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

41–50 of 592 posts

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#41

Post by paxys »

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…

Those are two parts of the same problem. If a company is doing layoffs and refusing to hire more who is going to take on the work burden? Obviously existing employees.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#42

Post by giantg2 »

orochimaaru wrote: post #36
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.

Same. My "team" is doubling in size, but all the hires are international.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#43

Post by Workaccount2 »

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…

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 notorious for ridiculous workloads/long hours. The pay was just decent too. Not jaw dropping like today.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#44

Post by genmud »

dsm4ck wrote: post #22
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.

IT jobs are only a part of the total jobs picture.

Yes, but I would be interested in the gross income of IT vs other occupations and how that is impacting overall economy.

For example, if you drop 2 IT jobs, but each one is 150k, but you create 4x 60k jobs, it looks like you added 2 jobs, but in reality, you removed 60k worth of payroll income.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#45

Post by obscurette »

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.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#47

Post by itsoktocry »

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.

>2021 and 2022 felt like great years in terms of the job market. 2023 felt horrible.

Well, we had people bragging about working 2, 3 or more remote jobs in 2021/2022, so I'm not sure that should be the expectations anchor. 2023 reversed some of that.

We're in a lull, no doubt. But there's still a lot happening.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#48

Post by Mc91 »

giantg2 wrote: post #42
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.

Same. My "team" is doubling in size, but all the hires are international.

Same. I work as an SWE at a non-FAANG, non-tech Fortune 100 company. We already had an IT staff in India and would hire consultants in India, but this has been accelerating over the past year - virtually all hires or new consulting contracts have been in India. Some of the SWEs in the US are even being put under PMs in India.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#49

Post by giantg2 »

dsm4ck wrote: post #22
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.

IT jobs are only a part of the total jobs picture.

I'd love to get put of IT, but there's nothing else that I can really switch to. Other good paying jobs have a high barrier to entry, terrible hours, etc.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#50

Post by taude »

orochimaaru wrote: post #36
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.

Yeup, we're expanding and only hiring off-shore.
Post reply on HN