The job market is worse now than it was a couple years ago. It's not AI's fault, blame the Federal Reserve Bank and the interest rates. Blame VC, who've been relying on 0 interest loans for so long they don't know how to actually take a risk any more, and will no longer fund startups. Blame cowardly executives of established companies, who are no longer seeing sales numbers increase exponentially forever.

This is what non-zero interest rates do to a motherfucker.

We need universal basic income.

I was laid off last year. Got a job after a while and just survived another layoff today. I agree with this assessment.

It’s all post-pandemic stuff. Executives thought growth would continue, and it didn’t. Then they had to take account for their decisions and make others suffer for them.

I’ve met a lot of people who were boot camp developers. Did a month long class and came out during a period where everyone was hiring anyone with a pulse. Got in the job, barely produced anything, and didn’t really learn much past that. Obviously they were the first to get cut when things got sour. Now, they’re wondering why they can’t get past the tech part of the interview. I feel this might account for a lot of those numbers.

This article isn't really saying anything. It's just saying that a lot of people feel like the job market has gotten tougher, but we don't have any solid evidence to prove that.

Personally, I recently got a new software development job, and it was offered to me from the very first company I interviewed for. (This is out of the ordinary for me, as during past job searches it took me several interviews before I got an offer.) Did I get a job quickly this time because the job market is better, because I've become a better candidate, or because I got lucky? It's impossible to say. Anecdotal evidence doesn't really mean anything when it comes to market competitiveness IMO.

AI has very little effect on my job. When the common task I've given is 'write an ASN.1 parser that will fit into 100Kb flash', AI can only copy code from existing ASN.1 libraries, and both of them are GPL-licensed, so it's no-go for a proprietary firmware.

I've spent the last 18 months learning how to program so I could get a job that doesn't make me want to kill myself, not being ironic, and now this bullshit. Am I just forever doomed to be miserable and just not enjoy anything or have a single break in life?

I would say the general job market is getting worse 🤔

I don't think they are engineers. AI isn't anywhere near replacing engineers yet.

The 2017 tax bill that the Republicans rammed through had a time bomb in it for software developers. Starting in 2022, companies could no longer expense R&D costs, and instead had to amortize them over 5 years. This has led to massive tax bills in 2023 for companies. I have no doubt that this is another major factor in the recent tech layoffs.

Take an imaginary bootstrapped software business called “Acme Corp.” This company generates $1,000,000 of revenue per year running a SaaS service. It employs five engineers, and pays each $200,000. That is $1,000,000 paid in labor costs. For simplicity, we omit other costs like servers and hosting, even though those costs can also fall under the new R&D rules, and have to be amortized. So, how much taxable profit does this company make?

In 2021, the answer would be zero profit. In 2022, the answer was $900,000 in profits(!!)

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-will-us-companies-hire

This is old news though. The article is a poll of engineers, which means that the "news" is what we already know.

I doubt it has to do with AI, feels more in line with rising global inflation

Fuck

I mean, I keep seeing news articles about tech companies laying off tons of employees. I don't think many of those companies are going to be hiring very much.

What about the regular engineers? I hardly ever hear about those guys and AI.

Yet tech companies keep posting record profits. Hmm, it's low people on the totem pole get used as pawns so executives can make millions.

It’s not AI - most companies are still in the process of experimenting with it and exploring the limitations of it, and there’s a tonne of shoe leather it doesn’t seem able to help with. If anything, companies need warm bodies to try to generate innovative uses for it.

Feels what we’re seeing is the repercussions of lots of huge tech corps making mass layoffs last year to placate their shareholders in the face of growth stagnation. Of course a lot of those devs got hired back as contractors, and consequently the global contractor market is a shambles atm, but that’s an awful lot of Silicon Vallet devs in the pool who’ll really struggle to replicate that kind of package in the wider world. I certainly felt this when I rocked up in a new city earlier last year with nothing but a CV and a plucky “can-do” attitude. I initially planned to contract but ended up taking perm, because I like food and a roof over my head.