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That confirms my anecdotal experience. At times I felt I was losing my mind with all the "record low unemployment" and "soft landing" stories in the press. 20

That confirms my anecdotal experience. At times I felt I was losing my mind with all the "record low unemployment" and "soft landing" stories in the press. 2021 and 2022 felt like great years in terms of the job market. 2023 felt horrible.

dsm4ck 3y ago
IT jobs are only a part of the total jobs picture.
- genmud 3y ago
  Yes, but I would be interested in the gross income of IT vs other occupations and how that is impacting overall economy. For example, if you drop 2 IT jobs, but each one is 150k, but you create 4x 60k jobs, it looks like you added 2 jobs, but in reality, you removed 60k worth of payroll income.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >For example, if you drop 2 IT jobs, but each one is 150k, but you create 4x 60k jobs, it looks like you added 2 jobs, but in reality, you removed 60k worth of payroll income. But the company saves 60k, so the net (to the economy) is the same.
    - wbshaw 3y ago
      That is not entirely true. Whereas a company will likely bank that profit, employees are more likely to put that income back into the economy which provides a multiplier effect of the income in overall economic growth.
      - itsoktocry 3y ago
        >That is not entirely true. No, it's entirely true. The economy is a closed system. Employees can't "put that income back into the economy", because it has never left. How it gets redistributed will vary, and you can make normative arguments about spending the money at the local coffee shop. But the net effect on the economy is the same.
        jewayne 3y ago
        If that were true, then recessions and depressions would be impossible. The velocity of money moving through the economy would be a constant, like the speed of light. But recessions and depressions happen, so we know that the disappearance of certain transactions from the economy can have a negative macroeconomic effect.
        milesvp 3y ago
        >The economy is a closed system This is sort of not true. The biggest example of why is the concept of the velocity of money. If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, it’s the idea of of how many times a single dollar is used in a given time period. It’s a very important measure, and it’s historic low at the start of the lock downs was why the fed dumping so much money into the economy was not a mistake (at the time). It’s an effective multiplier, and has very real impact as to the total utils that everyone in the spending chain collect. What this means, is that when money is spent outside a country, there is a very real risk that that the local velocity of money goes down, even though the gdp of the global economy is going up.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        > The economy is a closed system. No, its not; value (and, separately, money) can both be created and destroyed. And, when examining any scale smaller than the global economy, value and money can each enter or exit the universe of analysis from or to the outside, as well.
        dleink 3y ago
        Even if it's a closed system (I'm not sure it is), it's definitely not a zero-sum system.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    According to the latest jobs report, average wages are up 4.1% in 2023.
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago
      where would they be if wages kept up with inflation, or value generated? 4.1% sounds nice, but inflation has been at, what, 7% over the last couple of years?
      - bryanlarsen 3y ago
        https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth
      - HDThoreaun 3y ago
        Inflation is currently 3.1%
- giantg2 3y ago
  I'd love to get put of IT, but there's nothing else that I can really switch to. Other good paying jobs have a high barrier to entry, terrible hours, etc.
1-6 3y ago
It’s still horrible and lots of people at large companies are worried of getting laid off any second.
- 1-6 3y ago
  Lots of risk taking behavior is gone and focus has shifted to saving the company money.
- pc86 3y ago
  Is it horrible or is it reversion to the mean? Post-COVID hiring and pay was completely unsustainable, and I'm shocked it lasted as many years as it did. You can't look at years of largesse and then when we get back to reality lament about how it's so horrible.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - iamflimflam1 3y ago
    It’s horrible for people terrified that their job might disappear and they won’t be able to find another one.
  - ok_dad 3y ago
    > years of largesse The American worker has never had largesse, even the tech workers like ourselves, the largesse is and was and will still be going to the capitalist class. You're basically saying that we must accept that we're meant to live shitty lives where we grind and grind for very little gain while the capitalists and founders thrive on our labor. Reality is reality, but the whole "we can't complain about this" message you're sending is part of what's keeping us here. We should be fighting for the fruits of our labor.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  I am, and several friends in F500s and/or Big4 consulting are too. Esp. the consultants, where they're waiting for the other shoe to drop every quarter.
obscurette 3y ago
If the opinion from old guy matters - 2021 and 2022 weren't great, these were insane and it wasn't sustainable. And it's completely normal that hangover after such years feels horrible.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Exactly. To me this felt extremely similar to the post-dot-com bust. Back then, the joke was that anyone who could "fog a mirror" could get hired in tech. While the mechanics this time around are a bit different (we didn't have TikTok back then to chronicle "A day in the life at a FAANG food court..."), the outcome is very much the same: lots of easy money led to over-hiring, and when that spigot turns off, there are lots of layoffs, which (if you got laid off) feels like an outright depression because you have a huge number of laid off people now going after a much smaller pool of job openings. Also, just like in the dot com bust, companies really start laser focusing on roles that are directly tied to revenue, but anything that is even slightly tangential/"a luxury" gets cut. In a non-scientific perusal of my LinkedIn connections, most of the software devs and sales people I know who were laid off found work relatively quickly, but I've seen people in roles like recruiting, content marketing, UX research, and product managers that have in some cases been unemployed for over a year. Middle management also definitely had a major thinning out.
itsoktocry 3y ago
>2021 and 2022 felt like great years in terms of the job market. 2023 felt horrible. Well, we had people bragging about working 2, 3 or more remote jobs in 2021/2022, so I'm not sure that should be the expectations anchor. 2023 reversed some of that. We're in a lull, no doubt. But there's still a lot happening.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  I now question how many of these cases were legitimate and/or sustainable. Coincidental to the overemployment stories, there was a trend of entry-level workers taking jobs and abandoning them at the end of the training period. They'd work a series of short-term "jobs" concurrently in which they collected pay for the time period in which nobody had any real expectations from them, and left when that changed. Overemployment candidates don't hide it well, or the media was making news up based on viral bullshit someone exaggerated on Reddit based on the above trend. I figured someone would try this shit so I kept an eye out; we only ever caught two OE cases arising from unresponsive remote employees with low output. (One confessed.) There's not exactly any mystery to catching this, and there's a ton of ways to get caught (as repeatedly reported by Redditors). I have a hard time believing this narrative was ever real for more than a handful of people. The story mainly seemed to serve as astroturf citable in support of eventual RTO mandates.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  > Well, we had people bragging about working 2, 3 or more remote jobs in 2021/2022 Do we know how prevalent that really was though? I just assumed those were extreme outliers, famous because they were so outrageous.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    Also, I never understood why people had a beef with it. Companies bend and cut the throat of loyal hard working employees the moment they are not relevant yet people raged some ethics there which was very misplaced.
epolanski 3y ago
> 2023 felt horrible. It really did. I choose that year to become an independent contractor, and thanks God the only client I found loves me and pays on time because otherwise literally nobody has ever contacted me on LinkedIn or anything with a single decent proposal. I have a huge fear of losing that client and going back to European corporate job and salary again.
- bsdpufferfish 3y ago
  > otherwise literally nobody has ever contacted me on LinkedIn If you're a contractor you should be the one contacting. Sales is part of the job.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    Thank you, I will take note of this for the future.
octodog 3y ago
Both can be true. Tech sector, especially start ups, is especially sensitive to interest rates. It's been a booming year for travel, retail, hospitality and more.

dsm4ck 3y ago

IT jobs are only a part of the total jobs picture.

genmud 3y ago
Yes, but I would be interested in the gross income of IT vs other occupations and how that is impacting overall economy. For example, if you drop 2 IT jobs, but each one is 150k, but you create 4x 60k jobs, it looks like you added 2 jobs, but in reality, you removed 60k worth of payroll income.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >For example, if you drop 2 IT jobs, but each one is 150k, but you create 4x 60k jobs, it looks like you added 2 jobs, but in reality, you removed 60k worth of payroll income. But the company saves 60k, so the net (to the economy) is the same.
  - wbshaw 3y ago
    That is not entirely true. Whereas a company will likely bank that profit, employees are more likely to put that income back into the economy which provides a multiplier effect of the income in overall economic growth.
    - itsoktocry 3y ago
      >That is not entirely true. No, it's entirely true. The economy is a closed system. Employees can't "put that income back into the economy", because it has never left. How it gets redistributed will vary, and you can make normative arguments about spending the money at the local coffee shop. But the net effect on the economy is the same.
      - jewayne 3y ago
        If that were true, then recessions and depressions would be impossible. The velocity of money moving through the economy would be a constant, like the speed of light. But recessions and depressions happen, so we know that the disappearance of certain transactions from the economy can have a negative macroeconomic effect.
      - milesvp 3y ago
        >The economy is a closed system This is sort of not true. The biggest example of why is the concept of the velocity of money. If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, it’s the idea of of how many times a single dollar is used in a given time period. It’s a very important measure, and it’s historic low at the start of the lock downs was why the fed dumping so much money into the economy was not a mistake (at the time). It’s an effective multiplier, and has very real impact as to the total utils that everyone in the spending chain collect. What this means, is that when money is spent outside a country, there is a very real risk that that the local velocity of money goes down, even though the gdp of the global economy is going up.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        > The economy is a closed system. No, its not; value (and, separately, money) can both be created and destroyed. And, when examining any scale smaller than the global economy, value and money can each enter or exit the universe of analysis from or to the outside, as well.
      - dleink 3y ago
        Even if it's a closed system (I'm not sure it is), it's definitely not a zero-sum system.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  According to the latest jobs report, average wages are up 4.1% in 2023.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    where would they be if wages kept up with inflation, or value generated? 4.1% sounds nice, but inflation has been at, what, 7% over the last couple of years?
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      Inflation is currently 3.1%
giantg2 3y ago
I'd love to get put of IT, but there's nothing else that I can really switch to. Other good paying jobs have a high barrier to entry, terrible hours, etc.

1-6 3y ago

It’s still horrible and lots of people at large companies are worried of getting laid off any second.

1-6 3y ago
Lots of risk taking behavior is gone and focus has shifted to saving the company money.
pc86 3y ago
Is it horrible or is it reversion to the mean? Post-COVID hiring and pay was completely unsustainable, and I'm shocked it lasted as many years as it did. You can't look at years of largesse and then when we get back to reality lament about how it's so horrible.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- iamflimflam1 3y ago
  It’s horrible for people terrified that their job might disappear and they won’t be able to find another one.
- ok_dad 3y ago
  > years of largesse The American worker has never had largesse, even the tech workers like ourselves, the largesse is and was and will still be going to the capitalist class. You're basically saying that we must accept that we're meant to live shitty lives where we grind and grind for very little gain while the capitalists and founders thrive on our labor. Reality is reality, but the whole "we can't complain about this" message you're sending is part of what's keeping us here. We should be fighting for the fruits of our labor.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
I am, and several friends in F500s and/or Big4 consulting are too. Esp. the consultants, where they're waiting for the other shoe to drop every quarter.

obscurette 3y ago

If the opinion from old guy matters - 2021 and 2022 weren't great, these were insane and it wasn't sustainable. And it's completely normal that hangover after such years feels horrible.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Exactly. To me this felt extremely similar to the post-dot-com bust. Back then, the joke was that anyone who could "fog a mirror" could get hired in tech. While the mechanics this time around are a bit different (we didn't have TikTok back then to chronicle "A day in the life at a FAANG food court..."), the outcome is very much the same: lots of easy money led to over-hiring, and when that spigot turns off, there are lots of layoffs, which (if you got laid off) feels like an outright depression because you have a huge number of laid off people now going after a much smaller pool of job openings. Also, just like in the dot com bust, companies really start laser focusing on roles that are directly tied to revenue, but anything that is even slightly tangential/"a luxury" gets cut. In a non-scientific perusal of my LinkedIn connections, most of the software devs and sales people I know who were laid off found work relatively quickly, but I've seen people in roles like recruiting, content marketing, UX research, and product managers that have in some cases been unemployed for over a year. Middle management also definitely had a major thinning out.

itsoktocry 3y ago

>2021 and 2022 felt like great years in terms of the job market. 2023 felt horrible. Well, we had people bragging about working 2, 3 or more remote jobs in 2021/2022, so I'm not sure that should be the expectations anchor. 2023 reversed some of that. We're in a lull, no doubt. But there's still a lot happening.

jstarfish 3y ago
I now question how many of these cases were legitimate and/or sustainable. Coincidental to the overemployment stories, there was a trend of entry-level workers taking jobs and abandoning them at the end of the training period. They'd work a series of short-term "jobs" concurrently in which they collected pay for the time period in which nobody had any real expectations from them, and left when that changed. Overemployment candidates don't hide it well, or the media was making news up based on viral bullshit someone exaggerated on Reddit based on the above trend. I figured someone would try this shit so I kept an eye out; we only ever caught two OE cases arising from unresponsive remote employees with low output. (One confessed.) There's not exactly any mystery to catching this, and there's a ton of ways to get caught (as repeatedly reported by Redditors). I have a hard time believing this narrative was ever real for more than a handful of people. The story mainly seemed to serve as astroturf citable in support of eventual RTO mandates.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
> Well, we had people bragging about working 2, 3 or more remote jobs in 2021/2022 Do we know how prevalent that really was though? I just assumed those were extreme outliers, famous because they were so outrageous.
- epolanski 3y ago
  Also, I never understood why people had a beef with it. Companies bend and cut the throat of loyal hard working employees the moment they are not relevant yet people raged some ethics there which was very misplaced.

epolanski 3y ago

> 2023 felt horrible. It really did. I choose that year to become an independent contractor, and thanks God the only client I found loves me and pays on time because otherwise literally nobody has ever contacted me on LinkedIn or anything with a single decent proposal. I have a huge fear of losing that client and going back to European corporate job and salary again.

bsdpufferfish 3y ago
> otherwise literally nobody has ever contacted me on LinkedIn If you're a contractor you should be the one contacting. Sales is part of the job.
- epolanski 3y ago
  Thank you, I will take note of this for the future.

octodog 3y ago

Both can be true. Tech sector, especially start ups, is especially sensitive to interest rates. It's been a booming year for travel, retail, hospitality and more.