Yet another Hacker News

22 points santiagobasulto 3 hours ago 15 comments

Lately I've noticed that "Who wants to be hired" posts are getting more comments than the "Who's hiring" ones.

I pulled the data using HN API and confirmed this "reversal". "Who wants to be hired" posts are getting 2x more comments than "Who's hiring" posts (and seems to be accelerating). For reference, in 2022 it used to be 0.25.

I'm old, I'm from the times where demand for software devs greatly outpaced supply, but maybe we're seeing a reversal of it?

I don't want to draw any conclusions yet, there could be many things going on. My initial thoughts would be AI-related. We're either entering a general recession because the AI bubble is bursting, or the job market is changing due to AI.

Again, I don't have any answers, but it's something definitively interesting to discuss!

Here's the source code (including data): https://github.com/santiagobasulto/hn-who-is-hiring-analysis

ddorian43 2 hours ago | parent

Started to reverse before ai though. With the law in US (which was reverted) that you couldn't use all software research as expense so you needed to pay tax on no-profit.

Then with increased interest rates. Which are still active and weirdly should've caused more hardship than ~3 months lower stocks.

And now ai, but this depends on demand for software too, which I don't how big it is, like can demand scale too with ai?

Like when you lower electricity cost people just use more electricity.

gokuljs 1 hour ago | parent

It all starter from With the law in US (which was reverted) that you couldn't use all software research as expense so you needed to pay tax on no-profit. Then you cannat hire people remotly if you do that you will loose tax benefits and stuff. then ai picked up . basically we are screwed

brazukadev 1 hour ago | parent

Most of the money that used to go to software is going straight to Google and Meta. The well has run dry.

smw 42 minutes ago | parent

Why would it go to Meta?

zamadatix 1 hour ago | parent

It'd be interesting to go slightly farther back to better gauge the impact of the covid hiring craze.

gokuljs 41 minutes ago | parent

Its not that dude. is been six years and we are still talkin g about that

gib444 1 hour ago | parent

I'm tired of reading job adverts for 3 people's jobs (frontend, backend, DevOps) all in one, all lead/staff/senior but not the salary to match any of that, not even close

znamd 50 minutes ago | parent

you left out ai/ml stuff like agent/rags. the sad part is i'm willing to accept doing all this for a low salary but i just get rejected.

not_foobar 22 minutes ago | parent

same

Tade0 1 hour ago | parent

Back in 2023 when I was reading the "Who's hiring" for March I wanted to ask aloud "truly, who is?".

I'm happy my junior years passed before all this and I don't envy those who are just coming into this field.

And it's not just tech - all over my extended social circle there are people in various fields who were laid off. It's a crawling, largely invisible in the usual indicators, crisis.

mhitza 1 hour ago | parent

I think the number of HNers also increased significantly over the last year. It'd be nice to see some uptick stats from dang or tomhow.

larose 1 hour ago | parent

I've been tracking this as well [1], and there's indeed a clear difference between pre-2023 and 2023 onward.

[1] https://hnjobs.mathieularose.com

operation_moose 58 minutes ago | parent

Unsurprisingly, the "Who's Hiring" almost perfectly tracks the "Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States" data from the fed, though it doesn't go as far back.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

Most other industries follow a similar trend, but didn't fly quite as high in 2022 and aren't in as bad of a trough right now.

Electrical Engineering: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXDETPELECENGI (actually up slightly)

Accounting: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPACCO (more seasonal noise)

Marketing: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPMARK

culopatin 51 minutes ago | parent

What I noticed lately is that everyone wants a principal or staff SWE. So much that I even think the titles are getting diluted.

gaws 30 minutes ago | parent

> I've noticed that "Who wants to be hired" posts are getting more comments than the "Who's hiring" ones.

Well, yeah. High supply of workers meets low demand of jobs.