It is no doubt a campaign or at least a meme. It seems basically impossible for everyone to have overhired, for the simple reason that qualified workers do not appear and disappear from nowhere. There is a population of qualified workers in the software sector, and only new grads and retirement can move the needle significantly. So, if someone overhired then someone else must have done without, all things considered. The only ways out of the pool are basically retirement, career change, and death.

I know there are complications with this argument. For example, unemployment could double by basically doubling the average time to find a job. That kind of thing could support an overhiring thesis if the unemployment rate in tech got very low. To really test the "everybody overhired" thesis, I think you need to do a full accounting of early careers people, unemployed, retired, etc. I'm not gonna attempt that...

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chabons 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

“There is a population of qualified workers […]”

In my experience, this is not true. Demand for software engineers has been so high, and pay so high as a result, that it’s pulling in workers from adjacent industries. The total software-qualified workforce is larger than the set currently working in software, and people with transferrable skills move in and out of software as incentives dictate.

A number of my current and former coworkers are from math and physics backgrounds (CFD, energy, etc…). These are folks that before might have stayed in academia, or ended up in aerospace, defense, or other engineering fields.

If everyone over hired, demand drops, and companies drop pay as a result, I’m sure we’ll see some folks in software with transferrable skills move to other industries.

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wakawaka28 a day ago | parent [-]

You may be right but it's not high pay alone that draws in people from other industries. Standards must be relaxed to accept people from unconventional backgrounds. When conditions tighten, many of these people are simply not competitive enough to get another job. When it comes to aerospace, defense, academia, etc., opportunities are more scarce in those fields than in software the past few years also. It is this, not just the pay, that drives people to software.

I'm not saying people with odd backgrounds can't ever make it. But let's be clear, these are not usually hot shots who can simply get any vaguely technical job they want. They get into software because it is traditionally very accepting of uncredentialled or non-mainstream individuals. The framing you put forward makes it sound like the people committed to software are chumps who have to take what they're given, and these interlopers are the real geniuses who leave for greener pastures with ease. That simply isn't true.

	▲	chabons 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> "[…] and these interlopers are the real geniuses […] This wasn’t the framing I was going for. My point was that industry boundaries are fluid and expand/contract as demand dictates. You’re correct that incentives are not all positive (pay, work life balance, perks), other industries contracting might force people to find work elsewhere. All that said, I don’t think these people have “odd backgrounds”. I work in a math-heavy domain, so these backgrounds make as much sense as a traditional CS background, and I think these folks are just as likely to be retained in a crunch.

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computably 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It seems basically impossible for everyone to have overhired, for the simple reason that qualified workers do not appear and disappear from nowhere. There is a population of qualified workers in the software sector, and only new grads and retirement can move the needle significantly.

SWEs (and most any role for that matter) definitely can be minted in ways besides graduating with a relevant major. On top of that there's also H1Bs and contractors. Plus "overhiring" doesn't necessarily just mean absolute headcount, it could be compensation, scope, middle managers, etc. The definition of "qualified" is also malleable depending on the incentives.

> So, if someone overhired then someone else must have done without, all things considered.

Beyond the previous points, this also assumes the supply of labor is independent of the demand, and it's clearly not. As the demand increases, so does compensation, outreach, advertising/propaganda, etc. Everybody can overhire simultaneously as a result of pushing for growth of the supply of labor.

	▲	wakawaka28 a day ago \| parent [-]
		We can both "yeah, but" this to death. You make some valid points but I think my observation generally holds. The supply of workers is not so elastic, at least if you have real standards for the workers such as college degrees and so on.

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sokoloff 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> There is a population of qualified workers in the software sector, and only new grads and retirement can move the needle significantly.

“Qualified” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Just like the first dotcom boom and crash, there were people in other fields who got into software during the boom time and went back to whatever other field after the crash.

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eloisant 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Also there isn't one profile of software developers.

At least 3 tiers: the FAANG level, the mid-size tech companies, then all the developers working for non-tech companies/administration or in IT service companies.

Even in those categories, workers aren't swappables.

	▲	wakawaka28 a day ago \| parent [-]
		If they're not swappable, that supports my claim about scarcity even more. But I also have people here saying that you can swap in anybody vaguely technical, sometimes without credentials at all, to fill these roles even at FAANG. I happen to think workers with minimum qualifications like a CS degree can be fairly swappable, at least more than FAANG types would have us believe. But they're very elitist when it comes to hiring. I have practically given up on being hired at FAANG companies, and these days I think their jobs are overrated too. Sign up to bust your ass 50 hours per week with backstabbing snobs, till you get laid off unceremoniously. I'd rather not.

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wakawaka28 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

That might be true but how many of these people are there, really? I'm not convinced that many companies are hiring these barely-qualified people.

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theshackleford 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It seems basically impossible for everyone to have overhired, for the simple reason that qualified workers do not appear and disappear from nowhere.

Not everyone, but it go through the roof, or at least it did in my country. I know a lot of people who doubled or even tripled their salary during that time as these companies went absolutely ape shit. They were getting 50k increases with each position change. I've not seen anything like it before, and I honestly wonder if i'll ever see anything like it again. Kinda wish i'd been in the job market at the time, but I was off with health issues sadly so missed that boom.

> So, if someone overhired then someone else must have done without, all things considered.

They did? Again, at least in my country. Smaller shops felt the pain, as tons of people left for the pastures of big tech.

> Small businesses have been identified as the biggest losers of the 2020–2022 explosion in big tech hiring. While demand for digital transformation grew to previously unseen levels, smaller firms and businesses were severely disadvantaged by intense competition from large companies for talent, resulting in a multi-year skills shortage where less than 50% of small business vacancies were filled, compared to 65% for large firms

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sureMan6 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Overhired has nothing to do with the talent pool and just means they hired more than they actually needed or wanted, if the talent pool is large enough then everyone can overhire

	▲	wakawaka28 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Of course the judgement about whether people overhired is subjective on a per-company basis. My point is, you can't hire people who don't exist, and the ways to get people into the industry are limited. All other things equal, we would expect massive overhiring to be matched with very low unemployment in the industry, and the correction should not go below some baseline.