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Job trends of HN Who Is Hiring?
- devKnight 2y agoeverything is trending down. is that because there are fewer job posts over all?
- locusofself 2y agothat's the only thing I can intuit from this graph. The relative popularity of languages seems irrelevant.
- rossdavidh 2y agoSo, thank-you for confirming that it's not just me. :)
- rossdavidh 2y agoActually, it does also confirm that, although it hasn't gotten better yet, during 2024 it did stop getting worse, at least.
- scoperesolution 2y agoTrends? Start your own business because nobody is hiring. That's the trend i'm seeing... sigh.
- thaumaturgy 2y agoSincerely, yes. A lot of talented people are struggling right now, but could take the time and energy they're spending on fruitless job applications and devote it to some modest-scale side project with commercial potential. Worst-case scenario, you get an interesting portfolio project and something to talk about at a future interview. Possibly, you get something that pays the bills and avoids having to deal with everything that's gone wrong with tech hiring. If you've been laid off from a technical role, you probably came away with enough knowledge to build a competing micro-service.
- TheCapeGreek 2y agoFew people, even in decently earning roles like in tech, will have the runway to try and make something successful on their own all of a sudden after job loss. Starting a freelancing practice is more likely to bear fruit, but it's a very different ballgame of overheads than "just" the core job itself, if you want to get the full rewards of being a freelancer.
- coolThingsFirst 2y agoRunway is not the issue, imho the issue is skills and having a idea that can be monetized. Hosting is pretty cheap, we have insanely good tools to automate tedious parts of the process and the time investment isn't huge as well.
- TheCapeGreek 2y ago"Making money is easy, just go out there and make money" is effectively what you're saying. It takes time to find and execute these ideas. Yes the tech can be cheap, maybe even building it can be cheap, but the time to grow your customer & client base from scratch can be highly varied. If it were really this easy, you'd have every person on IndieHackers having ditched their jobs already because their ideas have taken off. Yet very few have. Go out and execute, yes, but it can take many iterations to get anywhere. Even Pieter Levels has about a 10% hit rate on his projects being successful.
- krsnyder 2y agoI think you're being pretty dismissive here. That person is talking about someone who currently isn't working and is struggling to find work. "idle bandwidth". Nobody is saying it's simple or easy, but if you're in this field you have the skills to at least try. I've been laid off for 9 months so I understand the toll it takes mentally, but having a pessimistic attitude won't help you in the short or long term.
- conductr 2y agoWeb 2.0 came out of the dotcom bust. As a HN oldtimer, I really wish I was seeing more posts on HN about people partnering up to build cool stuff right now given there’s ton of collective idle bandwidth out there. Maybe it’s happening somewhere else and HN is not the place for that these days?
- CalRobert 2y agoWell, I tried to do something cool but I had rent to pay and kids to feed so I needed to get a day job (I was very fortunate to find one, on an HN who's hiring thread no less). However, I don't have the savings a lot of people here seem to, perhaps because I'm in Europe.
- conductr 2y agoDoesn’t sound like you have the idle bandwidth I mentioned, are you just venting?
- CalRobert 2y agoFair point, I think the idea was more about people who had the ability to work on their own project unpaid for a decent amount of time perhaps being scarce. But if you're on unemployment now seems like a great time to bootstrap something.
- shubb 2y agoI think it's pertinent. Ppst 2008 was essentially disinflation economy whereas inflation has been high running into this and people are struggling a bit. To launch something you gotta be hungry but not too hungry. Maybe people are either retiring on thier 401ks or uber driving 24 hours a day to make rent. That or the demo here got old and acquired responsibilities.
- conductr 2y agoThere's still some large enough percentage of laid off folks that perhaps are looking but living on reserves instead of 24hr gig work. This is the pool of idle bandwidth I'm speaking of. G'parent that found another job; not idle bandwidth. Someone that had no reserves and is flipping burgers; not idle bandwidth. Refreshing Indeed, LinkedIn Jobs, etc. daily after about a week or two while living on savings, moving back with parents, living off spouse's income only, and an infinite number of other possibilities; idle bandwidth. I find if funny you mention economics of 2008 but don't also mention how tech salaries changed over that same time. At a high level, this is the exact population of people that should have some dry powder in the keg and be able to weather this storm. I'm not saying that to be dismissive of how dire prolonged unemployment is to one's personal finances, even with savings. But I am being dismissive of the idea that most of these people are doing gig work so much they can't hack on something. I do also think the demo here has changed a lot and you're onto something with that comment.
- jonshariat 2y agoThanks for putting this together. Curious if HN traffic is also down but intuitively this feels right.
- askonomm 2y agoLooks like the downtrend has slowed, and almost stopped. This aligns with my observations on local job boards to me, and some programming language specific Slack channels I'm on that have #jobs boards, in that there's a slight uptick in jobs right now. This is good news, it seems.
- layoric 2y agoDo you think that is just the time of year or more significant?
- askonomm 2y agoI'm not sure really, but I also did get a recruiter contact me for the first time in like 2 years. This is all anecdotal of course, but I'm hopeful.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoThere's always an uptick at the beginning of the year.
- araes 2y agoSomewhat correlates with the Layoffs.fyi trends [1][2]. Extreme lack of layoffs Q3 2020 to Q1 2022. Big rise through 2024, peaking at Q1 2023 and then slowly declining. Mostly tapered off to 2021 and 2022 levels near the start 2025. Also, complimentary chart from Stackoverflow about the general trends in questions related to these categories [3] [1] https://layoffs.fyi https://layoffs.fyi [2] [layoffs.fyi chart] "Tech layoffs since Covid-19", https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRluXcoyZOl3YRgzY_FSdeyu1t1dPNjs39KQjxhCq7aP1V9QmlvJ9XdfpBR49dBT894gVXipjEAcazG/pubchart?oid=856137289&format=interactive https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRluXcoyZOl3... [3] StackOverflow Trends, https://trends.stackoverflow.co/?tags=reactjs,python,typescript,node.js,go,javascript,ruby,kubernetes,java,ruby-on-rails https://trends.stackoverflow.co/?tags=reactjs,python,typescr...
- ProjectArcturis 2y agoAnecdotally, I've been getting a lot more recruiter spam lately.
- Jaygles 2y agoSame, although most of the LinkedIn profiles of the recruiters are incredibly sparse. For me some of it might be scammy/spammy
- mattmanser 2y agoHere in the UK I was seeing the recruiter emails begin to return to more normal levels in Sept/Oct. Albeit with lower salaries than 2022/23. But then it all abruptly stopped and disappeared again for a few months. It's now started again but very slowly.
- myko 2y agoSame, though primarily for leadership positions. Most probably looking for someone to run an offshore team.
- el_benhameen 2y agoYeah. Really slow in November/December (I assume holidays, budgets, etc.), but seems to be picking back up.
- CoastalCoder 2y agoVery cool. Probably not so easy, but I'd be really interested in seeing the relative trends of (related to AI) vs. (not related to AI) job posts.
- worik 2y agoWhat a dreadful graph on the front page y-axis has no units. x-axis has no years Two many data to be able to follow it Sigh
- stanleykm 2y agox axis has years but the months are inconsistent. Y axis is probably just the count of posts but that could be clearer
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cryptoz 2y agoRemarkably consistent downward trend for Android :(
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoOther than Typescript, they're all on a downward trend if you omit the COVID bump.
- pkaye 2y agoIf you graph iOS and Android they are both on a downward trend.
- OptionOfT 2y agoIt's been really quiet. I was laid off twice in 2024. First in April after 10 years at the same place. There wasn't a lot. Got a new great opportunity, but restructurings happened, I was the last to join and... again laid off. But now it feels even more quiet than April-May-June. I've been debating cutting down my cover letter into a couple of lines just telling the company why I find the role interesting, and removing the rest. But it's hard.
- bilsbie 2y agoFor one data point I always did better with a short, generic cover letter than a customized one. Maybe employers like you more if you don’t look too interested?
- OptionOfT 2y agoBut these days half of the employers ask why you want to work somewhere, which is gauging interest. So unsure. Plus, I haven't had success with my previous cover letter. So I figured I'd change something.
- conductr 2y agoThe goal at this stage isn’t to get a job offer, it’s to start a conversation. If you’re being asked why you want to work somewhere, I’d consider that a winning cover letter/resume. That said, I’ve job hoped my entire career and have never once written a cover letter since a college workshop where I had to in order to earn course points.
- roland35 2y agoI've stopped doing cover letters entirely and have had more luck. I've heard the same from others too. I do have a few separate resumes with different focuses, and tweak a one sentence summary at the top.
- OptionOfT 2y agoThat's a good idea. My summary is way too long.
- dom96 2y agoGreat graph, crazy that we still haven't recovered to 2018/2019 levels
- aprilthird2021 2y agoWe likely will not
- Trasmatta 2y ago2021 was such a bizarre year in so many ways. It feels like a post COVID fever dream in retrospect, and seeing that massive jump in job listings that year is a reminder of how weird it was.
- thr0w 2y agoThe market was so insane.
- cudgy 2y agoThe job market and the capital markets are still insane. Unfortunately, I don’t think we reached the bottom yet given the astronomical real estate prices relative to incomes and high market valuations relative to earnings. Some signs of reality are starting like Real estate prices starting to fall in the Sunbelt of the US. The obvious commercial real estate bubble has not completely burst yet. So many markets are hanging like guillotine’s ready to drop. Markets have been buoyed by excess capital and rampant speculation by the wealthy for so long now; its shocking how long the charade has lasted.
- conductr 2y agoMy armchair macroeconomic take is Covid should have been an enormous financial depression but they flattened the curve and caused bubbles in some cases by printing so much money we’ll be paying the price for decades. It was certainly a huge reallocation/consolidation of wealth. I even think the somewhat untold story is just how much less well off a lot of Americans are. Like in my world, what I’ve seen amongst my access to HR data at a handful of large companies, the executive class (maybe VP and up) did great, the low/minimum wage class did great (labor shortage helped wages net of inflation), but there’s a huge mass of people in the middle that perhaps are only making 10% more than their 2019 wage right now after all the inflation. House prices ~doubled so unless they were already a homeowner acquiring one is basically impossible now, especially with rates were they are. They didn’t own much stock so largely did not participate in that either. It’s a different world and I think we can’t say for sure what will happen next.
- 2y ago
- joshdavham 2y agoNice timing with this post! I guess there will be another new HN Who is Hiring? in a couple days
- dartos 2y agoAs someone who’s been in the industry for 15 years and got laid off just today for the 2nd time in the past year. This is depressing.
- coolThingsFirst 2y ago[flagged]
- dartos 2y agoYou can have the same answer I got: “Restructuring”
- TypingOutBugs 2y agoWhat sort of edit is that?
- mttpgn 2y agoWhat a great reply this graph can make the next time we see VCs on X complaining how, "Everyone I talk to has so, so many engineering positions they just can't fill". By these measurements, the job market looks worse now than it did at the troughs of lockdown.
- ErikAugust 2y agoHa. Not that anyone lies to VCs or anything.
- Glyptodon 2y agoMidpandemic was great for hiring in my memory, but I guess that was after the lockdowns probably.
- harimau777 2y agoPersonally, I'm getting close to just giving up. I've completed hundreds of applications, contacted hundreds of recruiters, and spent hundred of hours studying. All with nothing to show for it. Every single job I see has hundreds of applications. I have no idea what to do.
- rr808 2y agoIPO market is still dead. VC companies are all stuck in PE purgatory. AI was a bright spark but now Deepseek is killing that dream too.
- aaronblohowiak 2y agothis is something i dont understand because P/E's are so high, why so few IPOs?
- rr808 2y agoWho knows, maybe the private valuations are even higher, or maybe they think there will be a boom this year which will be a better time to sell.
- cudgy 2y agoInteresting take on deepseek. I think deepseek may be a breath of fresh air slightly leveling the playing field for small startups and individual developers, Assuming the claimed reduced training cost are real.
- notatoad 2y agodoes this account for all the listings? or is there a mystery "other" category that's rising as these ones fall?
- cudgy 2y agoThe listings in this graph are almost entirely from the San Francisco Bay area.
- lolinder 2y agoI know this doesn't make things better, but it bears repeating: much as the media would like it to be, this is not caused by AI. Two major things happened in 2022 that everyone knew would cause this if they stuck around: * The Section 174 changes went into effect, requiring all software to be expensed as R&D, which means it can't be deducted from profits directly and instead has to be amortized over 5 years [0]. * Interest rates went back up starting in Feb 2022 and continuing through Aug 2023. This chart [1] is a near-perfect mirror of the job trends. I know this doesn't help anyone who's struggling right now, but it does serve to emphasize that this didn't just happen, and it wasn't the result of technological advances making us obsolete. Federal policy was set up to encourage an enormous amount of investment into software development, and it's now... not. Turns out politics matters. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34627712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34627712 [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1DfOX https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1DfOX
- Sytten 2y agoI really don't understand why nobody is talking about it anymore. It's a big deal for startups.
- harimau777 2y agoWhat would be the point? Politics is hopelessly broken so even if people did talk about it there is nothing that we can do about it.
- guyfromfargo 2y agoThank you for posting this! I can’t believe section 174 is not more well known. I run a small software company and hiring an engineer is literally 5X more expensive as hiring a marketing or support person in a post section 174 world.
- la64710 2y agoYes but there is also another force that I see playing out now. With two decades of continuous training companies have grown an army of people overseas who can do any software or IT jobs at a level good enough to really be competitive to domestic workers. Offshore locations today are not the same it was twenty years ago both from quality and quantity perspective. No point in staying blind to this phenomenon.
- lgleason 2y agoBasically the entire market is dead right now.
- aprilthird2021 2y agoIf this is dead, I don't see many signs it's going to liven up soon...
- phyzix5761 2y agoAs lolinder stated, one of the main causes of this is Section 174 where software is now amortized as R&D over 5 years which means companies can't treat is as a regular expense. This leads to companies hiring less. There is a bill that is stuck in the Senate which aims at reversing this (among other things): https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7024 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7024 Please reach out to your senators and tell them to support this bill so our job prospects can return to normal.
- holyroller 2y agoThis is effectively a subsidy for the tech industry, why is this incentive necessary here? It's not specifically targeting startups from what I can tell and potentially just a kickback to large employers and investors.
- aaronblohowiak 2y agoWhy is forced amortization of payroll a subsidy?
- phyzix5761 2y agoAll software jobs, including those in startups, are affected by the amortization rule. It makes it harder for startups to afford more software engineers because they have to pay taxes on cash they don't actually have. The only companies the new amortization rule helps is big established firms that can afford to amortize because they have excess cashflow.
- belter 2y agoThe chart correlates well, with similar references from the US and similar related markets (see [1], [2], [3] and [4] ). At a more macro level, for the United States, I looked at U.S. unemployment data, for the last 80 years. Starting from 1945 until today Jan 2025. All jobs, not only Technology. What jumped out immediately is a clear cyclical pattern: Unemployment peaks occur, on average, every 7–8 years, with some variability. - Shorter Gaps (3–5 years) showed up in the 1950s and early 1960s, often tied to small recessions. - Longer Gaps (10–11 years) happened before the early 1990s recession, again around the early 2000s, and more recently between 2009–2010 and 2020. - Outliers include the early 1980s (double-dip recession pushing unemployment above 10%) and, the 2020’s pandemic spike, which briefly soared past 14%. Overall, the business cycle hasn’t radically changed over 80 years: Expansions that push unemployment down to historic lows, followed by recessions that create sharp spikes in unemployment. Assuming 7–8 years is a decent rule of thumb, and based on US history of the last 80 years, we are in for a next continued peak into growing unemployment, until at least 2027–2028. At a smaller scale, local trends in geopolitics, tariffs, AI adoption, and political dysfunction reflect (or confirm) the broader macro trend. Plan accordingly...And hope I am wrong... [1] Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE [2] Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in Canada: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXCATPSOFTDEVE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXCATPSOFTDEVE [3] Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in Germany: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXDETPSOFTDEVE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXDETPSOFTDEVE [4] Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United Kingdom: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXGBTPSOFTDEVE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXGBTPSOFTDEVE
- vipartX 2y agoCTO para revolución musical. 0 cash, 10% equity. Si puedes codear más rápido que un tweet de Musk, DM.