It seems quite sluggish here in the UK.<p>Has it got better at all where you are?<p>PS I know there's the monthly hiring HN threads here tomorrow.
I've been a software dev for almost three decades and manager the last few years of it. I've been looking for work for over 6 months. Granted, I'm trying to move back to SWE work but have been somewhat opeN to EM work.<p>Finding work is harder than 2008 and even harder than 2001. It's as bad as tech has ever seen.<p>For EMs, middle management is always the first to get culled. That was me. And there are about 10% or less EM roles to engineer roles.<p>No one has said it but my management years away from daily coding likely count against me.<p>What more, I'm seeing far fewer Staff+ roles now than in the past several years. Anecdotally, from a recent employer, I had the impression that company was attempting to hire fewer staff+ to (1) outsource more and (2) hire more people at lower levels and (3) both 1 and 2 together.<p>The net effect in the US is seeing many more "senior" roles (we love our title inflation in Tech where "senior" tends to mean "has more than 2 years experience") or extremely specialized roles where exceptionally few people would have the skill set at the required experience level.<p>The VCs and the bigger firms evidently were heavily leveraged in low interest rate loans. Raising rates meant less money to play with and lower profits. Employees are the biggest cost center so that's where companies cut.<p>Without significantly lower interest rates, I suspect Tech is going to experience something of a depression in terms of unemployed/under-employed software developers.
US East Coast === Also Dead. edit: I'm a frontend focused JS/TS dev with 5 years experience and I was laid off at the end of May and never before has my anxiety been this high about landing another SWE role. At this point I've been heavily considering some sort of "hold over job" just to keep the lights on and keep me from going crazy, but I'm hoping I don't have to go down that route.
I can anecdotally attest that the market, at least in agency spaces, has definitely shifted to offshoring/outsourcing mode. I think it’s a reaction to our swelling salaries during the pandemic during the hiring craze, and like always, although they think it’s different this time, I think it’ll swing back once they realize (again) that there is more to our jobs than just pounding out lines of code, outsourced business interests don’t always align with their own, and dealing with the extra communication lag is a headache.<p>As for the sluggishness, I listened to an interesting podcast called Marketplace[0] last night that said, at least according to the latest jobs numbers, we’re now in what you’d call a “normal” pre-pandemic market. The thing is, the market has been crazy the last few years, and that makes the current state of things feel worse than it really is for some. I can’t decide if I agree or not. I’m seeing postings at my LOE, at least.<p>However, I think all of this is also heavily dependent on YOE and skill level. AI is a compounding factor that, in combination with the outsourcing, means that people with less work experience are probably having a harder time catching a break.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace/wheres-the-ai-spending-payoff/" rel="nofollow">https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace/wheres-the-ai-...</a>
I am an SWE in the US.<p>In 2022 on Linkedin I got messages from recruiters at Google, Amazon, Uber, and many other companies, large and small.<p>I haven't gotten a message from any recruiter on Linkedin for over a year. Luckily I am working.<p>One data point, but it fits with what I've been seeing and hearing from others.
Way better than 2023. 5 YOE web developer. From Argentina, though, we are benefitting from offshoring of course. But last year I had months with 0 reach outs. Nowadays every week at least 2 to 3 even with the looking for job Linkedin feature deactivated.<p>Last month around day 10 I made [this](<a href="https://i.imgur.com/uWoGaM3.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/uWoGaM3.png</a>) taking note of reach outs. My personal anecdata, ofc...
Very bad in the US right now, but I spoke with a tech recruiter recently who told me that, in his experience, June and July are always slow months, across almost all industries. He thought it was due to summer vacations, and that in August, as hiring managers get back to work, things start to pick up, and that it only gets better as EOY approaches and department heads become eager to spend their budget.<p>Here’s hoping he was right. Best of luck to all looking.
It feels like recruiters and HR have wedged themselves into being an untouchable block between candidates and hiring managers. Those in the wedge have no incentives for actually connecting candidates to the needs of the employer so the wedge keeps getting larger and stronger. Companies are too scared of their HR departments to stand up to them. They're basically commissars that have a MAD pact with the company should anyone try to remove them. Recruiters mostly exist to make things easier on HR though they will claim its to ensure employment equity policies are followed and the reduce the burden on hiring managers. But it's mostly so HR has less to do in their section of the wedge.<p>We see the frustration on the part of candidates but hiring managers are pulling their hair out too. In many cases, they actually have a strong candidate they've worked with before that is fully qualified, but everyone now must go through the HR/Recruiter obstacle course without exception. Good matches between position and candidate are tossed aside by those in the wedge and there's nothing those at either end of the pipeline can do about it.
I've found that a lot of the tools that I've used to find jobs in the past appear to have fallen apart.<p>LinkedIn and Indeed's job boards are filled with much more spam and seem to have much less reliable search tools.<p>LinkedIn has restricted the ability to browse who works for a company so I'm having trouble finding recruiters to contact directly.<p>AngelList no longer appears to be a way for job seekers to connect with startups. I have no idea what's going on with this one.<p>Is anyone else noticing this? Has anyone found better alternatives?
I have competing offers from multiple companies right now. Everything will be highly dependent on what industry you’re looking at and your skill set and experience.
I am in Toronto, Canada. I don't have the open to work flag on in LinkedIn. Two years an ago, even with the flag off, would get recruiters reaching out daily (> 20 years experience). Now it's 1 per week. I do get lots of job openings alerts in the area though. Not looking, hoping current company does not blow up (betting heavy on LLMs. Fun demos, no real products yet. Concerned it's an expensive fad) this year. But, feels like something bad is brewing (might just be crazy state of the world).
location: bay area, ca. experience: 8yrs, type: backend developer.
The number of recruiters reaching out to me has dropped a good amount over the summer, but as noted by others, thats typical. Still get phone screens/interviews but im not very good at interviewing so still looking around, but i am fortunate to still get recruiters talking to me. Fortunately im still employed so pressure is less.<p>My personal observation is that there is a saturation of devs and companies are focused on saving cash so work will be tough to get for a bit. Eventually the market will sort itself and work will be more available.<p>Sucks for those that are unemployed - i was unemployed for 2 years so i know what it feels like. Best of luck.. things will eventually turn for the better, you just gotta ride it out
I've seen two things:<p>1) There is a strong Cargo Cult ideation in our industry. Hence every startup is looking for a React developer who also have experience with Kafka and BigQuery.. and .. and... . And when the followed cults like Tesla, Netflix, .... began to layoff, guess what? our little cargo cult followers began to layoff, because that is the way to become the next Uber,Tesla,Netflix,whatever....<p>2) Lot of MBA C-Suite admins have arrived to our industry. And this is bad. We are not more an isolated island where code reigns, defines our position inside the hierarchy and so on. Now, politics, friends, nice looking people rule our dens. We are the operatives, the Storm Z cannon fodder. For every one of us, there are 300 waiting in line to "do the job".
I only have about 3 YOE, working at a non-tech Fortune 50 in the US and job searching on the side. I’ve sent out over 100 applications and haven’t received a single interview. The only interviews I do get are through LinkedIn recruiters reaching out. I have used a few referrals to apply as well but no bites on those either.
Originally, I thought it may be a Resume issue, but after getting quite a bit of feedback on it, it doesn’t seem to be that either. Before I started my job searching process, my main worry was that I wouldn’t be able to get past technical screens, but Leetcode was fairly easy to pick up again and am able to solve most mediums optimally and some hards with a less than optimal approach.
Also in the UK and can confirm very sluggish. I’m struggling to even get phone calls back from recruiters.<p>I would love to switch career path too. I’ve spent 6 years doing software development and vulnerability research in a heavily customer facing role, and would now like to look at something like solutions engineering. The reality is that all these companies likely have 100+ better qualified applicants, and there aren’t many companies who would like to take a gamble given the more attractive alternatives.<p>Don’t give up, I’m sure the right thing will come along! You’re not alone, if that’s any consolation at all.
It depends... I've been working remotely the past few years for about 40-50% above local market rates excluding a fairly long 7-month unemployment (planned on 3 months down, but took much longer). I have been approached a bit (few emails a week) for local, in-office jobs at local market rates. YMMV.
I have seen a recent uptick in body-shop recruiters reaching out with low-grade jobs. Annoyingly, this recent batch seems keen to use SMS to reach me instead of traditional Email.<p>I have started to put feelers out for a change of scenery, but nothing is landing yet. It feels like the first dotcom bust all over again.
It's weird. Not looking for full time, just contracting. Meaningful jobs have completely disappeared. Bullshit one, on the other hand, flourish, and they pay top dollar anyway. I set aside a bit of money for the therapy and go on like that.
Has anyone else found that there seems to be an incredible number of job postings for AI engineers? It feels like way more than the market could actually support.
I was searching for a job from April to June 2024 as a senior/lead front-end (React) dev in EU (Germany). In addition to the usual mid-year slow down, the market itself was tougher. It seemed like a lot of companies had weird standards, contradictory at times even; even though the salaries they offered were much lower than before.<p>Luckily I landed a great job in late June, but it took 60+ applications and countless interviews.
As a Clojure backend dev (3YOE), I've noticed the same. Clojure jobs have always been few and far between but I believe it's slowing down even more lately.<p>Maybe it's time to move on from Clojure, though I really love it. I need to specialize in something, find a niche...
Thankfully for me, there are plenty of infrastructure roles where I’m at; however, they are insanely competitive. I made a final with one company, and they were interviewing eight people for the role. Eight! For one opening… those are not favorable odds.
I’m getting interviews. But the one offer I got was extremely low balled. Like 50k under previous salary and no equity.
During the process I found out that execs got equity, but not the peons.<p>Giant ass red flag.<p>OTOH: I’m getting more attention than I was in 2001-2.
International recruiters seems to have stopped all LinkedIn activities, but job postings remain pretty high in Denmark. It's a wide mix of jobs as well, but in my area at least, it's all established companies, no startups.
Very sluggish, although not totally dead (I am in Texas, USA). I'm getting some part-time work. I have the impression maybe a bit better than a couple months ago, but still very slow.
I can't read much into anecdata. (Something as simple as a meaningless tweak to LinkedIn profile can stimulate recruiter outreaches. Also, number of outreaches isn't necessarily an indicator of available jobs.)<p>I'd be interested in hard insights (maybe it would have to come from levels.fyi or LinkedIn) like monthly charts of: number of new hires, salary&TC distributions, title or skillset distributions, by company/industry/size per month.<p>And similar monthly breakdowns for ended employment.<p>Internal promotion numbers would be great, too (and good incentive for employers to give attention to promotions and retention, rather than the fad of transactionally renting team members for only 18 months), but maybe harder to get.
It’s been a year ago today I got laid off. I have had a handful in interviews in the past year. The year before I had 5 interviews a week.<p>I’m in Silicon Valley and a software engineer.