Charted: The Decline of U.S. Software Developer Jobs | Hacker News Reader

Charted: The Decline of U.S. Software Developer Jobs

visualcapitalist.com

43 pointsbarbacoa52 comments

Today:

- I go to the supermarket: the screen calling the next customer at the register and running Windows 11 (sic) crash all the time, so chaos.

- I can't make a bank transfer online because the transfer system is unavailable

- I walk in my street: the lights are turned on during the day and turned off at night (and I usually don't even notice the government related stuff anymore, it is hopeless)

I see computer related things in need of a serious fix everywhere, all the time. Most of those are "local" systems. But those companies won't recruit and empower anybody to fix it, because everybody got used to things not working.

In the meanwhile, engineers are told there is no more jobs for them "because of AI". But it seems the AI they were sold can't figure out lights need to be turned on at night and not during the day...

I actually think this decline will have a positive impact on more local issues. Here is my reasoning:

Software Developers (and I am one) are too expensive for most companies. This caused a brain drain into "Big Tech" which while a valuable bubble of technologists, is only a niche in the greater community.

If software wages come down, more local, non-tech, smaller scale companies will be able to afford to have in house developers, and the world needs way more bespoke software to truly capitalize on the power of small software.

I would rather see software developers be on par with your local machinist or trade specialist rather than a tool to upper-echelon companies in big tech.

I don't see why all software roles are seen as in the same category. There is a huge difference between the difficulty level and experience requirements in different tasks and roles.

So one of the few profession that allows owning a home (not necessarily house) would be gone. I'm afraid I can't agree with that

Everyone should be able to own a home, not just tech workers.

Often it's software developers that made homes unaffordable for everyone.

No, failing to build enough housing and apartments over the last 30 years made homes unaffordable. Software developers were just lucky enough to be making above average income, enough to afford a house even while prices rose.

We have plenty of homes to go around. They're just not affordable.

Not anymore.

Which is crazy. Where I live, even upper-middle class can't afford a house, so what is going on? Who is actually participating in the market to keep prices so high, and who ultimately benefits from all this imaginary value on non-productive asset speculation?

No one mentions it but the problem is immigration. It pushed the demand curve too high.

No one mentions it because it's ridiculous.

While we are at this.. the real reason is that we have too many kids.

The U.S. is really big, if housing was built there wouldn't be a problem

Not all land is equally valuable. People need access to water and food. There's a reason why every big city is located next to a river.

Please - not another us vs them blame game between the lower classes, it distracts from the govt policies and financial industries that got us into this mess.

There is no one cause that leads to housing shortages, but tech salaries are a huge issue in and around tech hubs like the SF Bay and Seattle. And especially during covid, with remote work, the rich spread out to towns nearby and bought up all the housing there too and pushed out the locals.

That's not the government's fault (besides lockdown), it's because tech workers were way overpaid (and hence all the layoffs and salary deflation now).

sure, in silicon valley. The rest of the US? Nope…that would be due to a variety of factors:

- allowing corporations to “own” homes.

- allowing individuals to personally own more than 1 home, EVEN if those other homes were vacant for 95% of the year. (this encourages the rich to “invest” in 2nd homes, or make them AirBnb’s)

- allowing foreign buyers at all (this encourages wasteful ultra-luxury real estate in places like manhattan)

- not building _enough_ housing, especially starter homes.

- corporations and billionaires taking a larger piece of the pie, which has cause stagnating income growth (except for a minor bump post-covid) for decades.

i could go on. Most of this problem was “manufactured” by the US govt via greedy (or in some case shortsighted) laws and policies. In other words, there are almost no strict policies on housing in the US. It’s a free for all, and the rich win. How surprising.

For context i own a home so im not personally affected. But i’m bitter because the people “at the top” in the US seem to hate everyone else. It’s an “i got mine attitude”. Shameful.

There is no law of economics that says that a society must improve. It is entirely feasible for capital to concentrate to the point that the productive classes are no longer able to produce due to lack of surplus investible capital.

The reason why these systems are not fixed is that it does not make sense to hire the engineers to fix them, the customers lack the money to afford the improvements.

Why begs the question, what is the point of captialism if it cannot maintain key infrastructure?

Perhaps as coding becomes commoditized by Agentic AI, or whatever it evolves into, these types of problems in infrastructure too will become easier to maintain.

When has capitalism been about maintaining key infrastructure? That’s what government is for!

Government hires capitalists to do it's job, and is bribed by them. Still people have voted with their silence for this to be the status quo. So what government is for, is a choice of the people, the rest is toothpaste advertisement.

Not to let it get so deregulated that it falls under the weight of its own greed. Pure capitalist forces will cook any system, needs a mix for functioning markets.

None

Sounds like someone made a bunch of bad hires recently and needs take some time to mature their workforce.

Are good programmers the ones that fix everything and put themselves out of work or the ones that can drag things out to keep themselves employed long enough to jump to another company?

Why would you start the graph from 2020? The only thing it shows is that Covid was such a strange time.

Stretch the graph to 1995 and then we can talk.

Regardless of what happened during covid, the chart shows the listings have decreased since five years ago, prior to covid.

The point is that was there an overhire/pull forward during covid that we're still paying for or is this a long term trend?

That's a fair point. Do you have any thoughts on how long it'll take for a decline to qualify as long term?

(different person) Just eyeballing the graph, If we can attribute the entire spike to a "pulling forward" effect, then I'm guessing it might end late 2026 or so (as a gradual slope over longer period, not a hard noticeable line). Then give it a few months for stabilization / to ignore random normal fluctuations that just happen to be at that time. So without more information, early 2027 we can call it a long-term trend for certain?

Extending it back to 1995 or so like the first comment suggested would give us a few more upsets in the market to see more easily if this effect actually exists in this data. That said, their source is https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE so that data probably doesn't exist.

Interesting would love to learn more about their methodology.

Like are they straight searching “software developer” on indeed?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

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It’s rough out there, I see former coworkers laid off last year and the year before still struggling to find work

Charted: The Decline of U.S. Software Developer Jobs after a recession

Charted: The Rise of U.S. Software Developer Jobs up to a new peak

Charted: The Decline of U.S. Software Developer Jobs from this peak

Decline of job LISTINGS. This seems to have nothing to do with jobs whatsoever.

When you hear the AI folks screaming about "AGI" (Which is a scam), this is what they are really talking about.

The problem is that there will be less jobs and it won't recover and nothing to replace those lost jobs. Not even "UBI", which is unsustainable at a larger scale and really doesn't work at all.

Remember when the whole industry also was screaming about Jevon's paradox? Well, as AI gets more efficient, it benefits the LLM providers (not you) and creates more job-destroying AI (not more jobs). It enriches AI use-cases for companies that own LLMs or the systems that run them to keep you out of a job.

Even if 1 job is available, a growing list of candidates per job to compete and will just continue to increase.

You see, I hope you realized that the bullsh*t in AI, over-valuations and the the rapid race to zero are all factors that have not only caused this decline in SWE jobs, but will also cause a crash like it's the year 2000 + another AI winter.

Right now we are in late 1999 and just need a new surprise to reset the industry. Likely to happen before 2030.

So I'd prepare for that and you are 5 years early to do so before the "intelligence age" advances far into 2030, which is the dealine. [0]

[0] https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-repo...

I can't wait for the next AI winter. I've got my coat ready for when everyone realizes the hype train they've jumped on is headed straight off a cliff.

For those looking to pester me with sealioning & strawmen arguments, I'm not interested. This is unsustainable and will come crashing down. If you have a retort locked & loaded, save it for 5-10 years & come back, we can discuss if this was another Silicon Valley snake oil frenzy or the real deal once every company overleveraged on AI has crashed & the rubble pile has stopped smoking.

This has nothing to do with AI, this is us letting capital benefit from the infrastructure our taxes pay for while sending the jobs that generate them to India. It’s short sighted bullshit, but hey, stock go up

How about using absolute numbers instead of confusing percentages?

Yeh that graphic is useless

Their source is absolute numbers: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

...but the graph is the same, isn't it? Did they just change the Y-axis without doing the math to get percent change?

Lots of college students will regret their CS degrees. And it's a shame because it's not an easy degree to get like, say, communications. Imagine all that hard work just to work at McDonalds.

That's the reality of a lot of other degrees. Looks like it finally caught up to CS degrees.

I don’t regret my math minor but that didn’t go on the paper diploma …

I somewhat regret my math degree, which was in addition to my CSE degree. I didn't need to learn complex analysis or Galois theory. I've forgotten all of it. CS was rigorous enough for my 20 years working in software engineering. Instead, I should have done a study abroad semester or two.

I will tell my kids my mistakes and recommend that they don't "put all their skill points into math/engineering/etc" in college.

what should your kids do then? Do you mean it subtly as in, also do the debate team instead of extra classes of math? That's probably good advise I guess.

However, if you mean they shouldn't choose engineering as a major: I don't regret my CS degree at all, even though i hated it at the time. The logic and scientific rigor helps me in the most practical things in every day to day things at work by being consciously analytic.

The former. Still get the degree they need for the career they want, but explore other subjects, extracurriculars, sports, exchange programs, etc. I focused almost entirely on "take the hardest CS and math classes" so that I'd have a better chance at a good job. Turns out I didn't need to do that. Could've gotten the same jobs but had a more enriching college experience.

All I see here is the pandemic boom in hiring

This just confirms that companies over hired during the pandemic and are now cutting jobs back to those levels.

the only way this article would have been better if it charted like 02/28/2021 through 03/11/2021 :)

In case anyone wonders why the peak was in 2022, which of course makes no sense if COVID really was the cause of a permanent decline.

https://www.onlycfo.io/p/new-tax-rule-is-terrible-for-softwa...

TLDR: software jobs were tax free in the US until 2022, when congress who widely promised and were expected to repeal a Trump tax raise ... didn't. Now software engineers in the US are expensive for US companies and software engineers outside the US are 3x more expensive.

This was financial engineering by Trump. Not by him personally of course, but by GOP "strategists" that lowered taxes on the extremely wealthy.

you have lies, damn lies, statistics, and zoomed in graphs.

It’s not AI, the jobs are going to India and/or Vietnam

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