5 ms·

The Job Market Is Frozen

87 points by aarghh 2y ago

ronbenton 2y ago
I feel this. A side effect has been a lot of unhappy people in my workplace. People clearly don't want to be here, but they can't move, and there's an air of discontent.
- paulddraper 2y ago
  Low volatility indicates discontent, or high volatility?
paulpauper 2y ago
Employers too choosy. It's like everything else in the post-2010s economy: you have to be really talented to get ahead'; otherwise you are stuck or unemployed or menial jobs.
- desert_rue 2y ago
  I’m sure some of that is delaying: by having such high standards, they don’t have to go through the risk of actually hiring someone.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  they can afford to be. we used to get 1600+ apps in a week -- and that was 2013! now with AI and a global marketplace -- and remote work being a thing -- the pool is deeper and cheaper. burn an extra 3+ months and you can find the highly ("highly") skilled worker willing to take 70k to code some new stack. they may be in Croatia or Indonesia, but hey Teams works w/ different timezones...
linusg789 2y ago
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-job-market-is-frozen/ar-AA1zPrFg https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-job-market-is-froz...
1970-01-01 2y ago
Employers are afraid to take new hires in unprecedented and unpredictable times. It's not going to get better until the daily news becomes boring again.
- YZF 2y ago
  I think what makes this better is the emergence of new competitive business areas. E.g. AI companies are fighting for talent because they want to grow fast and beat the competition. Established companies sitting on a revenue stream and piles of cash without a good idea of where to go don't need more people. It's companies chasing growth that hire like there's no tomorrow.
  - betaby 2y ago
    > AI companies are fighting for talent and then there are Montreal AI companies with job listings of 75K CAD ( 52K USD ) Job market is dead in Montreal
Terr_ 2y ago
> Kyle M. K., a talent-strategy adviser at Indeed, told me. “Survive Until ’25” became an unofficial rallying cry for businesses across the country. All kinds of business? AFAIK that saying is/was specific to commercial real-estate, where nobody wants to admit that the valuation of the property might have gone down, and they're trying to delay and obscure it for long enough that they can pretend it never happened.
- araes 2y ago
  > “Survive Until ’25” That was the exact quote in the entire games industry last year. [1][2] The tail end of the 2023 layoffs really hit the industry hard and then it never really recovered afterward. [3] [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/survive-til-25-how-game-studios-are-keeping-the-lights-on-amid-the-layoffs https://www.ign.com/articles/survive-til-25-how-game-studios... [2] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-to-survive-until-2025-in-the-games-industry https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-to-survive-until-2025-in-t... [3] https://www.ign.com/articles/game-developers-mass-layoffs-human-impact-sony-ea https://www.ign.com/articles/game-developers-mass-layoffs-hu...
angry_moose 2y ago
If you want data on it; the St Louis Fed has some really good stats for job postings on Indeed in various sectors going back to 2020. They're rough in a lot of industries: IT Operations and Help Desk: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPITOPHE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPITOPHE Software Development: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE Banking and Finance: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPBAFI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPBAFI Hospitality and Tourism: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPHOTO https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPHOTO Scientific Research: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSCREDE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSCREDE Electrical Engineering is going pretty well though: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPELECENGI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPELECENGI
- meltyness 2y ago
  I disagree on the quality. Google trends reflects a general decline of Indeed popularity, which could lead to fewer postings. However yeah, places aren't really hiring. Absurdly gerrymandered roles and specific tech stacks point to probably more backrubs than hiring. Which is fine, if you want crony mcauthorized knuckledragger, take him, your product, your marketing, your teams, your contracts, and your whole history, and gtm.
  - angry_moose 2y ago
    It looks pretty flat to me over the last 5 years which roughly corresponds with their data: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F09ylwk&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge... Maybe a small decrease over the last year.
  - smnrchrds 2y ago
    In addition to being a job board, Indeed is a job aggregator. It scoops up listings from job boards and company websites and allows searching through them, with links to the original listing. It is not perfect—it misses many postings across the web. But as long as its miss rate hasn't gotten much worse over the past few years, the data presented above is still valid.
Spooky23 2y ago
Duh. Between the chaos in Washington and the commercial real estate crisis (30% of properties are underwater) we’re going to see a big crash, probably this year. Tesla and Nvidia are both huge components of the overall market cap and drive alot of the yields in the last year or two. You’re one Elon scandal or Nvidia earnings miss away from a really bad day. Healthcare is the other wildcard. For the last decade, medical practices of all kinds have consolidated into big regional networks that are interconnected. Many of them have cash flow challenges and the fucking around with Medicare/medicaid will drive some to insolvency. My one friend in the space is planning on 30% rif in some scenarios. Be smart. Heads down at work and start unwinding your long positions and increasing cash holdings.
- lukev 2y ago
  Just curious, what kind of Elon scandal do you think could move the needle at this point? Anyone capable and willing to observe his behavior has probably already acted on it. What lines are left to cross?
  - hedora 2y ago
    He could fall out of favor with Trump, or the market could conclude that Tesla’s being sacrificed at the altar in exchange for pork barrel spending on spacex and twitter.
  - happymellon 2y ago
    The needle has moved. https://www.thestreet.com/video/tesla-loses-1-trillion-status-as-shares-tank https://www.thestreet.com/video/tesla-loses-1-trillion-statu... Stock is dropping, sales are falling, Elon is losing money with his antics. [Edit] I'm showing a 25% drop in Tesla stock vales over this month. If Tesla is a significant part of the USA economy, then that has to be pretty painful. [/Edit] It may not be obvious to you, but the protests are emboldening people. https://electrek.co/2025/02/24/tesla-protests-gain-momentu-while-the-hate-is-spreading-tesla-owners/ https://electrek.co/2025/02/24/tesla-protests-gain-momentu-w... Not sure where you are, but here in the UK sales might not have dropped as much as other European countries but there are definitely less Tesla's around, and the conversation is towards other EV makers because people don't want to fund him.
pipeline_peak 2y ago
As a software dev should I even bother switching jobs? I really can’t stand my current one, but articles like this and ones about AI are pretty demotivating.
- YZF 2y ago
  You do you. If you can't stand your current job then look for a new one while doing your best at the current one. There are jobs out there and it's much easier to find a job while you have a job. Are you learning? Can you pivot a bit with your current employer to do something more interesting? Are you paid well? Ignore the articles. In the worst times of the dot com bubble burst you could still find interesting jobs. The aggregate is the aggregate and you are you. These are somewhat weird times but the companies are piling in money and will need to find ways to put it to work. AI not taking our jobs any time soon.
  - wucaworld 2y ago
    I find your second sentence very difficult to pull off in practice, if you have any sort of responsibility (e.g. kids). Modern interviews seem to assume you have a lot of time to dedicate to prep. In the old days, one could prep while on severance. But those seem to be becoming. Less generous and in some cases being skimped on through shenanigans.
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      Don't prep by doing leetcode. Skip leetcode places and places that expect multi-hour homework assignments as part of the interview process. Doing so narrows your options, but does not eliminate all openings. (In fact, I consider both leetcode and homework assignments to be negative signals about the company, or at least the team, so this can be a net win.)
- mmcromp 2y ago
  I don't want to spread fear but the market is very bad. Worst then people realize or want to admit. And it could very much be that we haven't seen the worst of it yet. People are trying to minimize it with comparisons to the dotcom crash or 200X market crash but the circumstances now are unique and no one knows the future. You can try to send out some resumes and see where they go but unless you have strong pedigree, high level senior, or connections expect to be disappointed.
dumbledoren 2y ago
The article doesn't emphasize the biggest elephant in the room: The zero-interest economy ended and crashed the economy that rode on bloated valuations and stock prices. And now companies are gutting themselves to float the stock prices.
- asdff 2y ago
  Wasn't that the excuse when they were laying people off two years ago?
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    Well yeah, but most companies still have a much higher headcount than before the pandemic so those initials layoffs from 2 years ago haven't cut through all the bloat.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      It is hard to grasp how Facebook and Google etc. could grow headcount like that. In like five years 2017 to 2022 Google doubled from 100k to 200k.
      - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
        It really isn't hard to grasp. All large orgs from government to private sector accumulate useless bloat over time if allowed to, since the goal of each employee is to grow their position and influence in the org at the expenses of the org, due to how the incentives for promotion are set up, kind of like a parasite . And the easiest way to do that is to get the budget to hire a team to work under you, then you basically get an instant promotion to "leader/manager" and you offload your work to those below you while you chill "working" at home and take credit, and boom, the org somehow doubled its headcount overnight without any added productivity or innovation. This gravy train was allowed to continue while there was an endless supply of free money to enable that added inefficiency, but now that the jig is up, the layoffs are a correction to that.
      - 2y ago
amai 2y ago
Europe is hiring: https://europa.eu/eures/portal/jv-se/home https://europa.eu/eures/portal/jv-se/home And companies in Europe still embrace home office often even in foreign countries: https://euremotejobs.com/ https://euremotejobs.com/
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  >Europe is hiring: On paper yeah but everyone I know who's applying to jobs is getting instant rejections before getting to the interview stage. Was also my experience a few months ago. The key word everywhere are "cost reduction" and layoffs and outsourcing are the norm. >And companies in Europe still embrace home office often even in foreign countries That's far from the norm. Most jobs (at least where I live) are in-office or hybrid. Full remote is super rare now. And fully remote from another country is usually B-2-B freelancing contracts which is not legal for one customer in all EU countries since it's considered dodging employment taxes.
- nicbou 2y ago
  Looking around me in Germany, I would say that we're out of the gutter at best. My relocation consultant friends said that hiring has picked up again after their slowest year in business. At some point it felt as if half of my friends were unemployed. Some of them had their 12 months of unemployment insurance run out, or their 6-month residence permit extension after losing their job. Now a few of them found jobs, but it took them a while and interviewing was far more difficult than before. This is just anecdata, but it feels like if something recovered from the bottom, it was in the last two months at best.
- svilen_dobrev 2y ago
  Not really. Searching "staff software" there yields 4 jobs, and the datadog one is lingering on Linkedin for 3+ months already. i am scanning since September... in January there was some uptick, but February is going nuts, especially last 2 weeks, nearing zero. Here some stats of my search (around staff, principal, CTO, tech.lead, ..): month: maybe >applied +-interview -rejects ..the rest did not respond 2024.8: 15 >10 +-1 -3 2024.9: 35 >15 +-2 -5 2024.10: 45 >25 +-2 -8 2024.11: 50 >30 +-6 -6 2024.12: 60 >25 +-3 -4 2025.01: 80 >40 +-5 -20 2025.02: 45 >25 +-0 -8 ~~where-approximately~~: local-local: 5% where i live local-onsite: 25% elsewhere in same country local-remote: 20% abroad-onsite: 30% abroad-remote: 20% ~~source-listing~~: linkedin: 40% news.ycombinator: 30% local-job-boards: 26% python.org: 1%
aurareturn 2y ago
It's very similar to the US housing market, which is frozen with the fewest homes exchanging hands in at least 30 years. Sellers don't want to sell because most of them are sitting on less than 3% mortgage rate. If they sell and buy a new home now, they'll have to pay 7%. Buyers don't want to buy because of the 7% mortgage rate and the drastically higher housing prices since covid. I think the job market is very similar to the housing market. People don't want to leave because no one is hiring. New people can't get hired because no one is leaving.
- whatever1 2y ago
  For the job market, there is a solution, pay more and they will come to you. It's just now it's more difficult to make the case because companies have completely eroded the trust to them, aka you cannot lure one with the prospect of career growth, as you will likely lay them off in 1 to 2 years. Masks have fallen, it's pure barbarism now. Enjoy.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    The solution is lower interest rates - for both markets.
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      nah artificially low rates is how we got here in the first place. it's like a junkie who is dope sick being desperate for more dope. that eases the pain in the short term but doesn't fix the problem -- real adjustments need to happen.
      - aurareturn 2y ago
        If the goal is to thaw the housing market and job market, then lower interest rates is basically the only lever. If your goal is to not to have a frozen market in the future, then you can do what you said. Depends on what goal you want to achieve.
qHrtahg 2y ago
They are right about the tariff threats, but orange man is quick to roll those back. Otherwise, it is hilarious to blame orange man for the current malaise. Biden provoked and escalated the Ukraine proxy war, with detrimental effects on energy prices and the world economy. Trump seemingly tries to shut down that conflict, which would be a major boost to the world economy. Whether he'll go through with that against the powerful political interest groups is another question.
- throw0923039 2y ago
  Trump is just completely ignoring the conflict. All negotiations in Riad were about normalising US-Russia relationship. Ukraine was barely mentioned. US is now buying mines and land from Ukraine for bargain price. Whatever Russia or Ukraine controls those mines in 10 years, does not really matter to US government! They will get ownership, profits and resources either way!
Havoc 2y ago
Yeah definitely something odd in the air. Also seeing a renewed offshoring push

87 points by aarghh 2y ago

I feel this. A side effect has been a lot of unhappy people in my workplace. People clearly don't want to be here, but they can't move, and there's an air of discontent.

paulddraper 2y ago
Low volatility indicates discontent, or high volatility?

paulpauper 2y ago

Employers too choosy. It's like everything else in the post-2010s economy: you have to be really talented to get ahead'; otherwise you are stuck or unemployed or menial jobs.

desert_rue 2y ago
I’m sure some of that is delaying: by having such high standards, they don’t have to go through the risk of actually hiring someone.
red-iron-pine 2y ago
they can afford to be. we used to get 1600+ apps in a week -- and that was 2013! now with AI and a global marketplace -- and remote work being a thing -- the pool is deeper and cheaper. burn an extra 3+ months and you can find the highly ("highly") skilled worker willing to take 70k to code some new stack. they may be in Croatia or Indonesia, but hey Teams works w/ different timezones...

linusg789 2y ago

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-job-market-is-frozen/ar-AA1zPrFg https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-job-market-is-froz...

1970-01-01 2y ago

Employers are afraid to take new hires in unprecedented and unpredictable times. It's not going to get better until the daily news becomes boring again.

YZF 2y ago
I think what makes this better is the emergence of new competitive business areas. E.g. AI companies are fighting for talent because they want to grow fast and beat the competition. Established companies sitting on a revenue stream and piles of cash without a good idea of where to go don't need more people. It's companies chasing growth that hire like there's no tomorrow.
- betaby 2y ago
  > AI companies are fighting for talent and then there are Montreal AI companies with job listings of 75K CAD ( 52K USD ) Job market is dead in Montreal

Terr_ 2y ago

> Kyle M. K., a talent-strategy adviser at Indeed, told me. “Survive Until ’25” became an unofficial rallying cry for businesses across the country. All kinds of business? AFAIK that saying is/was specific to commercial real-estate, where nobody wants to admit that the valuation of the property might have gone down, and they're trying to delay and obscure it for long enough that they can pretend it never happened.

araes 2y ago
> “Survive Until ’25” That was the exact quote in the entire games industry last year. [1][2] The tail end of the 2023 layoffs really hit the industry hard and then it never really recovered afterward. [3] [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/survive-til-25-how-game-studios-are-keeping-the-lights-on-amid-the-layoffs https://www.ign.com/articles/survive-til-25-how-game-studios... [2] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-to-survive-until-2025-in-the-games-industry https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-to-survive-until-2025-in-t... [3] https://www.ign.com/articles/game-developers-mass-layoffs-human-impact-sony-ea https://www.ign.com/articles/game-developers-mass-layoffs-hu...

angry_moose 2y ago

If you want data on it; the St Louis Fed has some really good stats for job postings on Indeed in various sectors going back to 2020. They're rough in a lot of industries: IT Operations and Help Desk: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPITOPHE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPITOPHE Software Development: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE Banking and Finance: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPBAFI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPBAFI Hospitality and Tourism: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPHOTO https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPHOTO Scientific Research: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSCREDE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSCREDE Electrical Engineering is going pretty well though: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPELECENGI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPELECENGI

meltyness 2y ago
I disagree on the quality. Google trends reflects a general decline of Indeed popularity, which could lead to fewer postings. However yeah, places aren't really hiring. Absurdly gerrymandered roles and specific tech stacks point to probably more backrubs than hiring. Which is fine, if you want crony mcauthorized knuckledragger, take him, your product, your marketing, your teams, your contracts, and your whole history, and gtm.
- angry_moose 2y ago
  It looks pretty flat to me over the last 5 years which roughly corresponds with their data: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F09ylwk&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge... Maybe a small decrease over the last year.
- smnrchrds 2y ago
  In addition to being a job board, Indeed is a job aggregator. It scoops up listings from job boards and company websites and allows searching through them, with links to the original listing. It is not perfect—it misses many postings across the web. But as long as its miss rate hasn't gotten much worse over the past few years, the data presented above is still valid.

Spooky23 2y ago

Duh. Between the chaos in Washington and the commercial real estate crisis (30% of properties are underwater) we’re going to see a big crash, probably this year. Tesla and Nvidia are both huge components of the overall market cap and drive alot of the yields in the last year or two. You’re one Elon scandal or Nvidia earnings miss away from a really bad day. Healthcare is the other wildcard. For the last decade, medical practices of all kinds have consolidated into big regional networks that are interconnected. Many of them have cash flow challenges and the fucking around with Medicare/medicaid will drive some to insolvency. My one friend in the space is planning on 30% rif in some scenarios. Be smart. Heads down at work and start unwinding your long positions and increasing cash holdings.

lukev 2y ago
Just curious, what kind of Elon scandal do you think could move the needle at this point? Anyone capable and willing to observe his behavior has probably already acted on it. What lines are left to cross?
- hedora 2y ago
  He could fall out of favor with Trump, or the market could conclude that Tesla’s being sacrificed at the altar in exchange for pork barrel spending on spacex and twitter.
- happymellon 2y ago
  The needle has moved. https://www.thestreet.com/video/tesla-loses-1-trillion-status-as-shares-tank https://www.thestreet.com/video/tesla-loses-1-trillion-statu... Stock is dropping, sales are falling, Elon is losing money with his antics. [Edit] I'm showing a 25% drop in Tesla stock vales over this month. If Tesla is a significant part of the USA economy, then that has to be pretty painful. [/Edit] It may not be obvious to you, but the protests are emboldening people. https://electrek.co/2025/02/24/tesla-protests-gain-momentu-while-the-hate-is-spreading-tesla-owners/ https://electrek.co/2025/02/24/tesla-protests-gain-momentu-w... Not sure where you are, but here in the UK sales might not have dropped as much as other European countries but there are definitely less Tesla's around, and the conversation is towards other EV makers because people don't want to fund him.

pipeline_peak 2y ago

As a software dev should I even bother switching jobs? I really can’t stand my current one, but articles like this and ones about AI are pretty demotivating.

YZF 2y ago
You do you. If you can't stand your current job then look for a new one while doing your best at the current one. There are jobs out there and it's much easier to find a job while you have a job. Are you learning? Can you pivot a bit with your current employer to do something more interesting? Are you paid well? Ignore the articles. In the worst times of the dot com bubble burst you could still find interesting jobs. The aggregate is the aggregate and you are you. These are somewhat weird times but the companies are piling in money and will need to find ways to put it to work. AI not taking our jobs any time soon.
- wucaworld 2y ago
  I find your second sentence very difficult to pull off in practice, if you have any sort of responsibility (e.g. kids). Modern interviews seem to assume you have a lot of time to dedicate to prep. In the old days, one could prep while on severance. But those seem to be becoming. Less generous and in some cases being skimped on through shenanigans.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Don't prep by doing leetcode. Skip leetcode places and places that expect multi-hour homework assignments as part of the interview process. Doing so narrows your options, but does not eliminate all openings. (In fact, I consider both leetcode and homework assignments to be negative signals about the company, or at least the team, so this can be a net win.)
mmcromp 2y ago
I don't want to spread fear but the market is very bad. Worst then people realize or want to admit. And it could very much be that we haven't seen the worst of it yet. People are trying to minimize it with comparisons to the dotcom crash or 200X market crash but the circumstances now are unique and no one knows the future. You can try to send out some resumes and see where they go but unless you have strong pedigree, high level senior, or connections expect to be disappointed.

dumbledoren 2y ago

The article doesn't emphasize the biggest elephant in the room: The zero-interest economy ended and crashed the economy that rode on bloated valuations and stock prices. And now companies are gutting themselves to float the stock prices.

asdff 2y ago
Wasn't that the excuse when they were laying people off two years ago?
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  Well yeah, but most companies still have a much higher headcount than before the pandemic so those initials layoffs from 2 years ago haven't cut through all the bloat.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    It is hard to grasp how Facebook and Google etc. could grow headcount like that. In like five years 2017 to 2022 Google doubled from 100k to 200k.
    - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
      It really isn't hard to grasp. All large orgs from government to private sector accumulate useless bloat over time if allowed to, since the goal of each employee is to grow their position and influence in the org at the expenses of the org, due to how the incentives for promotion are set up, kind of like a parasite . And the easiest way to do that is to get the budget to hire a team to work under you, then you basically get an instant promotion to "leader/manager" and you offload your work to those below you while you chill "working" at home and take credit, and boom, the org somehow doubled its headcount overnight without any added productivity or innovation. This gravy train was allowed to continue while there was an endless supply of free money to enable that added inefficiency, but now that the jig is up, the layoffs are a correction to that.
    - 2y ago

amai 2y ago

Europe is hiring: https://europa.eu/eures/portal/jv-se/home https://europa.eu/eures/portal/jv-se/home And companies in Europe still embrace home office often even in foreign countries: https://euremotejobs.com/ https://euremotejobs.com/

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
>Europe is hiring: On paper yeah but everyone I know who's applying to jobs is getting instant rejections before getting to the interview stage. Was also my experience a few months ago. The key word everywhere are "cost reduction" and layoffs and outsourcing are the norm. >And companies in Europe still embrace home office often even in foreign countries That's far from the norm. Most jobs (at least where I live) are in-office or hybrid. Full remote is super rare now. And fully remote from another country is usually B-2-B freelancing contracts which is not legal for one customer in all EU countries since it's considered dodging employment taxes.
nicbou 2y ago
Looking around me in Germany, I would say that we're out of the gutter at best. My relocation consultant friends said that hiring has picked up again after their slowest year in business. At some point it felt as if half of my friends were unemployed. Some of them had their 12 months of unemployment insurance run out, or their 6-month residence permit extension after losing their job. Now a few of them found jobs, but it took them a while and interviewing was far more difficult than before. This is just anecdata, but it feels like if something recovered from the bottom, it was in the last two months at best.
svilen_dobrev 2y ago
Not really. Searching "staff software" there yields 4 jobs, and the datadog one is lingering on Linkedin for 3+ months already. i am scanning since September... in January there was some uptick, but February is going nuts, especially last 2 weeks, nearing zero. Here some stats of my search (around staff, principal, CTO, tech.lead, ..): month: maybe >applied +-interview -rejects ..the rest did not respond 2024.8: 15 >10 +-1 -3 2024.9: 35 >15 +-2 -5 2024.10: 45 >25 +-2 -8 2024.11: 50 >30 +-6 -6 2024.12: 60 >25 +-3 -4 2025.01: 80 >40 +-5 -20 2025.02: 45 >25 +-0 -8 ~~where-approximately~~: local-local: 5% where i live local-onsite: 25% elsewhere in same country local-remote: 20% abroad-onsite: 30% abroad-remote: 20% ~~source-listing~~: linkedin: 40% news.ycombinator: 30% local-job-boards: 26% python.org: 1%

aurareturn 2y ago

It's very similar to the US housing market, which is frozen with the fewest homes exchanging hands in at least 30 years. Sellers don't want to sell because most of them are sitting on less than 3% mortgage rate. If they sell and buy a new home now, they'll have to pay 7%. Buyers don't want to buy because of the 7% mortgage rate and the drastically higher housing prices since covid. I think the job market is very similar to the housing market. People don't want to leave because no one is hiring. New people can't get hired because no one is leaving.

whatever1 2y ago
For the job market, there is a solution, pay more and they will come to you. It's just now it's more difficult to make the case because companies have completely eroded the trust to them, aka you cannot lure one with the prospect of career growth, as you will likely lay them off in 1 to 2 years. Masks have fallen, it's pure barbarism now. Enjoy.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  The solution is lower interest rates - for both markets.
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    nah artificially low rates is how we got here in the first place. it's like a junkie who is dope sick being desperate for more dope. that eases the pain in the short term but doesn't fix the problem -- real adjustments need to happen.
    - aurareturn 2y ago
      If the goal is to thaw the housing market and job market, then lower interest rates is basically the only lever. If your goal is to not to have a frozen market in the future, then you can do what you said. Depends on what goal you want to achieve.

qHrtahg 2y ago

They are right about the tariff threats, but orange man is quick to roll those back. Otherwise, it is hilarious to blame orange man for the current malaise. Biden provoked and escalated the Ukraine proxy war, with detrimental effects on energy prices and the world economy. Trump seemingly tries to shut down that conflict, which would be a major boost to the world economy. Whether he'll go through with that against the powerful political interest groups is another question.

throw0923039 2y ago
Trump is just completely ignoring the conflict. All negotiations in Riad were about normalising US-Russia relationship. Ukraine was barely mentioned. US is now buying mines and land from Ukraine for bargain price. Whatever Russia or Ukraine controls those mines in 10 years, does not really matter to US government! They will get ownership, profits and resources either way!

Havoc 2y ago

Yeah definitely something odd in the air. Also seeing a renewed offshoring push