Comment by y-c-o-m-b 4 days ago
If you're counting on this for a recovery, you're in for a bad time. Remember, the drop is quick, the recovery is slow as molasses. It's going to take so so so much more for things to turn around and I doubt we will ever see the 2020-2022 days of high salaries and full remote again. I hope and pray I'm wrong, but after nearly 20 years in tech, my gut says we are in for some hard times ahead.
Unemployment rate doesn't give you the full story. It's always been a suspect metric in my opinion, kind of like how people use Kelly Blue Book values for cars. It's not a good reflection of the real world complexities. I'm not unemployed, but I'm also stuck in my current position because of the 100 applications I may have applied for, I get a response from 1 and I may not even make it to the interview phase. Pre-2020 that would've been 1 in 10 applications. Unemployment rate doesn't capture that. It doesn't capture stress levels due to lack of mobility between employers, nor people that have given up, nor part time workers, etc
A study cited this month in a Wall Street Journal article has the IT unemployment rate at 6%.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-unemployment-hits-6-amid-ove....
People on hackernews think tech is the whole economy.
the recession and bad job market we are in. you can believe what you see in real life or what you are told in media.
Honestly do not get this perception at all. Have you ever live through an actual recession? Did it feel like this at all? I see some significant secular changes. Some industries are just changing and leaving some people in the cold and they'll be forced to adapt. Media in particular is just not the same kind of business it used to be and never will be again. I do not see any cyclical downturn. Just amongst my network, everyone is working, hiring is a bit slower but it's happening.
General employment includes working in pizza shops, factory floor sweepers, car salesmen, janitors, deboning chicken, making Happy Meal boxes, and of course tech jobs that pay low six figures.
To me it seems we have alot of the former (several food places that specialize in lunch are closed monday and tuesday due to not enough employees) but the latter is tough right now.
But the general unemployment metric is solidly good.
Plus there is latency on the supply side. A lot of people were drawn by the crazy compensation starting about 10 years ago and accelerating during Covid, so that there is a huge amount of new developers out there. Plus due to the internet and mobile devices we're all more connected so the existing pipelines in developing countries are all also pointed at developed countries, bringing in even more supply.
I wonder what's the number of developers today compared to say, 2014, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's 2x if not 3x.