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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

#31

Post by le-mark »

I’d been dodging layoffs for 20 years until I got laid off for the first time, late last year. My personal situation isn’t bad at all. Meaning my wife has insurance through her job and we have plenty of cushion. I’m spending time on a hardware startup and practicing leetcode. The job market will come back, it always does. Maybe not as hot but we’ll see.

Edit; According to Vernor Vinge, real long term tech unemployment could be a signal of the singularity approaching; so we’ll have that going for us (if the job market doesn’t come back) at least.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#32

Post by glintik »

le-mark wrote: post #31

I’d been dodging layoffs for 20 years until I got laid off for the first time, late last year. My personal situation isn’t bad at all. Meaning my wife has insurance through her job and we have plenty of cushion. I’m spending time on a hardware startup and practicing leetcode. The job market will come back, it always does. Maybe not as hot but we’ll see. Edit; According to Vernor Vinge, real long term tech unemploymen…

Will be funny if AI hype slashes more IT jobs.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#34

Post by toomuchtodo »

le-mark wrote: post #31

I’d been dodging layoffs for 20 years until I got laid off for the first time, late last year. My personal situation isn’t bad at all. Meaning my wife has insurance through her job and we have plenty of cushion. I’m spending time on a hardware startup and practicing leetcode. The job market will come back, it always does. Maybe not as hot but we’ll see. Edit; According to Vernor Vinge, real long term tech unemploymen…

> According to Vernor Vinge, real long term tech unemployment could be a signal of the singularity approaching; so we’ll have that going for us (if the job market doesn’t come back).

That would mean the messy parts are starting. Not great!

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#35

Post by random42 »

glintik wrote: post #32
le-mark wrote: post #31

I’d been dodging layoffs for 20 years until I got laid off for the first time, late last year. My personal situation isn’t bad at all. Meaning my wife has insurance through her job and we have plenty of cushion. I’m spending time on a hardware startup and practicing leetcode. The job market will come back, it always does. Maybe not as hot but we’ll see. Edit; According to Vernor Vinge, real long term tech unemploymen…

Will be funny if AI hype slashes more IT jobs.

funny?

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#36

Post by orochimaaru »

deathpanels wrote: post #25

Everyone is talking about layoffs and lack of hiring, but I've found the problem to be that companies are cutting costs by silently increasing workload on existing employees. Everyone is getting burnt out trying to keep a 300-person engineering team running on only 100 head count. That leads to more incidents, slower delivery, less innovation, longer hours. Even those who are still employed are seeing working conditi…

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.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#37

Post by kypro »

frontman1988 wrote: post #29

Elon showed with Twitter how you don't need hordes of engineers to run a company. He laid off 90% of the staff and still the website is doing alright (at least engineering wise). More engineers lead to more useless bullshit being created(like at Google). A lean mean team seems the way to go.

You're getting downvoted for this, but factually what you're saying is correct. He did lay of 90% of the staff and although people have claimed Twitter will die any minute, it hasn't.

Whether or not a lean team is the way to go perhaps remains to be seen, but what I'd say is that my anecdotal opinion on this is that the majority of engineers are a liability and assuming that 10x more engineers means 10x more work done is incorrect. Most engineers can build stuff, but they also add complexity and require hand holding. Both suck time from the most productive engineers.

A team of 10 excellent engineers is easily better than a team of 100 good engineers, in my opinion.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#40

Post by [deleted] »

mk89 wrote: post #30
gedy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah in past 20 years I would receive a job offer from nearly every company I interviewed with. Past few months have been really disappointing with rejections after interviews that I'd normally have said went great.

It's also true that you have now 20+ years of experience. The higher you go, the harder it gets - you might want a different role, etc etc. If on the other hand you're competing with senior sw devs with 5+ years of experience, there could also be other factors to keep in mind (age, ability in very specific tech stacks, etc). I think companies are still hiring, but more focused, unlike in 2021-2022 when they over-hire…

[deleted]
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