Tell HN: Who wants to be hired" posts outpace "Who's hiring" 2 to 1
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I pulled the data using HN API and confirmed this "reversal". "Who wants to be hired" posts are getting 2x more comments than "Who's hiring" posts (and seems to be accelerating). For reference, in 2022 it used to be 0.25.
I'm old, I'm from the times where demand for software devs greatly outpaced supply, but maybe we're seeing a reversal of it?
I don't want to draw any conclusions yet, there could be many things going on. My initial thoughts would be AI-related. We're either entering a general recession because the AI bubble is bursting, or the job market is changing due to AI.
Again, I don't have any answers, but it's something definitively interesting to discuss!
Here's the source code (including data): https://github.com/santiagobasulto/hn-who-is-hiring-analysis
Discussion (22 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Really, what do you expect from a "profession" that has been trying to lower the entry level to a point where anyone with access to an AI is a programmer?
I remember when folks had to have a degree to enter the "profession" of software developer. Nowadays all you need to be a "programmer" is access to AI. And correspondingly the quality of the output has fallen to such a level that it no longer possible to distinguish between human generated or machine generated code.
The bad quality is hidden away with euphemisms such as "release early, release often" or "move fast and break things". The constant requirement to update because updates were broken is just another symptom of an industry gone badly wrong.
Worse still, the solution coming out the tech hubs isn't to slow down and reflect about these issues in IT, rather it's to throw even more technology at it. Technology that then also fails. Technology that is designed to cause vendor-lockin and dependence on a few controlling companies (OpenAI & Anthropic being the latest in a long line ... AWS for servers and Google for spreadsheets and email).
Hm ... now what do we do? More of the same probably.
I am not old enough to remember that era; by the 1980s, when I was learning to code, it was already quite normal to get a programming job on the basis of skill you had acquired independently. The past era of quality code you refer to must already have ended, because most of the code I encountered back then would be considered garbage now.
I spent many years of my early career trying to lower the entry level to a point where anyone who could read and write English could be a programmer: this was a popular idea, part of the whole "democratization of computing" theme that came along with the development of the personal computer. BASIC was popular, GUI interface builders were popular, HyperCard was popular, there were many efforts to make software construction as easy as anything else you might do with a computer. This all continued into the web era.
In the end, though, it seems that the great majority of people don't want to make their own software.
> More of the same probably.
Yes, I imagine so. Technology keeps changing, but history goes around in circles!
[1] https://hnjobs.mathieularose.com
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE
Most other industries follow a similar trend, but didn't fly quite as high in 2022 and aren't in as bad of a trough right now.
Electrical Engineering: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXDETPELECENGI (actually up slightly)
Accounting: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPACCO (more seasonal noise)
Marketing: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPMARK
Mix that with heavy AI bills, there isn't a lot of budget left for hiring.
I'm happy my junior years passed before all this and I don't envy those who are just coming into this field.
And it's not just tech - all over my extended social circle there are people in various fields who were laid off. It's a crawling, largely invisible in the usual indicators, crisis.
The post attempts to compare to 2022 rates without asking if that has more to do with 2022 than now. Based on their graph https://raw.githubusercontent.com/santiagobasulto/hn-who-is-... it seems more to do with what was happening just prior to 2022.
Well, yeah. High supply of workers meets low demand of jobs.
Then with increased interest rates. Which are still active and weirdly should've caused more hardship than ~3 months lower stocks.
And now ai, but this depends on demand for software too, which I don't how big it is, like can demand scale too with ai?
Like when you lower electricity cost people just use more electricity.