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Layoffs are still happening in tech (Cisco, Intel, Intuit to name a few in the last couple of months) and companies that are hiring, have very few roles or are very selective in their hiring process.

And beyond hiring, internally, the companies are being hyper focused on performance. People are being let go despite working hard and going above and beyond.

The comparison really is: Do I leave my current job which may pay less but won’t fire me or do I go to a new company, risk performance based firing and then be unemployed for months before I find the next job.

People are being let go despite working hard and going above and beyond.

This is what primarily scares me and my circle. I'm not going to look for another job while I see and know people far smarter than me being let go from positions far more important than mine.

I'd argue that's a very good reason to have backup options. Remember that looking for a job does not commit you to leaving your current one unless you find something better.

The problem is that the job market is a market for lemons on both sides.

From the employee side, I have no way of knowing whether I've actually found something better. It could be that I've just found a company that interviews well or that got lucky enough to avoid putting foot in mouth long enough to get me out the door.

If I'm in a company that's good enough and am not sure I'll be able to land a job six months from now, it makes very little sense for me to even start looking because I know that any new job I find might be a lemon, even if it looks better during the interviews.

Market-for-lemons is sometimes a useful framing, but there's such a thing as taking it too far.

Markets, even markets for lemons, are frequently in non-equilibrium states. That can happen because actors have imperfect information, because underlying conditions have changed, because some actors are new to the market and haven't settled to equilibrium yet, because people have personal beliefs that override market-rational behavior, because market actors are simply bad at their jobs, or any number of other reasons. Far more information-perfect, rational, and optimized markets than hiring frequently show inefficient behavior in practice.

Yes, there are market pressures that tend to remove good candidates and good jobs from the market, and that incentivize both sides to pretend they're better than they are. But a tendency is only a tendency, and not a guarantee, and incentives can be missed or ignored or defied or failed in implementation. A bad company might be incentivized to lie to you, but they have to be self-aware that they suck (a trait terrible companies very frequently fail at) and capable of implementing the deception, among other things. And that means that your impressions when you speak to them do carry meaningful signal that should shift your beliefs about them.

A new job might be a lemon. But it also might not. You don't need to be certain that it isn't; you just need to be sure enough that the expected value of taking the new job, minus whatever risk discounting you're choosing to use, (minus the cost of searching for one), is greater than the expected value of staying in your current job.

> You don't need to be certain that it isn't; you just need to be sure enough that the expected value of taking the new job, minus whatever risk discounting you're choosing to use, (minus the cost of searching for one), is greater than the expected value of staying in your current job.

Agreed. And what I'm saying is that people aren't looking because the job interview process provides little enough information that the expected value of job hopping right now is very unlikely to exceed the expected value of staying put unless they're already in a bad situation. The time spent fielding phone screens and interviews isn't worth it if you already know that even a seemingly dream job wouldn't be worth the risk right now.

In another, more certain environment with lower risk of long-term unemployment the calculus is different, but right now sticking with the devil you know is for most of us the most rational move until the layoffs slow down.

The other thing I see is that people nearish retirement age and are comfortable, who might have cruised on for a few years, are pretty much going: now is probably the time. Maybe do some consulting though that's tight right now. So, maybe not optimal, but why stay in a non-ideal situation?

> the companies are being hyper focused on performance

If you are being paid some multiple of six figures would you not expect this?

Yea, I think much of the tech industry has really had it too cushy. The (internet) tech industry had 2 decades of nearly constant growth because it was a completely new thing to human civilization. But now it's all hitting maturity and the status quo is changing with it.

It's also why companies are desperate to sell AI as its currently the only visible avenue for further large growth to pump stocks.

Good one. Next you’ll tell me that I’m horribly under compensated for not getting huge amounts of equity when no one in my company gets equity.

Right but a year ago, FAANG and deca-corns weren't even hiring at ALL. There was almost no headcount. Sure it's not a boom, but there is hiring, teams are getting backfills, it's not great but it's not near as horrible as it was.

What's demoralizing is employers aren't motivated to fill the listed open positions and the only thing real and worth our time is our present, paying job. It's understandable, it costs nothing to list an opening and costs a lot to hire someone.

There is that too. So much disrespect in the interview process vs. 2 years ago. It'd be unheard of for me to not at least get a polite "we were looking for X/Y/Z" if I got in contact with a human at some point in the process. Now it's a fortnightly occurance that some recruiter reaches out to me, talks for 15 minutes, and then is never heard from again. Sometimes they schedule a call and proceed to never make the call (and ofc never respond on LinkedIn to re-schedule).

It just all sucks. The process was already pretty bad IMO, but now you're being treated as random quota fodder, with no interest to even pretend the position exists.

When recruiters have ghosted me after an interview and then a follow up email from me, I have scolded them with something like, "Hey. I haven't heard from you in a few weeks. I am sure that you are busy, but so am I. I took the time to interview for your position. It is unprofessional and rude not to respond to my follow up."

They almost always respond with an apology, and then I'm sure black list me. I don't much care. I'd rather work with competent caring people. And maybe my scolding will help the next recruit.

>What's odd is that, on paper and for the engineering jobs we work with specifically, it doesn't seem like that's actually more justified now than it was a year or two ago. The tech hiring market seems to have bottomed out and to be (unsteadily) on its way back up.

I mean, as someone out of a full time job for 15 months now (4 of those by choice), I can't really blame them. Of course, I'm an extraordinary case in games that seems to be hit the hardest out of most domains, but the fallout hasn't seemed to bottomed out in this industry just yet.

And in tech specifically: it's not like these interview processes are just a drink with the founders and a firm handshake anymore. You gotta weigh the question of "do I REALLY want to study trivia and go through 5 stages of calls" vs. the potential upsides of a new job/pay raise. Many tech professionals are probably not scrap for cash, so there's no financial pressure to jump at the next step up if they are focusing on security.

>Two years ago, prediction markets [2] were pretty confident a recession would occur by this point, but it hasn't.

Layoffs and the previous COVID bailouts probably "helped" in that regard.

And indeed. As you said, it caused an even more extreme dichotomy of financial pressure between the middle class and below and the asset owning or upper-middle+ (who weren't laid off). Where the former may as well be in a depression while the latter two are on cloud nine, trading houses like baseball cards and growing money by just letting it sit.

Is that better than a proper recession? I can't say, but you can understand why the former group can feel that way, and even feels bitter at the latter. Being told that the economy is soaring while your income barely increased 10% that barely covers rent. While rent surged 30% in the past 5-8 years.

K-shaped “recovery” is socially dangerous for that reason:

- you have net positive statistics, so the government doesn’t intervene

- you have a class that controls the levers of power growing substantial wealth in “services” and other extractive portions of the economy; and accompanying growth in large institutions or government

- you have a largely devastated productive and working economy; and accompanying collapse of SMBs

In whatever sense we’re not in a recession, that’s only because economic looting is so profitable on paper, we’re marginally positive. But that false signal of “not recession” can suppress normal responses and allow the country to move into socially unstable territory.

Which institutions have been growing? For example, the overall number of government employees has been relatively stable since the 2007 crisis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_employees_in_the_Un...

In my opinion the US and many european countries are going through stagflation where parts of the economy that went down or decreased dramatically with covid are recovering so you have economic growth in those areas but the rest of the economy not doing so good as well parts losing the covid boost.

> Two years ago, prediction markets [2] were pretty confident a recession would occur by this point, but it hasn't.

Do prediction markets in general even predict well? Someone might stake out a losing long-term prediction, but in a way where it isn't profitable to bother taking their money.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39178750

FWIW, the fact that the recession market on Manifold doesn't resolve until the end of 2025 (to give the NBER time to declare a recession) limits how low people will push the probability. I'm the biggest NO holder, and my credence is closer to 10%, but the rate of return isn't attractive enough to bet it lower. This is somewhat asymmetric, since bettors who expect a recession also expect an earlier payout.

I made this derivative market to try to address the issue somewhat, but not much trading yet:

https://manifold.markets/chrisjbillington/will-manifold-pric...

What are non "object-level" economy predictions?

I mean "as distinguished from their general principles for decision-making, e.g. risk aversion". Maybe not a great use of the term.

Great perspective, thanks. Are you seeing fewer openings? Same quality or lower?

More and higher quality. That's not a data-driven observation, though, it's just my own subjective impression (though it is one backed up by everyone else in the hiring space that I speak to right now).