April 2020 - 608
January 2016 - 471
First time the thread has been under 600 posts since January 2016.
Posts still trickle in throughout the month but the first 12 hours is when the majority of posts show up. I'm sure someone could do a more thorough analysis of post count but the overall number is unusually low.
I'm not saying HN and other platforms should censor (/ take action) either. It's just a thought I have on this subject, and I don't know if there is a solution.
If I were to change my course of action, I'd use that since it happened way earlier.
“ The Best Time To Start A Business Is During A Downturn”
Why does his intent matter unless you think the data is being skewed or misrepresented? Seems like a fairly objective factual post to me (but I didn’t run the numbers myself).
I would appreciate if data observations like this always included the script so people could easily (and quickly) verify the results, but that’s just a personal knit pick.
Because the data can be cherry-picked, intentionally or un-intentionally, similar to https://xkcd.com/882/
If you believe a trend exists (or just want to find evidence for it for other reasons) and you keep looking for statistical evidence of it, you're going to find it.
I agree this can be a self fulfilling prophecy. A lot of larger tech companies were announcing hiring freezes or restructuring months ago to get ahead of the downturn.
But I also think we could restate the quote above in ways that are actually true. For example, a lot of these posts are startups and monetary policy is slowing or shrinking the money available for VC. It makes sense that we see slower hiring. The past few years have probably been above historical VC funding levels anyways, so we may be returning to a more historical level for the next few years (or who knows?).
Alternately, I think a lot of companies are using the spector of a recession as cover for reducing unproductive or unnecessary headcount.
Over-hiring is an issue that's difficult to correct. If you do a round of layoffs, the perception is that you're in financial duress. This can affect investor and consumer confidence.
It's also difficult to explain to the public and to employees "oops, mia culpa! We asked you to upend your life to take a job with us, but our bad, we don't really need you."
I see it as similar to the way a lot of businesses implemented cost-cutting measures during covid that they had very much wanted to do, but couldn't because of the worry that they'd lose a competitive edge. Many of these measures had nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with cost cutting.
On the other hand, there are actual fundamentals like economy-wide inflation, employment numbers, GDP growth, supply/demand curves, etc., and it's important as an operator to have information about how the economy actually is, and more importantly how it's changing. I think the benefit of a post like this is much less tenuous; it provides insight into how the broader market conditions are panning out in our specific corner of the economy.
So yes, every measurement perturbs the system under measurement. In some cases that can be substantial. But in this case I don't think it is so.
The current stated goal of the Federal Reserve is to raise the unemployment rate from 3.7% to a target of 4.4%.
What you are remarking on as possibly a self-fulfilling prophecy is instead the result of official policy achieving its goal.
Pretty sure a recession is two quarters of negative growth. Rationalization hamster wheels notwithstanding.
Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.
And also all the inflation and recession action going on.
So it's likely a combination of the two.
https://www.africanews.com/2022/06/28/zimbabwes-key-interest...
Why am I being downvoted? All this is is a data point showing that rising interest rates don't have to bring down inflation.
Lower wages, lower job mobility, asset deflation, consumable inflation -- YAY!
...
I think Powell jacking up the fed funds rate is going to have a much larger effect than some random HN post.
that's not really how it works though, and it should absolutely not be a concern (it's quite common to get a sort of tech-industry tunnel vision while discounting the bigger picture or regional focuses.)
I've always argued that downturns are a natural part of every business cycle and perhaps instead of trying to avoid them, we plan for their inevitable occurrence.
"maybe it won't be a recession. maybe it will be. what i can tell you for sure is that it will be the first of its kind in real-time, full surround, three dimensional, quintophonic social media stereo."
economics is the study of population behavior. remember that.
So, no, there is no solution. To avoid crises of overproduction (including the subsequent adjustments), the planning that takes place within the capitalist firm has to be extended to the global network of production.
This also happens with inflation. It is probably because people start acting differently. The hypothesis is that if people are preparing for a recession then demand goes down, which pushes prices up, which is identical to inflation. Obviously this model is far too simplistic but it is still interesting.
This makes no sense at all. even the inverse makes no sense, if people preparing for a recession stopped buying goods, prices would go go down not up, which obviously would not cause inflation. This idiocy of saying that inflation comes from the people, and not from monetary policy, is depressing. It guarantees that governments will keep having a free pass to print as much colored paper as they want.
This isn’t some insidious campaign to crash the economy by showing that the economy is finally cooling off. Getting inflation under control is good long term but it will be painful.
This thread by myself contains a BigQuery to reproduce the data + a chart of Who is Hiring posts over time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675750
Here's a new chart of up-to-date data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13yGlJzFpVzZ-WNHAOsdo...
Not exactly correct. While the global crypto market cap is currently around a trillion dollars (and was higher in the recent past), this is vastly different than it being the case that a trillion dollars was invested in crypto (i.e., "siphoned out" of the rest of the economy).
In fact, according to one estimate, in 2021 global crypto investment was $30.2 billion [1]. (I don't quickly see estimates for 2022.) For comparison, US gross private domestic investment across all industries was $4.1 trillion in 2021 [2] and globally it was several times that. While $30 billion is nothing to sneeze at when considered on its own, crypto investment is a rounding error when compared with global investment.
[1] https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/media/press-releases/2022/02/to... [2] See Table 1.1.5. Gross Domestic Product at https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=19&step=3&isuri...
Inflation adjusted nothing the government is selling is earning other than I-bonds (individual yearly buy limit of $15K). With Trump's energy output restriction deal with Saudi and others expiring inflation may slow, but the situation of gas in Europe over the winter seems poised to keep it up (CPI doesn't include energy directly, but it feeds back in).
While the housing market has fallen, the actual cost of buying a house is still rising. Rate increases have well outpaced the list price reductions.
So I think all this talk of a recession is just a bunch of reporters trying to jeer people into that state of mind for clicks.
My pet theory is that everyone is just tired, so damned tired, and seeps into everything.
If you stop looking for 4 weeks, you're not employed but not "unemployed" (in their numbers).
We could have low unemployment but high underemployment and end up with a similar softening of consumer demand just because people don't have the discretionary income to buy stuff. Underemployment combined with inflation is extra painful.
When this point of unemployment is hit, it always acts as an inflection point before the trend reverses and unemployment goes up.
With the major exception of the pandemic/remote work, the world is not markedly different than it was in 2013 or 2003. What makes it seems like 2023 is so different?
Otherwise when I look around it seems like the restaurants are busy, people are taking holidays (even those who wouldn't usually), and people as a whole seem better off than they've been in a while...
It kind of seems like the view of the economy is being manipulated, because here on the street everything looks hunky dory.
Some people. The lower classes are definitely struggling a lot more recently, especially given the rental market going bonkers.
Depending on your personal financial circumstances, it may be many months before you end up "seeing this with your own eyes". Inflation won't eat up your savings over night - but over a period of 5-10 years, combined with increasing energy prices, interest rates, costs of living and salary stagnation? A lot can change. It's a boiling frog situation...
Economies don't roll-over in a month, sometimes it takes years. But this cycle has peaked. Inflation and rising interest rates will cause all kinds of issues, including the highest mortgage rates in 30 years.
Although I'm not sure why 2019 ushered in much better performance on those threads.
I don't know if it really means anything though.
I post every month on the "who wants to be hired?" thread except for when the 1st of the month falls on a weekend or a national holiday in the US. Why? Because the number of people reading the thread, and the number of people posting on "who is hiring?" threads dips precipitously when the 1st of the month falls on the weekend or a national holiday in the US.
Most of the outreach I get from founders through "who wants to be hired?" is low-effort "we'll pay you in exposure!" or "well you can't live on what we're paying in any major meotropolitan area but think of the equity when we IPO!" but occasionally there is a diamond in the rough that reaches out. My current job was one of those diamonds.
The difference between entrepreneurs who "get it" when selling their company on the "who is hiring thread?" and those that don't is stark. And even more stark is the difference between entrepreneurs selling their company to prospective hires on the "who is hiring thread?" vs developers selling their skillset on the "who wants to be hired?" thread. It is the difference between selling features vs selling benefits writ large.
Also, can you expand a bit more on the "those who get it" vs "those who don't"? What are you looking for here? What do you mean selling features vs. benefits?
"Who is hiring" never worked out for me, as the geographic limitations are too strict or confusingly worded. Looking through 400 posts to figure out which are actually open to hire someone from europe is not as promising as looking through dedicated job portals.
I tend to comment on topics I wouldn't want to discuss in a professional setting and so I'm pretty unlikely to ever bother with a "who wants to be hired?" thread.
Sidenote: we're not a big company, we hire single-digit new people per year. I have no idea how to scale this success up, ie if we'd advertise way more aggressively elsewhere the % would likely go down.
I also recently interviewed for another position advertised via Who's Hiring. I didn't take the offer, but it was a very close decision.
I had enough success to try again the next time I am looking for a new gig.
Having said that, in the last ~2 years, we've had FAR less success with these threads. Didn't post in the last one cuz it just didn't feel worth it.
Archive reasons: (4) Underqualified (4) Work Authorization (1) Unresponsive
Ask HN is now sort of part of YC Startup School where founders can ask people in the community about their startup issues.
Show HN is now Launch YC: https://www.ycombinator.com/launches
With traffic stats for HN, so we could see if there was a change in traffic/participation, or something else.
My personal thought is that many startups have been advised by investors to trim the sails for less follow on capital for a while, and that results in more conservative hiring. What I'm seeing at the day job (I have a recruiting tech platform), is that non-tech companies have plenty of open tech jobs to go around - and still can't find enough people.
What is currently in demand, what is desirable?
From the layoffs I've observed Recruiters were some of the top laid off roles.
Less recruiters means prioritization of efforts.
HN Who's hiring is probably a low priority platform. (Recruiter's boss doesn't know what it is, hard to instrument for tracking metrics)
If you really want to know how many jobs are out there it's better to index and crawl all the companies jobs page directly. Albeit much much harder to do than a single HN thread per month.
This has always surprised me. At several companies I've suggested to the hiring folks that they post on HN and I've rarely seen it happen. But IMHO, although you may not get a lot of candidates that way, I would imagine the signal/noise ratio is high, relative to the average recruiting channel. (Would be curious to see that (dis)confirmed.)
Don't fret about the state of the market - you can't do anything and it is irrelevant.
Focus on making sure your skills are up to date and you network and put yourself in the best position.
If there are a hundred less roles, it doesn't matter if you are in the top 10%, even the top 50% - just be better than average and you'll be fine.
I'll let you all know when I've scheduled my defense so that you can start stockpiling gas, food, ammo, and whatever else.
People wanting a Mobile Developer with knowledge both in iOS and Android, and it wouldn't hurt if you knew some crass platform solution also.
I see posting with wanting 8+ years in a particular framework or language...
Am I the only one who finds that insane? I know that before "the requirements" were more like "wants" and if you are a good candidate, the company will give you a chance, but I have had situations right now where the recruiter would just answer point blank that all of the requirements must be met...
How are people with under 2,3,4 years of experience supposed to find a better paying job?
God forbid if you are fresh from college...
All data in CSV format would be ideal if someone has it to share via gist or such.
EDIT: I generated a new sheet for the chart with up-to-date data and fixed a data issue noted below.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICNSA << in fact, Jobless Claims are typically seasonally adjusted. Non-seasonal adjustment indicates claims spike around start/end of the year. The idea being, all else equal, if same amount of people get hired/fired every month, but supply of jobs dips, then claims go up...
Conclusion: not enough data points.
October 2021 [1]: 853 posts
October 2022 [2]: 415 posts
Not an exact comparison, as some posts will continue to trickle in to Oct 2022, but its still a sharp decline.
* Weird sense of relief? (“At least I wasn’t laid off!”)
* Gloating? (“Ha! I knew that wildly successful company wasn’t so great!”)
* Determine if a particular company is shrinking headcount? (Seems unreliable at best.)
Something else?
Saying that last month had 536 posts, and that that was a low since June of 2020 seems much more interesting IMO.
Around Q2/Q3 of 2023 we should have most supply chains stabilized again, and a better estimate of actual market demand.
Hang on, it is going to be one volatile winter... ;)
https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2022/09/predicting-next-r...
Makes me realize how much I miss the glory days of rss.
Months when the 1st falls on a Saturday or Sunday.
May & October 2016
January, April, July & October 2017
April, July, September & December 2018
June, September, December 2019
February, March, August & November 2020
May & August 2021
January, May, October 2022
Perhaps the posts were restricted to a certain time frame, or coincidence?
Does anyone know if such a resource already exists? Don't want to duplicate effort.
Not saying the results would different, but just comparing arbitrary dates for this sort of data is not going to give you data to derive any meaningful conclusions.
When people hear these anecdotes, check yourself! In an era of fake news and bubbles you have to be accountable to yourself by researching if common sayings are really true before sharing them.
A lack of posts can't be interpreted as a lack of hiring.
No, we don't know that. If you do, you'll make quite the killing on the stock market.