Yes, interest rates are higher than ever and consumer sentiment makes business wary
replyZIRP is over but rates are not especially high and yet I don’t remember job market being that bad. Maybe employers are taking wait and see approach and avoid hiring developers they expect to layoff in a year or two if models will continue to improve and becoming cheaper at the current pace.
replyI think that models will improve and get cheaper. I think we'll see Opus 5.5 tier models open weights in six months.
replyYou are probably right that some companies are factoring AI into headcount but I'd imagine that the interest rate and energy crisis are bigger concerns
Not that it explains all job market weirdness but you do have a problem on the hiring side with having to deal with the flood of AI generated applications. I assume that’s going to have a slowing effect on the typical apply/interview/hire process.
replyInterest rates are higher because AI.
replyIt was long predicted that the sign that AI is here in macroeconomics is rising interest rates, because investors can get MUCH higher rates of return doing AI investments than borrowing governments, why would I lend money to Greece when I can lend it to Anthropic?
I own my company and directly participate hiring. What’s changed among me and my peers is that we’re on incredibly precarious economic grounds with no telling what’s going to happen next month.
replyLLMs haven’t done much in the way of informing me or others I know regarding “who and how many”.
I’ve done some hiring lately as well and we got a ridiculous number of applications, like 500+ for a run-of-the-mill developer job.
replyI’ve worked in tech for 20+ years and I’ve never seen it like this. Sure there are job openings, but sooo many applicants it seems.
(This is Sweden, YMMV.)
I would wager that most of them are AI generated. The cost of generating a neat looking LaTeX resume and adding vibe-projects to one's GitHub is very low...
reply500+ is a lot?
replyIf you’re one of the 500 then it is, yes.
replyIt’s normal to be one of 10k.
replyFor a research role at Anthropic perhaps, not for the roles I’m typically hiring for.
replyAnd how! All the “nothing has changed, stop whining posts” are neglecting that they haven’t had to go look for a job. My previous company became quite toxic about LLMs and employee usage. It’s not “move over to the paradigm or get left behind” instead it was “jump on the hype-wagon and sing LLM’s praises all day, every day or you’re out”.
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