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Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

wsj.com

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Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#71

Post by strls »

stuaxo wrote: post #46
klipklop wrote: post #4

It’s been this way for at least 2 years. I suspect that WSJ held back such topics until after the election… The people I know that lose their job spend at least 1 year looking for a job. Usually at a significantly lower salary. With the current rate of inflation it’s a 1-2 punch that requires a big step down in lifestyle. I don’t really see these conditions changing until there is a AI bubble pop or something. Facebo…

Longer than this: certainly in the UK things were not in a good state before the pandemic started in early 2019. I know at least one person who was a software dev who was worked very little over the last 5 years. For myself, over that period I noticed almost all work except for government and financial dried up - lucky for me that was my most recent experience.

This was not my experience. Many of the high paying tech companies were actively hiring senior/staff in London for most of 2022. OK, maybe not Google. This very suddenly changed late in the year.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#73

Post by OutOfHere »

bagels wrote: post #15
OutOfHere wrote: post #9

In our industry, they key to getting a job is simple: 1. Work on two meaningful projects using the tech you want a job in. Update your resume with the work that was done, without embellishment. 2. Open your profile on LinkedIn. Close it when you get five interviews. Learn from each failing interview.

I don't think most people are getting meaningful job offers by simply having an open profile on LinkedIn right now. This isn't 2021.

Doesn't that overlook step #1 that I noted?

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#74

Post by nh23423fefe »

franktankbank wrote: post #69
anal_reactor wrote: post #45

1. The field got oversaturated. Everyone signed up for coding classes, not everyone has graduated from coding classes. 2. Lack of information transparency: everyone involved has huge incentives to lie, so it's extremely difficult for a company to say "we are a good company wanting to hire a good dev" and someone to respond "I am a good dev looking for a good job". Same problem as dating. 3. Moving jobs to cheaper cou…

> Moving jobs to cheaper countries: the flipside of work-from-home is having companies realize that they don't need to have butts in chairs is San Francisco, they can have butts in chairs in India, 75% of performance for half the price. They had to be brain-dead to only consider that as an option now. What was keeping them from figuring it out sometime post-Reagan?

False moralizing arguments only have to feel true for a split second until you discard the stream of thought.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#75

Post by jerlam »

geor9e wrote: post #24

It's kind of odd that the tech sector has so many talented people desperate for any job, yet companies aren't taking them on. Those same companies continue to pay their existing staff such exorbitantly high compensation. You'd think things would equalize out a bit as companies take advantage of this situation to get cheaper talent.

Alternatively, employees aren't fungible cogs, and experience in the specific company, with their specific technologies and management culture, counts more than new hires who need guidance.

It could be an extreme reaction to the large number of new hires in the 2022 era.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#76

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

klipklop wrote: post #4

It’s been this way for at least 2 years. I suspect that WSJ held back such topics until after the election… The people I know that lose their job spend at least 1 year looking for a job. Usually at a significantly lower salary. With the current rate of inflation it’s a 1-2 punch that requires a big step down in lifestyle. I don’t really see these conditions changing until there is a AI bubble pop or something. Facebo…

There are a bunch of usual suspects for the current situation, some that are temporary but others that are very worrisome long term (for the US at least):

1. There was massive over-hiring at many tech companies during the pandemic boom. That hangover is still taking time to wring out.

2. The era of easy money is over. Lots and lots of speculative investments that make sense when interest rates are essentially 0 don't make sense at all when rates are 5+ percent.

3. Outsourcing has exploded since the pandemic, and this is a long term change that is definitely not going away. The remote work trend is a double edged sword. I've worked with lots of great developers in Latin America and Europe (both Eastern and Western Europe) whose salaries are much less than American software developers, and there is plenty of time zone overlap to get lots of collaboration time in.

4. Companies are realizing they can get by with a lot fewer people. Elon may have gone off the deep end with laying off 75% of Twitter, but a lot of places are realizing they can lay off ~20% with no loss of effectiveness, including future bets. In fact, I've seen some business leaders argue (and I agree with them) that the post pandemic downturn has actually provided an opportunity for better focus and less bureaucratic meetings. I.e. cutting some people has allowed them to move faster.

5. AI is having a big impact on at least some roles. Washington Post did an article shortly after ChatGPT came out about how a bunch of copywriters were being replaced by AI. I think AI is generally over hyped, but for roles like marketing, copywriting, recruiting, etc. it's definitely having an impact on jobs.

I think #s 3, 4 and 5 are long term trends that are here to stay.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#77

Post by UncleOxidant »

klipklop wrote: post #35
vineyardmike wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what they did for years. I suspect there are some “nice” macroeconomic trends helping them avoid this. Like regulatory capture and the general regulatory fragmentation of the global tech sector. And that new AI tech is prohibitively expensive.

I agree, something has changed. Also good look any small business trying to buy Nvidia hardware to compete in the AI space. Best they can do is get gouged renting compute time.

Trying to do more with less would be one strategy - coming up with more efficient inference that takes less compute and energy. This seems to be what's driving companies in China like Deepseek. Whether one could be profitable with this strategy is another story, probably the best to hope for would be getting bought by one of the FAANGs (if you were able to show good results).

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#78

Post by UncleOxidant »

uptownfunk wrote: post #16

My observations for the last two years: Employers are hyper hyper selective There are a lot a lot of fake job postings The bar has gone way way up It is in general very difficult and gruelling to get a job If engineering roles are hard to find, product is 10-100x worse If you have a job, be thankful, don't rock the ship OBVIOUSLY there will be statements to the contrary, but this is really more in the spirit of - if…

Landing a white collar job now is akin to winning the lottery. My wife's been looking since October '23 when she was laid off from one of the big banks. She doesn't want to give up quite yet, but taking social security is probably going to be something she decides to do soon. Similar for the cohort of people laid off with her (the whole office was shut down, about 250 people) - very few of the ones she's staid in contact with have landed something and if they have it's at a lower pay point.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#79

Post by echelon »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #77
klipklop wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, something has changed. Also good look any small business trying to buy Nvidia hardware to compete in the AI space. Best they can do is get gouged renting compute time.

Trying to do more with less would be one strategy - coming up with more efficient inference that takes less compute and energy. This seems to be what's driving companies in China like Deepseek. Whether one could be profitable with this strategy is another story, probably the best to hope for would be getting bought by one of the FAANGs (if you were able to show good results).

It's also possible that the first movers are doing all of the expensive and risky research and utterly failing to build a moat for themselves. It doesn't look like there's any particularly lock-in for any category of AI model, and open source is following closely behind.

Compute will get cheaper and open models will proliferate.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#80

Post by bagels »

OutOfHere wrote: post #73
bagels wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most people are getting meaningful job offers by simply having an open profile on LinkedIn right now. This isn't 2021.

Doesn't that overlook step #1 that I noted?

No. I have worked on meaningful projects, and I don't get any legitimate unsolicited recruiter contacts anymore.
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