[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?
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Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?
I haven't been job hunting in a while, but I've noticed many of my
friends and family struggling just to land interviews. Most are
well-qualified and can easily pass initial phone screenings, yet
they face challenges in progressing further or even securing a
first meeting. Previously, my LinkedIn profile used to be flooded
with job offers, but now it's nearly silent. It seems this trend
isn't limited to software jobs alone. What are your thoughts on
this?
Author : warkanlock
Score : 29 points
Date : 2024-09-09 20:58 UTC (2 hours ago)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Potentially related to ground truth shared in what was posted
| here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41493049
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/1fbhap7/sec...
| RGamma wrote:
| You know what would be funny? If there was a free labor market
| for the C suite. There's probably some talented disgruntled
| folks with financial runway right now, who would do CEO for
| minimum wage just for the lolz.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/technology/ai-chief-
| execu...
|
| https://archive.today/Y9gBv
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Yes. I'm the CEO of Google and I can't even get an internship at
| Google
|
| But tbh yes, it seems job postings for software jobs are the
| lowest in 4 years, almost as low as the dip that occurred just
| after the pandemic. The COVID job boom was clearly temporary and
| is now being massively offset by AI
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?width=880&he...
|
| It's over. Best alpha for people who aren't being flooded rn is
| to just start their own company while applying in the background
| via AI so it doesn't waste their time. All their applications are
| being culled via AI anyway so it's fair.
| camdenreslink wrote:
| What is the evidence it is being offset by AI? I haven't really
| seen that. I think it is mostly two factors:
|
| - Companies over-hired during the COVID boom and don't need to
| hire as much because they still have those people. It's like
| they did all of their hiring for a few years ahead of time.
|
| - Interest rates are still the highest in a long time. Tech
| hiring is disproportionately affected by this.
|
| You can throw in offshoring of jobs if you'd like (I would
| still put that ahead of any impact AI has had).
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Doubt AI is reducing the need for developers very much, if at
| all, but the perception of AI very well could be causing some
| companies and managers to reduce hiring as they believe the
| hype that LLMs will obsolete most developers.
| jordanb wrote:
| My opinion there are five things going on:
|
| 1) Tech hasn't really innovated since the smart phone era. VR
| and web3 didn't work out. All the covid B2C subscription
| stuff didn't work out. Big data and SaaS only partially
| worked out. AI is pretty transparently a pump and not many
| people are investing in headcount for it.
|
| 2) Interest rates raise the risk-free rate of return so
| there's less impetus to dump money into speculative
| investments in chase of yield. This affects startups but less
| so established companies who don't need to raise.
|
| 3) There's a massive offshoring push right now. Bigger than
| I've seen since the early 2000s. Lots of organizations are
| making it basically impossible to open a req in a western
| office while also actively moving roles offshore.
|
| 4) There's a big push from the ownership/investor class for
| labor discipline. There's a feeling that industry workers got
| too comfortable during the Covid boom and started making
| demands.
|
| 5) People actually getting displaced by AI is marginal to
| non-existent as far as I've seen, but I've seen plenty of
| managers using it as an excuse for workforce reduction "we're
| going to fire 10 percent of you because you should all be
| using AI to be more productive."
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I'm still getting LinkedIn recruiter spam, just nothing
| interesting.
|
| The only two software people I know who lost jobs this year are
| now employed again.
| icedchai wrote:
| Same. There has not been any interesting LinkedIn recruiter
| spam in months. And any interesting looking jobs on there are
| showing 100+ applicants. Doesn't seem like a good time to be
| looking for a job.
| njtransit wrote:
| Anecdotally, I see the market picking up again. Fewer good
| candidates coming across the recruiting desks and hearing stories
| of the friends of our new grad engineers finally landing jobs.
| xpl wrote:
| _> Previously, my LinkedIn profile used to be flooded with job
| offers, but now it's nearly silent_
|
| Can confirm. I nowadays receive mostly messages from people who
| are looking for a job and curious if our team is hiring. Though
| it is mostly entry-level candidates (fresh grads, people who have
| completed bootcamps, etc.), which probably tells something about
| the job market.
|
| HRs occasionally reach out to me but only to try to sell devs. So
| it looks like nobody's hiring and everyone is desperately looking
| for a job. Or maybe it's just LinkedIn is dead and people use
| other channels to find opportunities.
| sneed_chucker wrote:
| I get recruiter and "join my startup" messages once or twice a
| week now, up from it being completely dead a year ago.
|
| It's definitely still a tough market, but I don't know anyone
| good who was laid off and then stayed unemployed.
| __loam wrote:
| Anecdotally I just got a new job and a massive raise from my last
| position but my friends who are new grads or have less
| experience/weird educational backgrounds are still struggling to
| land roles. Definitely a much better market than a year ago but
| the floor still dropped out from under us and it took the new
| grads and bootcamp devs with it.
| CM30 wrote:
| It's getting better, but it's still dire.
|
| Anecdotally I've gotten a fair few more job interviews in the
| last month or so than I did when still at my previous company,
| and seems recruiters are reaching out a bit more than they did
| back then as well.
|
| But it's still really bad for anyone that's not a senior,
| especially anyone who hasn't been a senior at a large tech
| company. I often look on LinkedIn and Glassdoor and other such
| sites for jobs, and whenever I end up on the home page feed,
| there's always at least a few very popular posts from people
| lamenting how bad the market/search is. Those posts are filled
| with comments from people saying it's been weeks/months of effort
| to get anything, including from those in the tech industry.
|
| And heck, I've even seen depressing stories pop up all the time
| outside of job boards and related sites too. Twitter, Threads,
| BlueSky, Mastodon... they've all got a lot of people who seem to
| be in serious trouble right now, and in pretty much every
| industry under the sun.
|
| It definitely feels bad, especially when people I know with a lot
| of experience are struggling to even get interviews. We're
| talking senior devs, team leads, managers, etc. All people that I
| feel should be getting offers left, right and centre, yet are
| struggling to get anywhere.
|
| Makes me rather worried as someone who is by default unlikely to
| have much of a personal network, and who has basically negative
| charisma.
| teling wrote:
| As someone involved in hiring, there are a few factors going on:
|
| 1. There's no available headcount. No one is leaving since there
| are no opportunities elsewhere. Especially those on visas.
|
| 2. When we do have headcount, we get 1000 resumes within an hour
| or two. We also have a stack of referrals to get through first. A
| lot of these resumes are experienced folks with backgrounds in
| FAANG.
|
| 3. Supply remains high (100k CS undergrads every year including
| global supply) whereas innovation is low.
| danbmil99 wrote:
| Yes
| spookybones wrote:
| LinkedIn is now silent for me besides spam.
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