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Comment by ruraljuror | Hacker News Reader

> Absolutely. This is the worst job market for tech workers in probably 20 years.

Any sources for this? Asking out of curiosity—not disagreement.

Nope, hence the word probably. 100% anecdotal.

Last recession was 2008 and job prospects for a software dev are much worse now compared to then. Go back further and it was dotcom bust a little more than 20 years ago.

I think that's highly dependant how many years of experience you had. 2008 was definitely worse for inexperienced new grads than today, but today is probably worse for people in their peak earning years as companies are trimming the fat.

There are plenty of jobs out there right now, you just have to be willing to move and take a lower salary, which is much easier for young people than mid-career folks. The same definitely wasn't true in 2008.

I’ve been hearing the complete opposite on EU CS jobs Reddit. People say it’s impossible to get hired with no experience and just hard for seniors.

There’s so much of reporting and selection bias though.

The juniors say that juniors are most affected. The experienced developers and engineers say that it is the experienced developers and engineers most affected.

Everybody has their perspective.

I'm a senior and I would say juniors have it way harder. I could find a new job, new grads - yeah, gonna be hard. Money is tighter, and new grads are oftenly money sinks, thus no hiring.

I'm in EU but in the eastern part of it.

In case of a recession, fresh grads are usually affected the worst. Really it makes sense, because work experience tends to be valued more than a degree.

https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/recessi...

There are still plenty of great high-paying jobs, they are just more competitive.

If you are a good engineer you won't have a problem aside from having to play the numbers game a bit more. There are still new grads being hired but it's definitely not as easy as it was.

> If you are a good engineer you won't have a problem

If companies on average knew who the 'good engineers' were, they wouldn't be laid off in the first place. (Unless the layoffs are really big).

The recruitment pipe is so convoluted nowadays that connections and recommendations are way more important than they used to be. Skills not so much.

> 2008 was definitely worse for inexperienced new grads than today, but today is probably worse for people in their peak earning years as companies are trimming the fat.

So same people affected both times?

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