[chiefalchemist]

My sense is, there is less movement. It's like musical chairs. When more people are changing more often those that have been waiting on the side lines have a greater chance of jumping in and getting a seat. Now that the tempo has slowed down, more people are left standing longer.

Some big name layoffs aside, the market feels to be roughly the same size. What's missing is the churn.

[hn72774]

I'm in a holding pattern myself. Some personal observations:

1. Leads and cold messages from recruiters are for roles that tend to pay a significant amount less than my current role. Easily 20%-50% less. This tells me that companies are still looking to play arbitrage and sell (fire/layoff) high, buy low. That's a losing game for me. No thanks.

2. I like my team and the work. There are quirks like any company. There's nothing that's motivating me to look for a new job other than occasional boredom or frustration that passes.

3. A fear I have is joining a new company, then getting laid off. Until the layoff trend subsides a job change is not appealing.

4. New hires need to contribute to profitability, not just growth. It's just plain harder to justify hiring and get reqs opened in the current business climate. Part of that is board and exec group think. Another part is higher interest rates and cost of capital. Not being able to depreciate software dev expenses anymore hurts too.

[saltminer]

My department pays out any leftover budget as a bonus at the end of the fiscal year. I got an email recently that, due to retention, there probably won't be much of a bonus come June.

Churn is indeed down.

[cyberlurker]

To add to this, the churn creates inefficiencies within companies since new employees need to onboard and can take as long as two years to truly understand what the heck is going on within the org.

If you have less churn, you have better efficiency and perhaps can get more done with fewer engineers.

Also interviewing and onboarding people takes a lot of time and effort from other employees, if it is being done right.

I don’t know to what degree this is happening but people staying in roles longer definitely helps. Even better if they are happy in those roles and not held hostage by a tougher job market.

[chiefalchemist]

> If you have less churn, you have better efficiency and perhaps can get more done with fewer engineers.

True. But the downside is groupthink. New hires bring new ideas, new perspectives, etc. Heck, even something as simple explaining X or Y during onboarding forces the "teacher" to rethinking and reinterpret.

No chun? No new blood. No new ideas.

[cyberlurker]

I 100% agree. There is a balance and also different dynamics based on the trajectory of the company. When a company is growing, you could have new blood and old hats. When a company is shrinking, everything sucks.