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IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

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Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#561

Post by piskov »

benterix wrote: post #485
osigurdson wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia?

This would make sense - most of top talent left when they realized what can happen to them and those who decided to stay did it mostly for family reasons. So someone needs to fill in this hole.

The notion of most top talent leaving is very much opposite of true.

Some reasons for better than ever demand in IT are the creation of alternatives to some gone paid western products like SAP or migration of the existing solutions to open-source stack: e.g. from Sql server/Oracle to PostgreSQL and/or adding Linux support instead of just Windows.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#562

Post by wait_a_minute »

The need for competent IT will only increase, especially in the US. There are so many systems that need upgrades and improvements that it is scary. Some may say that AI will do this, but by the time AI is capable of doing this then all labor of any kind is deprecated as a concept and we'll have transitioned to a different type of economic system anyway. So don't be afraid, there's a lot of work coming.

There are hundreds of billions of lines of code that haven't been meaningfully upgraded or maintained and those systems are still profitable and useful and cool to work on. Even though there may be economic downturns when it's harder to find work, and I was affected by this in the last two years so I understand what it's like, the long term trend until labor is irrelevant is that we'll always need IT and software engineers and software developers. The good ones will continue to earn a really great wage because it's difficult to become a really good one and a lot of other shops will want your great devs. It does not matter where you're located on earth - if you're great, a better shop will take you.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#563

Post by AnthonyMouse »

everforward wrote: post #541
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kind of can though. In Europe even 30% of a US FAANG wage would be an incredible wage here. 50% certainly would be. There are other problems like timezones etc. and maybe payroll taxes are higher here too but I think the possibility for labour arbitrage is definitely real.

In my dealings with companies that had European offices, European workers had far higher non-salary costs that brought the total compensation numbers closer together. Eg Europeans usually had much more time off. The costs of that time off scale with salary. I do think labor arbitrage could work, I just don't think it would be in Europe. I suspect the total employee cost in Europe approaches that of the US, the money…

The thing about arbitrage is that it generally implies you know something nobody else knows or are otherwise in a different situation than they are. Otherwise everybody would do it, bid up the price, and there would be no more arbitrage opportunity.

Which is basically what happened. When the earliest companies figured out that you could do a lot of computer things remotely, they would hire some quality staff in e.g. India, pay them a little more than they'd usually get in India but a lot less than they would in the US, and that was great. Then everybody wanted to do that... but there isn't an unlimited supply of qualified staff.

So the competent staff started demanding more money, because they could, until they got paid enough that the savings was only just offsetting the inconvenience of different timezones and laws etc. But the current CEO still remembers that case study they read in business school from 1985 about how great outsourcing is at saving money, from before the arbitrage opportunity was eliminated by everybody trying to do it.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#564

Post by loa_in_ »

coffeecloud wrote: post #375
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…

"Skill mismatch" could also mean experience mismatch. I would imagine a mismatch is more often about a company wanting someone with 10 years experience in a particular domaine than about a Java developer needing to learn python. You can't take an online course or build a couple side projects and be qualified to run a 1M+ qps distributed system.

it can also be a sign of company looking for graduates to hire for cheap, so they're looking for inexperienced only.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#565

Post by loa_in_ »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #562

The need for competent IT will only increase, especially in the US. There are so many systems that need upgrades and improvements that it is scary. Some may say that AI will do this, but by the time AI is capable of doing this then all labor of any kind is deprecated as a concept and we'll have transitioned to a different type of economic system anyway. So don't be afraid, there's a lot of work coming. There are hund…

> There are so many systems that need upgrades and improvements that it is scary

> There are hundreds of billions of lines of code that haven't been meaningfully upgraded or maintained and those systems are still profitable and useful and cool to work on

Will putting additional effort and in turn paid man hours increase the profit margin?

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#566

Post by loa_in_ »

kypro wrote: post #272
coolThingsFirst wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

18 years ago I was 15 and I worked on my first startup with a friend before I was even able to code. We hosted the website on the spare computer in my bedroom and within a few months had our first pay customer and we continued to grow it from there. However despite working on countless startups since then none of them replicated that success, despite me since becoming an accomplished software engineer and knowing far…

You make it sound like a game of chance, but bootstrapping a startup is mostly about coming up with the right ideas, is it not?

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#567

Post by pi-e-sigma »

missedthecue wrote: post #384
yesdocs wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people forget that a 40 hour work week exists because of unions? Did we forget that having weekends off and holidays off was not a thing until unions? Did we also forget that children were put to work at a young age until unions?

The weekend was due to organized religions. The Atlantic has a great article on the history of it. Henry Ford pioneered the 40 day workweek without union prodding, only through his own experimentation. Besides, let's say youre right and unions have given us all those things. Those standards are over 100 years old. If it were true, it would mean nationwide unions did some things 5 generations ago and have collected li…

Only Sunday was off thanks to Christianity. Free Saturday only came in early XX century. Before that it was work 6 days a week.

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#568

Post by democracy »

grogenaut wrote: post #528
wyclif wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, this is a really valuable answer and makes sense to me. The only follow-up I would have would be if that dev with 10-20 years of experience applying for SDE2 did tell you in an interview that they didn't want to move "up or out" and their goal was to be a productive dev for as long as possible instead of applying internally for management roles, would you accept that answer?

So lead (3) isn't manager... I'm in one of those systems where after lead you have staff, principal, senior principal, distinguished/fellow/God tier. You never have to be a manager in those. In that style system you can stop at lead (L1/L2/L3 lead/PE/sr PE/de). At those you can stop at L3. It would be very hard to explicitly stop at L2 there. You would have to opt out of hiring, peer reviews, and doing architecture a…

"staff, principal, senior principal, distinguished/fellow/God tier"

wow people do love their titles )))

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#569

Post by bjorglo »

wyclif wrote: post #397
rr808 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably more relevant is how many over 40 give up coding because they're bored and/or employers dont want them any more. (I'm over 50 and finding it much harder to get piad compared to when I was younger despite kids moved out and I have lots of time to dedicate to working)

Ageism is one of the bad things about our industry. It's the last accepted form of discrimination. The irony is that when you're young and starting a family, you feel guilty about working crazy hours because you're not spending time with your wife and kids. Then when the nest is empty you've got plenty of free time to work hard and even learn some new things, languages, frameworks, &c. but at that point a lot of clos…

[dead]

Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023

#570

Post by telotortium »

cableshaft wrote: post #538
pjmlp wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you have a point, the golden rule is to shut down everything related to email and IM during meetings.

But you can't control what other people do. You can control what messages you send.

It's called snooze your notifications. Easy enough to do, at least on macOS, and surely all OSs with a unified notification manager.
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