Chart of the week

I don’t know if this will be a regular feature, but I saw this chart recently, and just had to share it.

This is number of Software Jobs posted on Indeed in the past four years. It’s a bleak picture if this is the game you’re in, and an even worse one if you’re trying to join the party.

Smart people, like yourself, might point out that this is just a return to normal, and they’d be right. On the demand side of things, the index is around 78 at the start of 2024, so lower than it was pre covid, but not by much.

What this picture doesn’t capture is that the supply side has exploded. CS majors have increased by 30%. The amount of people doing boot camps, or learning online, has grown substantially as well. Three or so years ago, doing a 12-week bootcamp could land you a job at Microsoft. Now, you won’t even get a call back.

Labour market corrections are the most painful, and sadly, the tools we have to counter it are limited. There WILL be millions of aspiring software engineers who will have to look, like journalists, switchboard operators, and fletchers in times past, for different lines of work.

The good news is that Software Engineering allows you to build cool things, and with AI and plenty of cash floating around, there is no reason why many of these young men and women can’t create their own jobs.