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Tech Jobs Have Dried Up - and Aren't Coming Back Soon (msn.com) 116

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The once-booming tech job market has contracted sharply, with software development postings down over 30% since February 2020, according to Indeed.com. Tech companies have shed around 137,000 jobs since January, Layoffs.fyi reports.

This downturn, following years of aggressive hiring, marks a significant shift in the industry's labor dynamics. Companies are pivoting from growth-at-all-costs strategies to revenue-focused approaches, cutting entry-level positions and redirecting resources towards AI development. The release of ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked an AI investment frenzy, creating high demand for specialized AI talent.

Tech Jobs Have Dried Up - and Aren't Coming Back Soon More | Reply

Tech Jobs Have Dried Up - and Aren't Coming Back Soon

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  • Brutal (Score:3)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @12:09PM (#64799885) Homepage

    I hear from former coworkers how brutal it is. Glad I'm retired. :(

    • I don't know. I've experienced a strong *uptick* of recruiters reaching out to me, not just spam, but real opportunities. In a few cases, I had first interviews and turned them down for reasons such as not being willing to tolerate remote flexibility. But opportunities are definitely out there.

  • Simple solution (Score:3)

    by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @12:11PM (#64799891)

    Just learn to code! That's going to -- I'm sorry, what? It's the coders that're on the chopping block now?

    Welp, I'm out of ideas.

    • Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nucrash ( 549705 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @12:23PM (#64799933)

      These jobs are still needed because AI needs guidance and even with knowledge of how AI works, you need someone to fix the many iterations of what AI does to get the right information.

      The problem is AI needs to be supplanted with experienced developers and unfortunately that creates a skills gap because entry level gets the short end of the stick. This to me is now different than how many of these smaller shops that used to build PCs were slowly phased out by smaller form factors that pretty much come assembled at a cost less than white box systems.

      At some point you will have a generation that doesn't understand the inner workings of software and just assume they didn't prompt the AI correctly whereas someone who has some level of code literacy can see where the bugs are in AI generated code and resolve them.

      Learning to code is still relevant, just not at the level of entry where we coded previously.

      • Not to mention the Proof Of Concept Scope Issue- in which because an executive got one answer he liked, real or fake, he's now inclined to believe everything the AI says and discount everything his actual employees say- to the point of laying off all the humans.

      • I don't see this as an AI thing at all. The job market has been extremely strong for many years now - abnormally so. So, it's coming back to earth.

    • Just learn to code! That's going to -- I'm sorry, what? It's the coders that're on the chopping block now?

      Welp, I'm out of ideas.

      I counseled my son to not go into that field 2 decades ago. It was obvious even then.

      • Two decades ago, everybody and their brother were charging head-first toward six figure salaries (those used to mean something) and the easy life of playing arcade games at a startup waiting to become millionaires. Anyone who thought this was sustainable - particularly for the general population - was failing to think. Coding ability, like most things, is an innate skill advanced by training. You can take people with little innate talent and train them to get better just like you can take Average Joe and te

        • The world is run by mediocre people who got lucky or were born on 3rd base and think they hit a home run when they score. Its the average people who are the ones that keep the wheels turning.

          And its the below average that do most of the actual work.

          The problem for coders is nothing new. The industry has always laid off people with aging skills and hired people straight out of college trained in the current technology. What's changing is that they are now purging more people with aging skills than they are

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      What's needed is people with both skills and competence to do electrical installations and coding/configuration of installations now that many homes are becoming "smart" in one way or another.

      Good network technicians are also in shortage, even if it might seem like you could as a corporation just have some central control/management you could discover that it becomes a "keeping all eggs in the same basket" situation.

  • TECH != DEVELOPERS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Subgenius ( 95662 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @12:13PM (#64799901) Homepage

    DAMNIT, there is more to the "Tech Job" sector than "developers"! But please, keep on thinking that, while I keep my stable, decently-paying (really, not sarcasm) "Tech Job" not being a developer.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by zlives ( 2009072 )

      should OSI layer8 support even be considered tech? or "engineer"
      speaking as one my self

    • DAMNIT, there is more to the "Tech Job" sector than "developers"! But please, keep on thinking that, while I keep my stable, decently-paying (really, not sarcasm) "Tech Job" not being a developer.

      People should pay attention to what you said.

      I've always worked in Tech other than high school stuff. Despite what some think, Tech is no field to be in if a person demands stasis. And many do.

      That programming and development was not going to be a stasis career, that those in that field would be in such demand that they could force employers to allow them to work only from home is one of the silliest things I've seen. Ain't happening.

      Having started from school in the late 1960's I was impacted by

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I've always worked in Tech other than high school stuff. Despite what some think, Tech is no field to be in if a person demands stasis. And many do.

        And these are the ones currently losing their jobs with no replacement. In an established engineering discipline, you may be able to get away with learning very little new stuff, but IT is in no way an established engineering discipline.

        That programming and development was not going to be a stasis career, that those in that field would be in such demand that they could force employers to allow them to work only from home is one of the silliest things I've seen. Ain't happening.

        I disagree. "The office" is an outdated, historical concept and those clinging to it will suffer for that. I now know of several quite successful businesses in the IT space that do not even have offices and are fully remote. The cost-savings are staggering, they get the pick

        • You can get away with learning little new as a developer as well. I know plenty of people who worked on a system for decades and were able to maintain it. Nearly impossible to hire new people. So they spent the last ten years of their careers learning nothing and adding a lot of value maintaining critical systems to which they had contributed. But, I agree that once you stop learning you have only about ten years of employability.

          • You can get away with learning little new as a developer as well. I know plenty of people who worked on a system for decades and were able to maintain it. Nearly impossible to hire new people. So they spent the last ten years of their careers learning nothing and adding a lot of value maintaining critical systems to which they had contributed. But, I agree that once you stop learning you have only about ten years of employability.

            Kind of like the COBOL/FORTRAN issue. Even to some extent what I do now.

            After most abandoned those languages, people who knew that could name their price. In my case, the "smart" money was on digital, where there was no longer a need for Analog, including RF. And why these high tech folks don't understand that thier little smartphones are just walkie-talkies and the whole cellular system is built on radiolocation is weird, but I name my price as well.

            Asn an example, we have people who are against surv

            • Sure. And learning has intrinsic value. But it's harder when talking about careers. I've written more Java/.Net than anybody who learns today probably ever will. I can write Python and JS but I'm not more skilled in those languages than somebody who is relatively new in their career. Which isn't to say that *general* knowledge doesn't carry over. But if I ever find myself in the job market again, I'm going to look for a Java or .Net gig because that's what I know best and at a place where I can learn

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Ten years sounds about right. Well, I know of one critical legacy system that is older (don't ask), but they also happen to not have anybody that knows how it works either.

        • I've always worked in Tech other than high school stuff. Despite what some think, Tech is no field to be in if a person demands stasis. And many do.

          And these are the ones currently losing their jobs with no replacement. In an established engineering discipline, you may be able to get away with learning very little new stuff, but IT is in no way an established engineering discipline.

          Exactly. Human stasis is a beotch

          That programming and development was not going to be a stasis career, that those in that field would be in such demand that they could force employers to allow them to work only from home is one of the silliest things I've seen. Ain't happening.

          I disagree. "The office" is an outdated, historical concept and those clinging to it will suffer for that. I now know of several quite successful businesses in the IT space that do not even have offices and are fully remote. The cost-savings are staggering, they get the pick of the experts and productivity is just fine. Of course you need the managers that are able to deal with this situation, but that just increases productivity even more.

          You offer the blanket Statement th

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Well, I sort-of agree. Obviously, I was talking about (tech) jobs that can easily be done from home for the "outdated" comment. But for these, it really _is_ an outdated and quite wasteful model.

    • I confess to having quite a chip on my shoulder over how hardware is never considered part of "tech" but web sites are.

    • Read more carefully... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OneOfMany07 ( 4921667 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @02:09PM (#64800319)

      Tech jobs == jobs at tech companies. They have a statistic for that. Job postings are down in general.

      Does that mean nobody is employed or well paid? No. And if you were fired tomorrow, might you care about how the market is doing in general? Yeah, I'd hope you would. Just because you have a bubble doesn't meant he rest of the world should mirror your 'happy happy, joy joy' delusions that let you ignore the pain around you.

      Oh, AND they have a statistic for one prominent role at companies like those. Does that mean only software developers work at tech companies? No. Is that a major employer of that title? Probably. Was that an industry that was seen as a great place to get into until semi-recently? Believe so...

    • Yeah, plus many "software developers" aren't really tech jobs. In fact many "tech companies" barely have any "tech" in them. "Tech" is a highly inflated term these days.

  • The cycle (Score:5, Interesting)

    by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @12:15PM (#64799905) Homepage
    It's cyclic.

    This particular cycle, the software sector bet big on hiring for "AI" applications, and then found out that the applications (inaccurately) called "AI" are more of a toy than a product that's going to make them money.

    Wait for the next fad, they'll be hiring again.

    • Wrong. Grunt-level AI has already saved Amazon $260M. That's real money:
      https://accelerationeconomy.co... [accelerationeconomy.com]

    • It's cyclic.

      This particular cycle, the software sector bet big on hiring for "AI" applications, and then found out that the applications (inaccurately) called "AI" are more of a toy than a product that's going to make them money.

      Wait for the next fad, they'll be hiring again.

      I hate that they call it 'AI'. It is not intelligent. It is a predictive algorithm. Whether LLM, or some other base algorithm, it is not intelligent. Even the generative AI images are terrible as they cannot learn from their mistakes. In order for something to be called intelligent, it needs to be able to learn, and demonstrate that new knowledged. I have yet to see any AI do that.

      Also, any 'AI' developer worth their salt will carefully avoid implying intelligence, they'll always lean back on the underl

      • It's mimicked intelligence. You're absolutely right that - under the hood - there's not the sort of traditionally cognitive processing happening that we might consider intelligence. That can be a distinction without a difference if the output is the same, and for quite a lot of things, they're becoming indistinguishable.

        I think the real challenge for LLMs specifically is the training data. Between the limits placed technically and legally, malicious poisoning already happening, and the breakdown of function

      • Problem is its meaning keeps shifting as technology advances. 20 years ago image and speech recognition were considered AI. Now? Not so much.

        AI doesn't mean conciousness or personality, it means aspects of living beings that can be simulated by a computer.

    • Re:The cycle (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @12:48PM (#64800039) Homepage
      This has nothing to do with AI. This has everything to do with the cost of borrowing money. It was almost zero cost for twenty years. Companies could spend, spend, spend without worrying about profitability as long as they were growing, because if the subscriber numbers were growing, investors would keep throwing cash at them because cash was so cheap. That's what's changed. And while interest rates have peaked, that free borrowing isn't coming back for a long time because the conditions that created it are gone. If you want a job in tech, look to the manufacturing industry. That's where the growth is.
      • That really just shows why the free money was bad, even if it seemed good in the short term. It created an artificial bubble that wasn't worth anything, propped up by speculators who could keep the illusion going because they could borrow cheaply on the false bubble valuation. Not all investments will work out, even if they're well grounded and there is actual market demand, but here it was all based on the hope that eventually a market might emerge or somewhere along the way a revenue stream would be disco

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Yip, cyclical. The tricky part is one of the cycles skipped by for some reason, and people got complacent.

      There have been IT slumps starting approximately in 1983 (game crash), 1992 (Glasnost), 2002 (Dotcom bubble), and this one.

      There should have been one around 2010, but the smartphone boom appears to have injected market energy, absorbing non-phone IT layoffs caused by the mortgage bubble crash.

  • Developer jobs are fine, though? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @12:20PM (#64799921) Homepage Journal

    I don't know any software developers looking for jobs, particularly those with 3+ years of experience, which is virtually all of them.
     
    If you're in marketing or the non technical side, then yeah, those jobs are gone. Tech companies were the first to lay off jobs that could be augmented by AI. Especially ones generating ad copy.
     
    But to reiterate, I don't know of any software developers looking for jobs, or if they are, they're not sitting around looking for jobs for very long.

    • I know one that is looking. I doubt it will take him long to find a new one, and I sent him a few leads I know (my company is hiring for example).

      There are fewer remote-only contract jobs than they used to be. Lots of place one full-time with transition to a location near the company office. That sort of job doesn't really cut it for coders who have kids or grandkids.

    • Entry-level jobs for fresh grads seem downright ethereal these days though. Like you said, a lot of them demand about several years of experience right off the bat for what is basically a glorified junior-level position. It gate keeps a lot of fresh talent from developing the necessary experience to progress in the job market.

      That all said, I think what people miss are the days when punching out a summer session in boot camp was an almost guaranteed path to a six-figure salary. Those days are definitely gon

    • I'm currently hiring for my team and have encountered some devs affected by these layoffs.

      Some of them have felt like poor performers, like they didn't meet the expectation for their former title. Some felt clearly talented and were likely part of an unimportant project that got binned or a stable enough one that was put on maintenance mode.

    • I don't know any software developers looking for jobs

      Tens of thousands of software developer jobs have been terminated by big tech companies during the past two years. What, do you think all of those laid off employees just retired really, really early?

      Try visiting the Blind app, where you'll see thousands of developers anonymously complaining about how they have to interview with dozens of companies just to get a single offer. Mean-time to hire went from three weeks to 15 months.

      Your anecdotes are meanin

  • Resist RTO! Quit your job! they said. Funny how for 2 years I've been seeing lay offs after lay offs and most slashdotters still don't grasp that RTO is just not something they can resist.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      If your job requires you to be in an office, you can resist, or not... but do realize that whatever work output you have is meaningless busywork. It ultimately doesn't matter, because the value of the corporation/company you're working for is effectively zero in the broad scheme of things.

    • I don't think anyone said to quit your job if a company calls for RTO. Just keep your resume up-to-date and either don't comply with the RTO or do the absolute bare minimum or possibly less to see how far you can push it. Keeping your resume up to date is basically the strategy we've always used in this profession. Make sure you have your next job lined up and hop over there when the pay is better or the work is more interesting or the conditions are better (rarely the case, all companies kind of suck). Do

    • Resist RTO! Quit your job! they said. Funny how for 2 years I've been seeing lay offs after lay offs and most slashdotters still don't grasp that RTO is just not something they can resist.

      When companies announce RTO mandates, they know that some people will quit out of protest, it's calculated into the cost of the mandate. Some companies are even using it as a form of layoff that saves them money since a person who quits doesn't get severance.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Sique ( 173459 )
        My employer, which actually has an RTO policy, managed to cut so much office space and locations in the last five years, that for me, there is no office to return to. I still wonder how this should work. For the time being, I just nod, and continue to do my job from home.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tbuskey ( 135499 )

          My employer, which actually has an RTO policy, managed to cut so much office space and locations in the last five years, that for me, there is no office to return to. I still wonder how this should work. For the time being, I just nod, and continue to do my job from home.

          My team is in 6 timezones and we coordinate w/ a customer in a 7th zone. If we all went into the office, we'd see one other person on the team, at most.

          These companies mandating RTO can't do this type of work. I bet the RTO companies can't coordinate between 2 locations at all. One office will be larger and the other will be "remote" and ignored w/o the larger office noticing. It becomes a self fulfilling result.

          Companies that can figure out remote collaboration will need to have self starting employees

  • Don't forget Offshoring. Coders are cheaper in 3rd world country's

    • Have fun managing teams that are 12 hours away. And don't expect managers you hire in that region to adapt well to your own company's management practices.

      While software development is basically a machine where you put requirements into one end and turn a crank. If half of the requirements spill out of the hopper or are misinterpreted and the crank is usually jammed or falling off. Then your product's release is going to have a bad time.

  • As soon as interest rate cuts hit (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @12:37PM (#64799985)
    we'll have a wave of start ups and the jobs will be back.

    That'll get us through about 2-3, maybe 4 years though. Automation is going to keep chipping away, especially LLMs & ML. We're going to have to do something about it, or we're gonna have to get used to eating cat food. Dry cat food.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sinij ( 911942 )

      Automation is going to keep chipping away, especially LLMs & ML. We're going to have to do something about it

      Maybe not. Boomers are going to retire or die at the desk at some point.

      • Global pop is still growing and immigration, at least in America, is outpacing deaths + low birth rates.

        Long term as the remaining world modernizes that'll change, but we're decades away from that. It does mean though that immigration will slow a bit, I *think* in about 10 years, maybe 20, but I'm just pulling numbers out of my @$$.

        Meanwhile self driving cars are going to put 7m people out of work and LLMs are going to put at least another 3m out. Permanently.
        • The global population of youngish people is going to start to decrease fairly soon. As this shows, the number of people 0-4 years old is smaller than the number between 5-9 years old:

          https://www.census.gov/content... [census.gov]

          That means 20 years from now, the global population of people 20-25 years old (i.e. people entering the workforce) will be smaller than it was 5 years prior, and from then on that shrinkage will only continue - or rather, accelerate.

          20 years from now isn't tomorrow, but it's not off in th

    • Forces 5 year amortization of all R&D costs instead of the previous 'all in the current calendar year' expectation like all other business costs have. Meaning businesses could be only taxed on profits, but now R&D and all software work is not. And many startups can't last 5+ years.

      • They're expenses from the r&d are still part of their expenses and therefore mean that they don't have profits.

        What section 174 did do though is your regular run of the mill maintenance on your code base doesn't count as r&d for the purposes of some of the tax incentives that are out there. So what you can't do is get a nice big fat tax incentive for research and development that's supposed to create new jobs when all you're really doing is maintaining existing jobs.

        Basically it just closed

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      It'll help a bit, but there's no way we can get back to the practically zero interest rates that silicon valley enjoyed for so long, and that's because the amount of capital available in the system is much lower now, and it's going in the negative direction. That's because so much of the capital is tied up in boomers' retirement savings, and they're moving all that money into safer (less risky) investments, which is typical when you get near retirement age. So it's not going to be in "growth" funds anymor

  • AI generative models are not an end in and of themselves and are highly educated though not very smart. However, this as a component of larger products has extraordinary potential. So far, companies have been rushing to implement it into their existing products and that is typically less impressive than the hype. However, architecting new products with AI at the core is a different proposition. It may take a while for big new things to come out of the woodwork but the material now exists to make it so.

  • Half correct-it's interest rates, not AI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @12:43PM (#64800009)
    So yeah, the market is contracting, but the cause is not AI innovations. AI is not relevant. AI cannot yet replace anyone you actually pay to do something today...and my personal prediction is it won't anytime soon. What happened was interest rates were at record lows for a very long time. Corporate leaders and investors viewed that they could borrow money for essentially free...so the part the article got right was "growth at all costs".

    Companies like Amazon and Google famously were talent hoarders and hired every smart person they could find...and figured out what to do with them later, a strategy I call "talent hoarding." This is a very expensive strategy. I am not even sure it's an effective one, bang-for-buck-wise, but I assume they know more than I do. I interviewed for them many times and even got offers...but if you couldn't tell me what I was doing or where I was working, I will instead sign with one of your competitors who will....a strategy that may have been stupid on my part in hindsight, but was my comfort zone, especially since their competitors were paying slightly more.

    A more conventional strategy is to identify a need and hire to fill it. You'd ideally want people with as much relevant experience as you can find. One of my concerns with talent hoarding is they just try to hire brilliant geniuses, who often don't have experience where they're deployed. They treat them like stem cells. It is glorious to watch a smart person transform themselves for the task, but it's far from efficient, hence why it's a pretty new concept.

    I don't want to deal with a genius designing a DB schema. I've seen what happens, it isn't pretty. DBA work is dull, mundane minutia....it's boring AF for someone who graduated top of their class at MIT or Stanford. They're going to do "just good enough" then move on and get promoted and not consider the ramifications of their actions, long-term or the maintenance costs. You can say the same about everything I've worked with: UI, data processing, middleware/backend-end. Writing working Java?...easy...LOTS of people can do that....writing java that's easy to maintain by anyone but the original author and scales well and has few vulnerabilities?...well...I don't personally consider it "HARD"...but a LOT FEWER people can do that, especially short-attention-spanned geniuses from elite schools.

    The point of all this? Well, talent hoarding is expensive and far from efficient. However, if you have infinite money, it may be to your advantage. You have a massive pool of potential workers to throw at a problem who have already been vetted and trained in your company ways. You're stealing the talent from lesser employers...and if you have fancy perks, you're ruining them as well. Once a developer gets used to free meals and massages and laundry and wine on tap and crazy perks...they're going to be MISERABLE if they go to a conventional employer, like an insurance company or bank....so now you have a class of tech professionals who are spoiled by your crazy perks and have unreasonable lifestyle expectations...so thus they won't consider a bank, no matter how high the salary is. I disagree with the strategy and most businesses do...but I can see their side. These big tech companies have core businesses that are licenses to print money (Amazon's monopoly on e-commerce and Google's monopoly on search)....so the money is flowing in and is practically free to borrow...so who cares about efficiency?....growth, growth, growth!

    So once borrowing money is not free, well, the excesses of the past get tamped down. I am sure Google isn't introducing any crazy new perks. Most of the big players probably won't talent hoard like they used to. Also, their weaker, less profitable, competitors will fail first, so they're getting access to new pools of veteran talent from failed startups....basically, once the talent market gets less competitive, excessive and wasteful employee-pampering and hoarding practices don't make much sense...especial

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
      Mod parent up

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      I interviewed for them many times and even got offers...but if you couldn't tell me what I was doing or where I was working, I will instead sign with one of your competitors who will

      I think you misperceived how they work. In these companies a team knows it needs and has budget for headcount in one of a few broad categories (generalist, systems, ML, ...), and the company adds together all the headcounts from all the divisions across the company, and it sets out to centrally hire roughly that many people. Once you're hired then there's a process lasting many weeks where you're brought up to speed on company tech setup, and you try out with the different teams for a week or two, and you a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dvice ( 6309704 )

      > I call "talent hoarding." This is a very expensive strategy.

      You might call it expensive, but Google's revenue is 300 billion dollars and they have about 182k employees. That is 1.6 million dollars per employee. So they can afford to pay good salary for the best talents.

      > I am not even sure it's an effective one

      I don't know either, but I follow the AI development and I have to say that I am really impressed with the work they do at Google Deepmind. What they did with games was inspiring, but especial

  • If you are good at what you do and have some more special skills like IT security, graphics or sound, system admin and coding in combination, real Linux skills, etc. you will probably not have any real trouble. If you are not that interested, see it as "just a job", can only code with help from ChatGPT, etc., you will face problems, likely serious problems. Same if management thinks you are in the second group, but really are not.

    • Beyond what you listed, I think we're just entering an age where to work with code you'll need domain specific skills. The need for someone clueless to poop out a simple module based on a hard spec is evaporating. The need for people with real understanding of a project or industry, who can also write code, is only growing. This isn't the death of software development, it's the democratization of it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Beyond what you listed, I think we're just entering an age where to work with code you'll need domain specific skills. The need for someone clueless to poop out a simple module based on a hard spec is evaporating. The need for people with real understanding of a project or industry, who can also write code, is only growing.

        I fully agree to that. That is also what I ran into whenever I did coding commercially: I actually did domain-specific consulting and just happened to be my own implementer because it was easier, overall cheaper and I was actually available and competent.

        This isn't the death of software development, it's the democratization of it.

        I am not sure about that. Simpler code, yes. Any younger engineer is expected to be able to do somewhat competent coding these days and not being able to seriously limits options. But as soon as things get harder, I think coding is just as inaccessible to n

  • Jobs are how many people are working.

    Job market is how many open positions there are.

    At times of low employment, there is is less work to do so fewer positions need to be posted.

    However at times of high employment, there is less available labor to pursue so just posting an opening is useless for filling a position.

    It's only when employment is *increasing* that the job market will be large. When it is stable it will be small.

  • Remember all the automation they did to fix problems in the work flow?
    They fixed the biggest one!
    YOU!

    • True workflow automation is one thing, but I have been instructed to implement Microsoft's latest "workflow automation" tools by multiple employers on multiple occasions, and I can say with relative authority that, of all the threats to my employment as a programmer, the prospect of my job being taken by non-programmers dragging pictures around is the one I take least seriously.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chas ( 5144 )

        Remember it's not about taking your job from you by successful automation.

        It's about taking your job from you for SHIT automation.

        Only to turn around and introduce successful solutions to the shit automation.

  • I love layoffs.fyi but a large number of smaller businesses with layoffs won't be captured there, so the number of businesses listed is the tip of the iceberg.

  • Just like the company I worked for made a ton of money by fixing up outsourced projects that were mismanaged to hell and back for a quick buck, I'm sure we will make a ton of money by fixing up AI-driven projects that were mismanaged to hell and back for a quick buck.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by m00sh ( 2538182 )

      Just like the company I worked for made a ton of money by fixing up outsourced projects that were mismanaged to hell and back for a quick buck, I'm sure we will make a ton of money by fixing up AI-driven projects that were mismanaged to hell and back for a quick buck.

      I have an AI-driven project that will fix AI-mismanaged projects.

      Next will be AI-driven project that solve AI-mismanaged projects that were fixing AI-mismanaged projects.

  • This is only a problem for people who suck. Good riddance.

    • What is the cutoff point, the minimum of skill level that justifies layoffs? Is it the bottom 50% of workers? The bottom 25%? The bottom 10%? Okay, what about the second-lowest 10%? Is it okay to lay them off once the first 10% is gone? How many times may this be repeated?

      What happens to the lower-skilled people who are laid off? Their families? Should they seek menial employment at a lower rate of pay? Should they be re-trained to do some other professional job? What if that economic sector subse

      • Well, you generally start with identifying a role as superfluous or overstaffed. Not a person. By definition, a layoff is a position elimination. Then, it may become a choice between individuals, but skill level isn't at the top of the list. I've had to make that call on occasion, and productivity, attitude, team compatibility, and other soft skills mattered more, assuming basic competency.

        But... more of often than that I was simply told which people in my reporting chain were eliminated. Dispassionate posi

        • "Productivity" of a given IT worker, whether in development or operations, is difficult to define and to measure. How was it done in this particular case? Were these assessments objective and reliable?

          As for "attitude, team compatibility, and other soft skills", how are those measured? How is the bottom-line value of each of those measured? How can these criteria be reliably distinguished from simple bias?

          When the list of terminated personnel comes from above, are all these questions asked of relevant t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by m00sh ( 2538182 )

        You mean what age is the cutoff point? 30 for big name companies, 40 for the slower and smaller ones and 50 is absolute. After 50, maybe 1% can have it.

    • You might be surprised at how many very skilled horsemen lost their jobs when we moved from horses to cars. The fact that you are good at what you do does not mean someone is going to pay you to do it. In the startup economy, innovation was the key to grabbing market share. I am not sure the current tech monopolies need take risks with people who are innovative. They need people who are safely competent doing their current job until that job is no longer needed. A lot of tech jobs are no longer needed.

  • Section 174 was new to me until recently... (Score:3)

    by OneOfMany07 ( 4921667 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @01:56PM (#64800269)

    https://www.reddit.com/r/cscar... [reddit.com]

    https://www.thomsonreuters.com... [thomsonreuters.com]

    Basically part of how companies used to work was they'd write off (not be taxed on) anything they spent first, including software developer salaries. Not true any longer. Now they must do 20% a year for any 'R&D' of which, the IRS claims ALL software is R&D (and they add extra documentation requirements, aka work, for any R&D).

    What if you're a new company? Most new companies don't last 5 years. Seems like this 2017 new law prevents new companies from entering any software market, hence it benefits any big incumbents.

    Though I'd guess breaks the old "just buy a startup instead of doing R&D yourself" paradigm lots of companies seemed to shift to (pick winners on their upward climb, instead of playing the lottery yourself). Meaning it is hampering any previous US R&D investment which I'd be curious to hear statistics on.

    Another great job Trump and team! Yes, it was passed with votes going along party lines.

  • Iâ(TM)ve seen regular news articles making this exact claim since the dot com bust, even when the industry was booming. Itâ(TM)s just not true and Iâ(TM)ve come to suspect that these regular claims are just intended to spread fear uncertainty and doubt.
  • It's just Wallstreet calling out tech companies hiring useless people to do nothing. Now that tech stocks are booming again they'll go back to hiring useless people one by one till we're back, and the cycle will just repeat.

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