October 2022 - 408<p>April 2020 - 608<p>January 2016 - 471<p>First time the thread has been under 600 posts since January 2016.<p>Posts still trickle in throughout the month but the first 12 hours is when the majority of posts show up. I'm sure someone could do a more thorough analysis of post count but the overall number is unusually low.
I don't know the intention of the author, but I see like a lot of "Look, it's happening! The economy is going down!" posts pop up these days. Which may be true, but it can also be a self-fulfilling profecy if everyone is doing that on all platforms. Which would be a shame.<p>I'm not saying HN and other platforms should censor (/ take action) either. It's just a thought I have on this subject, and I don't know if there is a solution.
Similar discussion a few months ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675201" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675201</a><p>This thread by myself contains a BigQuery to reproduce the data + a chart of Who is Hiring posts over time: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675750" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675750</a><p>Here's a new chart of up-to-date data: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13yGlJzFpVzZ-WNHAOsdoOZdo5H2cY_VyiSMXeFSQfBo/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13yGlJzFpVzZ-WNHAOsdo...</a>
One reason is that crypto is down and the flurry of random crypto startups are absent right now. Compare the number of posts in December 2021 for reference, which was peak crypto of recent times.
Presumably enough employers have stopped posting to be statistically significant. I know I did; finding one qualified candidate in a sea of 50 bootcamp grad applicants for an explicitly staff-level position just wasn’t worth the effort. Worse was when I was threatened with an ageism lawsuit because our recruiters didn’t want to move forward with a guy with 10+ <1 year job stints became immediately argumentative in the recruiter phone screen.
I feel like people are trying to wish the economy into a recession / depression, but I really don't see it happening. I do see some belt tightening wrt SaaS expenditures. There's still a massive demand for labor.<p>While the housing market has fallen, the actual cost of buying a house is still rising. Rate increases have well outpaced the list price reductions.<p>So I think all this talk of a recession is just a bunch of reporters trying to jeer people into that state of mind for clicks.
My theory, YC software team has been building features like <a href="https://www.workatastartup.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.workatastartup.com/</a> and so YC companies are posting less on HN.
Would be interesting to see this chart: <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13yGlJzFpVzZ-WNHAOsdoOZdo5H2cY_VyiSMXeFSQfBo/edit#gid=1857597029" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13yGlJzFpVzZ-WNHAOsdo...</a><p>With traffic stats for HN, so we could see if there was a change in traffic/participation, or something else.<p>My personal thought is that many startups have been advised by investors to trim the sails for less follow on capital for a while, and that results in more conservative hiring. What I'm seeing at the day job (I have a recruiting tech platform), is that non-tech companies have plenty of open tech jobs to go around - and still can't find enough people.
also consider the whole chain --<p>From the layoffs I've observed Recruiters were some of the top laid off roles.<p>Less recruiters means prioritization of efforts.<p>HN Who's hiring is probably a low priority platform. (Recruiter's boss doesn't know what it is, hard to instrument for tracking metrics)<p>If you really want to know how many jobs are out there it's better to index and crawl all the companies jobs page directly. Albeit much much harder to do than a single HN thread per month.
The jobs market goes in cycles, sometimes there are less roles, sometimes there are more roles.<p>Don't fret about the state of the market - you can't do anything and it is irrelevant.<p>Focus on making sure your skills are up to date and you network and put yourself in the best position.<p>If there are a hundred less roles, it doesn't matter if you are in the top 10%, even the top 50% - just be better than average and you'll be fine.
I do have to comment that while I see a lot of job postings online (incl. HN), the requirements are going up as crazy.<p>People wanting a Mobile Developer with knowledge both in iOS and Android, and it wouldn't hurt if you knew some crass platform solution also.<p>I see posting with wanting 8+ years in a particular framework or language...<p>Am I the only one who finds that insane? I know that before "the requirements" were more like "wants" and if you are a good candidate, the company will give you a chance, but I have had situations right now where the recruiter would just answer point blank that all of the requirements must be met...<p>How are people with under 2,3,4 years of experience supposed to find a better paying job?<p>God forbid if you are fresh from college...
Do you have data for the past 12 months rather than only October? That way, we can observe how gradual (or not) the curve was.<p>All data in CSV format would be ideal if someone has it to share via gist or such.
Is there seasonality? Like hiring slows down into the end of the year, is my guess. In which case, can you get 10-15 years of HN posts? Then you would need to adjust by user base as well..<p><a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICNSA" rel="nofollow">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICNSA</a> << in fact, Jobless Claims are typically seasonally adjusted. Non-seasonal adjustment indicates claims spike around start/end of the year. The idea being, all else equal, if same amount of people get hired/fired every month, but supply of jobs dips, then claims go up...<p>Conclusion: not enough data points.
i have the impression there are jobs, but they are not getting filled because companies don’t want to pay proper compensation even though there is inflation and there is less supply now than a few years ago. they also still think that people are coming back into an office which is probably never going to happen again except in positions where you really need to because of security or confidentiality or physical access to infrastructure. HR people tend to be delusional and out of touch with reality. we’ll see what happens.
The last quarter of the year is not really a huge time for hiring.. a lot of companies are finishing up their budgets and waiting for new ones to hit to post jobs in the new year..
But shouldn't you wait for the entire month of October before counting that number? Presumably "We're hiring" posts could be added through October 31.
Looking at September's Who is Hiring [0] it does look like there are quite a few posts many days into the month. I don't think we can draw many conclusions on this data until the end of the month to be honest.<p>Saying that last month had 536 posts, and that that was a low since June of 2020 seems much more interesting IMO.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32677265" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32677265</a>
No one knows what the economic forecast looks like these days, and anyone that thinks they do is fooling themselves. Whats happening in the EU/GB is very real, and uncoordinated inflationary control measures are amplifying issues.<p>Around Q2/Q3 of 2023 we should have most supply chains stabilized again, and a better estimate of actual market demand.<p>Hang on, it is going to be one volatile winter... ;)
For a data centric view on the larger economy and an assessment of leading indicators I highly recommend this blog:<p><a href="https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2022/09/predicting-next-recession.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2022/09/predicting-next-r...</a>
Now figure out how many "who is hiring?" threads have been posted on Saturday, Sunday or a national holiday in the US and compares those numbers against any others.<p>Months when the 1st falls on a Saturday or Sunday.<p><pre><code> May & October 2016
January, April, July & October 2017
April, July, September & December 2018
June, September, December 2019
February, March, August & November 2020
May & August 2021
January, May, October 2022
</code></pre>
Whilst I think your numbers are reasonably accurate, and there is "other things going on" to push those numbers down, I don't think they paint the full picture. There is a definite slow-down towards the end of each year.
On past who is hiring threads I seen posts throughout the month, but in September it seems it only lasted about the first week before new posts stopped.<p>Perhaps the posts were restricted to a certain time frame, or coincidence?
I've thought about tapping into the HN BigQuery dataset (or perhaps the HN API, whichever is more appropriate) to analyze the results of the Who's Hiring posts and their companion Who Wants to be Hired posts. I think aggregation of this data will paint an interesting picture for job-seekers and other technology professionals as to what's hot, what's not, what employers are looking for (and not), as well as other trends.<p>Does anyone know if such a resource already exists? Don't want to duplicate effort.
I don't know what's happening but I'm getting way more unsolicited recruiting requests than I have in a very long time (Sr+swe), so either they're more desperate in bringing in seasoned employees to replace the often lighter pulling entries, or something.
We've had a good run in tech, but I don't think it's necessarily over. While the days of social media and advertising might be limited, there's still a wide world of technological advances that I think can make good businesses.
I want to share that there are at least two jobs I've seen on "Who is hiring?" for almost 9 months. I applied to one of them and never heard back. Can only assume this is an effect of some form of "hiring freeze".
Any analysis such as this should account for seasonality and/or some sort of trending.<p>Not saying the results would different, but just comparing arbitrary dates for this sort of data is not going to give you data to derive any meaningful conclusions.
We are hiring and posted in the thread but the post looks like it was shadowban'd. Maybe the filters are just stronger these days? No shortage of demand for devs and growth, regardless of current market conditions..
Minor but I wish it got posted only on business days when it falls on a weekend. I tend to wait until the following Monday but then we usually lost in all the other comments.
I'm hiring but I'm not sure if I'd post on whoishiring. I find hiring by recruiting specific people I know to be awesome to be much less pain than inbound.
I didn't post this time. But I've hired lots and I'm ahead on my hiring plans.<p>A lack of posts can't be interpreted as a lack of hiring.