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

IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 592 posts

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#281

Post by grogenaut »

wavemode wrote: post #245
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…

Yeah but over 100,000 people graduate in CS/IT per year. 700 net jobs is rough. (I should know - several of those graduates are old friends of mine who struggled massively to find jobs.)

How many retire/quit/die each year

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#282

Post by frank_nitti »

mistrial9 wrote: post #199
pc86 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protectionism doesn't work beyond selfish short-term interests. American cars are not exactly paragons of technical or mechanical prowess compared to their Japanese or German counterparts. I've been a software developer for the better part of two decades, I'm not worried about the C-tier code coming out of rural India. You shouldn't be either unless you're a really bad dev.

the new CEO of Google is from India, no? I see a lot of very qualified people coming from India, around a big University here.. They have had twenty years to build to this.

There are extremely talented Indian engineers, but I don’t think this discussion is about the elite “cream of the crop” but more so the rank and file.

I have been assigned to lead offshore teams with engineers that need direct guidance on very basic coding tasks, produce low quality code and become combative when receiving feedback.

So many times I’ve reviewed and requested the same changes to code, classic example: a try/catch then completely ignore a caught exception, just to get some code “working” for the example inputs. When I call this out as a problem, it’s met with “well you did not say that in the specification, I have completed what was asked”. Another commenter had a similar anecdote where all input validation was removed to get test cases passing… are we expected to write things like that into a work spec? Seems like this would take longer than for me to write the damn code myself

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#283

Post by rrr_oh_man »

pc86 wrote: post #110
coolThingsFirst wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Takes a low IQ person to accept ridiculous workload for kinda ok money

Only when there are better options available in the same industry . Nobody is getting a CS degree from a good school then switching to nursing because they can make the same money with better hours (or better money with the same hours). The gravy train might be ending, I just wish it would end with the jobs that actually do nothing (product) rather than engineering first, but oh well.

Ouch :) I felt that

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#284

Post by Jensson »

acdha wrote: post #85
linuxftw wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that is true, but it was true before Elon took over, now they just have fewer employees to pay, so if they can turn the advertising back around, they'll be in a better cashflow situation.

You’re leaving out the massive amount of debt he added to the company as part of the buyout. That means they need to do something like triple their most profitable quarter just to be where they were before the buyout.

But that has nothing to do with the layoffs.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#285

Post by nightski »

madsbuch wrote: post #244
HumblyTossed wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I am realising that this is what taxes pays for in Denmark. I have a masters in computer science (5 year, postgraduate + thesis, Aarhus University which is top 100 and even higher for PL + semantics, which is my thesis subject) that I received tuition free and I am continuing with a professional degree in business at a reasonable tuition at 10k USD for the entire degree . It appears like continual learning should be…

I don't necessarily think it needs to be government run. The best schools in America are private. Ironically government support (the federal student loan system) is imo largely responsible for crazy high tuition in the U.S.

Maybe there is just less demand in Denmark? But I feel like demand surged here, and with easy access to capital it drove prices to absurd levels.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#286

Post by lowbloodsugar »

hotpotamus wrote: post #106
pc86 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: Why is the answer to firms automating everything "give me money for doing nothing" and not "get a different job?" Don't get me wrong I would love shorter work weeks, fewer hours a day, etc. for the same pay. That was the promise of all this additional productivity, after all. But even that is still getting paid for work. I just can't rationalize the idea of paying an entire population for nothing.

What other job would you recommend? It seems like the ones considered low hanging fruit for automation, the drudge-work, are actually resistant, but I don't really feel like asking people if they want fries with their burger.

>I don't really feel like asking people if they want fries with their burger.

McDonalds and others have kiosks already. One place I frequent only has touch screens for ordering.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#287

Post by kredd »

grogenaut wrote: post #281
wavemode wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but over 100,000 people graduate in CS/IT per year. 700 net jobs is rough. (I should know - several of those graduates are old friends of mine who struggled massively to find jobs.)

How many retire/quit/die each year

Relatively young industry, the population pyramid of workers would have more people at the bottom. So gaining only 700 jobs isn’t that fun. That being said, I feel bad for newgrads, since it feels like nobody wants to train them anymore. Any job posting I’ve seen is mostly 2-3 year minimum experience at a professional level.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#288

Post by willsmith72 »

madsbuch wrote: post #244
HumblyTossed wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I am realising that this is what taxes pays for in Denmark. I have a masters in computer science (5 year, postgraduate + thesis, Aarhus University which is top 100 and even higher for PL + semantics, which is my thesis subject) that I received tuition free and I am continuing with a professional degree in business at a reasonable tuition at 10k USD for the entire degree . It appears like continual learning should be…

it depends what skills you're talking about. when i see people complaining about always having to learn new things, it's related to new libraries, frameworks, technologies (e.g. now i have to learn graphql, now i have to learn to make things cloud-native, now i have to learn go because it's cooler than java).

this stuff in my experience is either taught badly or not at all in universities, and i don't even mind that. the institution can stick to fundamentals applicable across the given hot tech on any day

personally i don't agree with the sentiment. constant learning is something i love about the industry. for one it's interesting, but it also means there are always opportunities to prove yourself by being interested in learning

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#289

Post by Tommah »

deathanatos wrote: post #270
jncfhnb wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good news, I got rid of ALL the tickets!

You probably say that in jest, but I have seen — multiple times — someone just go and delete all the tickets. Boom! 0 tickets. No bugs, totes. /s

Reposting my comment from a couple of months ago:

At one of my jobs, they used Asana when I started. It was too full of backlogged issues, so we moved over to Jira. Then Jira got too full. A month before I was laid off, one of my coworkers said, "Maybe we should try out Asana."

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#290

Post by frankbreetz »

eek2121 wrote: post #152
frankbreetz wrote: post #88

Considering 262k were laid off in 2023. Compared with 165k in 2022. The beginning of 2022 also included the over-hiring phase of the COVID Era[0]. You can see a clear sign of the worst being over and I would expect 2024 to start a return to normalcy again, maybe people will even start hiring again 2022 was not a good time to be entering the industry, but I think for people with 5+ years experience it was not so bad.…

I have 20 years experience and I have not had a job in 6 months.

People are pushing hard for in office. Are you only applying to remote positions?
Post reply on HN