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Comment by amrocha | Hacker News Reader

There’s been over 1 million people laid off in tech in the past 4 years

https://www.trueup.io/layoffs

According to that site, there were more tech layoffs in 2022 than in 2024 or 2025. Doesn't that speak against the "AI is taking tech jobs" hypothesis?

Massive, embarrassingly shortsighted overhiring in 2020 and 2021 seems like the more likely culprit.

I agree, I think AI taking jobs is all smoke and mirrors by companies trying to gas up their stock prices

Again, sucks to be in the US as a programmer today maybe, but this isn't true elsewhere in the world, and especially not if you already have at least some experience.

Definitely true in western Europe, and finding a job is extremely hard for the vast majority of non expert devs.

Of course if you're in south eastern europe or in south asia where all the jobs are being offshored you're having the time of your life.

> Definitely true in western Europe, and finding a job is extremely hard for the vast majority of non expert devs.

I don't know what else to say except that hasn't been my experience personally, nor the experience of my acquaintances who've re-skilled to become programmers these last few years, in Western Europe.

Anecdotes are cool but we came up with a neat little thing known as statistics.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tech-job-postings-fall-across...

> Among the 27 countries analysed, European nations saw the steepest fall in tech job postings between 1 February 2020 and 31 October 2025,

> In absolute terms, the decline exceeded 40% in Switzerland (-46%) and the UK (-41%), with France (-39%) close behind.

> The United States showed a similar trend, with a decline of 35%. Austria (-34%), Sweden (-32%) and Germany (-30%) were also at comparable levels.

Do you base your entire worldview purely on your own personal experience?

You seem to keep having to add more and more qualifiers to your statements…

I only see one. "Outside the US" was the starting proposition, then they only added "experienced".

I have been laid off 4 times. Tech has a lot of churn, there are a lot of high risk high reward companies.

Good thing I posted statistics that show this is an industry wide phenomenon and not just high risk companies going bust then!

This has more to do with monetary policy than AI, though.

I couldn’t agree more, I think AI is more about taking power away from tech workers who have historically had a lot of power compared to other non unionized workers.

Oh I disagree

Good thing I wasn’t replying to you then!

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