What’s with the comments here? Forget the official reports, we should ask a couple randos on HN about their inboxes?
kristopolous · 28m ago
After reading the article it looks like the attribution is defensible:
"In contrast, professional and business services were down 7,100 jobs in July, the worst of any sector, and the tech-heavy information sector lost 1,000 jobs."
This could be many things. People could be leaving to do their own startups. The BLS counts that as a job loss thus high-velocity sectors can be reported as job loss.
Cyclone_ · 25m ago
People leaving to do their own startups would be a pretty small portion of the job market, even on the SF Bay area.
kristopolous · 17m ago
right, upon further research, there's no corresponding increase in LLC or EIN filings so the startup hypothesis is likely unsupported
tootie · 23m ago
BLS includes a household survey. It's not just based on payrolls. They aim to capture as much as possible about people with informal work or self-employment.
littlexsparkee · 20m ago
Provided folks give some context about their location, experience, search, etc the input can be helpful - averages are great but aren't super instructive about one's own odds.
Plus BLS household survey probably has some non-response bias from it re: high income, low time individuals, precisely the folks chiming in.
nadermx · 27m ago
We're littreally reading stories upvoted in importance by a bunch of randos. What else do you expect?
throwmeaway222 · 1h ago
anecdata: after lay off 10 months ago, I suddenly got 3 offers in July and I am employed now.
I think it's the BBB that fixed the tax code issue - just a guess.
Terr_ · 1h ago
With respect to chronology and cause/effect, I'd point out that provision took effect in January 2022, so it's been of-concern for a while.
It was put into law in 2017 with the Republican TCJA, but section 174 was time-delayed, part of a general trick of having all of the tax-cuts and spending immediately, with any budget "balancing" items deferred as long as possible.
jvanderbot · 20m ago
I and a few thousand of my colleagues were laid off that day.
echelon · 6m ago
> With respect to chronology and cause/effect, I'd point out that provision took effect in January 2022,
That's when the layoff spree started!
ivewonyoung · 28m ago
Why didn't the Democrats who were in power repeal it by Jan 2022 by itself or as part of other large bills they passed?
devonbleak · 10m ago
It wouldn't have been budget-neutral without a bunch of tax increases along with it which they don't have the spine to implement.
ivewonyoung · 12s ago
It had Republican support so they could've easily gotten the 60 votes in the Senate, so it didn't need to be budget-neutral.
trenchpilgrim · 10m ago
Because it was intended to offset losses in tax revenue from the 2017 tax cuts, and trying to undo those tax cuts would have been political suicide.
gedy · 2m ago
Crimethink
silisili · 56m ago
I'm not looking for work, but have a LinkedIn that I honestly forgot about until the end of July. It'd been so long since I got even recruiterspam I forgot about it. And out of nowhere, 2 or 3 target recruiter messages.
Hopefully things are looking up for the market.
bitbasher · 42m ago
anecdata: I run a saas product and my primary customers are recruiters, after the BBB I have had more daily signups and new subscribers than previous months.
littlexsparkee · 1h ago
less recruiter activity than a few months ago, cleared one interview gauntlet just to have the role change due to a new lead hire, otherwise getting followups for screens but hit or miss on the tech assessments. might have to spend more time practicing.
throwmeaway222 · 1h ago
sorry to hear that, keep it up, it was absolutely demoralizing for me during those 10 months I started to believe I was actually losing my mind after a literal 20 year history in startups/tech.
But my colleagues are all younger than me - they are hiring people out of college too, so you can make it just keep pushing
MisterBiggs · 1h ago
I was laid off this year and also saw a massive uptick in offers in July. Based in Colorado, but was looking nation wide and I got more interest out of SF than the rest of the country combined.
petcat · 56m ago
Sounds like you're one of the lucky ones. In my experience, remote tech jobs have largely moved to India. It's like pulling teeth at my company to get them to offer a remote job in a NA timezone (US or Canada).
dyauspitr · 1h ago
This might be the only good thing in all of BBB
bravesoul2 · 48m ago
Good... for tech workers, and tech companies.
sexeriy237 · 49m ago
Ah yes, the BBB that fixed the rules that trump changed last time.
ivewonyoung · 26m ago
Why didn't the Biden admin "fix" the rule before it took effect in Jan 2022? They passed several bills, they could've have included the repeal. It took effect on the democrats watch, because of their inaction.
Edit: Republican Marco Rubio introduced a clean bill to repeal the changes in 2023.
The Democrat controlled Senate blocked it from coming to a vote.
Why does HN always blame only Republicans for this change which the Republicans always counted on repealing once the actual changes were about to take effect?
hn_acc1 · 16m ago
It's possible you need a supermajority or something to specifically "undo" laws passed by a previous session of congress - something Biden did not have.
ivewonyoung · 11m ago
Then how did Republicans repeal it just recently with zero Dem votes?
Repealing it had Republican support during the Biden term too, they even introduced a bill in2023 to repeal it which the Democrats killed.
Good on the rust belt states for being able to get their unemployment down under 5.5%.
deadbabe · 1h ago
I’ve started seeing emails from recruiters coming in again after a long drought. These unemployment figures will probably be lagging indicators.
selfhosttoday · 25m ago
I'm not sure if this is entirely related, but during COVID (in SF) I was always surprised to see my colleagues so adamant against RTO once the vaccine was widely disseminated. I always felt that if jobs were remote there would be no need to hire us specifically - they'd hire in the cheaper parts of the country remotely or worse yet, other countries. The usual retort was that folks in North Carolina, Canada, Eastern Europe, Bangalore or whatever weren't as good - but I always thought such rebuttals were arrogant at worst, and ignorant at best.
Sad to see that to some extent that's exactly what happened. My current tech take is that developers shouldn't allow AI and/or agents to do the entirety of their job, rather allow them to do more, and it should be framed as such specifically. e.g. don't use AI to write the entire feature, use it to make the feature better and drive more revenue, or more correct and result in less bugs, thus less wasted effort on ops/etc.
It's amusing to see some people excited for AI to do the entirety of the implementation and planning, as if there would be no impact on us. If AI is that good, you just need TPMs (to the extent it's even possible, anyway).
It's no surprise to see that jobs that cannot be done remotely are making a comeback.
nextworddev · 1h ago
Hmm anecdotally I’m seeing a lot of hiring in all places ranging from faang to startups. So tech hiring is not evenly distributed.
Esophagus4 · 1h ago
There is definitely hiring going on, but having seen this now from the hiring manager side, companies are flooded with candidates because of all the tech layoffs.
So yes, companies are hiring, but it’s hard to get hired right now because of the volume of candidates.
Not impossible, but definitely harder.
darth_avocado · 54m ago
In my anecdotal experience hiring has been picking up but it seems that everyone expects the 2021 ZIRP economy where new grads were getting $200-300k offers with easy interviews. The experienced hire market is now back to where we were in 2015-2016 and new hire market slightly lagging behind. Unfortunately a lot of people will have to be comfortable working for non tech companies in tech roles like 10 years ago. It sucks because the living standards are more expensive than 10 years ago.
999900000999 · 6m ago
I just had to accept a keep the lights on offer. Still a software role, but I'm making what I was in 2018 without adjusting for inflation.
2020 I was making about 80k more, even though I got that job through a combination of networking and luck.
My budget is less ball out and more it's nice I covered my rent
scarface_74 · 5m ago
Most developers have always worked for non tech companies…
nextworddev · 36m ago
This is the right take, plus the glut of applicants.
bdcravens · 9m ago
Is it possible that the companies with cash to burn are trying to take advantage of the situation and swoop up talent on the cheap?
0cf8612b2e1e · 1h ago
Are those job posts or actual hires?
FollowingTheDao · 1h ago
Yes, I was going to ask the same question. Article on the topic:
It could be FAANG retreating from HCOLs to LCOLs with the hope that they can make up the expertise gap with AI.
nextworddev · 1h ago
This is a big part. Lots of rotating L6 and L7 with L4 and 5
rafram · 1h ago
Unless you can provide some evidence for that, it seems like pretty plain BS. The issues with outsourcing/offshoring were never the kind that can be solved with AI.
vitaflo · 58s ago
It’s pretty obvious the future is low wage devs using AI. It’s only a matter of time before US devs are squeezed out of the market.
scythe · 33m ago
I got my first (and only; I changed careers) tech job in 2014. I only learned years later that 2014 was considered a "down" year for the industry. The "job market" exists at the margins. If you're good, you get hired.
rufus_foreman · 23m ago
>> If you're good, you get hired
In the long term. But in the long term we're all dead.
I only have one social media account, LinkedIn, and I have that account because I wanted to help people that got laid off from the company I worked for who were good, but were definitely not getting hired in 2008. There were developers who were top notch, but they weren't getting hired, they were sitting there not working getting poorer, frustrated and divorced.
I'm on my last job so I have no idea what the job market is like now, don't know don't care, but no. There are times when even the best developers can't even get a phone interview.
Der_Einzige · 1h ago
That's hiring for people with AI skills. If you're not in AI, you're fked right now.
littlexsparkee · 1h ago
Or peripheral to it, e.g. data engineering for pre-training data or a joint DE/ML role, etc. Sometimes the scale (petabyte) or specific stack experience is a barrier.
esseph · 58m ago
Not every business is in tech.
Every business uses tech.
R&D tax credit problem fixed, now development starts to get back on track at a lot of companies.
__loam · 1h ago
Not true. The people who are screwed right now are juniors. There's still a lot of hiring happening for traditional development.
jeffbee · 45m ago
So the clickbait headline is "as tech falters" but tech actually had the least losses of any sector, except government. More correct in all possible ways would have been "as construction falters", "as manufacturing falters", or "as banking falters".
littlexsparkee · 30m ago
it's a little tricky with the labels, they did mention that professional and business did the worst of all sectors and while information sector lost jobs as well, that sounds like the closest match for tech so I have reservations about the claim as well
jeffbee · 28m ago
Generally the BLS categories are hard to parse. Some major companies are software categories, others are information. But in general the "information" sector is pretty heavy on newspapers, books, and film as well. And search engines etc have their own categories.
Would you be able to guess without looking what top-level category contains Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, or Google?
jeffbee · 1h ago
Same newspaper last week: tech guys so over-abundant they are paying $2000 each to sleep in bunk beds in Mission flophouses.
dyauspitr · 44m ago
These might be the only reliable numbers in the country…
aaroninsf · 47m ago
Worst reported.
Serious question: who is producing reliable numbers now? The Trump administration is actively suppressing federal reporting and openly threatening to cease collecting and reporting data,
and this is absolutely signaling to sycophants and supporters that they should falsify or withhold unflattering data.
This is a truly terrible timeline.
Waterluvian · 25m ago
The USSR went this route and it worked out great. It’ll be interesting to watch the U.S. do the same.
"In contrast, professional and business services were down 7,100 jobs in July, the worst of any sector, and the tech-heavy information sector lost 1,000 jobs."
This could be many things. People could be leaving to do their own startups. The BLS counts that as a job loss thus high-velocity sectors can be reported as job loss.
Plus BLS household survey probably has some non-response bias from it re: high income, low time individuals, precisely the folks chiming in.
I think it's the BBB that fixed the tax code issue - just a guess.
It was put into law in 2017 with the Republican TCJA, but section 174 was time-delayed, part of a general trick of having all of the tax-cuts and spending immediately, with any budget "balancing" items deferred as long as possible.
That's when the layoff spree started!
Hopefully things are looking up for the market.
But my colleagues are all younger than me - they are hiring people out of college too, so you can make it just keep pushing
Edit: Republican Marco Rubio introduced a clean bill to repeal the changes in 2023.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/282...
The Democrat controlled Senate blocked it from coming to a vote.
Why does HN always blame only Republicans for this change which the Republicans always counted on repealing once the actual changes were about to take effect?
Repealing it had Republican support during the Biden term too, they even introduced a bill in2023 to repeal it which the Democrats killed.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/282...
Democrats really wanted the changes to take place since their platform is all about higher taxes on companies and high earners.
Sad to see that to some extent that's exactly what happened. My current tech take is that developers shouldn't allow AI and/or agents to do the entirety of their job, rather allow them to do more, and it should be framed as such specifically. e.g. don't use AI to write the entire feature, use it to make the feature better and drive more revenue, or more correct and result in less bugs, thus less wasted effort on ops/etc.
It's amusing to see some people excited for AI to do the entirety of the implementation and planning, as if there would be no impact on us. If AI is that good, you just need TPMs (to the extent it's even possible, anyway).
It's no surprise to see that jobs that cannot be done remotely are making a comeback.
So yes, companies are hiring, but it’s hard to get hired right now because of the volume of candidates.
Not impossible, but definitely harder.
2020 I was making about 80k more, even though I got that job through a combination of networking and luck.
My budget is less ball out and more it's nice I covered my rent
https://www.apollotechnical.com/ghost-jobs-in-tech-why-compa...
In the long term. But in the long term we're all dead.
I only have one social media account, LinkedIn, and I have that account because I wanted to help people that got laid off from the company I worked for who were good, but were definitely not getting hired in 2008. There were developers who were top notch, but they weren't getting hired, they were sitting there not working getting poorer, frustrated and divorced.
I'm on my last job so I have no idea what the job market is like now, don't know don't care, but no. There are times when even the best developers can't even get a phone interview.
Every business uses tech.
R&D tax credit problem fixed, now development starts to get back on track at a lot of companies.
Would you be able to guess without looking what top-level category contains Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, or Google?
Serious question: who is producing reliable numbers now? The Trump administration is actively suppressing federal reporting and openly threatening to cease collecting and reporting data,
and this is absolutely signaling to sycophants and supporters that they should falsify or withhold unflattering data.
This is a truly terrible timeline.