[HN Gopher] Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips
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Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips
Author : sizzle
Score : 49 points
Date : 2023-08-22 20:29 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ciodive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ciodive.com)
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I would hardly call this normalizing.
|
| > Finding the IT workers they need to meet hiring goals or
| complete projects is a struggle for more than two-thirds of
| executives
|
| This should tell you everything you need to know about the
| market. Jobs are being added, but the quality of jobs has
| deteriorated. If 1000 people were laid off from Google and 1000
| jobs opened up for contract roles in consultancies that pay below
| market wages, I would not call that normalizing.
|
| Anecdotally, it is still very hard to find a reasonable paying
| job. I'm not talking Google/Facebook salaries, I'm talking
| engineering at Albertsons salaries.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > I'm talking engineering at Albertsons salaries.
|
| Anyone from Blind can confirm that a tech job at Albertsons is
| going to be the peak of anyone's career.
| darknavi wrote:
| Are the engineers allowed to sit at all or are they written
| up if they do?
| junon wrote:
| Seconded. Plus what is _up_ with recruiting culture lately? The
| ghosting is worse than online dating at this point.
|
| There was a time I was annoyed at the canned rejection emails
| but I'll be damned if I even get a one word "no" these days.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > The ghosting is worse than online dating at this point.
|
| Honestly, when I do several rounds and travel 2 hours to your
| stupid office, I'd hope I'd at least get a fucking yes/no.
| gedy wrote:
| Yeah I hate it. I do think folks should name names for
| companies like this. Glassdoor (ironically) did this to me,
| and they were the ones to reach out first.
| paulddraper wrote:
| It's laziness.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Ask for a timeframe for the hiring decision and if they
| don't respond by then, assume it means no. No use working
| for someone who will string you along anyway because they
| probably do that will all of their work.
| po8tin wrote:
| Recruiter head count got whacked. I hear back but weeks
| later. Summer vacations add lag time.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yeah, I've been seeing tech contracting jobs paying in the $60
| to $70/hour range that are very similar to what I was doing
| last year making $100+/hour.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| [dead]
| 1-6 wrote:
| You don't read Blind, do you? Albertsons is highly respected in
| that community.
| shams93 wrote:
| Yeah here in LA its especially bad with the hollywood strikes
| competition for work has never been more intense.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Part of the problem is that tech salaries jumped enormously in
| 2021/early 2022.
|
| Settling back to something more reasonable is now a pay cut.
| Frost1x wrote:
| Something reasonable needs to factor in the waves of
| inflation that have also occurred. TC was definitely over
| inflation at one point but in many places I suspect people
| are operating at a pay cut still.
|
| The never ending war on labor rates continues.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > needs to factor in the waves of inflation
|
| Yes, I would like that to be true, but inflation
| historically can and does happen independently of wage
| growth.
| Incerto wrote:
| Let's not count our chickens before they've hatched.
| dymk wrote:
| This article is about hatched chicks
| black_13 wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| tuckerpo wrote:
| I'd hardly call it normalizing. The acceleration of layoffs has
| decreased, nearing a zero-crossing, but we've still got 100,000s
| of unemployed engineers floating around in the market.
| sarchertech wrote:
| BLS says tech sector unemployment is down to 1.8%. Given the
| size of the tech sector there can't be hundreds of thousands of
| unemployed software engineers.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Looking at the number of open jobs on https://www.trueup.io/job-
| trend
|
| It was flat since March '23 and had a slight uptick in July
| mdorazio wrote:
| I'm having trouble reconciling this with several threads over the
| last few days lamenting how hard it is to get interviews right
| now. Different position levels? Different sectors within tech?
| Not sure what's going on.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Layoffs have disproportionately affected high tech, VC-funded
| companies, which (...obviously, given its sponsor...) dominate
| the HN base.
|
| Walmart, Nike, Ford, etc have just as many IT workers as
| before.
| frfl wrote:
| I asked the HN crowd's perspective just over a week ago [1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37111560
|
| I guess we can ask again. HN readers, what's it like for you
| right now trying to find a job?
| davesque wrote:
| Just wanted to point out that the way you presented the
| question, and the forum you presented it in, made it more
| likely that you would hear from people that agreed with you.
| Generally, if people don't have a problem with something,
| they just don't bother chiming in. If they're already
| concerned, they're more likely to respond. So you may not be
| getting a representative sample of the actual opinions that
| people hold on the issue.
| frfl wrote:
| Do you have a suggestion for a more neutral way to ask this
| question to avoid bias?
| davesque wrote:
| You could have simply asked something like, "What are
| peoples opinions on the job market?"
|
| > My conclusion, so far, is unless you've got strong
| connections it's hard right now to find a job.
|
| By including this take, you may have primed people to
| respond with a similar opinion.
|
| But actually I think it might be almost impossible to
| eliminate the bias. You're very likely to hear back from
| people who are job searching. And job searching is an
| inherently stressful activity that breeds a negative
| state of mind. So you're very likely to hear back from
| people who think the situation is bad.
| frfl wrote:
| @davesque, I guess I cant reply directly to you.
|
| I've updated my question so it's more neutral. Thanks for
| the suggestion
| davesque wrote:
| @frfl No problem. Thanks for being receptive to my
| observation.
| frozenport wrote:
| Intern I just hired as a junior compiler dev said he got
| silence from all applications.
|
| Guy had three prior internships, and great GPA from a top
| school.
|
| It was a really hard to advocate for his hire because we
| could get somebody with ten years of experience. And this is
| even with my policy of ignoring anybody from Google.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| Why ignore Google peeps? Cuz of salary expectations? Or cuz
| they suck?
| oxfordmale wrote:
| It will take until 2024 for the job market to recover. The ARM
| IPO will be the first bell weather this year to gauge confidence
| in the tech sector.
| austinwade wrote:
| There are many other factors that could cause the ARM IPO to do
| poorly other than the tech sector's health. See:
| https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1693995783715278957
|
| Take with a grain of salt of course given Chamath's public
| performance history.
| harryVic wrote:
| I highly doubt it. I hope I'm wrong but there were far too many
| companies that raised 100s of millions with no kind of business
| model during the 2021 bubble. Those companies would have to go
| out of business before the market can go back to exuberance
| again. As an example this company https://www.gather.town/ has
| raised $76 million.
| theonething wrote:
| lol, do they have virtual bathrooms?
| po8tin wrote:
| The potential ripple effect is too big to ignore for much
| longer. 100,000 engineers is tip of ice berg when it comes to
| number of people feeling the squeeze.
|
| Social media commentary has been trending towards outright
| hostility towards the rich and politicians, not just in the
| usual discourse hellholes like Reddit and Xitter, but even
| here (I have access to dashboards that model and weight
| discourse; technically proprietary though so I can't divulge
| too much.)
|
| Too many people with too much time on their hands, with
| little expectation of help from the system will foster
| sentiment it is time replace the system. I don't disagree but
| think it should be handled intentionally, not waved off until
| last minute like we did with covid and climate change.
|
| In the US there are only 1 million LEO but an order of
| magnitude more of people who stand to lose it all if
| austerity for the proles goes on too long.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Ok i'll concede that a few people will get modest raises
| through protests and strikes but thats just after years of
| stagnent wages and being cheated. But please, you've been
| looking at your dashboards for too long. This country is
| too fat and too scared of their government to do anything.
| Especially upper middle class SWE in between jobs. They
| probably just vote in Trump again as a form of "revenge"
| completely forgetting that he did squat for the regular
| person last time. Thats the highest level of uprising you
| can come to expect in this country.
|
| The fact that so much capital is fleeing everywhere else
| into the US shows that the people at the top have gotten
| everything locked down here. Nothing major is really
| coming. The progressive left is effectively dead, the far
| right is gasping its last breath. Where is this rebellion
| going to come from?
| zuhayeer wrote:
| We published the Levels.fyi 2023 mid-year compensation report
| earlier: https://www.levels.fyi/blog/2023-mid-year-report.html
|
| While volume of hiring may have been lower overall so far this
| year, median compensation has generally remained steady or
| increased in the first half of 2023 relative to the last half of
| 2022 for most roles. In particular, the median for software
| engineer compensation stayed the same, while roles such as
| software engineering management saw a 5% increase in overall pay.
|
| Augmented reality was quite in-demand so far in 2023. AI
| engineers have also seen elevated compensation compared to their
| engineer counterparts, which we analyze on our post here:
| https://www.levels.fyi/blog/ai-engineer-compensation.html
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| being just a regular IT person with 15+years experience and
| getting paid fairly well for what the local market is, whats
| the chance of a normal person working at a place that pays
| $700,000 as a SWE? How do you even approach that? Does someone
| mid career have a chance to pivot?
| woodruffw wrote:
| Almost nowhere _pays_ $700k for a SWE. These numbers come
| from stock grants or similar financial instruments; that
| money gets realized _eventually_ , but it's not guaranteed in
| the same way that a fortnightly bank deposit is.
| zyang wrote:
| Yes stock grants is a big part of it but I don't think they
| are counting unvested stocks. It's your gross income on
| w-2.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| If we are discussing the levels.fyi pay report, then they
| are only including the numbers you get in a single year,
| you are incorrect. $700k is obviously top top band, but
| this is referring to annual pay.
| idontpost wrote:
| [dead]
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Ok 356k then?
| hilbertseries wrote:
| Stock grants are typically vested quarterly, sometimes
| after an initial waiting period of 1-2 years. RSUs are just
| cash, I don't see how they would not be considered being
| paid. They certainly show up on my W2.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I didn't say they aren't considered being paid; I said
| that they're speculative instruments in a way that a
| paycheck isn't.
|
| In other words: 700k is 700k when realized, but there's
| no _particular_ guarantee that so-and-so many units of
| stock are worth that much; it depends on the market.
| Comparing TC as if 700k is _guaranteed_ is misleading.
| 1-6 wrote:
| To answer your question on how to make lots of money mid-
| career, think about how you're scaling yourself. Are you an
| IT person supporting a 20-100 person team at a small company?
| You gotta learn how to scale your time and effort by
| impacting more than that. You'll have to impact more than 2
| million people to get to 700k.
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(page generated 2023-08-22 23:02 UTC)