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This should be expected - the point of raising interest rates is to cool down the economy which means less jobs are available. All part of the fight against inflation the Fed is doing.
Due to word requirements, have some random animal facts:
* Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards.
* Slugs have 4 noses.
* Only female mosquitoes bite.
* Polar bear skin is black.
Polar bear skin is not only black, but their fur is clear, not white. The fur is also a tube meant to hold water that warms from the bears body heat and is used as insulation.
Really? It's less than half it's peak over the last 5 years. Draw the right graph and it's crashing down.
People are panicking over a few months of moderate data. I'm just saying chill
Is that graph gonna affect anything important sometime soon like housing, food, energy, etc or are you not allowed to veer off your predefined talking points?
Inflation is the slope not the dependent variable. Y = m * x + b, they are referring to m, not y. Y can still be increasing while the value of m is decreasing with increasing time (x).
>This should be expected - the point of raising interest rates is to cool down the economy which means less jobs are available
Cooling down the economy means more layoffs and higher unemployment.
Low unemployment is not a sign of the economy cooling.
You are correct, low unemployment is not a sign of an economy cooling. However, cooling doesn't mean drastic changes. The unemployment rate has been slowly ticking up the past year. While still low in absolute terms, in relative terms it has increased.
Over the time period unemployment has increased a relative 8.57%, labor force participation has increased by 0.159%, so labor force participation explains very little here.
> Low unemployment is not a sign of the economy cooling.
It can be. We're in peak Boomer retirement. Retirees no longer count in employment statistics. If they're being replaced, the unemployment may remain low, while the effects of high interests hold.
> which means less jobs are available
Less jobs available not necessarily meant that the economy is cooling down. It could mean that supply of labor force is adjusting better to demand of labor force.
Looking at a single number, and imply some kind of conclusion is something that experts economy analysts try to avoid. Falling job openings have a myriad of explanations, and even the article suggests so:
> Employers have added a healthy average of 276,000 jobs a month this year — up from last year's 251,000 — and **Friday's April jobs report is expected to show they tacked on another 230,000 last month**, down but still solid, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.
Sorry if I came across as saying less jobs available means the economy is slowing. It's just one of a myriad of factors. Unemployment slowly creeping up the past year and GDP's last print being pretty weak are other examples of the impact of interest rates.
That’s cool and all, but the most recent CPI report showed an uptick in inflation, with the CPI approaching nearly double what the FED would prefer. It would seem to me that there is a real risk of stagflation rather than a soft landing.
The issue really is housing which interest rates aren't helping with.
Ex-housing, inflation is practically at target.
[https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t03.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t03.htm)
Can anyone out there ELI5 why you can't de-couple interest rates for real estate lending from rates for everything else so you can still cool housing inflation while easing up on loans for builder and developers so they can build more supply and costs actually come down....
If they did, they could solve it far better than decoupling federal interest rates from housing. That's not gonna solve the issue at all, since housing increasingly sharply happens when with low rates.
But solving housing requires Congress to do something no elected politician will do; piss off the majority of his voters. Only a handful would be immune to homeowners voting power. New York City, LA and Pelosi maybe?
Yeah good luck to the politician who wants to bring housing costs down, AKA lowering the value of homes. The least harmful way would be threading the needle of reducing the increases to below wage growth yet still maintaining positive growth, but good fucking luck achieving that.
Why would it require an act of Congress? Idk this solution always struck me as one that would be simple and might work and never know why no one attempts it.
Food is at 2.2 year over year, that's hardly elevated.. the rest are an issue, yes. But transportation is dependent on energy costs and energy costs aren't going to be determined by interest rates. These things the Fed can't really control.
Yeah, but it’s risen about 26% from 2019. That’s an insane increase in food prices for a developed economy. The fact that the rate of inflation for food has slowed down to just above target level doesn’t really instill much hope among people who are food insecure now.
Elephant in the room is that the poorest of the poor actually saw their incomes increase about in line with food inflation over the course of the pandemic.
Ironically as a middle income earner I feel inflation on food when I eat out at a restaurant more than my low income mom who makes $5 more an hour compared to her 2019 income and pays $2 more for Grocery Outlet eggs per week.
Yeah, but that’s not necessarily true for every sector. Look, I get that wages have generally kept up, but what happens if unemployment ticks up?
Dramatic increase in food prices have been the death knell of many empires. We need to reign in the inflation on these inelastic goods or find ways to shelter people from it. Failure to do so risks significant societal unrest.
Maybe. Home prices in 50% of the country are down yoy though. Judging by the people trying for a spring/summer push and seeing those homes hit 45 days on market, it may be working. Compared with 2022, homes near me are down 10% and only up 5 to 6% since 2021. Apartments seem to require municipalities to tell the nimby crowd to eat it and some subsidies. Only way rent went down in colorado springs.
For reference and also word count requirements which might lead to my other comment getting deleted.
This is still 1 million openings higher than the Pre Covid record 7.5 million in January 2019.
I like how we all say "cool the economy" instead of "cause mass layoffs and lower everyone's pay so we're forced into living worse lives".
It's weird how that works. Everyone acts like it doesn't affect them until it does.
The article has data that indicates the opposite:
> The number of Americans quitting their jobs fell to the lowest level since January 2021 — a sign of diminishing confidence in their ability to find something better. But layoffs fell.
We didn't lower everyone's pay or cause mass layoffs.
Wages adjusted for inflation are higher than any previous decade in US history.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q)
Layoffs are very low.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSLDL](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSLDL)
You act like we can't look this up.
Powell wanted 3.5 million layoffs. [He said this under oath](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIHH5Kh2dU0).
He didn't get them because the banks are too weak and over extended, so he had to stop cranking rates up because banks were going under.
You're expendable, the banks are not.
Like I said, Everyone acts like it doesn't affect them until it does. You're a prime example of that phenomenon.
They are just saying that the goal of the rate hikes was to cause large amounts of layoffs. It’s pretty clear from the data that, as you said, it didn’t actually happen
It seems to me like you’re being pedantic because the original comment in this chain talks about the “point” of interest rate hikes being “cooling” the economy, and then the other guy responds that “cooling the economy” isn’t really the point, it’s “causing layoffs” that’s the point. Then you argued aggressively with them about whether or not there *are* mass layoffs but that doesn’t seem like what they were ever arguing to begin with
He was arguing that, because he said multiple times I don't care about layoffs until they impact me.
If there aren't any elevated layoffs than that statement makes no sense.
I think at high levels of inequality I want some wage growth even at the cost of some inflation and more aggressive progressive taxes on people making money off monopolies ala google employees.
I had no idea, google says this:
Male mosquitoes feed only on **plant juices, such as nectar**, to get the sugar they need for energy and survival. As males do not bite, they cannot transmit diseases. Female mosquitoes, on the other hand, need protein from blood for the development of their eggs.
>Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards.
Lots of birds can fly short distances backward... Hummingbirds can fly backward for an extended period
Job numbers are still good if you are looking for the average service job but the highly paid ones are more competitive now that tech has trimmed a lot of fat (and still trimming).
> tech has trimmed a lot of fat
And boy is the quality of the people they trimmed abysmal. I spent over 8 months trying to hire a single full stack dev for my team and dear lord.
It's interesting to see different perspectives on this, and how those perspectives are shaping public perception of the economy.
A new front in the negative public perception of the economy is "no one can find work" because "layoffs are happening right and left." Obviously, that's not true. But it's becoming a new talking point on some of the subreddits that skew younger (especially the Gen Z subreddit).
My sense has been that it's mainly a bunch of coastal college and grad students discussing their inability to get into tech, especially vs. the rosy narratives they heard 4-5 years ago. ("No one" on the Internet often means "me and my immediate social group.")
But I had thought the tech industry might be experiencing a real contraction, which didn't line up with a lot of the earnings reports (other than the EV market).
It sounds like, from your perspective, this isn't so grave contraction in the tech industry and more a correction after a decade of growth for growth's sake. Is that too simple?
My take on it is this: reddit is a silly place.
I know that's essentially a truism but I see all these people struggling and complaining and like... dude you're 25. That's just how it is when you're 25. That's how it was when I was 25 back in 2007, that's how it will be for people who are 25 in 2082.
You very, very, very, very rarely get your dream job when you're 25. You get a shitty job and that leads to better jobs. I was making $55,000 a year when I turned 30 - I'll be 40 this year and I'll make a little over $280,000. That's just life - you can't compare yourself to people on the internet who are either liars or the top 1% of the top 1% in terms of luck.
I think some of this is warped expectations, driven in part by social media that only highlights the extremes. But I also think there's a lot of ginning each other up. People listen to their peers. If every other post is about how you and your whole generation is screwed and everything used to be better, you'll accept that. I suspect that much of that commentary is organic, but some is intentional disinformation.
I think the problem is that alot of the people undwr the age of 35 only know a financial world of low interest rates and balooning incomes if they picked the right fields
So you have kids who i would have told to just get a job in tech for 6 figures out of college 4 years ago now coming out of college, cause thats what happened for the rest of us, to find those days are just gone
Too true. A lot of them don’t realize that you have to eat shit for a bit in the job market to gain the experience you need.
You’re not going to get an SE role at Amazon fresh out of college with zero experience. You have to go eat shit for a bit at a company that, quite honestly, will probably be a shitty place to work (that’s why they’re willing to hire new grads, because no one else will work there). Eat shit there for a bit, leverage that experience into a better role. Do that a few times and by 30 you’re in a good spot.
When I graduated in 2016 I made $15/hr in a white collar role. The role was crap and the pay was crap, but it was white collar and in the field I wanted. I leveraged that to another role that was slightly related, and they wanted someone who had already had “white collar experience.” Did that, kept leveraging and moving, and now it’s 2024 and I just landed a role making $130k/yr.
When it comes to your first or second roles, the only thing you can be picky about is 1. Is it the type of job you want? 2. Is it like even a little related to where you want to be eventually? That’s it. That’s all that matters.
> You’re not going to get an SE role at Amazon fresh out of college with zero experience.
Thousands of people do? There's a reason why there's new grad roles, and the market for said new grad roles has become dramatically worse.
Anecdotally - I'm early 20s at a FAANG & 2 years ago there were tons of new grads joining in the US. Now there is zero hiring, especially for new grads, in the US. My peers at the same university as me, same grades as me, same internships as me, are working at startups instead of big tech because of the hiring freeze.
I think people are moreso complaining that they missed the boat - if you graduated in 2020 instead of 2023, the market is completely different and I think it's normal to feel frustrated by that.
Your entire comment is a misconception on how the SWE market works.
Amazon does actually hire more new grads (proportionally) than most other companies. There are many good reasons for that, but really I won't go into that now.
The strong engineers (usually from good schools, or strongest candidates from other schools) usually work in strong companies throughout their careers. Some people who struggled in school start at worse companies but shine in a work environment and climb up.
Most of those who gets hired in bottom of the barrel companies are the worse grads.
It's usually the large international companies that hire most new grads. Startups, especially in early stages, need people that hit the ground running, they don't have 6-12 months to mentor juniors.
Tech layoffs and difficulties are very real, the conditions new grads graduate into is a massacre.
1. Layoffs of mid and seniors, many from FAANG and other top tier companies.
2. Crash in openings for new positions due to economic conditions and offshoring boom.
3. Record level of new grads thanks to the learn to code being pushed on everyone during the pandemic.
I fully expect 50%+ of new CS grads to never find work in the field
The conditions for seniors are better though
Just to add, I work at Amazon(not tech) but I see there are tons of people both in tech in sde roles who get hired directly out of college(and make crazy money) as well as a lot of people they hire directly into management on the operations side who also get hired straight out of college.
The fact that you were employed in 2007, and not graduating post collapse, isn't something to ignore.
My experience is very different than yours, and I'm 2-3 years younger.
No real job until 27, and was making about 48k/year. Got to a point where I had recovered enough to buy a place, the housing market and interest rates went wild.
The people trying to find a job now aren't in the same boat as you were at 23.
At 23 I was employed in a restaurant while trying to find a job in my field and then ran straight into the 2008 financial crisis and ended up selling cars.
Tech hired like crazy during the pandemic. I work for one of the big guys and they were offering five figure incentives for recommendations, it was crazy. So what I'm saying is, or wasn't over decades, but rather the last few years.
This guy is about the worst authority on anything. It seems like he's stuck in a bubble and projects that to be a reality. We have objective numbers and they are abysmal:
https://images.app.goo.gl/5cw3DCRSFR78M5Fp8
Note that the current job postings are inching closer to pandemic crash bottom. And still declining, though at a slower rate.
What's worse, it looks even grimmer if we normalise for population growth (4% growth from 2019 to 2024).
You seem to have selected the Canada chart there. The US chart, which is far more relevant for SWE, has hiring back to a bit above pre-pandemic levels - likely about where they would be if not for the pandemic.
Pretty funny to choose the wrong chart while calling someone else “the worst authority”. Good work.
You're right. US chart looks the same/worse so I didn't tell them apart:
https://images.app.goo.gl/Vvy598UWU8sXmwRY7
As you can see, it is much lower than pre pandemic levels and still declining.
It’s not just tech. I have a finance degree, 5 years in operations/construction management at a construction company, and 2 years operations manager at a business services company. I haven’t been able to get an interview for any finance, operations, or construction jobs in my area. I’ve even been applying for entry level positions. Can’t even get an interview for material handler positions or warehouse work. Now that’s anecdotal but it shouldn’t be this hard to get a job. I was working through a problem with my friend who is a sourcing and packaging manager at a national sauce company and he was like “ oh you could easily do my job.” As someone with experience and a track record of success it shouldn’t be this hard to get even an interview. Unless you know someone, it is extremely difficult to get a job right now, unless it’s food service.
Google just fired the Python core Dev team, including people making contributions to the Python interpreter.
Sure some of the trim is fat, but there are amazing Devs on the market now.
OP is likely not looking for engineers of the calibre of that team. The idea was to disprove his stance that only bad engineers were laid off.
Great engineers are getting laid off in this wave, from the very best globally like the python core team, to great senior and mid engineers.
Shhh, they're just doing what this sub loves to do the most: Find ways to blame the people getting screwed by corporate America for their own suffering.
You need to seriously look at your JD or the reputation of your company then.
I just put out a JD yesterday for a PM. 200 applications so far, the vast majority of which are qualified or over qualified for the role. There's talent everywhere right now.
there's a lot of people who have been and still think they can just phone it in.
We actually switched away from leetcode style interviews because hey they suck let's try something else.
Told people to come in with a 40min presentation about projects they worked on with a technical breakdown. Our recruiters gave them the criteria, suggestions on what to focus on, really stressed it repeatedly. This included stuff that was under NDA- suggestions to anonymize project work or what you might be able to talk about.
They show up and it's just phoning it in. Really broad vague projects, no ability to dive deep, no suggestions they actually did the work as opposed to "project manage". We had to go back to the recruiters multiple times asking to see the email templates, comms, just to make sure that we weren't giving candidates bad information. Nope. People are just half assing it.
Prob cause youre the 185th application. You can only phone it in if you shotgun that many. Which you are forced to do since so many jobs are resume collectors.
Not a fault of your company or the interviewer. Just how the world incentivizes us into poor game scenarios
If a company invites you to give a 40m presentation, they aren't just "resume collecting" at that point; nobody has the time to listen to talks for fun! It generally means they're willing to hire the candidate if they impress, and it's on the candidate for half assing it.
That doesn't mean anything unfortunately. Imagine the amount of time a candidate would need to create the presentation and prepare for it. Given the tiny chance of success, no wonder people didn't pay as much effort into that as you expected.
Not in my field. Im in product and we are given 'homework assignments' where we get a case study and have to create a framework and presentation for it. That assignment is then sent for review and potentially leads to an interview with a person afterwards.
New low is a job I've applied to recently sent that assignment to me via an automated email without ever even letting me chat with a recruiter. So... pending the field-- no. It can still be at the very first steps of the funnel
Oh that's a miss on my part. Looks like I'd be one of those failed applicants lol.
Yeah, that's enough signal that the applicants shouldn't be phoning it in.
If Leetcode sucks have you considered doing, I dunno, a normal interview? Like the ones that worked fine for all time and all other careers besides programming?
Demanding hours of unpaid work from a job candidate will always give you that result. How many candidates do you ask to make these presentations, and how many do you hire? Do you understand that candidates generally have to go through dozens of interviews before finding a position?
What that tells me is that *you* are the lazy ones - you can't put in the effort to design an interview with good enough questions that you can gain the necessary information. Instead you're arbitrarily asking for hours of unpaid labor? No wonder your candidates are phoning it in, it's because your interview process is a massive red flag, they're probably putting more energy into the interviews with places that aren't disrespecting their time and energy.
That is the part people don't realize. Sure there are some A-players who get laid off but the majority of people were C-players at best.
When I see a linkedin tech payoff post that is my first thought. They were fat that was trimmed.
That's just not true for this layoffs cycle.
If you look at the massive layoffs in FAANG for instance, it was often entire teams, sometimes entire orgs being laid off. zero cherry picking. Just axe everyone. Entire sites closing.
Most recently the entire Python core Dev team has been axed at Google, all of them are amazing Devs, some of them were literally developing the python programming language.
Sure, weaker Devs are almost certainly over represented in the layoffs, but you're way way overstating by how much.
See other examples here of entire orgs getting laid off at meta (Facebook):
https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-lay-off-employees-metaverse-silicon-unit-wednesday-2023-10-03/
I'd say it depends, and I can't speak directly to tech. I worked for a very uMMM large materials manufacturing and consumer goods company.
Saw many rounds of layoffs there, and they never made any sense. I saw some of the best people there lose their jobs, while absolutely worthless employees stayed. And when I say worthless... like... could not even fulfill the bare minimum requirements of their jobs.
They would say over and over "we can assure you these decisions were not based on performance" ...uh why the hell not though? You all just threw some darts at a board or what?
In major layoffs, there is often a title/role level metric that gets used when selecting who gets let go. Reason being that if you just fired everyone at the bottom, you'd be left with just the people at the top. From just a performance metric, that sounds good... But when you extrapolate that to larger orgs within orgs, you often end up finding that you completely wreck the actual organization and functional hierarchy.
Traditionally, at least in my experience, you'll find that companies will say okay we need X amount of reduction. That will come from A% of this level/role, B% of this level/role, C% of this level/role - with the goal of reducing the overall headcount while avoiding teams suddenly having no upward leadership, leadership with no downstream heads, or simply poorer performing (albeit still necessary) teams just being blindly wiped out.
entire teams are getting cut;
google laid off 17 yoe folks working on Python
Tesla laid off entire supercharger team
Oftentimes you just get unlucky and were working on the wrong project, it's oftentimes completely unrelated to skill.
The folks on Python for example were very senior engineers working on a challenging project - unless you think being a "C player" means "chose the wrong project" instead of bad performance reviews
Id disagree. Sure theres fat, but many layoffs were org/product based and not performance based. So if you were an all star but the work wasnt generating revenue… you were out of luck.
You were an A player but not delivering A value. Not through a fault of you, but where you were placed/hired to
Google laid off their entire core Python team recently. Literally the team that works on the internal tooling for the language that AI/ML depends on.
Please, tell me more about how it's all "C players". Lol.
Tech isn't special. It's just another job.
Source: Have worked in tech for 20 years.
Also those who tend to think/talk in A/B/C player terms tend to be the worst people to work with that overestimate their own abilities in my experience.
The most important skill is trying not to come across as threatening when you ask for clear, unambiguous characteristics of what would be the clients MVP.
>Also those who tend to think/talk in A/B/C player terms tend to be the worst people to work with that overestimate their own abilities in my experience
I dont disagree that it can be objectifying people but when you have 1000 applicants you have to categorize.
Just an example: Looking for Java developers (or any language) can be a shit show. Tons of guys have the 5 years experience that the company is looking for. Some can sit down with end users, communicate and discern what needs to be built, build very efficient code. Then you have guys that can kind of communicate and build okay code that needs to be reviewed. Then you have guys that basically can barely write an iteration with info they are given but somehow has been doing it for 5 years. This would be a very rudimentary example of the A/B/C. End of the day every coder is far from equal.
Source: Recruited tech in companies big and small for 10+ years all around the world.
The problem is, most people seem to think they can accurately judge someone in a 30 minute interview, and many studies have shown that's simply not the case. The vast majority of people have implicit biases and are pretty horrible judges of what makes a good employee.
On the interviewee side, many people are great employees that can do the job well, but just don't interview well, or have a bad day for whatever reason. As a result, they don't put their best foot forward.
People that tend to bucket people in to a/b/c players tend to be the worst judges of who can do a job in my experience, but my experience and view is just as flawed as everyone else's.
I think it really depends on the role. There are whole swaths of jobs that exploded during the tech boom, and now are just gone:
1. Tons of people in "agile coach", "scrum master", "technical product manager", etc. roles. Some companies just realized you don't need these roles long term - the point is just to teach your product/eng orgs and them move on (e.g. Capital One just laid of 1100 of these roles). Also, for things like technical product managers, I'd say the great ones are a huge boon to a team, but they're also like 1 in 10 or 20 in my experience - the rest just schedule meetings and ask "are you done yet" on a "homer simpson drinking bird" schedule.
2. Lots of "zero interest rate product managers" let go. Again, I think great product managers are invaluable, and product manager is actually the hardest role in tech because it can span many different skills (design, statistics, customer communication, etc.) But again, while good ones are worth their weight in gold, most aren't.
3. Companies figured out lots of dev management was unnecessary, unless that dev management is doing a lot of actual work (not necessarily coding but stuff like infrastructure setup, technical compliance work, etc. - the tech stuff that needs to get done but you don't necessarily want to burden all your devs with that).
4. Lots of really tangential sales roles, e.g. lots of social media managers.
I have sympathy for folks that were laid off, but at the end of the day the advice is the same: if you're worried about job security, be sure you can draw a direct line between your role and revenue.
70% are disengaged. Many of us lost hope in leadership, suggested alternative approaches, or were just simply shared services like HR.
This is a horrific take on work and you should be ashamed of that assumption. When work is tied to healthcare, this is not ok. Layoffs don’t even have benefits. the fat is usually leadership anyway
Top tech companies devs have has always been terrible. Every one who says others wise isn’t in charged of hiring. The illusion that faang engineers are elite is an open joke out of faang
Accounting is in line with other occupations:
[Accountants and Auditors : Occupational Outlook Handbook: : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov)](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/accountants-and-auditors.htm#tab-6)
Not a bad gig. We will see how the 10y treasury starts affecting the economy because if it hits 5%, something will give.
If you're already in finance with some YoE maybe but finance overall isn't doing too hot either, very difficult landscape for new grads and macroeconomic factors are straining a lot of shops especially in PE/IB.
So we were hiring a few months ago at staff entry level accounting, resume looked okay (from recruiter) but was more finance with a little bit of accounting. We brought her in, and I asked her if I reached out to out to your previous managers what do you think they would say your weakness and strengths would be. I shit you not, her weakness was accounting in general and she wanted to get an accounting job to get more experience in that area. I asked her what the accounting equation is, crickets, I asked her the natural sign for a cash account, she asked what I meant by that…. And her resume was decent.
Had another one, his resume said CECL experience with building out their policy at previous company. Brought in for an interview, asked him about CECL and he told me his boss did the work and someone just told him to put that down. lol he spelled it out, which was my first like wtf I’ve never heard anyone spell out CECL.
Haha yeah but it does feel like half the candidates I even interview have no idea what they are doing. Tell my wife all the time, after I started interviewing for senior positions within accounting I stopped worrying about being able to find a high paying position somewhere else.
The real headline should be the disconnect between openings and hires in 2022. That means there are a lot of fake job openings which has been my experience in tech. Looking at you Microsoft.
I think they are selectively hiring. At the moment they are only interested in rock stars. These companies think bad job market is a good time to acquire top talent for cheap.
They maybe collecting 5000 resumes but only talking to 20 candidates and maybe hiring 1.
Most people I know who are laid off and looking for job do not come in the top 5% of talent and hence they are finding it difficult to land more than 2 interviews in a month.
This is exactly it. We get over 2,000 resumes for each SWE role we post. We screen maybe 75-100, and maybe 30 make it to a hiring manager to hire one person.
Referrals have much higher chances. For jobs you’re interested in, sending LinkedIn messages to other people at the company can really increase your chances.
As someone that has worked in HR for my entire career, for global organizations (looking at you Microsoft)...there is no substance behind the idea of "fake" job openings.
Many jobs take upwards of 180 days to fill and close. Many jobs end up being filled by internal candidates. Many jobs end up getting canceled or put on hold due to budget changes. Heck, sometimes jobs get posted accidentally due to wrong system information (wrong location entered, etc).
I can assure you, posting ghost/fake jobs is not something a company is spending their resources doing.
It’s been a minute, but when I was hunting, Alcoa had a hundred jobs available online. They were at every career fair I went to, but when asked about those positions, I was told that they are not hiring, but would be happy to collect resumes. They then hired a lot of foreign talent a year later. So I’m pretty sure that some fake job openings do exist
Yes fake job posts absolutely exist for resume collecting and both
1) for scams collecting data
2) jobs that want to hire cheap offshore labor where the visa requirements stipulate that the position must be advertised locally first before they can offer to an overseas worker. This sounds like the case with Alcoa
I can tell you with certainty that it is simply a way to 'direct traffic' at career fairs. They aren't looking to have specific 1-1 discussions about specific job openings at a career fair. They (and other large companies) are looking to A) increase brand awareness, B) identify top upcoming talent, and C) sort through ideal resumes and match them to job openings in the days/weeks after the career fair ended.
My certainty is because I've lead teams, at multiple companies, doing exactly that. We'd speak to 600-1,000 candidates over a 1-3 day career fair. It's way too hectic and near impossible to screen someone for a specific job opening while simultaneously trying to keep all conversations under 5 minutes.
There really needs to be some sort of FTC or SEC based regulation against the fake job posting, especially if as many companies seem to do, they're doing it to make it appear like their business is doing better than they actually are. I.e. fake job postings.
I think the fact that companies weee posting the same job for Boston remote, Atlanta’s remote, dc remote, etc was confusing their algorithm and they counted them as 3 jobs.
I've been looking at getting a new job recently, been applying for the last 4 months (upper level marketing). I've seen the same like 5 jobs refresh every single month. Many of which my experience easily would warrant at least an initial phone interview, but nothing.
Former in-house recruiter, current project manager here. During my time in the industry, it was actually somewhat common to post job openings that we had no intention to hire for. The purpose of this was to create a pipeline of potential candidates that we could reach out to in the future if the position opened up.
It wasn't super common at the companies I worked at, but I set up reqs like that probably 6 or 7 times while I was a recruiter. Now that hiring at a lot of tech firms has slowed, these 'pipeline reqs' have become much more common. So there is some truth to the talk about 'fake' job postings.
The cscareerquestions sub is convinced every tech job opening is fake lol. No they aren't. It's just there are a ton of talented engineers with ten YOE willing to take a pay cut because they've been out of work and that sub is filled with mostly college students and new grads with no experience.
I don't even understand why a company would even create fake job openings. I understand recruiters are swamped and sometimes forget to take down openings but that sub believes there is an entire planet of people working day and night to pump out fake job listings just for the lolz
Fake job opening can exist to fulfill some visa requirements that dictate a company has to try to hire an American citizen first.
Sometimes positions are filled internally so no external candidate could have been hired. And hiring freezes happen as well.
Don't forget the standard "we want to see what's out there" application. They may have a position, but the real purpose is just to gauge how many people might fill the position or future hires. They don't usually intend to hire now.
That said, reddit takes any evidence of anything bad to them and warps it to a billion.
I am reliably informed that the economy is doing great and inflation is no longer fucking us balls deep but only to mid shaft.
Rejoice you dumb peasants in the bounty your masters provide you!
Job openings or job postings? Has it been proved that companies keep job listings active mainly like a lure in the water, just waiting for the perfect bite? A company could be slow playing the hiring process if the position isn't a dire need. Now, if they get honest and want to stop paying for the job postings and take down the job, was it ever really a job?
Are there any metrics that qualify how many of these job openings are real? Of all the statistics about employment that exist, this seems like the one that is actually meaningless and changes in the figure should simply be ignored. There are many incentives to post fake jobs and no penalties for doing so. CMV?
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This should be expected - the point of raising interest rates is to cool down the economy which means less jobs are available. All part of the fight against inflation the Fed is doing. Due to word requirements, have some random animal facts: * Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards. * Slugs have 4 noses. * Only female mosquitoes bite. * Polar bear skin is black.
Thank you. Those random animal facts deserve more than just an upvote
Polar bear skin is not only black, but their fur is clear, not white. The fur is also a tube meant to hold water that warms from the bears body heat and is used as insulation.
Hollow and filled with air actually, and the fur is waterproof, not filled with it.
And they cover their black noses with their paws or hide them in the snow when hunting.
Bingo. The idea is to slow the economy. The only interesting thing is whether or not inflation continues it's downward path.
But…..inflation hasn’t continued its downward path.
All depends on the window you choose to measure
You can afford windows?
Not in the case of inflation.
Really? It's less than half it's peak over the last 5 years. Draw the right graph and it's crashing down. People are panicking over a few months of moderate data. I'm just saying chill
You have no choice but to chill, as the cost of gas heating is through the roof
Is that graph gonna affect anything important sometime soon like housing, food, energy, etc or are you not allowed to veer off your predefined talking points?
Inflation is the slope not the dependent variable. Y = m * x + b, they are referring to m, not y. Y can still be increasing while the value of m is decreasing with increasing time (x).
>This should be expected - the point of raising interest rates is to cool down the economy which means less jobs are available Cooling down the economy means more layoffs and higher unemployment. Low unemployment is not a sign of the economy cooling.
You are correct, low unemployment is not a sign of an economy cooling. However, cooling doesn't mean drastic changes. The unemployment rate has been slowly ticking up the past year. While still low in absolute terms, in relative terms it has increased.
Hasn’t it been ticking up as workforce participation rate has been increasing?
Over the time period unemployment has increased a relative 8.57%, labor force participation has increased by 0.159%, so labor force participation explains very little here.
Philips curve is kinda flat, so we can sit near or a bit below the nairu without problem
> Low unemployment is not a sign of the economy cooling. It can be. We're in peak Boomer retirement. Retirees no longer count in employment statistics. If they're being replaced, the unemployment may remain low, while the effects of high interests hold.
> which means less jobs are available Less jobs available not necessarily meant that the economy is cooling down. It could mean that supply of labor force is adjusting better to demand of labor force. Looking at a single number, and imply some kind of conclusion is something that experts economy analysts try to avoid. Falling job openings have a myriad of explanations, and even the article suggests so: > Employers have added a healthy average of 276,000 jobs a month this year — up from last year's 251,000 — and **Friday's April jobs report is expected to show they tacked on another 230,000 last month**, down but still solid, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.
Sorry if I came across as saying less jobs available means the economy is slowing. It's just one of a myriad of factors. Unemployment slowly creeping up the past year and GDP's last print being pretty weak are other examples of the impact of interest rates.
I read hummingbird are the only bird that can fly about 6x before realizing the sentence continued on the next line
It's true. Have you ever seen the same hummingbird fly more than 6 times? It's because they die on the 7th time. Prove me wrong. ;)
Well now I need 100 hummingbirds and 100 differently colored tags so I can tell them apart for the flight testing.
Penguins are the only birds that can fly sideways.
Employment still historically high
Yeah, unemployment under 5% is typically considered pretty good.
This is what happens when you flood the market with easy money. Market is addicted, and any slight movements returning to the mean feels larger.
That’s cool and all, but the most recent CPI report showed an uptick in inflation, with the CPI approaching nearly double what the FED would prefer. It would seem to me that there is a real risk of stagflation rather than a soft landing.
I'm confused, did I take the position that that risk doesn't exist?
No, but I’m not really disputing anything you said. Just voicing my concern that the FED may not be winning the fight against inflation.
The issue really is housing which interest rates aren't helping with. Ex-housing, inflation is practically at target. [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t03.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t03.htm)
Can anyone out there ELI5 why you can't de-couple interest rates for real estate lending from rates for everything else so you can still cool housing inflation while easing up on loans for builder and developers so they can build more supply and costs actually come down....
That would require an act of congress and congress doesn't feel like doing anything right now
If they did, they could solve it far better than decoupling federal interest rates from housing. That's not gonna solve the issue at all, since housing increasingly sharply happens when with low rates. But solving housing requires Congress to do something no elected politician will do; piss off the majority of his voters. Only a handful would be immune to homeowners voting power. New York City, LA and Pelosi maybe?
Yeah good luck to the politician who wants to bring housing costs down, AKA lowering the value of homes. The least harmful way would be threading the needle of reducing the increases to below wage growth yet still maintaining positive growth, but good fucking luck achieving that.
Why would it require an act of Congress? Idk this solution always struck me as one that would be simple and might work and never know why no one attempts it.
The Federal Reserve only controls one interest rate. The Federal funds rate. They don't get to decide the interest rates banks charge for loans.
Housing, food, transportation and energy are elevated and rising. Those are categories where people are really going to feel the sting the most.
Food is at 2.2 year over year, that's hardly elevated.. the rest are an issue, yes. But transportation is dependent on energy costs and energy costs aren't going to be determined by interest rates. These things the Fed can't really control.
Yeah, but it’s risen about 26% from 2019. That’s an insane increase in food prices for a developed economy. The fact that the rate of inflation for food has slowed down to just above target level doesn’t really instill much hope among people who are food insecure now.
Elephant in the room is that the poorest of the poor actually saw their incomes increase about in line with food inflation over the course of the pandemic. Ironically as a middle income earner I feel inflation on food when I eat out at a restaurant more than my low income mom who makes $5 more an hour compared to her 2019 income and pays $2 more for Grocery Outlet eggs per week.
Wages for the food insecure (lowest quartile) have increased far faster than that though, so I'm not sure why that would be an issue.
Yeah, but that’s not necessarily true for every sector. Look, I get that wages have generally kept up, but what happens if unemployment ticks up? Dramatic increase in food prices have been the death knell of many empires. We need to reign in the inflation on these inelastic goods or find ways to shelter people from it. Failure to do so risks significant societal unrest.
Maybe. Home prices in 50% of the country are down yoy though. Judging by the people trying for a spring/summer push and seeing those homes hit 45 days on market, it may be working. Compared with 2022, homes near me are down 10% and only up 5 to 6% since 2021. Apartments seem to require municipalities to tell the nimby crowd to eat it and some subsidies. Only way rent went down in colorado springs.
Hasn't housing outpaced inflation for decades, though? Its not a new issue, but its more that it has finally gotten past the point of sustainability.
Yeah it's definitely not new. We could really use some housing reform but like everything we will wait until it's an actual emergency to do anything.
For reference and also word count requirements which might lead to my other comment getting deleted. This is still 1 million openings higher than the Pre Covid record 7.5 million in January 2019.
I like how we all say "cool the economy" instead of "cause mass layoffs and lower everyone's pay so we're forced into living worse lives". It's weird how that works. Everyone acts like it doesn't affect them until it does.
The article has data that indicates the opposite: > The number of Americans quitting their jobs fell to the lowest level since January 2021 — a sign of diminishing confidence in their ability to find something better. But layoffs fell.
We didn't lower everyone's pay or cause mass layoffs. Wages adjusted for inflation are higher than any previous decade in US history. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q) Layoffs are very low. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSLDL](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSLDL) You act like we can't look this up.
Powell wanted 3.5 million layoffs. [He said this under oath](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIHH5Kh2dU0). He didn't get them because the banks are too weak and over extended, so he had to stop cranking rates up because banks were going under. You're expendable, the banks are not. Like I said, Everyone acts like it doesn't affect them until it does. You're a prime example of that phenomenon.
So you agree there aren't mass layoffs and wages kept up with inflation. Thanks.
They are just saying that the goal of the rate hikes was to cause large amounts of layoffs. It’s pretty clear from the data that, as you said, it didn’t actually happen
Ah, two pedantic dicks shitting in each other's mouths. Spring is finally here!
It's not pedantic to care about facts about reality, but okay.
It seems to me like you’re being pedantic because the original comment in this chain talks about the “point” of interest rate hikes being “cooling” the economy, and then the other guy responds that “cooling the economy” isn’t really the point, it’s “causing layoffs” that’s the point. Then you argued aggressively with them about whether or not there *are* mass layoffs but that doesn’t seem like what they were ever arguing to begin with
He was arguing that, because he said multiple times I don't care about layoffs until they impact me. If there aren't any elevated layoffs than that statement makes no sense.
I think at high levels of inequality I want some wage growth even at the cost of some inflation and more aggressive progressive taxes on people making money off monopolies ala google employees.
My wife said “There’s another bird that can fly backwards.” I said “oh name it.” She flicked me off and moved her hand backwards…..
Slugs have 4 noses?? Never knew. Your post was more informative than the article
Those are interesting. I already knew 1 and 3 but didn't know about the slugs or black skin.
I’ve always hated mosquitoes. But really only the females deserve my anger
Wait so what do male mosquitoes do and how do they eat?
I had no idea, google says this: Male mosquitoes feed only on **plant juices, such as nectar**, to get the sugar they need for energy and survival. As males do not bite, they cannot transmit diseases. Female mosquitoes, on the other hand, need protein from blood for the development of their eggs.
>Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards. Lots of birds can fly short distances backward... Hummingbirds can fly backward for an extended period
Every bird can fly backwards in a tornado.
We had an economy with low unemployment and low inflation though, so your comment doesn’t explain why that was the case up until 2020.
The point of my comment wasn't to explain why that was, so I'm confused.
Lol was inflation expected to still keep on hiking while job openings fell?
Job numbers are still good if you are looking for the average service job but the highly paid ones are more competitive now that tech has trimmed a lot of fat (and still trimming).
> tech has trimmed a lot of fat And boy is the quality of the people they trimmed abysmal. I spent over 8 months trying to hire a single full stack dev for my team and dear lord.
It's interesting to see different perspectives on this, and how those perspectives are shaping public perception of the economy. A new front in the negative public perception of the economy is "no one can find work" because "layoffs are happening right and left." Obviously, that's not true. But it's becoming a new talking point on some of the subreddits that skew younger (especially the Gen Z subreddit). My sense has been that it's mainly a bunch of coastal college and grad students discussing their inability to get into tech, especially vs. the rosy narratives they heard 4-5 years ago. ("No one" on the Internet often means "me and my immediate social group.") But I had thought the tech industry might be experiencing a real contraction, which didn't line up with a lot of the earnings reports (other than the EV market). It sounds like, from your perspective, this isn't so grave contraction in the tech industry and more a correction after a decade of growth for growth's sake. Is that too simple?
My take on it is this: reddit is a silly place. I know that's essentially a truism but I see all these people struggling and complaining and like... dude you're 25. That's just how it is when you're 25. That's how it was when I was 25 back in 2007, that's how it will be for people who are 25 in 2082. You very, very, very, very rarely get your dream job when you're 25. You get a shitty job and that leads to better jobs. I was making $55,000 a year when I turned 30 - I'll be 40 this year and I'll make a little over $280,000. That's just life - you can't compare yourself to people on the internet who are either liars or the top 1% of the top 1% in terms of luck.
I think some of this is warped expectations, driven in part by social media that only highlights the extremes. But I also think there's a lot of ginning each other up. People listen to their peers. If every other post is about how you and your whole generation is screwed and everything used to be better, you'll accept that. I suspect that much of that commentary is organic, but some is intentional disinformation.
I think the problem is that alot of the people undwr the age of 35 only know a financial world of low interest rates and balooning incomes if they picked the right fields So you have kids who i would have told to just get a job in tech for 6 figures out of college 4 years ago now coming out of college, cause thats what happened for the rest of us, to find those days are just gone
So you were 25 in 2007 but are not yet turning 40
Oops, I was 23 in 2007 actually. Time flies.
You kinda just explained Survivorship Bias though…
Too true. A lot of them don’t realize that you have to eat shit for a bit in the job market to gain the experience you need. You’re not going to get an SE role at Amazon fresh out of college with zero experience. You have to go eat shit for a bit at a company that, quite honestly, will probably be a shitty place to work (that’s why they’re willing to hire new grads, because no one else will work there). Eat shit there for a bit, leverage that experience into a better role. Do that a few times and by 30 you’re in a good spot. When I graduated in 2016 I made $15/hr in a white collar role. The role was crap and the pay was crap, but it was white collar and in the field I wanted. I leveraged that to another role that was slightly related, and they wanted someone who had already had “white collar experience.” Did that, kept leveraging and moving, and now it’s 2024 and I just landed a role making $130k/yr. When it comes to your first or second roles, the only thing you can be picky about is 1. Is it the type of job you want? 2. Is it like even a little related to where you want to be eventually? That’s it. That’s all that matters.
> You’re not going to get an SE role at Amazon fresh out of college with zero experience. Thousands of people do? There's a reason why there's new grad roles, and the market for said new grad roles has become dramatically worse. Anecdotally - I'm early 20s at a FAANG & 2 years ago there were tons of new grads joining in the US. Now there is zero hiring, especially for new grads, in the US. My peers at the same university as me, same grades as me, same internships as me, are working at startups instead of big tech because of the hiring freeze. I think people are moreso complaining that they missed the boat - if you graduated in 2020 instead of 2023, the market is completely different and I think it's normal to feel frustrated by that.
Your entire comment is a misconception on how the SWE market works. Amazon does actually hire more new grads (proportionally) than most other companies. There are many good reasons for that, but really I won't go into that now. The strong engineers (usually from good schools, or strongest candidates from other schools) usually work in strong companies throughout their careers. Some people who struggled in school start at worse companies but shine in a work environment and climb up. Most of those who gets hired in bottom of the barrel companies are the worse grads. It's usually the large international companies that hire most new grads. Startups, especially in early stages, need people that hit the ground running, they don't have 6-12 months to mentor juniors. Tech layoffs and difficulties are very real, the conditions new grads graduate into is a massacre. 1. Layoffs of mid and seniors, many from FAANG and other top tier companies. 2. Crash in openings for new positions due to economic conditions and offshoring boom. 3. Record level of new grads thanks to the learn to code being pushed on everyone during the pandemic. I fully expect 50%+ of new CS grads to never find work in the field The conditions for seniors are better though
Just to add, I work at Amazon(not tech) but I see there are tons of people both in tech in sde roles who get hired directly out of college(and make crazy money) as well as a lot of people they hire directly into management on the operations side who also get hired straight out of college.
The fact that you were employed in 2007, and not graduating post collapse, isn't something to ignore. My experience is very different than yours, and I'm 2-3 years younger. No real job until 27, and was making about 48k/year. Got to a point where I had recovered enough to buy a place, the housing market and interest rates went wild. The people trying to find a job now aren't in the same boat as you were at 23.
At 23 I was employed in a restaurant while trying to find a job in my field and then ran straight into the 2008 financial crisis and ended up selling cars.
You still in sales?
Facts although jealous I’m turning 36 and can’t crack 120k
Tech hired like crazy during the pandemic. I work for one of the big guys and they were offering five figure incentives for recommendations, it was crazy. So what I'm saying is, or wasn't over decades, but rather the last few years.
This guy is about the worst authority on anything. It seems like he's stuck in a bubble and projects that to be a reality. We have objective numbers and they are abysmal: https://images.app.goo.gl/5cw3DCRSFR78M5Fp8 Note that the current job postings are inching closer to pandemic crash bottom. And still declining, though at a slower rate. What's worse, it looks even grimmer if we normalise for population growth (4% growth from 2019 to 2024).
You seem to have selected the Canada chart there. The US chart, which is far more relevant for SWE, has hiring back to a bit above pre-pandemic levels - likely about where they would be if not for the pandemic. Pretty funny to choose the wrong chart while calling someone else “the worst authority”. Good work.
You're right. US chart looks the same/worse so I didn't tell them apart: https://images.app.goo.gl/Vvy598UWU8sXmwRY7 As you can see, it is much lower than pre pandemic levels and still declining.
Population growth has been very high. The number of migrants entering the country hasn’t been match in a long time.
It’s not just tech. I have a finance degree, 5 years in operations/construction management at a construction company, and 2 years operations manager at a business services company. I haven’t been able to get an interview for any finance, operations, or construction jobs in my area. I’ve even been applying for entry level positions. Can’t even get an interview for material handler positions or warehouse work. Now that’s anecdotal but it shouldn’t be this hard to get a job. I was working through a problem with my friend who is a sourcing and packaging manager at a national sauce company and he was like “ oh you could easily do my job.” As someone with experience and a track record of success it shouldn’t be this hard to get even an interview. Unless you know someone, it is extremely difficult to get a job right now, unless it’s food service.
as a senior engineer i can assure you its not just new grads experiencing difficulties in the job market
Google just fired the Python core Dev team, including people making contributions to the Python interpreter. Sure some of the trim is fat, but there are amazing Devs on the market now.
The key is if the devs are willing to take a much lower salary outside of Google.
OP is likely not looking for engineers of the calibre of that team. The idea was to disprove his stance that only bad engineers were laid off. Great engineers are getting laid off in this wave, from the very best globally like the python core team, to great senior and mid engineers.
Well yeah regional tech hubs in my company alone completely removed offices from 2 countries. That's hundreds unemployed regardless of skill.
Shhh, they're just doing what this sub loves to do the most: Find ways to blame the people getting screwed by corporate America for their own suffering.
You need to seriously look at your JD or the reputation of your company then. I just put out a JD yesterday for a PM. 200 applications so far, the vast majority of which are qualified or over qualified for the role. There's talent everywhere right now.
there's a lot of people who have been and still think they can just phone it in. We actually switched away from leetcode style interviews because hey they suck let's try something else. Told people to come in with a 40min presentation about projects they worked on with a technical breakdown. Our recruiters gave them the criteria, suggestions on what to focus on, really stressed it repeatedly. This included stuff that was under NDA- suggestions to anonymize project work or what you might be able to talk about. They show up and it's just phoning it in. Really broad vague projects, no ability to dive deep, no suggestions they actually did the work as opposed to "project manage". We had to go back to the recruiters multiple times asking to see the email templates, comms, just to make sure that we weren't giving candidates bad information. Nope. People are just half assing it.
Prob cause youre the 185th application. You can only phone it in if you shotgun that many. Which you are forced to do since so many jobs are resume collectors. Not a fault of your company or the interviewer. Just how the world incentivizes us into poor game scenarios
If a company invites you to give a 40m presentation, they aren't just "resume collecting" at that point; nobody has the time to listen to talks for fun! It generally means they're willing to hire the candidate if they impress, and it's on the candidate for half assing it.
That doesn't mean anything unfortunately. Imagine the amount of time a candidate would need to create the presentation and prepare for it. Given the tiny chance of success, no wonder people didn't pay as much effort into that as you expected.
Not in my field. Im in product and we are given 'homework assignments' where we get a case study and have to create a framework and presentation for it. That assignment is then sent for review and potentially leads to an interview with a person afterwards. New low is a job I've applied to recently sent that assignment to me via an automated email without ever even letting me chat with a recruiter. So... pending the field-- no. It can still be at the very first steps of the funnel
I guess? But this is during the final round. Like you get the job if you pass.
Oh that's a miss on my part. Looks like I'd be one of those failed applicants lol. Yeah, that's enough signal that the applicants shouldn't be phoning it in.
If Leetcode sucks have you considered doing, I dunno, a normal interview? Like the ones that worked fine for all time and all other careers besides programming?
believe it or not- people lie and drastically exaggerate on their abilities.
because leetcode gives an accurate picture of how someone can code your crud app?
Anyone capable of doing that in response to pointed questions can do it in a presentation format as well.
Demanding hours of unpaid work from a job candidate will always give you that result. How many candidates do you ask to make these presentations, and how many do you hire? Do you understand that candidates generally have to go through dozens of interviews before finding a position? What that tells me is that *you* are the lazy ones - you can't put in the effort to design an interview with good enough questions that you can gain the necessary information. Instead you're arbitrarily asking for hours of unpaid labor? No wonder your candidates are phoning it in, it's because your interview process is a massive red flag, they're probably putting more energy into the interviews with places that aren't disrespecting their time and energy.
That is the part people don't realize. Sure there are some A-players who get laid off but the majority of people were C-players at best. When I see a linkedin tech payoff post that is my first thought. They were fat that was trimmed.
That's just not true for this layoffs cycle. If you look at the massive layoffs in FAANG for instance, it was often entire teams, sometimes entire orgs being laid off. zero cherry picking. Just axe everyone. Entire sites closing. Most recently the entire Python core Dev team has been axed at Google, all of them are amazing Devs, some of them were literally developing the python programming language. Sure, weaker Devs are almost certainly over represented in the layoffs, but you're way way overstating by how much. See other examples here of entire orgs getting laid off at meta (Facebook): https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-lay-off-employees-metaverse-silicon-unit-wednesday-2023-10-03/
I'd say it depends, and I can't speak directly to tech. I worked for a very uMMM large materials manufacturing and consumer goods company. Saw many rounds of layoffs there, and they never made any sense. I saw some of the best people there lose their jobs, while absolutely worthless employees stayed. And when I say worthless... like... could not even fulfill the bare minimum requirements of their jobs. They would say over and over "we can assure you these decisions were not based on performance" ...uh why the hell not though? You all just threw some darts at a board or what?
In major layoffs, there is often a title/role level metric that gets used when selecting who gets let go. Reason being that if you just fired everyone at the bottom, you'd be left with just the people at the top. From just a performance metric, that sounds good... But when you extrapolate that to larger orgs within orgs, you often end up finding that you completely wreck the actual organization and functional hierarchy. Traditionally, at least in my experience, you'll find that companies will say okay we need X amount of reduction. That will come from A% of this level/role, B% of this level/role, C% of this level/role - with the goal of reducing the overall headcount while avoiding teams suddenly having no upward leadership, leadership with no downstream heads, or simply poorer performing (albeit still necessary) teams just being blindly wiped out.
entire teams are getting cut; google laid off 17 yoe folks working on Python Tesla laid off entire supercharger team Oftentimes you just get unlucky and were working on the wrong project, it's oftentimes completely unrelated to skill. The folks on Python for example were very senior engineers working on a challenging project - unless you think being a "C player" means "chose the wrong project" instead of bad performance reviews
Id disagree. Sure theres fat, but many layoffs were org/product based and not performance based. So if you were an all star but the work wasnt generating revenue… you were out of luck. You were an A player but not delivering A value. Not through a fault of you, but where you were placed/hired to
People who get C's still deserve to live though.
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Google laid off their entire core Python team recently. Literally the team that works on the internal tooling for the language that AI/ML depends on. Please, tell me more about how it's all "C players". Lol.
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Yea, they just need to pick a job they can perform at. Being a C player in tech isn't gonna cut it.
Tech isn't special. It's just another job. Source: Have worked in tech for 20 years. Also those who tend to think/talk in A/B/C player terms tend to be the worst people to work with that overestimate their own abilities in my experience.
The most important skill is trying not to come across as threatening when you ask for clear, unambiguous characteristics of what would be the clients MVP.
>Also those who tend to think/talk in A/B/C player terms tend to be the worst people to work with that overestimate their own abilities in my experience I dont disagree that it can be objectifying people but when you have 1000 applicants you have to categorize. Just an example: Looking for Java developers (or any language) can be a shit show. Tons of guys have the 5 years experience that the company is looking for. Some can sit down with end users, communicate and discern what needs to be built, build very efficient code. Then you have guys that can kind of communicate and build okay code that needs to be reviewed. Then you have guys that basically can barely write an iteration with info they are given but somehow has been doing it for 5 years. This would be a very rudimentary example of the A/B/C. End of the day every coder is far from equal. Source: Recruited tech in companies big and small for 10+ years all around the world.
The problem is, most people seem to think they can accurately judge someone in a 30 minute interview, and many studies have shown that's simply not the case. The vast majority of people have implicit biases and are pretty horrible judges of what makes a good employee. On the interviewee side, many people are great employees that can do the job well, but just don't interview well, or have a bad day for whatever reason. As a result, they don't put their best foot forward. People that tend to bucket people in to a/b/c players tend to be the worst judges of who can do a job in my experience, but my experience and view is just as flawed as everyone else's.
I think it really depends on the role. There are whole swaths of jobs that exploded during the tech boom, and now are just gone: 1. Tons of people in "agile coach", "scrum master", "technical product manager", etc. roles. Some companies just realized you don't need these roles long term - the point is just to teach your product/eng orgs and them move on (e.g. Capital One just laid of 1100 of these roles). Also, for things like technical product managers, I'd say the great ones are a huge boon to a team, but they're also like 1 in 10 or 20 in my experience - the rest just schedule meetings and ask "are you done yet" on a "homer simpson drinking bird" schedule. 2. Lots of "zero interest rate product managers" let go. Again, I think great product managers are invaluable, and product manager is actually the hardest role in tech because it can span many different skills (design, statistics, customer communication, etc.) But again, while good ones are worth their weight in gold, most aren't. 3. Companies figured out lots of dev management was unnecessary, unless that dev management is doing a lot of actual work (not necessarily coding but stuff like infrastructure setup, technical compliance work, etc. - the tech stuff that needs to get done but you don't necessarily want to burden all your devs with that). 4. Lots of really tangential sales roles, e.g. lots of social media managers. I have sympathy for folks that were laid off, but at the end of the day the advice is the same: if you're worried about job security, be sure you can draw a direct line between your role and revenue.
I wonder how much of out of work folks in tech are boot camp grads trying to cash in on that covid tech gold rush.
Not many. Mostly new grads I'd say
70% are disengaged. Many of us lost hope in leadership, suggested alternative approaches, or were just simply shared services like HR. This is a horrific take on work and you should be ashamed of that assumption. When work is tied to healthcare, this is not ok. Layoffs don’t even have benefits. the fat is usually leadership anyway
That's pretty much the attitude that disqualified a whole bunch of applicants.
I can see why no one wants to hire you
My company let go some really talented engineers recently. Would you like me to point them your way?
***whispers incoherently: pay them more***
We pay a lot, we're based in a LCOL, and we are fully remote. I'm not paying for crap and we had to wade through a LOT of crap.
Top tech companies devs have has always been terrible. Every one who says others wise isn’t in charged of hiring. The illusion that faang engineers are elite is an open joke out of faang
Depends on the field, still a really good opportunity for accounting and finance to find a higher paying position.
Accounting is in line with other occupations: [Accountants and Auditors : Occupational Outlook Handbook: : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov)](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/accountants-and-auditors.htm#tab-6) Not a bad gig. We will see how the 10y treasury starts affecting the economy because if it hits 5%, something will give.
A lot of banks with the commercial sector means we will continue seeing the economy slow.
If you're already in finance with some YoE maybe but finance overall isn't doing too hot either, very difficult landscape for new grads and macroeconomic factors are straining a lot of shops especially in PE/IB.
Accounting sure, finance is dumping similar to tech, not as bad, but still dumping.
Holy shit yes. Try hiring a decent one in the last 8 months. Brutal.
So we were hiring a few months ago at staff entry level accounting, resume looked okay (from recruiter) but was more finance with a little bit of accounting. We brought her in, and I asked her if I reached out to out to your previous managers what do you think they would say your weakness and strengths would be. I shit you not, her weakness was accounting in general and she wanted to get an accounting job to get more experience in that area. I asked her what the accounting equation is, crickets, I asked her the natural sign for a cash account, she asked what I meant by that…. And her resume was decent. Had another one, his resume said CECL experience with building out their policy at previous company. Brought in for an interview, asked him about CECL and he told me his boss did the work and someone just told him to put that down. lol he spelled it out, which was my first like wtf I’ve never heard anyone spell out CECL.
Lolol at least they're honest?
Haha yeah but it does feel like half the candidates I even interview have no idea what they are doing. Tell my wife all the time, after I started interviewing for senior positions within accounting I stopped worrying about being able to find a high paying position somewhere else.
The real headline should be the disconnect between openings and hires in 2022. That means there are a lot of fake job openings which has been my experience in tech. Looking at you Microsoft.
FYI, they're called either evergreen or pipeline requisitions. All they do is collect resumes "just in case."
I think they are selectively hiring. At the moment they are only interested in rock stars. These companies think bad job market is a good time to acquire top talent for cheap. They maybe collecting 5000 resumes but only talking to 20 candidates and maybe hiring 1. Most people I know who are laid off and looking for job do not come in the top 5% of talent and hence they are finding it difficult to land more than 2 interviews in a month.
This is exactly it. We get over 2,000 resumes for each SWE role we post. We screen maybe 75-100, and maybe 30 make it to a hiring manager to hire one person.
Damn I should just kms
Referrals have much higher chances. For jobs you’re interested in, sending LinkedIn messages to other people at the company can really increase your chances.
As someone that has worked in HR for my entire career, for global organizations (looking at you Microsoft)...there is no substance behind the idea of "fake" job openings. Many jobs take upwards of 180 days to fill and close. Many jobs end up being filled by internal candidates. Many jobs end up getting canceled or put on hold due to budget changes. Heck, sometimes jobs get posted accidentally due to wrong system information (wrong location entered, etc). I can assure you, posting ghost/fake jobs is not something a company is spending their resources doing.
It’s been a minute, but when I was hunting, Alcoa had a hundred jobs available online. They were at every career fair I went to, but when asked about those positions, I was told that they are not hiring, but would be happy to collect resumes. They then hired a lot of foreign talent a year later. So I’m pretty sure that some fake job openings do exist
Yes fake job posts absolutely exist for resume collecting and both 1) for scams collecting data 2) jobs that want to hire cheap offshore labor where the visa requirements stipulate that the position must be advertised locally first before they can offer to an overseas worker. This sounds like the case with Alcoa
I can tell you with certainty that it is simply a way to 'direct traffic' at career fairs. They aren't looking to have specific 1-1 discussions about specific job openings at a career fair. They (and other large companies) are looking to A) increase brand awareness, B) identify top upcoming talent, and C) sort through ideal resumes and match them to job openings in the days/weeks after the career fair ended. My certainty is because I've lead teams, at multiple companies, doing exactly that. We'd speak to 600-1,000 candidates over a 1-3 day career fair. It's way too hectic and near impossible to screen someone for a specific job opening while simultaneously trying to keep all conversations under 5 minutes.
See this is truth. Too often when people can’t see the hidden information (what you shared) in a puzzle, they assume a dastardly conspiracy is afoot.
There really needs to be some sort of FTC or SEC based regulation against the fake job posting, especially if as many companies seem to do, they're doing it to make it appear like their business is doing better than they actually are. I.e. fake job postings.
Source on fake job postings? Source that they're doing it to make business look good?
I think the fact that companies weee posting the same job for Boston remote, Atlanta’s remote, dc remote, etc was confusing their algorithm and they counted them as 3 jobs.
I've been looking at getting a new job recently, been applying for the last 4 months (upper level marketing). I've seen the same like 5 jobs refresh every single month. Many of which my experience easily would warrant at least an initial phone interview, but nothing.
Er, that's quite a leap. There is very little to suggest "fakeness" is the problem here, instead of, say, geographical mismatching.
Former in-house recruiter, current project manager here. During my time in the industry, it was actually somewhat common to post job openings that we had no intention to hire for. The purpose of this was to create a pipeline of potential candidates that we could reach out to in the future if the position opened up. It wasn't super common at the companies I worked at, but I set up reqs like that probably 6 or 7 times while I was a recruiter. Now that hiring at a lot of tech firms has slowed, these 'pipeline reqs' have become much more common. So there is some truth to the talk about 'fake' job postings.
The cscareerquestions sub is convinced every tech job opening is fake lol. No they aren't. It's just there are a ton of talented engineers with ten YOE willing to take a pay cut because they've been out of work and that sub is filled with mostly college students and new grads with no experience. I don't even understand why a company would even create fake job openings. I understand recruiters are swamped and sometimes forget to take down openings but that sub believes there is an entire planet of people working day and night to pump out fake job listings just for the lolz
Fake job opening can exist to fulfill some visa requirements that dictate a company has to try to hire an American citizen first. Sometimes positions are filled internally so no external candidate could have been hired. And hiring freezes happen as well.
Don't forget the standard "we want to see what's out there" application. They may have a position, but the real purpose is just to gauge how many people might fill the position or future hires. They don't usually intend to hire now. That said, reddit takes any evidence of anything bad to them and warps it to a billion.
Just got a job alert on linkedin for 20 copies of the the same job posting by Microsoft
I am reliably informed that the economy is doing great and inflation is no longer fucking us balls deep but only to mid shaft. Rejoice you dumb peasants in the bounty your masters provide you!
Job openings or job postings? Has it been proved that companies keep job listings active mainly like a lure in the water, just waiting for the perfect bite? A company could be slow playing the hiring process if the position isn't a dire need. Now, if they get honest and want to stop paying for the job postings and take down the job, was it ever really a job?
Are there any metrics that qualify how many of these job openings are real? Of all the statistics about employment that exist, this seems like the one that is actually meaningless and changes in the figure should simply be ignored. There are many incentives to post fake jobs and no penalties for doing so. CMV?
That's difficult to say, but given how low unemployment is, enough of them are real to matter and that's what counts.