I’m not asking you to predict the future, though that would be awesome, but could you share some thoughts on when/how the labor market turning might unfold?
I'm not OP, though I see that he's among the few that shares this opinion of mine.
Take what I'm saying with a gigantic grain of salt because I am not some economist.
We have had 10 years+ of quantitative easing both in the US and in Europe, with it all peaking during the last 2 years due to Covid. This has delivered an aritificial stimulus to the economy in the form of basically free money. This has had a lot of consequences, including the craziness in the housing market & stock market, as well as a huge influx of money that went into other investments like startups, expansions and so on. Basically, in simpler terms, everybody could easily get money because money has been very cheap.
We are now starting to see the side-effects (of an otherwise arguably good thing) in the form of inflation. So the greater powers are now at a fork in the road - they either allow inflation to wreck the working and middle class or they turn off the money tap. The problem is that after living for so long with 0% interest rates, any significant change to this might trigger a recession that will make 2008 look like the good times.
I started my career after 2008, so I have only ever experienced an environment in which employeers were heavily competing for engineers (and generally workforce in all professions), so I'm afraid that anyone in a position similar to mine has simply no way of realizing the way things will look a few years from now.
Unless I'm seriously missing something of substance, then I'm afraid that there will be quite a few years in which people will lose homes, jobs, sanity and us privileged developers are maybe in a better position than most, but make no mistake - we will all suffer.
Keep in mind that large populations suffering often have political implications. That’s why economic predictions are mostly shots in the dark. They are reasonable and logical until people say “Nope”.
We’ll see what inflation is like this year, but it’s reasonable (due to Russia oil) to assume it’ll be just as bad as last year. This has a ton of economic and political implications. Some that can be predicted and some that will likely be surprising.
So making statements about what the the labour market will look like in 2 years…
> Keep in mind that large populations suffering often have political implications.
Not sure this is as insightful as you think. Yes, obviously that is the case. So? If inflation and housing continue to be this bad, then we have to stop printing the money or maybe find a way to better allocate the wealth, which would mean even more turmoil than your regular economic crisis.
> Some that can be predicted and some that will likely be surprising. So making statements about what the the labour market will look like in 2 years…
Yes, which is why I'm not making predicitons about company X in Y months from now. If you think that continuing in this manner for another 2 years is sustainable, then it means that one of us is _seriously_ misunderstanding the macro-economic situation. We can't have house prices increase 20% every year and inflation edging towards 10% inflation and stagnating salaries.
Something has got to give, and the point I'm making is simple. Things will get worse before they get better. If you think that is simply a coin flip or a matter of pure opinion, then I'm afraid, again, that one of us is really, really uninformed about the situation. Maybe it's me.
My point is you are drawing conclusions about the labour market when there are likely very large and potentially unpredictable changes in store.
One (just one) question is whether anyone has the political will or clout to make things worse in the short term to potentially correct it in the long term. Interest rates should have been raised long before covid if you’re thinking long term and yet that never happened. Raising rates right now could be political suicide (albeit the most logical path). There are a lot of other hard to reason about factors. Economists a couple months ago were predicting lower inflation this year, like in the 4% range. Seems unlikely now.
Any conclusion about the labour market is predicated on some pretty massive assumptions and therefore complete speculation.
>you are drawing conclusions about the labour market when there are likely very large and potentially unpredictable changes in store.
...isn't that the entire point of this particular thread? Looking at possibilities without necessary prediction?
Is there any point in history where you can't say "there are likely very large and potentially unpredictable changes in store."? Why predict anything ever then?
> Is there any point in history where you can't say "there are likely very large and potentially unpredictable changes in store."? Why predict anything ever then?
Pardon the rudeness, but that’s silly. Of course there are times of varying turbulence where predictions can be more / less accurate. To be honest though economic predictions in the last 20 years haven’t done better than a coin flip.
I think we’re mostly in agreement except the part about everyone will suffer so demand for software engineers will decrease. In fact I think the economy is probably worse off (not just QE causing issues) than you laid out.
But the demand for software engineers decreasing? I mean, maybe, but I don’t think your points support that. I think there’s a mountain of assumptions you need to make to conclude that.
In a vacuum I would actually argue the opposite and say software engineering is even more important today than yesterday and that we aren’t producing enough. For example (anecdotal), the almost complete lack of technical fluency shown during the remote learning shit show that was my kids education last year. But we’re not in a vacuum and the economy is so untethered to reality that I can’t predict anything about the labour market.
I do agree that low interest rates have helped fuel growth, but I'm not convinced that it's played that big of a role.
If we look at Europe and Japan, despite the historically low interest rates, they haven't exactly been a beacon of innovation in the last decades. In fact, the US and China have eaten most of their market share.
I think you are mistaking things because I didn't even mention growth.
You're also saying that just because the US and China have done better than Europe, that means that QE has not had a measurable effect on the job market?
I'm sorry, but it looks to me as if you're strawmanning becasue your reply is barely adjacent to the points I was trying to make.
Major tech companies (e.g. Netflix, Cloudflare, MongoDB, and nearly every other publicly listed high growth tech company) have seen their stock prices fall as much as 50% in the past few months.
When the value of the entire tech industry shrinks that dramatically this quickly, companies are bound to become a bit more conservative in their operations, which cloud slow the pace of hiring in tech (and for some, layoffs)
As for "when", the slow down has already started and will accelerate over the next few months (my prediction, no evidence).
Take what I'm saying with a gigantic grain of salt because I am not some economist.
We have had 10 years+ of quantitative easing both in the US and in Europe, with it all peaking during the last 2 years due to Covid. This has delivered an aritificial stimulus to the economy in the form of basically free money. This has had a lot of consequences, including the craziness in the housing market & stock market, as well as a huge influx of money that went into other investments like startups, expansions and so on. Basically, in simpler terms, everybody could easily get money because money has been very cheap.
We are now starting to see the side-effects (of an otherwise arguably good thing) in the form of inflation. So the greater powers are now at a fork in the road - they either allow inflation to wreck the working and middle class or they turn off the money tap. The problem is that after living for so long with 0% interest rates, any significant change to this might trigger a recession that will make 2008 look like the good times.
I started my career after 2008, so I have only ever experienced an environment in which employeers were heavily competing for engineers (and generally workforce in all professions), so I'm afraid that anyone in a position similar to mine has simply no way of realizing the way things will look a few years from now.
Unless I'm seriously missing something of substance, then I'm afraid that there will be quite a few years in which people will lose homes, jobs, sanity and us privileged developers are maybe in a better position than most, but make no mistake - we will all suffer.