There are still good tech jobs but hiring is down compared to its high. Whether its down compared to pre-covid times - can't say. What I will say however is: job search sucks no matter what the economy is doing. If you want to skip as much bs as humanly possible look for companies where its still possible to talk to the founders one on one and only apply if you've basically already done exactly what they need doing. Don't waste peoples time.
Tech job market is a bad proxy for the job market as a whole. The whole job market is basically completely broken now - tons of terrible jobs with no career prospects, but very little progress on "career" jobs unless you are in tech and graduated from a respectable university (which becoming more and more equiv. to having rich parents).
The job market for tech is especially brutal right now. Most tech companies have frozen hiring or are actively laying off people. Perhaps look at trading firms or more traditional F500 companies, which still seem to be actively hiring.
Seems pretty bad right now. A lot of companies, mine included, are in a hiring freeze. Some companies outside of big tech are hiring(I noticed quite a few jobs from banks), but a lot are expecting relocation or hybrid in addition to substantial pay cuts compared to tech salaries. I've had most of my recent applications rejected without even a recruiter call when in the past I had felt my resume was very strong.
I definitely get the feeling the tech job market is transitioning. I should say that the market never really died, but there was a noticeable slowdown during the recession (you could find a job, but not necessarily the exact job you wanted at the salary you wanted).
Just in the past month without looking for a job, I've had about three sort of "prospects" get thrown at me. I decided to interview with one place and actually have an offer right now. On the other hand, I feel like their offer is pretty low and I'll probably decline so maybe some employers are still stuck with a mentality from 6-12 months ago (Admittedly, I have the luxury of already having a job that I can stick with).
The tech job market is the worst I've seen since the dotcom bust. What makes it worse is that hiring has been really incredible the previous 10 years, so there's an entire generation of tech workers that have no idea what a "normal" or "bad" job market is like.
My advice is assume there are 1000 people applying for the same job as you, and you need to tailor every single resume for the job. If it says "Staff" just go for it and don't downplay your experience. Give it your best and let THEM be the one that tells you you're not qualified. Make it your job to study and be so well prepared that they can't tell if you are qualified or not.
I'm assuming that the job market will be bad like this for another 2-3 years so buckle up.
I haven't found direct hiring data, but the second chart in [1] tells a very interesting story - job postings in tech are now below pre-pandemic norm. I know that resignations in tech have been falling steadily the last several months as well, so it seems like hiring is likely down quite a bit.
Anecdotally, my software dev friends who are unemployed right now are having trouble getting hired, compared to a few years ago where they were turning down interviews weekly.
Absolutely. Total comp, not to mention hiring in general at publicly traded tech firms has dropped significantly since the “software recession” and mass layoffs.
The current good times for employees are mainly in the economy outside of tech
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