My anecdata - the large tech company I work for has practically stopped hiring. I went from conducting interviews practically every week in the first quarter to none at all on the post 3 months. Even during the layoffs on 2022 they were still hiring for some positions, so I conducted around 1-2 interviews a month.
What if this turns into rust belt but for software? Once high paying jobs gone with AI, politicians trying to please grumpy software developers promising them to open a software shop and create jobs. Mostly college drop-outs, voting for a certain party that promises to take on AI :)
Half kidding of course, but AFAIK many industries went through such a transformation and today most social and political issues stem from those areas that once were affluent lost their industries. Why not the software too?
What’s with the comments here? Forget the official reports, we should ask a couple randos on HN about their inboxes?
Are we sure its just tech? Isn't the entertainment industry going through a rough time right now as well?
anecdata: after lay off 10 months ago, I suddenly got 3 offers in July and I am employed now.
I think it's the BBB that fixed the tax code issue - just a guess.
The topic deserves a lot better explanation.
It's not helpful to just talk about absolute numbers of jobs gained or lost in a sector without talking about percentages and historical variability.
It also appears the California number cited is based on a survey of ~4K people, some reporting they can't find work, while e.g., Federal unemployment is a function of people getting unemployment benefits. Do states do the same surveys with the same methodology, so the numbers are comparable? Likely not. So the term seems to be used in different senses, and "worst in the US" is unsupported.
Further, for tech in particular, it's not clear which jobs were converted to contracts, for AI services or outsourcing (in or out of US).
This kind of salad article is likely the future: enough for the general public worried about jobs, but not helpful to anyone who actually wants to understand and plan accordingly.
Unemployment in California was higher back in 2015. Feels like this is layoff related
This is the time to cut back on h1b permits.
Good on the rust belt states for being able to get their unemployment down under 5.5%.
There's a reason most people you run into SF are either here on O1 or h1b visas these days...
Time to cull the waterloo crowd and maybe think twice about cheap outsourcing to latam and india.
California’s economy feels like it’s running on tech companies at this point. Any downturn in their hiring has really big effects on the California state budget.
It is only two weeks ago the commissioner of labor statistics got fired and going forward one needs to be very sceptical about the integrity of numbers or statistics coming from the official US government resources. How can anyone at this point trust any US statistics?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fires-commissioner-of-lab...
I'm not sure if this is entirely related, but during COVID (in SF) I was always surprised to see my colleagues so adamant against RTO once the vaccine was widely disseminated. I always felt that if jobs were remote there would be no need to hire us specifically - they'd hire in the cheaper parts of the country remotely or worse yet, other countries. The usual retort was that folks in North Carolina, Canada, Eastern Europe, Bangalore or whatever weren't as good - but I always thought such rebuttals were arrogant at worst, and ignorant at best.
Sad to see that to some extent that's exactly what happened. My current tech take is that developers shouldn't allow AI and/or agents to do the entirety of their job, rather allow them to do more, and it should be framed as such specifically. e.g. don't use AI to write the entire feature, use it to make the feature better and drive more revenue, or more correct and result in less bugs, thus less wasted effort on ops/etc.
It's amusing to see some people excited for AI to do the entirety of the implementation and planning, as if there would be no impact on us. If AI is that good, you just need TPMs (to the extent it's even possible, anyway).
It's no surprise to see that jobs that cannot be done remotely are making a comeback.
After a long drought I've seen more recruiter emails recently but I do think the days of 500k-1M TC are dwindling. Big Tech seems to be moving a lot of positions to LCOL areas and I don't see that abating.
I’ve started seeing emails from recruiters coming in again after a long drought. These unemployment figures will probably be lagging indicators.
Hmm anecdotally I’m seeing a lot of hiring in all places ranging from faang to startups. So tech hiring is not evenly distributed.
So the clickbait headline is "as tech falters" but tech actually had the least losses of any sector, except government. More correct in all possible ways would have been "as construction falters", "as manufacturing falters", or "as banking falters".
Got to love our kakistocracy.
These might be the only reliable numbers in the country…
Worst reported.
Serious question: who is producing reliable numbers now? The Trump administration is actively suppressing federal reporting and openly threatening to cease collecting and reporting data,
and this is absolutely signaling to sycophants and supporters that they should falsify or withhold unflattering data.
This is a truly terrible timeline.
Same newspaper last week: tech guys so over-abundant they are paying $2000 each to sleep in bunk beds in Mission flophouses.
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IMO it's far too early for "AI" to have had a meaningful effect on Software company hiring. A more plausible explanation for me is that between roughly 2012 and 2022, there was a tremendous increase in the supply of SWE talent (via undergraduate CS programs massively increasing enrollment, boot camps, immigration, etc), fueled primarily by ZIRP. On the demand side, ZIRPy VC funding primarily went to bullshit Crypto and (to a lesser extent) bullshit Metaverse companies, most of which have not panned out, meaning there is a dearth of late stage and newly public companies to hire said talent.