The tech downturn seen through Hacker News comments
rinzewind.org
rinzewind.org
I believe if you're a US citizen vacationing long-term in France because your work prospects aren't great at the moment - you'll still show up as not in the labor force in the labor force participation rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
But you won't show up in u-1 through u-6.
> Discouraged workers (U-4, U-5, and U-6 measures) are persons who are not in the labor force, want and are available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months
And, as you say, there are labor force participation numbers if that's what you're interested in.
Hiring rates skyrocketed during covid, but so did attrition rates (well, the same people joining Google left some other company)
After big tech started freezing hiring in summer 2022, attrition rates most likely tanked, people wanted to stay put. 6-8 months later, companies ended up with way more employees than they planned, even though they were the ones hiring, cue layoffs. People will crap on Google or Salesforce "why did you hire so much?" - but during the great resignation - what were they supposed to do?
Gee, I dunno, maybe NOT double in size like Salesforce did?
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CRM/salesforce/num...
I propose the following:
WHO HAS BEEN HIRED and metrics on such.
https://sql.clickhouse.com/play?user=play#U0VMRUNUIHRvU3Rhcn...
I am curious if the growth in comment count could be correlated with factors like more downvoted/hidden comments, more new comment-only reddit style users, more back and forth argument comments etc. or if it is genuinely healthy community growth.
I think there's plenty of people that have got used to an inflated salary, so offering "local market rate" won't cut it.
Time will tell if the global downturn will lead to reverting to norm (especially as a lot of companies seem to be moving away from fully remote).
I speculated that the layoffs in Australia are quietly happening amongst tech middle management / developer adjacent jobs but those quiet layoffs are encouraging everybody else to stay put for the moment.
EDIT: The second link provides more insights: https://rinzewind.org/blog-en/2021/percentage-of-hacker-news...
Most likely, there is just nothing to see, we are still in the process of being back to normal from the pandemic bubble.
This chart paints a very dishonest picture.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33773972
Feel free to use the historical data, I haven’t had time to update for Jan and Feb 2023!
- Can you share this analysis across a longer time span?
- Maybe there's a way to normalize it to general activity on HN? It probably hasn't gone down, but it would be cleaner to do that.
For starters. There are so many possibilities here that any attempt to even think of a trend let alone what it's caused by, is wrong :) On the other hand: without knowing number of users, number of who's hring posts, when they were posted, location, ...: still really hard to give any sensible meaning to it. Just nice to look at.
Edit: typo.
The number of recrutiers spamming with job offers has gone way down. I even had a situation where the recruiter who was supposed to hire me, got laid off during my final interview alongiside a big chunk of the company...
What’s perverse, and not being discussed enough, is that this is an engineered recession. Rather than admit our economy no longer works, the Fed can alternate between low and high interest rates (inflation or unemployment, take your pick) and so, even though bad things are happening, the fact that it’s different bad stuff each year makes it look like the Fed is doing something.
Somehow those policies became the only acceptable ones a government can issue. Worldwide and through all the societies.
It is also an obvious cause of instability, because once you pay rich people to change their investments, it takes a huge amount of time until anything on the real economy changes. I really doubt policy makers run PDI algorithms over their data to attenuate that delay.
What do you mean our economy no longer works?
Its nothing like hockeystick growth.
EDIT: I suppose if you overenthusiastically extrapolate from, like, just the last three data points the trade rather than budget deficit might distantly resemble that, but...
Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded?
> At some point, someone has to put some reality back into the simulacrum because simulacrum does not feed your family
Aren’t poverty, famine, and food scarcity at record lows?
They were temporarily alleviated thanks to technological advances.
To me, the technological advances seem to be a product of the economic system. As long as the economic system can be sustained, then it is likely that human welfare will continue to improve.
I would recommend picking up First Principles of Islamic Economics by Al-Mawdudi.
I saw this organically happen both pre- and post-pandemic. Pre-pandemic, it was rare if a Slack or email I sent to client staff was answered off hours. During the latter half of the pandemic and post-pandemic with those in WFH situations, it became much more common as staff learned to communicate all the time during brief idling periods while going about their off hours days and evenings. I'm going to miss this low-latency communication, but it is what it is.
If this is an actual secular trend instead of mere n=1 anecdata, then it will stack on the demographic trend baked in of ever-fewer workers for the next 20-odd years (assuming there is a baby boom in the next 3-4 years, which by current family and household formation statistical trends is still looking unlikely).
I have to walk all the way across the building to a phone room every time I need to make a phone call, and the rooms are usually all full. Which means I have to hide in the mail room or walk a couple of blocks out to my car.
The office is full of minor annoyances like broken elevators, full bathrooms, no coffee creamer, etc. It's super obnoxious.
I'm trying not to be a spoiled /r/antiwork jerkbag here, but I really hate this job, haha.
Sounds stupid but forced return to office will also do enormous damage to the environment
Watch what they do, not what they say, I guess. Maybe it's mostly greenwashing?
The pandemic lockdowns were probably as close as we're ever going to get to observing how much a drastically reduced transport-intensive footprint is capable of helping the environment. If a lot of tension arises out of increasing RTO and shrinking labor pools, it will be interesting to watch how it resolves out.
Probably write it on the way to Davos in their private jet for the climate conference they'll issue it at.
Update: Actually just got an interview so it's not so so bad.