Hacker News Reader

Hiring freezes don't have to be industry wide to be problematic. If you are competing with dozens of people for a job, there is a high chance some of them are both a good fit and willing to accept crappier compensation.

View on HN

Yeah, even if there are only some actual layoffs and only some degree of hiring freezes/slowdowns/tight budgets, that translates to fewer openings with more people competing for them with lower TC being offered. The general sense among the people I talk to is that it's increasingly significantly less of an employee's market than it was 6 to 12 months ago.

Nowhere near dot-bomb territory of course (and the dynamics are different) but the market has changed.

Interesting. I haven’t seen this. Been through many hiring freezes and economic downturns but my salary has only ever gone up and if my employer tightened the reigns, i moved on. (here is your sign)- nothing really changed the market unless it was something such as 2008 meltdown with was systemic.

2008 didn't really effect tech that much. In dot-bomb, a lot of people were out of work for a long time and many left the industry. I was lucky to find something fairly quickly but it was a significant pay cut. (Not developer but in "tech").

None of this really supports your argument. 9/11 was the largest workforce reduction in tech as far as people leaving the industry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com