla wrote: post #168
agentultra wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven’t passed the stage where we convince policy makers to stop dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We’re not going to convince anyone to keep hiring software developers. I think we ought to be keeping people trained and employed but it seems we’re not on the winning side here.

The comparison to greenhouse gases doesn’t make sense. Corps pay a lot for developers right now because they get more value out of them than they cost. As long as that remains true, devs will be fine.

Part of being a developer is innovating as rapidly as possible. We obsolete our own practices in a regular basis.

We should be the last occupation to be replaced by machines.

Maybe I’m stupid, but I’m stupidly optimistic.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#256

Post by pyuser583 »

iwontberude wrote: post #227
cal_dent wrote: post #62

I think there's something quite interesting (well to me anyway) where if you go by the internet, there is this bloodbath (slight exaggeration perhaps but feels like that) in jobs out in the US, UK, Aus and major European countries (the volume of anecdotes & complaints would suggest a significant downturn in employment) but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbin…

Actually having trouble finding candidates...

What are you looking for?

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#257

Post by pyuser583 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #97
mollusc-engine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I became a USPS mail carrier instead. Certainly less pay but I love being outside and walking. And no Jira, changing the color of that button, or steeping myself in Frank’s eldritch horror code.

My wife and I have a running joke about her giving up accounting and working for USPS instead. Some days I think she’s serious.

Are they even hiring?

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#258

Post by cloverich »

adamredwoods wrote: post #220
HDThoreaun wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McDonald’s is expensive. Much cheaper to cook yourself.

Situational. IMO, I think it breaks even, but eating out saves a lot of time! Healthier cooking at home? Yes. I studied this for myself (N=1), and my cooking is about US$10/meal give or take (asparagus, chicken, rice, water to drink). If you cook for two or more people, then I think cooking at home comes out ahead financially.

10/meal is very expensive, fyi. A rotisserie costco chicken is $5 for reference; rice and beans is essentially free. Cabbage nearly so.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#259

Post by nradov »

onion2k wrote: post #253
bluGill wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that story every few years for the last 30. I know when it is your personal situation things are hard, but your story is nothing new and people recover. Some get back into whatever their degree was, others start a new career and never do. this will happen again.

In all the previous job market contractions the root cause has been money - increasing costs, less investment capital, etc. This is the first time the root cause appears to be tech (if you believe the announcements about layoffs). That makes it different.

Nah. It's not different. Money in the tech industry has always chased the hype cycle. We're approaching the peak of inflated expectations for LLMs and then in a few years the AI industry will crash into the trough of disillusionment. That doesn't mean that LLMs are useless but in many sectors of the real economy they will have only a slow and limited impact.

https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hy...

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#260

Post by AIorNot »

Well as a single datum:

After I got laid off in late 2023 I had a devil of a time finding work (despite having AI experience) to the point my unemployment ran out -

And I was 20 years as a dev and tech lead and full stack, (never had trouble finding work) including stints as a leading EM and CTO, I’ve been an industry award winning innovation lead,a digital studio director, switching tech stacks and cloud certs all my career..mentoring juniors and doing podcasts and writing white papers etc, but peanuts - nothing

Getting ghosted by 25 year olds in interviews and doing rounds and rounds and leetcode and all that but no success- for example I had a 7 round interview with NBCUniversal in 2023 and then got ghosted (I probably doged a bullet since they had subsequent layoffs)

a 12 month stint with nothing - we lost our savings as my wife got laid off too

Since then I pivoted to AI and Gen AI startups- joining incubators and finally got some work or at least cofounded some AI startups- now money is tight and I dont have health insurance but at least I have a job… it sucks as a over 45 year old as I have so much experience but no one cares.. still dont have much grey hair so I can pass for 40 to get noticed

No one stable is hiring or your resume just goes to a dead letter queue or is lost in ether or lost amid all the ai generated resumes out there - young ML and PHds and people under 40 seem to be getting work in Gen AI but thats about it

networking is the only game left and most good recruiters I know got laid off too

At least I’ve built up production experience in agents and context engineering RL, pytorch, langchain/LangGraph, RAG, KGa, etc python, BAML, LLM and LLMops to add to my years of full stack work

Post reply on HN