Lately I've noticed that "Who wants to be hired" posts are getting more comments than the "Who's hiring" ones.

I pulled the data using HN API and confirmed this "reversal". "Who wants to be hired" posts are getting 2x more comments than "Who's hiring" posts (and seems to be accelerating). For reference, in 2022 it used to be 0.25.

I'm old, I'm from the times where demand for software devs greatly outpaced supply, but maybe we're seeing a reversal of it?

I don't want to draw any conclusions yet, there could be many things going on. My initial thoughts would be AI-related. We're either entering a general recession because the AI bubble is bursting, or the job market is changing due to AI.

Again, I don't have any answers, but it's something definitively interesting to discuss!

Here's the source code (including data): https://github.com/santiagobasulto/hn-who-is-hiring-analysis

That’s true! Naysayers keep mentioning it’s due to over hiring during Covid. I’d say it’s AI investment related and AI replacing a lot of software needs. Plus, people seem to use just a couple applications or platforms nowadays.

I'm kind of surprised that this is even moving the needle.

Really, what do you expect from a "profession" that has been trying to lower the entry level to a point where anyone with access to an AI is a programmer?

I remember when folks had to have a degree to enter the "profession" of software developer. Nowadays all you need to be a "programmer" is access to AI. And correspondingly the quality of the output has fallen to such a level that it no longer possible to distinguish between human generated or machine generated code.

The bad quality is hidden away with euphemisms such as "release early, release often" or "move fast and break things". The constant requirement to update because updates were broken is just another symptom of an industry gone badly wrong.

Worse still, the solution coming out the tech hubs isn't to slow down and reflect about these issues in IT, rather it's to throw even more technology at it. Technology that then also fails. Technology that is designed to cause vendor-lockin and dependence on a few controlling companies (OpenAI & Anthropic being the latest in a long line ... AWS for servers and Google for spreadsheets and email).

Hm ... now what do we do? More of the same probably.

I've been tracking this as well [1], and there's indeed a clear difference between pre-2023 and 2023 onward.

[1] https://hnjobs.mathieularose.com

Back in 2023 when I was reading the "Who's hiring" for March I wanted to ask aloud "truly, who is?".

I'm happy my junior years passed before all this and I don't envy those who are just coming into this field.

And it's not just tech - all over my extended social circle there are people in various fields who were laid off. It's a crawling, largely invisible in the usual indicators, crisis.

It'd be interesting to go slightly farther back to better gauge the impact of the covid hiring craze.

There's a lot of things you could attribute it to: AI, the economy, career transitions. For me personally, more interested in freelance/consulting work at my stage of life vs. full-time gigs.

AI is definitely disruptive to technical work though but how do you attribute it without confounding it with the economy weakness or just people transitioning in their own career? Not an easy task.

I think the number of HNers also increased significantly over the last year. It'd be nice to see some uptick stats from dang or tomhow.

What I noticed lately is that everyone wants a principal or staff SWE. So much that I even think the titles are getting diluted.

High interest rates and instability makes it a bad environment to invest, it raises the bar on speculative/growth investment, and tech is mainly that.

Mix that with heavy AI bills, there isn't a lot of budget left for hiring.

Nothing to do with the bar for wanting a job being WAY lower than the bar for being able to even potentially hire someone they found on an internet forum.

> I've noticed that "Who wants to be hired" posts are getting more comments than the "Who's hiring" ones.

Well, yeah. High supply of workers meets low demand of jobs.

i just wonder from "who want to be employed" how many from ai firm that fired people

I'm tired of reading job adverts for 3 people's jobs (frontend, backend, DevOps) all in one, all lead/staff/senior but not the salary to match any of that, not even close

It's not AI. It's cash flow and corporate lending across nearly every publicly traded company is as high as it can be without lenders raising eyebrows. It's been really bad for nearly a decade. You can see it in screeners. Everyone loaded up to the hilt on debt.

Most of the money that used to go to software is going straight to Google and Meta. The well has run dry.

Started to reverse before ai though. With the law in US (which was reverted) that you couldn't use all software research as expense so you needed to pay tax on no-profit.

Then with increased interest rates. Which are still active and weirdly should've caused more hardship than ~3 months lower stocks.

And now ai, but this depends on demand for software too, which I don't how big it is, like can demand scale too with ai?

Like when you lower electricity cost people just use more electricity.