Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 720 posts

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#711

Post by asdff »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #541
asdff wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame how the cost of the long game is paid by the future employee having to be lying in wait, applying to you and 300+ of your colleagues openings, praying for a bite.

The best applicants aren't lying in wait or filing hundreds of applications. They're happy where they're at, ignoring the dozen people a week who reach out trying to recruit them, until eventually they decide it's time for a change. Then they apply or get referrals to the handful of companies they find most interesting, and at least one is going to give them an offer. So if you don't have a job opening posted on the…

Life is always good for the 1% of anything

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#712

Post by giwook »

overfeed wrote: post #105
crystal_revenge wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally tend to interview every year to see what's out there in the world (sometimes I find something worth switching for, other times not). I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month. Personally I think it's a bit more nuanced than senior vs junior (though it is very hard for juniors right now). What I've seen a lot of hunger for is people with a track record of getting their hand…

> I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month. How many offers did you receive? Companies have also adopted your strategy: interviewing candidates "to see what's out there" - there's a job I interviewed for that's still open after 10 months.

I doubt that very many (if any) companies do this.

I don't see how this would benefit them. Why do you care what's out there if you may not be hiring for months/years down the line when the landscape may have changed dramatically?

Why waste the time of the people who are often your most expensive employees (your engineers)? You're just burning cash at this point.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#713

Post by boca_honey »

greggoB wrote: post #689
boca_honey wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I went off-topic for no good reason. I was just reacting to my personal bias against Bluesky and its stereotypical user and content. Too late to edit / delete my post but I retract it and apologize.

I appreciate that you can so readily admit that - definitely not something commonly seen. Could you say a bit more about what's behind your dislike of Bluesky? I'm curious as I don't know much about it, other than it's possibly become a home of the more liberal/left-leaning base that found themselves disguested by Twitter/X once Musk took over (fairly so IMO, given how that's led to things like Grok AI's sexualized p…

Basically what you said. I find it to be a liberal echo chamber as intolerable as any conservative echo chamber. I actually prefer Twitter because in my experience there's a lot of neutral content and you can pretty much evade all political commentary if you take care of who you follow. For example, I follow almost exclusively accounts that talk about art history, archaeology, and cinematography... and it's really hard to find dedicated accounts about most topics on BlueSky. It's too small.

Basically, over there users tend to be in a position of "we're against $topic" while on Twitter you can still find millions of users with the position of "we just really like $topic". At least that has been my experience so far.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#714

Post by ramijames »

orangecoffee wrote: post #616
ramijames wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Senior, but I'm not a Junior either. The market has no place for people like me. I've killed myself for almost two years and can't secure a position. It's incredibly disheartening. I have a family to feed. I need to be able to work.

Sending you empathy. I think we have to get used to the lower pay expectation. This is the biggest negative, which does not make up for all of the AI's upsides.

I've dropped my pay requirement into the basement. 60-70% pay decrease and it isn't enough. At some point I'm going to wonder if I'm ever going to work again.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#715

Post by salawat »

schlauerfox wrote: post #94
salawat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a hiring manager, I have to write the job description. HR is responsible for posting the damn thing where people can see it, then into the ATS you go. We also know recruiting posts can be a source of competitive intelligence and signal for investors. We don't want it used that way, but we're aware of it. Bit of a dirty secret. That means, alas, the only people hurt are the applicants looking for work. I'll work th…

https://www.bls.gov/k12/teachers/posters/pdf/how-bls-collect... This says statistics, i've seen unsourced articles saying that they pull Unemployment Insurance numbers as part of it which are part of the payroll process, but BLS seems to say sampling and surveys.

I know, I've just... never found someone who says, "Oh! The BLS survey? That's meeeee! I fill it out!" Ever. Admittedly I haven't necessarily hit up any other platforms, so maybe those people don't visit HN. Totally viable explanation. But... Still pretty weird when I've been periodically poking for years now but never seem to locate anyone who even claims to know of or have been annoyed by having to implement the process of responding. Might bump this search up my todo list for hahas.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#716

Post by greggoB »

boca_honey wrote: post #713
greggoB wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate that you can so readily admit that - definitely not something commonly seen. Could you say a bit more about what's behind your dislike of Bluesky? I'm curious as I don't know much about it, other than it's possibly become a home of the more liberal/left-leaning base that found themselves disguested by Twitter/X once Musk took over (fairly so IMO, given how that's led to things like Grok AI's sexualized p…

Basically what you said. I find it to be a liberal echo chamber as intolerable as any conservative echo chamber. I actually prefer Twitter because in my experience there's a lot of neutral content and you can pretty much evade all political commentary if you take care of who you follow. For example, I follow almost exclusively accounts that talk about art history, archaeology, and cinematography... and it's really ha…

Sounds like you've managed to find a configuration on Twitter that works well for you. I've recently seen some people anecdotally say the same about Facebook, which I find surprising in 2026.

I think its worh bearing in mind that Twitter was born in a period of creation and tech-optimism, when the world thought a "digital town square" could accommodate all voices. This is obviously no longer the case. Maybe in thr future it will change, who knows.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#717

Post by unselect5917 »

shimman wrote: post #685
unselect5917 wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Build one to throw away" comes to mind. You'll figure out what you should have built after it's been used in prod for a while. Possibly years.

I have only met one company that was willing to do this in my career and it was a company that had a massive monopoly in the space with little regulation. Most of the time, what gets done stays this way until the project gets abandoned completely, it's a luxury that the vasty majority of companies will ever have.

I've been at several places that did it. Usually it coincided with a move to the cloud or swapping out the underlying database.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#718

Post by eranation »

twistedpair wrote: post #691
eranation wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a few mouths. Also, Cursor made Microsoft’s 2 year blow their lead (with GitHub Copilot) with just 30 employees.

Honestly, Copilot is the worst of the AI tools at this point. IDK how they lost that lead so handily.

I hate predictions, but when the dust settles, Copilot will take the lead. They are deep in the enterprise ecosystem, and they practically give it for free.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#719

Post by ozim »

daheza wrote: post #493
cmiles8 wrote: post #252

Not dismissing that it’s a tough market for some but folks also need to learn how to read a chart. It shows a slight decline following a massive expansion. The primary thing going on in the market right now is a lot of companies simply over-hired during the post Covid boom and they’re correcting for that.

I don't believe its over hiring I believe its offshoring. Blaming Covid after so many years doesn't make sense.

Covid was just starting point, no one is blaming Covid.

There are interest rates going crazy, AI hype, wars going on, visa rules changes, tariffs and trade wars.

Offshoring seems like a silly explanation in current global situation, there probably is some still but I don't believe anyone is risking having employees in Elbonia.

Post reply on HN