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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

#471

Post by winrid »

mk89 wrote: post #78
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm more likely to be loyal The funny thing, is that I've been told that "Old people are just cruising to retirement," but it's OK to establish your entire business infrastructure on the idea that your young, energetic, engineers will not remain at the company for more than 18 months.

> Old people are just cruising to retirement, That is just BS. In my company we have quite a few 50+ and it's nice to work with them. They add exactly what younger people can't. Reality is: They need to squeeze every dollar as much as they can. If they could, they would never hire: 1. People with kids 2. Older than 33-35 (more often than not also 1) 3. Disabled 4. Often sick People (give me your history of sick leave…

I really knocked a smile off a CTO once when I said I wanted to have another kid.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#472

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#473

Post by gumballindie »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #417

How much of this do you think involves senior programmers using LLM and AI-generated code to do a lot of the grunt work, thereby not needing to either employ, outsource or train? I am amazed how much more productive I have become with the leading LLMs, especially with specialized full-stack tasks that I do not do every day. Many things that I regularly outsourced once a year I now just get an LLM to assist. Could it…

Senior developers detect junior developers by how blown away by llms are. For instance, I can tell you a junior dev, or not a dev, by reading your comment.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#474

Post by gumballindie »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #182
huytersd wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it coincides with there being no VC money and it’s hard to build something without funding.

Opinion and not a fact, have you heard of bootstrapping and using old computer as server We used to be dreamers now is like cant do

> We used to be dreamers now is like cant do

A lot of people on here are workers that can do one type of task and not much else. Of course they cant understand that people can bootstrap by writing code and managing servers and designing databases and building uis themselves. For many, adding a button to a page is a career defining win. Leetcode doesnt translate to experience. A lot of NPCs will soon realise they not better than the factory workers they are looking down upon. And a lot worse than the outsourced people that deliver value they so dread. Perhaps they can look into bartending jobs.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#475

Post by epolanski »

bsdpufferfish wrote: post #280
epolanski wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2023 felt horrible. It really did. I choose that year to become an independent contractor, and thanks God the only client I found loves me and pays on time because otherwise literally nobody has ever contacted me on LinkedIn or anything with a single decent proposal. I have a huge fear of losing that client and going back to European corporate job and salary again.

> otherwise literally nobody has ever contacted me on LinkedIn If you're a contractor you should be the one contacting. Sales is part of the job.

Thank you, I will take note of this for the future.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#476

Post by epolanski »

metiscus wrote: post #333
epolanski wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one? A large part of the IT community does indeed very little work. As for having to work over 40 hours and being stressed, I guess there's a price to having to work in US under such lax worker's rights and benefits, in Europe you just say no thanks boss see you on Monday.

It is a testament to the great work they do that many people believe that IT does not do much. The work required to keep things working without noticible downtime is hardly trivial.

Thanks I work in IT, I'm a dev, and based my comment on both my own and experience and the dozens of peers I know very well in many companies of the world.

And I reiterate, a large parte of our sector does very little practical work.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#477

Post by bojan »

ehnto wrote: post #374
kredd wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have genuinely never seen an in-house training program in the software industry. Maybe some bullshit industry certs that amount to a single exam. But nothing like an apprenticeship style program where over a year you are taught and mentored. Even university doesn't teach you how to work in the industry. It's a very DIY career, we should probably change that.

At my previous company there was an in-house training, where the first three months were dedicated to the training of a new employee. The training consisted of both the tech stack and the development and business processes used by the company.

As a result everyone knew how things worked and everyone by far exceeded the minimum level of knowledge needed to meaningfully contribute. It was a great department to work in and I miss it still.

Sadly, the company had that insane policy of only 3-4% annual raise irregardless of performance, so most people, including me, would leave after a few years.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#478

Post by [deleted] »

chii wrote: post #379
spacemadness wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am dumbfounded this idea gets trotted around HN so freely. I’ve met nobody like this in the industry. Most people I know are burnt out from many years of having to work over 40 hours.

> I’ve met nobody like this in the industry. nobody is going to admit to other people they know that this (slacking off) is what they do. You only get this on an anonymous forum like HN or reddit. Of course, some of them might be lying, but where there's smoke, there's fire imho.

[deleted]

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#479

Post by ok_dad »

pc86 wrote: post #114
1-6 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still horrible and lots of people at large companies are worried of getting laid off any second.

Is it horrible or is it reversion to the mean? Post-COVID hiring and pay was completely unsustainable, and I'm shocked it lasted as many years as it did. You can't look at years of largesse and then when we get back to reality lament about how it's so horrible.

> years of largesse

The American worker has never had largesse, even the tech workers like ourselves, the largesse is and was and will still be going to the capitalist class. You're basically saying that we must accept that we're meant to live shitty lives where we grind and grind for very little gain while the capitalists and founders thrive on our labor. Reality is reality, but the whole "we can't complain about this" message you're sending is part of what's keeping us here. We should be fighting for the fruits of our labor.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#480

Post by medo-bear »

mc32 wrote: post #60
hprotagonist wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“there’s a power in the union..”

IT is one of the easiest to off-shore; how would a union help?

IT is also one of the easiest to disrupt by industrial action. Immagine a Go-Slow in Amazon for example. Lol
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