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Ask HN: How bad is hiring going to be within the next year?

61 points by ss108 ↗ HN
I anticipate looking for a software engineering job starting ~next month (see below for what I am currently doing). If this were a year ago, I'd feel good; grind some leetcode, get hired at a big tech company for a good salary.

Now, of course, such companies seem to be laying off people way more qualified than me, freezing hiring, etc. Am I fucked?

I can provide whatever details people want, but I am not sure my personal circumstances are relevant except that I am not an exceptional dev with an enviable resume. The overall question is one many of us have: how bad is the hiring situation going to be in tech over the next year?

I also understand it's not one most people can effectively answer, but would like to know peoples' thoughts.

I used to be a software engineer. Then I went to law school, and now work in biglaw. I am a year out of law school, and have been working on a legal tech startup with a friend. If we cannot raise in the next couple months, I wish (almost need, really) to bail on the biglaw job and go back to being a dev.

62 comments

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PaulHoule
I am hearing a lot about layoffs at "FAANG", Intel, Twitter and a few other employers that are notoriously bloated. (e.g I wouldn't take layoffs at Intel as an economic indicator because Intel seems to lay 10,000 engineers off every few years because of its own perversity)

More normal sorts of employers are still reporting extreme problems hiring people. For instance I was late for work this morning because the bus was cancelled because they didn't have anyone to drive it. All the pharmacies I know are closed on the weekend. I had to buy dress shoes for a wedding and found the shoe store at the mall closed at 5PM, fortunately they opened the gate and let me in...

I don't know about software dev jobs outside of bloated "big tech" firms but I think other companies actually need to hire people to get specific things done. Bloated big co's hire people to keep seats warm.

PM_me_your_math
I had a friend who would say that 10% of the workforce keeps the company running, while another 10% support them; whereas, the remainder role-play giving presentations to each other.
mjevans
The numbers probably aren't that bad, but real need depends not just on the quiet moments where station keeping people keep things running smoothly. It also depends on the capability during incidents and outages. Institutional knowledge in playbooks people are too panicked to read or never ran what if disaster drills to write may as well not exist.
PragmaticPulp
> I had a friend who would say that 10% of the workforce keeps the company running, while another 10% support them; whereas, the remainder role-play giving presentations to each other.

That's what it feels like when you're at the bottom of the org chart

But I've worked in a few large businesses that had a lot of people doing work on the front lines. It ends up being more like 10% of the company in management. Most of our time was spent rushing to keep the front-line workers happy.

When jobs are relatively interchangeable (e.g. a warehouse worker can quit their job today and start at a new warehouse tomorrow) you actually have to work really, really hard to avoid upsetting those front line employees. I worked through some convoluted business/engineering problems just to avoid making front-line workers the least bit troubled in their jobs. I know this is polar opposite of the stereotype, but it's especially true in tight hiring markets like the one we're currently in.

PaulHoule
In Good to Great, Jim Collins says that in great companies people on the bottom of the org chart understands the business case for the business. In such a company, you don’t have to worry so much about “alignment”.
sys_64738
Sounds like your friend got burned for some reason. Resentment breeds such fallacy.
madmax108
... and the fun fact is that a large majority at these Cos believes they are in the former 10% whereas statistically they are very much in the latter.
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browningstreet
Hiring at bigger orgs is likely to be mostly frozen into Q3 next year.
mariojv
I don't know your personal situation, but the way I interpret things is kind of like this:

- FAANG got bloated during the bubble and anticipated growth that isn't materializing as fast, so they're cutting headcount. Similar for other big non-FAANG public companies.

- Down stock market means that public companies can't get as much capital for new investment by selling shares.

- High interest rates increase cost of debt, meaning nonprofitable companies relying on debt to grow will not grow as fast and may cut costs to become profitable or cash flow positive.

In other words, I think the impact will mostly be on "growth" companies that are not profitable, and companies that got bloated in the past few years.

I think companies will still hire software engineers, but the places with the most headcount are going to pay less. They didn't become bloated during the COVID bubble because they pay less. Think lower growth, stable, profitable, private companies that need folks to keep the lights on, where engineering is a cost center and not the company's focus. The places that pay top dollar will be more limited because growth prospects have narrowed. Entry level folks that can code will probably find a job, but it might not pay well.

I don't have a crystal ball, but I don't think it's going to be as bad as 2000 or 2008. We'll see though. The next 2 quarters will be informative.

abraxas
For software engineering 2001 especially post 9/11 was brutal. Much more so than 2008 unless you worked for a financial company.

2008/2009 was lean times but good people were able to find work. After the dotcom bust however, things were so bad I had a friend who is a very good developer who spent a couple of years gluing shoes for a living. In Canada.

everfrustrated
While this is true, 22 years on the tech industry is a very different size. It could play out differently.
myth_drannon
I spent some time working as a secuirty guard (while a student) after dotcome bust. Half of my coworkers were laid off software developers.
cvhashim
Tech is such an important facet of our lives these days the amount of work to do outweighs whatever was around in the early 2000s.
netfortius
The problem is that neither in 2000, nor in 2008, have we had the amount of meaningless crypto/blockchain/web3 out of thin air tens of thousands of jobs created, in all places of over night born companies.
ss108
Wasn't that 2000? I was 10 at the time, so IDK
mmierz
I’m not immune to worrying about the doom and gloom news. But what I decided is that there will be jobs for programmers for as long as businesses need custom software. The various scary economic news suggests that maybe things will get worse for workers. And even if the news is wrong there’s always a down cycle eventually. But I don’t see how software people are more exposed than anyone else in any profession that draws a salary.
PM_me_your_math
Hiring for FAANG and other publicly traded companies will be slowing down, if not mostly frozen for a year, but there should be sectors that are still seeing growth, need talent, and are willing to pay for it. It will be a matter of searching for those opportunities or creating your own within those markets. Every economic downturn is an opportunity to innovate, find real problems, and create solutions for them. Turnover doesn't stop (although it may slow) so there could also be opportunities filling roles that were vacated.
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jcadam
Well, I was working for a mortgage company and got cut already. The mortgage industry is def not the place to be right now.
jerkstate
One kind of messed up thing some companies did during covid/wfh was suspend performance reviews; prevented people who were performing under the bar from getting feedback that their performance was not acceptable. Now the economy is dramatically slowing and pips are happening again, so people are going to get fired into a horrible job market. Really sucks.
jcadam
I remember 2008.

Workplaces get increasingly cutthroat when layoffs start looming. Coworkers sabotaging each other, whole teams trying to make other teams look bad, etc.

thisiswrongggg
I don't think they ever got out of this stage TBH. Workplaces are getting more toxic as years go by IME.
jcadam
You have a point. Another reason to prefer remote work.
outworlder
You are not immune to that by any means. If anything, you are more vulnerable. It's more difficult to spot the machinations going on.
antisthenes
It's not hard at all. You can spot passive-aggressive language and refusal to collaborate corporate-speak a mile away.
thisiswrongggg
This. Being remote actually amplifies toxicity. At least that's my experience in 3 different workplaces over 5 years.
hedora
Here's the conventional wisdom:

Normally, at this point in the economic cycle, the big companies cut headcount to appease the stock market. Startups tend to have a few years of runway. All of a sudden, that runway buys much better talent than normal.

Fast forward three years: The incumbent players have been dithering around for a few years, while the startups were built assuming the incumbents were executing better than average. As products go to general availability, they end up knocking out a bunch of giants that seemed unassailable at the beginning of the downturn.

Data to back this up: https://web.archive.org/web/20190907043749/https://mattermar...

(Note there is no dip corresponding to the 2008 downturn.)

tl;dr: Look for a financially stable startup that's still paying for top talent, and try to get a job (perhaps as a junior dev, assuming that's where you are in your career).

favflam
Maybe fintech is out, but manufacturing is in?

Fintech is sensitive to interest rates.

Manufacturing and anyone with fixed capacity get fatter profit margins from inflation (energy, etc).

streblo
It'll be harder, not going to bullshit you. It might take longer for you to find something, you may have to interview at more places to get an offer (especially one that's appealing), and when you do get an offer it won't be at a 2021 price. But there definitely are open roles to be had, the industry isn't broadly in a hiring freeze, and it's possible to get a job. You will just need to put more effort into it than you would have in previous years.
PragmaticPulp
> If this were a year ago, I'd feel good; grind some leetcode, get hired at a big tech company for a good salary.

This dynamic is one of the reasons we're seeing such large layoffs right now. Even many of the companies that are rolling in cash simply got too aggressive with hiring in recent years. Anyone who knew the drill could grind leetcode, study interview guides, apply to enough FAANG companies and get a job eventually.

I've heard more stories about in-progress FAANG interviews being cancelled than I could possibly count. Most FAANG companies are still hiring, albeit very selectively. They're also trimming staff through large layoffs and also smaller, less publicized team cuts.

I suspect many of these are soft landing cuts, as I've seen a sudden increase in the number of ex-FAANG resumes landing in my inbox. A lot of stories about how people are just "looking for a change of pace", but I suspect they see the writing on the wall.

> I used to be a software engineer. Then I went to law school, and now work in biglaw. I am a year out of law school, and have been working on a legal tech startup with a friend. If we cannot raise in the next couple months, I wish (almost need, really) to bail on the biglaw job and go back to being a dev.

In your case, "used to be a software engineer" is already going to put you at a massive disadvantage relative to all of the experienced engineers who were recently forced into the job market by layoffs. You could try to lean on the startup experience, but keep in mind that hiring managers won't be eager to hire someone who admits to working on an entire side startup while having a dayjob. That could mean the employee wants to continue working on their startup while collecting paychecks, which is a lot of risk to take in a job market that is crowded with applicants.

perspective3
> Anyone who knew the drill could grind leetcode, study interview guides, apply to enough FAANG companies and get a job eventually.

It's ironic that the trackpants set that got into leetcoding over medicine because the lifestyle was better are now getting fucked by the fact that if you're doing useless shit in programming, you truly will get fired and fucked.

At least if you grind in medicine, you are helping people. That said, the lifestyle options like radiology that those same trackpants kids get into will have their comeuppance too, just in longer time scales.

UltimateFloofy
but healthtech is doing pretty well!
nitrixion
Very well, but people don't seem to want to apply to jobs in Healthtech. I say this as my company has many active openings that we just don't get many applications for.
cvhashim
Are you paying well enough for the current market?
ss108
Given the highly regulated nature of healthcare, would it be a meaningful plus if a software engineering applicant had a legal background as well, or is basically irrelevant?
devKnight
Try posting in the monthly who's hiring, and freelancer posts. You might get some bites
cvhashim
Eh idk, medicine has its own challenges. I was a premed years ago. I’m thankful I made the change to swe. Grinding leetcode is still a great investment in the long run as long as you keep skills up to date and are a competent engineer.
ss108
>In your case, "used to be a software engineer" is already going to put you at a massive disadvantage relative to all of the experienced engineers who were recently forced into the job market by layoffs.

No doubt. Luckily, I did actually do some job searching for dev jobs from March - May this year, and I did get interviews, etc., so hopefully the situation for me isn't that dire so long as I can perform.

Whether my doing a startup while employed at my last job is seen as a negative is going to be really up to them, but all I can do is assure them I am not continuing. Luckily, this has made me a competent dev again.

The honest truth is I would feel pretty happy to be free of both the biglaw job and the startup (I believe in the idea, but it's difficult, especially with another full-time job, Jesus it's getting unsustainable), and would love to just focus on being a software engineer again, and would have a level of gratitude for the job that would outstrip most other candidates. But they have nothing to go off of as to all that aside from my word.

haskellandchill
> and would have a level of gratitude for the job that would outstrip most other candidates

most candidates who don't already have a job probably feel this way

PaulHoule
That's an important point that a company might think that an economic slowdown is a time to let go of the bottom 20% of workers but it has the paradoxical effect that the better people see things getting worse and they are the first to go.
sys_64738
Companies like Facebook often hire bodies just because. They don't have actual positions for them during interview as it's more about leveraging them when they start, which might be months away. They're generally not hiring to fill open positions.
ghusto
I think you're in the U.S.A.? Can't speak for there, but here in Europe, nothing has changed, and we're still being headhunted.
Buttons840
Most of us have been writing software that takes two developers to maintain - exponential growth.

There's always down times, but companies will want to get those huge inefficient enterprise software cogs moving again soon. The siren call of how great things could be if only the software was good are too tempting.

rcoder
> ...how bad is the hiring situation going to be in tech over the next year?

I think it's going to be pretty bad if you're expecting to go through something like the process you described:

1. Cram some coding exercises

2. Breeze through a FAANG panel b/c they're hiring anyone who can balance a binary tree and carry on a conversation at the same time

3. ...

4. Pull an easy $250k base, plus stock and a twice-annual review/raise cycle

I worked through the 2001 downturn and 2008. Both times I maintained a decent amount of flexibility in where I worked and what I worked on, with the consequence that I could no longer simply demand whatever salary I wanted and an extremely senior title on my way in the door.

Given that you have software development _and_ legal qualifications you should have lots of options if you're willing to branch out a bit. Ex.: big co's need folks to own compliance for user data, financials, etc.; being a technical lawyer could be a superpower there. Ditto running audits from a bigger consultancy: anyone trying to gain PCI, SOX, or various ISO certifications -- or even just the record-keeping and reporting needed to be a public company -- needs experts in both tech and legal policy.

So: I wouldn't freak out, but I would suggest actively looking for a more creative/blended use of your skills, vs. simply throwing yourself into a FAANG candidate pipeline and hoping for the best. It'll put you ahead of other candidates, hopefully avoid some of the post-layoff hangover, and honestly probably be more fun and interesting than just slinging code that gets more people to click on ads.

notacoward
I've lived through a few previous downturns - early 90s, dot com, 2008. Yes, it was tough for a lot of people, especially when the market had a glut of ten-year folks competing directly with five-year folks. (For various reasons the people both above and below that didn't seem to have it quite so bad.) But it wasn't impossible. In both periods I succeeded in changing jobs - voluntarily - myself. It probably helped that people with less experience are generally cheaper in a time when companies were desperate to reduce costs. So yes, the job-hunting process might take more time and/or effort, you will probably collect more rejections along the way, but don't give up hope. The demand is not going away, and in fact it's still increasing overall even if some high-profile companies are having to correct their staffing plans.
sdevonoes
I think we are exaggerating. I started a new position 5 months ago (with a significant raise of around 20% my previous salary). Within these 5 months the company fired a significant portion of their employees (some techies, but mainly non-techies like HR); it made it to HN (not the front-page I think). Hiring freeze for around 3 months... but since about a month ago they started to hire again. Now on Linkedin you can see the company is posting around 200 job offers... although, sure before the lay-off they had like around 1000 job offers (crazy).

My point is: if you go to Linkedin right now and filter by location=Europe, remote=yes, you get like 160K job offers (tech ones). Sure, you can filter down that number by removing managerial positions and other roles you are not interested in, but the thing is companies are still hiring (not all of them, but the majority).

Maybe it's just Europe? I have no idea about US.

atraac
Most of those EU remote jobs will not even glance at your resume twice if you don't have x years of experience in their stack. I know this because I just ended a two month long interview loop for remote positions within EU as a senior developer who only has C# experience(on paper). There were literally two companies that would give me time even though I didn't have experience in JS and Go respectively, one of them also offered very much under market average salary. European job market is retarded like that, still living in ages where companies think you can't learn any other web framework in a week even if you worked with another one for years. I actually hated interviewing these last two months, granted I didn't even try to approach faang level companies, still, most processes are terrible, long and even disrespectful. Also for the LinkedIn "remote+EU" search you mentioned, a lot of companies on LinkedIn will list remote but in fact will not hire outside country they're in. You will only find out if recruiter graciously tells you that, most will just ignore you. I found it baffling considering that you can simply invoice them within EU but suddenly it's a problem.
fnordpiglet
Companies are like swarming fish. They perceive a threat and they all dodge together. Whether there’s a major recession, a minor, or nothing, they will lay off and freeze hiring across the board. I would suggest you find a way to hang in there but start looking immediately, and keep looking. Eventually you’ll find what you want but it’ll be an extended and disheartening search and you might not make as much as you would have a year ago. But over a lifetime career it’ll average out and you’ll be fine. Just remember, as with all things, this too shall pass.

What you do need to do from now on though is always have a plan for what’s next and an exit, even if you’re happy where you are. You never have to exercise your options, but optionality alone has value and it’ll provide a level of continuous confidence and courage. It also provides a focus for your development. Good luck.

shadowdevvv
honestly the job market have been a bit bad, the number of remote jobs have definitely decreased. all the big tech companies aren't hiring anymore and the ones that are, can just lowball since the competition with other tech companies have definitely softened.

P.S check out spacedleets.com for a free resource using spaced repetition to effectively study leetcode

haskellandchill
It's not as nice as it just was. Since after COVID hiring resumed I've had no problem getting jobs. Just tested the waters and they are chilly. I can't get past intro emails whereas previously I had trouble scheduling the amount of interviews I was getting. It should recover in the new year.
undoware
My advice is to get 'ML' on your resume, some way, somehow, along with some selection of: TypeScript, React, Python, C#, Java, Linux, and Kubernetes.

Start with a good online free course like https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-in...

You don't have to be a full-bore data scientist to benefit from the surging interest in ML -- for example, I've made my current focus 'UX for data scientists', I focus on trying to make interfaces that are pleasing to people working in ML, and this, I am pleased to say, just got my ass hired.

It's also salient to know that, over the next decade, while tech salaries will likely trend down (esp. as CoPilot, nocode/lowcode, etc continue to make our lives easier and hence less lucrative ;D) the *amount of addressable work* in ML specifically will almost certainly offset this change.

YMMV in other tech specializations, but I'd still rather be in our industry than most others. Again, there's plenty of work in MLOps that does not require being a data scientist.

Finally, if you can physically live in a geolocation with lower cost of living (or better yet, a currency that is weaker than USD) you can be the lower-cost option that everyone ditches Fancy McSanFransiscoPants for in 2023. Be sure to blog and show your work on GH ;D

uxcolumbo
Good points.

I'd like to hear more about UX for data scientists.

Do you mean creating custom user interfaces similar to the ones used in Tableau or PowerBI etc to explore large datasets?

Or just in general following good UI principles when showing data, e.g. Tufte, Few, etc?

Which interfaces / apps do you think do a good job in this regard?

undoware
That's just it -- I don't think there are any great interfaces, yet. Jupyter scratches only the surface of what literate experimental coding could be.

I also have a back-of-napkin argument that the field is due for an invention as revolutionary to ML as the beizer handle was to vector art, or the spreadsheet was to money management.

I'm interested conceptually in eventually leveraging eg VR and sonification for aid in exploring very-high-dimensional datasets.

Meanwhile, yes, there is a lot of just nuts/bolts Good Design to worry about. :)

uxcolumbo
VR… great example. I’m curious to know whether and what kind of impact the immersiveness of VR will have on exploring large data sets.

I wonder what kind of UIs Deepmind created for their data scientist… similar to Jupyter or better.

halfjoking
I don't know how so many people tolerate the BS of going through the interview process where they can switch jobs every few years.

I've never been successful with it. I've only gotten hired as a dev by a very strong reference or because an eccentric boss gave me a contract-to-hire opportunity. That boss posted an ad on Craigslist... I joked about it saying it was a scam, and he said you know it's legit because he also wrote the job posting on park benches and bathroom stalls. My favorite boss.

Lately I just save money because HR keeps threatening to fire me for being unvaccinated. I've been breaking company policy for a year, and saving money for a year, I don't give a shit about the job market anymore and I hope they finally grow balls and fire me. My startup only has $200 MRR but if they don't fire me before end of the year I'm out. And I don't want another job either, I've survived an 8 year gap without a real job before. I'd rather live off of rice/soup than deal with corporate software dev another year. And interviewing is the worst, way worse than the day to day, I don't know how you guys do it.

gwnywg
I don't work for FANG (or MAANG or whatever it's called now) but for small startup which pays well. I'm not exceptional in any way, nor are people I work with- we are bunch of devs who like what they are doing and try to be a bit better every day.

We had been hiring for a few positions this year (Europe and APAC) and are expanding and will be hiring more next year. I can only tell it's difficult to even get candidates attention, not to mention get good senior people join the team.

Not sure if this is good indicator but I'm also receiving a 3-4 calls from recruiters each week, and it was like this for the whole year.

Maybe I live in bubble, but from what I can see next year looks good enough for tech.