My (SWE) job search this year has been exceptionally slow compared to past years. It's discouraging when the statistics don't reflect that, and pundits talk about correcting high salaries for devs — for those of us without jobs, we're having a hard time getting an interview at all, forget about salary negotiation.

I'm not sure how aggregate job posting statistics are collected, but the difference compared to a couple years ago is pretty stark. There are fewer job postings, for one, and more agency postings — meaning, 10 agencies posting for the same job. Except I can't get them to call me back either.

Many positions I apply for just disappear without the usual automated "thanks, maybe next time" email.

The one promising lead I had (with multiple interviews) went poof — they didn't fill the position; just stopped interviewing for it.

I think the tech sector was pumped up by the long period of zero interest rates and falling back down since interest rates are up, have been up for a while, and looks like they will stay up longer than expected.

Meanwhile, most of the rest of the economy didn't benefit very much from the zero interest rates - it didn't grow like crazy with huge job demand and high wages. So, it isn't as affected as much by the higher interest rates. Which makes the overall job growth look stable even though the tech sector is hurting.

The tech sector in general went through 2 decades of growth. Smartphones didn't even take off until just about 12 years ago. It isn't just the interest rates but the fact the entire sector was the wild west for the longest time. Now it's reaching maturity. AI is the last "growth" avenue for them to market infinite growth on but eh.

There's still room for new startups and entrants in the tech sector, it just ain't going to be the wild west anymore. There's only so many variants of the same thing the market is going to support long term.

I agree that the tech sector in general went through a lot of growth in the past 20 years, with a lot of new products.

But, I think the level of interest rates has a large impact on which projects are funded. With interest rates at zero (actually negative given inflation), almost anything is worth trying because you don't need a big return to come out ahead. And lots of those projects fail (never produce a product which can be sold), but while the projects are active people are employed. It's sort of like Venture Capital, but inside big companies: when interest rates are low, they run a lot of different riskier projects expecting some of them to pay off enough to make up for the failures.

When interest rates are higher, a project has to have a more certain return and a higher projected return in order to get funded. So weak projects are cancelled, or not started, people are laid off and hiring becomes really slow.

The mystery to me is why the rest of the economy didn't take off. Real estate did, and equities (stock market) did. But not the "main street" part of the economy or the industrial part of the economy. I think that since these parts of the economy did not take off, overall inflation remained relatively low.

>>With interest rates at zero (actually negative given inflation), almost anything is worth trying because you don't need a big return to come out ahead

You still lose the principal, geez! Like if you worked your ass off for a life time to save a million dollars and interest rate is zero, you're saying "I'll bet all my money on red in a Las Vegas casino", quoting you "because anything it's worth trying".

The interest rate has very little impact on the overall risk of starting a business.

Anecdote:

My father was a Director at <large telecom company> and then an executive at another.

He's spent his entire career in the industry.

It's coming up on almost a year unemployed for him, and at this point he's resigned himself to the idea he'll probably have to re-train and do something else.

Take that for what you will.

Many of us in the tech sector are seeing exactly this.

I've spoken with many colleagues, a record number of which now are unemployed, some of whom are now at two years of unemployment (and each one of them have a decade or more of experience in their profession (Network/System Engineers/Operations/Principal Engineers, etc).

The unfortunate part is the numbers don't point out any alternative sector that needs people. Worse, re-training is done at your cost, and age-ism is a very big thing everywhere.

Most vocational programs have also been gutted, and the only program that survived requires you to be under 25.

The interference of AI companies, and other bad actors in the hiring process has also made it near impossible to find jobs (when they are actually available).

Many of the job postings require that submission for a position is contingent upon agreeing to borderline unlawful terms from a third-party company (to sign up for an account). Where they consider the candidates information proprietary information owned by the company, which cannot be shared; even though parts of the vetting process involve sharing sufficient information to identify the candidate...

Its all very stupid when you make it impossible and prohibit people from taking working. Historically, nothing good ever comes of preventing people from working.

1776 largely was driven by corruption and because there simply was too many mouths, and too little work.

I imagine senior roles in telecom are hard to come by considering the growth of that industry.

Being overqualified is a real thing, ain't it?

It wasn't always so.

The ignorant socialists among us took over the bureacracies, pushing a cult of qualification, and made it seem like subscribing would promote prosperity through cheap debt. They made it a real thing.

Rather than simply looking for baseline requirements to fulfill a role, positions always want a ballerina with contradictory requirements they themselves can't determine is most important.

I remember a position asking for 15 years experience in a language, that only existed for 10, and they refused to hire the creator of that programming language.

They also have loans fueling them with near free money so they can wait and suppress wages to a point of debt-slavery.

Its been quite a trip seeing all the things my grandparents (silent generation) were adamant and warned about coming to fruition within my lifetime.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a violent civil war starts in the next few years given the social contract has largely been broken by the generation currently in power, and they burnt all the bridges in doing so. There's going to be one hell of a massive correction in our lifetimes. For good or ill its coming.

I'm old, when I get fired, I will never work a day in this industry for the rest of my life.

Be prepared.

Well, while you might find it harder to find work, know this -- I'd take a single experienced engineer over 10 inexperienced ones any day of the week (of course, you have to actually be an experienced engineer/manager vs some Boeing-wannabe MBA to actually know this!).

Easier to hide silver hair than feign ignorance to older questions.

Those jobs reports might be crooked somehow, I don't trust them.

Could be fake job postings (companies might do it for whatever reasons, e.g. for H1B PERM), or duplicates.

Or those are all simply low-wage jobs, which could be the simplest explanation.

We need better statistics, because obviously those official reports do not reflect the reality many people face today. Something is off.

How are you so sure that you aren't the one that needs better measures of what's going on outside of your immediate field of view?

I am not 100% sure in anything, but I'd like to see an explanation, why the internet is now flooded with stories like "I have 10+ years of SWE experience, sent 1000s resumes and got 0 interviews". It's crazy how often I hear about that. And not just in IT.

Yeah, lots of job postings... yet somehow people don't get hired?

Those stories are accurate and not just hearsay. First-hand experience here.

Its largely because of third-party interference in the hiring process.

There is no enforcement of fraudulent postings.

GPT has made generation of in-differentiable scam positions cost effective.

Head hunters are incentivized to engage in this activity since it concentrates value in their services.

There are also some companies engaging in dubious legal agreements where they outsource their hiring to a third-party which is incentivized to engage in pay-for-play kickbacks among their real customers.

There is also about an equal chance that this is either the Chinese government (causing sabotage), or monopolistic companies seeking to suppress wages.

Bad things happen when the majority of people can't find work to feed their family, and there is no means to retrain.

Because virtually no one is an SWE?

Software jobs were fueled by stupid startups creating flashy cash incinerators hoping to get bought up before burning out.

Then interest rates came and gave VCs a reality check. It's unsurprising tech is going through withdrawal after the madness of 2020/2021.

There are 1,000,000 different ways to measure unemployment, and the popular ones stop counting people who have been unemployed for some amount of time and count 3 part-time jobs keeping someone afloat as 3 jobs. Sooo yeah. :D All the unemployment numbers are essentially fake.

The article itself notes this as though in uncertain self-reflection: "And the number of people collecting weekly jobless benefits has risen to three-year high"

I think the Fed should have already lowered interest rates. I think they are overcooking it waiting until September. If they do not lower interest rates soon I suspect we will see greater unemployment and may eventually enter into a recession.

Lowering interest rates wouldn't have solved this. The problems are multi-layered because this was a multi-layered economic attack that's been almost 3 decades in the making.

The action of lowering interest rates will pop the bubble that started with QE in 2010, but has ballooned since then. At this point it is inevitable, and will be the worst financial crisis to date because we'll be seeing foreign held reserves of USD come flooding back (now that the petrodollar agreement expired).

This is what always happens when you deficit spend forever thinking MMT is a solid strategy (when its magical thinking sacrificing your children's future for short term gain).

We have already entered a depressionary stagflation (Dec 2023), if you normalize the currency value, and undo the changes in metrology the Fed snuck in, its pretty clear.

Feds can’t do much when Congress keeps on approving spending in trillions.

The feds are doing their best keeping inflation in check.

However housing is so short in supply, that prices are still rising.

So lower interest rates will get another big jump in inflation.

Or, your job is atypical and your chosen industry is frantically trying to automate your job (and every other middle class job) out of existence. Sorry!

And that's why people like to talk about underemployment rather than unemployment.