4 ms·

I feel like the more obvious explanation is that we live in a time of economic uncertainty (cough tarrifs) so companies are cutting back hiring until things bec

I feel like the more obvious explanation is that we live in a time of economic uncertainty (cough tarrifs) so companies are cutting back hiring until things become more certain.

drivebyhooting 2y ago
Was happening last year too for SWE.
deepsun 2y ago
Job market got issues way before tariffs, somewhere in the pandemic times. I believe it's WFH. It taught companies remote work, and it's a small next step to offshore work.
- lolinder 2y ago
  The job market crash didn't correlate at all with WFH, it correlated with the end of WFH and (more importantly) exactly lined up with the end of ZIRP. Money was free, so a lot of people were paid out of thin air. When money stopped being free salaries actually had to come from somewhere, and there weren't enough somewheres to go around.
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    This is the correct answer. Tariffs are not why the job market is so awful. Maybe that will be true in the future, but the past two years of horrible terrible miserable state of the job market is not because of tariffs imposed a month ago. I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers all those posts on hn 2-3 years ago about how bad the job market is, right? It has only become worse. I know a kid who interned at a job last summer. Graduated, applied to a full-time job at the company. He happened to know someone in HR who told him "we got over a thousand applications for this job req in one day." How tariffs can be blamed for that kind of situation, which is happening all over the US and has been for literal _years_, defies logic.
  - deepsun 2y ago
    I don't understand "money was free". I'm an employer. I need to pay salary, and those money are not free for me regardless of interest rates. Maybe on a scale of national economies you can say that, but it doesn't affect my situation at all. It would be true if I could say "hire a person for $X, it will increase our net income by $X+$x", but it doesn't work like that at all. And for me it makes sense to skip candidates from SF Bay Area altogether, there are a lot of good candidates somewhere deep in Utah-s.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  Offshore is nothing new. Has been tried with multiple degrees of failure for decades. Hell, my first job decades ago was as cheap labor in an IT project offshored from the US.
Bluestein 2y ago
Maybe - also to all the below comments - it's "overdetermined", ie., an "all of the above" situation, with AI some part of that mix.-
mmooss 2y ago
That would seem to at least have a major impact that needs to be accounted for. A couple more I'd add: First, the Trump administration's economic impact is much more than tariffs - which are highly significant - but unprecedented interference in the free market and private business; destruction of the regulatory and other institutions that a stable economy depends on (e.g., democracy, the courts, the rule of law, bank regulation); disrupting the stability of international relations, possibly leading to highly destructive things like wars. Also, the recent trend of business to switch from (broadly speaking) innovation and productivity to rent-seeking, epitomized by private equity: cut workforces, other investment, and product to the bone and squeeze as much as possible out of the asset - leaving a dead, dry carcass.
- bawolff 2y ago
  The biggest thing with trump is nobody knows what he is going to do next. Businesses more than anything need to be able to make long term plans. Stability is important and that is out the window.
Ekaros 2y ago
At least in Europe I feel there has been general slowdown for a while and this was before tariffs. If there is uncertainty and maybe even drop in revenue companies really start considering if hiring makes sense in the moment unless it is absolutely mandatory.

I feel like the more obvious explanation is that we live in a time of economic uncertainty (cough tarrifs) so companies are cutting back hiring until things become more certain.

drivebyhooting 2y ago

Was happening last year too for SWE.

deepsun 2y ago

Job market got issues way before tariffs, somewhere in the pandemic times. I believe it's WFH. It taught companies remote work, and it's a small next step to offshore work.

lolinder 2y ago
The job market crash didn't correlate at all with WFH, it correlated with the end of WFH and (more importantly) exactly lined up with the end of ZIRP. Money was free, so a lot of people were paid out of thin air. When money stopped being free salaries actually had to come from somewhere, and there weren't enough somewheres to go around.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  This is the correct answer. Tariffs are not why the job market is so awful. Maybe that will be true in the future, but the past two years of horrible terrible miserable state of the job market is not because of tariffs imposed a month ago. I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers all those posts on hn 2-3 years ago about how bad the job market is, right? It has only become worse. I know a kid who interned at a job last summer. Graduated, applied to a full-time job at the company. He happened to know someone in HR who told him "we got over a thousand applications for this job req in one day." How tariffs can be blamed for that kind of situation, which is happening all over the US and has been for literal _years_, defies logic.
- deepsun 2y ago
  I don't understand "money was free". I'm an employer. I need to pay salary, and those money are not free for me regardless of interest rates. Maybe on a scale of national economies you can say that, but it doesn't affect my situation at all. It would be true if I could say "hire a person for $X, it will increase our net income by $X+$x", but it doesn't work like that at all. And for me it makes sense to skip candidates from SF Bay Area altogether, there are a lot of good candidates somewhere deep in Utah-s.
surgical_fire 2y ago
Offshore is nothing new. Has been tried with multiple degrees of failure for decades. Hell, my first job decades ago was as cheap labor in an IT project offshored from the US.

Bluestein 2y ago

Maybe - also to all the below comments - it's "overdetermined", ie., an "all of the above" situation, with AI some part of that mix.-

mmooss 2y ago

That would seem to at least have a major impact that needs to be accounted for. A couple more I'd add: First, the Trump administration's economic impact is much more than tariffs - which are highly significant - but unprecedented interference in the free market and private business; destruction of the regulatory and other institutions that a stable economy depends on (e.g., democracy, the courts, the rule of law, bank regulation); disrupting the stability of international relations, possibly leading to highly destructive things like wars. Also, the recent trend of business to switch from (broadly speaking) innovation and productivity to rent-seeking, epitomized by private equity: cut workforces, other investment, and product to the bone and squeeze as much as possible out of the asset - leaving a dead, dry carcass.

bawolff 2y ago
The biggest thing with trump is nobody knows what he is going to do next. Businesses more than anything need to be able to make long term plans. Stability is important and that is out the window.

Ekaros 2y ago

At least in Europe I feel there has been general slowdown for a while and this was before tariffs. If there is uncertainty and maybe even drop in revenue companies really start considering if hiring makes sense in the moment unless it is absolutely mandatory.