[maxehmookau]

Agreed. I still think we're seeing layoffs due to _overhiring_ in 2020. AI makes a nice excuse when laying these people off because CEOs can say their huge investments in AI are starting to pay off because they don't need the humans.

Turns out, they never needed those humans in the first place.

That doesn't answer the other side of the problem though, that it's so hard to find work right now, even for folks who would typically be very easy to employ.

[AnimalMuppet]

Sure it does. If everybody overhired, then nobody needs to hire now. And the few places that do are inundated with all the laid-off job seekers, so odds on getting hired at one of them are very low.

[throwway120385]

At my employer the overhiring was in areas where there wasn't actually a business case. For example they staffed an entire internal team to build a unified portal between all of the software systems the company acquired through acquisitions. That team produced nothing and at great expense. They got laid off last year, and the funds re-allocated toward hiring in areas that produced revenue or reduced expenses.

[maxehmookau]

Fair point. Depressing, but it makes sense.

[BearOso]

Layoffs are one of the only ways way to cut spending before quarterly reports when the market is already saturated. The other way is to make the products cheaper (enshittification).

As far as more employable candidates go, I don't think executives realize the vast limitations of LLM. You have to remember they aren't technical people. They're thinking managers with no training are going to replace skilled employees--that there was a secret magic button that the lowly employees all knew about and it's now in their hands.

Sam Altman said there were now going to be one-person, billion-dollar companies. Reading between the lines, since there's not enough money for every person to do that, what does he intend for the remainder to become?

[jmaestrooper]

Can someone please refer me to the hard data on "overhiring in 2020"?

I was laid off as part of the initial panic in early 2020. The job market for IT for the entirety of 2020 was dead. D-E-A-D. There was a _very_ small pickup in the summer when people got more optimistic about the vaccines but it waned very quickly.

I'm in the Midwest so it might have been different in the West but I doubt it was that much different.

There was _some_ pickup in 2021, when companies realized the end of the world isn't happening soon, but it was not very significant. IT job market never really normalized, there was some pickup in 2022 but by then LLM hype started causing layoffs to go up and openings down.