It is very, very divided tech market right now. As a full stack eng with lots of startup product experience and an AI product under my belt, I had no trouble landing interviews and getting a new role. 2 years ago, it took me ~300 applications for a handful of viable interviews, as the meta was FAANG or "big data experience". 2 years later, everything is different.
Most telling: I mistakenly filtered against all jobs in SF on LinkedIn and I was a few pages in before I noticed. There were just a few lawyer jobs in the mix but literally every other job was AI/backend/product engineering roles. Meanwhile, I know an experienced EM from enterprise SaaS who has all but stopped looking for work.
This remains quite the nasty storm of a job market.
* A non-zero amount of employers simply aren't opening jobs because they're all-in on AI replacing workers within the next 6 to 18 months, and have been all-in on that gambit for the past two to three years.
* Tariffs are choking out domestic tech workers in non-tech companies, as those companies try to save money by farming out to MSPs and contractors instead of retaining in-house talent.
* Interest rates choke out job growth across the economy as a whole, but the Fed can't really lower them since inflation continues skyrocketing due to tariffs and geopolitical destabilization
* The government axed 10% of the entire bodycount from the 2008 Collapse, in the span of a year, and from within its own ranks, thus increasing competition further
* The remaining folks who want to put butts in seats are being tied by their leadership into offering lower salaries for higher skills/experience, and the hiring managers still want to find a candidate that's willing to take shit pay but also not leave the second things improve
* Continued datacenter buildouts and the Nth-order effects on supply chains continue to support the narrative that AI will just replace all work(ers) anyway, so there's no point trying to deal with this crisis, but aren't displacing enough jobs to spur policymakers into actually fixing the problem through increasing taxes or passing more regulations.
* Ongoing deportations are hampering complimentary jobs for citizens. Research from the Obama era deportations show that for every 100 migrants deported, 12 citizens lose their jobs - meaning under the current regime alone, as many as 72,000 fewer jobs exist solely from deportation efforts since the start of their term.
This is bad, ya'll. There's no "easy" way out of this either, no silver bullet to make everything all better and get folks back into job roles again. If the regime capitulates on tariffs or geopolitics (which they won't), they look weak and incompetent (which they are). If the Fed lowers rates to boost job growth, inflation will take off like a rocket because that's what Capital has been trying to engineer since 2024; if the Fed raises interest rates to keep inflation in check, the job market will crater and the datacenter boom will go bust as safer investments produce good returns again. If employers keep wages low, workers will fuck off to greener pastures the literal second they find something; if they raise wages to match cost of living and promote familial growth, they'll have to hire fewer workers and thus increase competition. Hell, by some estimates it's easier to get into Harvard than land a job right now!
Shit's fucked, and until someone forces accountability and takes the L (namely the regime who started this shitshow in the first place), nothing is going to really improve.
Don't forget skyrocketing employer health care costs due to Government-endorsed monopoly and fraud that is the US Healthcare system. Robots don't need healthcare.
I mean, yeah, I'm in full agreement with you. Think Tanks, Economists, Researchers, Politicians, Philosophers, Social Workers, everyone who looks at this stuff professionally is in general agreement that our method of shoe-horning middlemen into every single transaction, forced privatization of government services, permissive attitudes towards corporate consolidation/antitrust laws, and lack of substantial taxation is what's ultimately harming our long-term growth prospects.
Try telling that to the people who have benefited from said conditions for decades and are enjoying the fruits of their harmful labors. They're the ones running all three branches of government from local to federal level and everywhere in between, and they have no intention of changing anything or sacrificing their own gains until they're dead in the ground.
In line with developed countries except, for example, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden, each of whom previously levied wealth taxes on individuals, but apparently didn't like the taste, and have since repealed.
I don't think the rich should be taxed a dime more until they route out the Fraud. What's the point of having all the rich people suddenly pay out $40 Billion next week, if that money disappears in California Homeless and Hospice crap. I don't disagree with increased safety nets but it needs to be done without people writing 50k Medicare billing lines per day.
Supposedly CA spent 800k on EACH HOMELESS PERSON over the last 5 years. They could have all gotten a free home in a suburb and developer salary for 2 years instead of fraud capture.
It needs to be a yes-and. We need to be better about fraud (digital ID + biometric proof on delivery of services) and we need a more equitable tax system that doesn't have the top .1% paying an effective tax rate lower than a school teacher.
The more useful way to think about this is competition density rather than raw job count. A market with 10% more jobs but 2-5x times more candidates isn’t a better market, it’s a harder one wearing a better outfit.
We need to cancel the H-1B visa program. It is not helping Americans.
If more Americans knew how much money was being funneled to non-Americans they would be outraged.
71 comments
Most telling: I mistakenly filtered against all jobs in SF on LinkedIn and I was a few pages in before I noticed. There were just a few lawyer jobs in the mix but literally every other job was AI/backend/product engineering roles. Meanwhile, I know an experienced EM from enterprise SaaS who has all but stopped looking for work.
* A non-zero amount of employers simply aren't opening jobs because they're all-in on AI replacing workers within the next 6 to 18 months, and have been all-in on that gambit for the past two to three years.
* Tariffs are choking out domestic tech workers in non-tech companies, as those companies try to save money by farming out to MSPs and contractors instead of retaining in-house talent.
* Interest rates choke out job growth across the economy as a whole, but the Fed can't really lower them since inflation continues skyrocketing due to tariffs and geopolitical destabilization
* The government axed 10% of the entire bodycount from the 2008 Collapse, in the span of a year, and from within its own ranks, thus increasing competition further
* The remaining folks who want to put butts in seats are being tied by their leadership into offering lower salaries for higher skills/experience, and the hiring managers still want to find a candidate that's willing to take shit pay but also not leave the second things improve
* Continued datacenter buildouts and the Nth-order effects on supply chains continue to support the narrative that AI will just replace all work(ers) anyway, so there's no point trying to deal with this crisis, but aren't displacing enough jobs to spur policymakers into actually fixing the problem through increasing taxes or passing more regulations.
* Ongoing deportations are hampering complimentary jobs for citizens. Research from the Obama era deportations show that for every 100 migrants deported, 12 citizens lose their jobs - meaning under the current regime alone, as many as 72,000 fewer jobs exist solely from deportation efforts since the start of their term.
This is bad, ya'll. There's no "easy" way out of this either, no silver bullet to make everything all better and get folks back into job roles again. If the regime capitulates on tariffs or geopolitics (which they won't), they look weak and incompetent (which they are). If the Fed lowers rates to boost job growth, inflation will take off like a rocket because that's what Capital has been trying to engineer since 2024; if the Fed raises interest rates to keep inflation in check, the job market will crater and the datacenter boom will go bust as safer investments produce good returns again. If employers keep wages low, workers will fuck off to greener pastures the literal second they find something; if they raise wages to match cost of living and promote familial growth, they'll have to hire fewer workers and thus increase competition. Hell, by some estimates it's easier to get into Harvard than land a job right now!
Shit's fucked, and until someone forces accountability and takes the L (namely the regime who started this shitshow in the first place), nothing is going to really improve.
Try telling that to the people who have benefited from said conditions for decades and are enjoying the fruits of their harmful labors. They're the ones running all three branches of government from local to federal level and everywhere in between, and they have no intention of changing anything or sacrificing their own gains until they're dead in the ground.
Supposedly CA spent 800k on EACH HOMELESS PERSON over the last 5 years. They could have all gotten a free home in a suburb and developer salary for 2 years instead of fraud capture.
it's the usual elastic job market. yesterday BE was down because clueless employers thought saas and cloud would be good enough. it wasn't
today FE is down because employers think slop react is good enough. it clearly isn't.
and cycles goes on.
> tech jobs that come with relocation support for foreign candidates.
So this is only measuring people who live outside the US and want to take jobs in the US?
We should dismantle the H1B program if we are struggling to find roles for American youth.
We need to cancel the H-1B visa program. It is not helping Americans.
If more Americans knew how much money was being funneled to non-Americans they would be outraged.
https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/stop-h1b-visa-holders