Hacker News Reader

Comment by jt2190 | Hacker News Reader

Remember that two things have changed the employment landscape:

- the end of zero interest rate policies mean that investments in projects can’t show a return “someday” but actually have to show some benefit on a reasonable timeline, say 2-3 years. Gone are the days when hiring armies of warm bloodies and having them work on “moon shots”.

- the expiration of the tax write off for programmer salaries when developing a new product.

The bottom line is that most of the market is now very price sensitive (hence trying to find the cheapest labor i.e. less experienced or overseas devs) and that devs in high-cost geographic areas now need to be extra productive to complete.

View on HN

Also there's going to be very little sympathy if people who have been earning 6-7 figure salaries working in their pajamas for the past decade are now going through a rough patch.

Reminds me a bit of 2008, when I'd regularly encounter recently laid off bankers getting drunk and bemoaning their situation with some passion. It was hard to have much sympathy for people who'd earned enormous salaries and somehow failed to put any aside for an emergency...

Then, just like now, a lot of the hardest hit people were junior employees that hardly had many years of enormous salaries but mostly had student loans, junior pay and large one-off expenses like moving into a major population center and trying to rent an apartment.

Shrug. I’ve done a lot of intensely creative work in my pajamas. I’ve burned a lot of unproductive hours on commuting and pointless in-person meetings.

Me too! I can understand why many/most folks might not have a lot of sympathy for formerly highly paid tech workers tho.

Personally, even for the not-so-highly paid tech workers, if you're complaining about "some foreigner willing to do it for less", you don't get a lot of sympathy from me. If they can do it, and are willing to do it for less, good on them!

Complaining about less well off folks coming and taking our jobs seems so Un-American. I'd be upset to lose my job, no doubt. But I'd be in good company.

I know there are a lot of folks eager to tell me how naive/ignorant I am, but the bottom line is that I'm allergic to entitlement.

I fear end of ZIRP has even worst implications. I’ve got a feeling it’s not just the tech job market that is bad, but the tech industry as a whole was too circular, doing B2B with other tech companies (maybe there is a better word?) all fueled by free money and the house of cards crumbled.

Don't think its just in tech. My wife is in the pharma industry on the research side. Just couple of years ago, she would have recruiters cold-calling her at least 2-3 times a week. She was part of a mass layoff back in spring,2024 when her entire team got axed. Almost took her 5 months and several rounds of interview before she landed two offers. Her background at one point allowed her to pick and choose were she wanted to work. Now that's not the case anymore. It's an employers market right now. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com