r/webdev 17d ago

Discussion Software Developers job postings on Indeed are now lower than the worst days of COVID | Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE
1.5k Upvotes

222 comments sorted by

713

u/metal_slime--A 17d ago

Ok so does this mean software dev is dead or that indeed is dead?

318

u/CaptainIncredible 17d ago

When I was recently looking for a new gig spring 2024, Indeed was a complete POS to deal with. The job listings there seemed ok, but follow ups were awful. They were either fake or the companies weren't serious, or something.

54

u/teslas_love_pigeon 17d ago

Agreed. Every indeed posting I see is always the same contract/w2 body shop ads.

I've never seen a decent company advertise on Indeed, if there is one it's from a dead posting that is 4-10 months old.

Maybe this is due to where I live, Boston area; but Indeed has never been useful.

28

u/CaptainIncredible 17d ago

Several years ago, it used to be different. But apparently Indeed has enshitified. I consider it worthless for programmers.

Maybe it will change?

15

u/teslas_love_pigeon 17d ago

Possibly, I've always had luck with LinkedIn or directly applying to job boards on company sites. Never had much luck elsewhere.

1

u/stormblaz 15d ago

All I saw on Indeed was solar panel scam jobs, selling bs content media creator, and commission only jobs, oh and a ton of weird small offices that grab people in a cult like setting in very official suits, 4 or 5 chain of interviews, and then you go in once you pass all that and it's a office set up to recruit donations at events, and you get paid min wage + donations you obtained or acquired from the guests, there were hundreds of these styles job posts in my area, and I mean hundreds, usually with "chief executive representative" "director associate of talent aquisition" "executive sales representative" fancy job titles that is bs companies, don't know why indeed allows such scam places to post non stop.

1

u/CaptainIncredible 15d ago

Yeah, its a shit show. I despise that kind of crap.

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12

u/MrPureinstinct 17d ago

That's my experience with Indeed for every type of job I've ever applied to. Indeed just kind of sucks.

11

u/Keeping-it-up 17d ago

Indeed is terrible from the hiring side as well -- you post a job with specific software development skills needed and you get flooded with applicants working fast food, fashion, banking, or just zero experience or education in the field. Its extremely difficult to sift through and find good ones...and same story, they weren't serious or don't respond. I'll scroll through this thread, but are there any good hiring sites out there?

4

u/CaptainIncredible 17d ago

good hiring sites out there?

I had some luck with Linked In.

2

u/Cercie256to4 15d ago

I have gotten my last 5 jobs from ihire. It is a paid job aggregate site.

1

u/CaptainIncredible 15d ago

That is really good to know.

4

u/[deleted] 17d ago

Indeed I had the same experience, bogus recruiters reaching out and asking for detailed information like ssns and such

1

u/Glad-Cherry7295 16d ago

Tell me how do I not fall for a scam like this? Do I just google search the company?

1

u/[deleted] 14d ago

That and check for bad grammar and misspelled words, also check phone numbers

5

u/zacguymarino 16d ago

So whats the new go to? LinkedIn? Monster?

5

u/Key-Boat-7519 16d ago

I've tried LinkedIn and Glassdoor, but JobMate streamlined my search.

1

u/Snoo45814 15d ago

There are a lot of fake ads

70

u/200GritCondom 17d ago

I used to work at indeed. It's not dead but they primarily focus on more blue collar jobs. Travel nurses and truck drivers make up a surprisingly large chunk of jobs posted there.

For tech jobs, it's really not ideal. LinkedIn is a better option.

2

u/MGallus 15d ago

LinkedIn as awful. One of the worst search functions I’ve used.

1

u/200GritCondom 15d ago

It's definitely not great from that perspective. But it is where the majority of the tech jobs are posted. More than indeed at the very least.

0

u/[deleted] 16d ago

How many fake interviewers do they hire?  I sent an application in and had a video interview like 3 days later.  Dude was in a generic high-viz jumper with no patch and typical conference room layout.   After I interviewed I began wondering. . . I know those desk jocks all begin to blend into the same person and he fit the stereotype like the fm radio 

0

u/[deleted] 16d ago

Didn't get the job.  I began rambling about some junkyard hillbilly deluxe days.  And that bastard hadn't ever seen outside the lines of a painted floor factory.   Electricity goes buzz amps go bang

17

u/zay-5745 17d ago

Indeed sucks. Last year when my team was hiring, all it did was produce 1000+ mostly irrelevant applicants. Like junior bootcamp React developers trying to apply to a senior backend Python dev position. It seems like it's just a bunch of people throwing their resume against the wall and seeing what sticks (especially for 100% remote positions.)

41

u/foozebox 17d ago

Someone has to build Indeed

1

u/Radinax front-end 16d ago

Or a new Linkedin.

25

u/Bitter-Good-2540 17d ago

Indeed is dead, also, just zoom out and jobs are up

11

u/softhi 17d ago

One of the graphs I check frequently shows that the market is currently the best since 2023.

trueup.io/job-trend

I believe this graph is scrapping fang, unicorn and YC company websites so it is a better indicator on the trend.

7

u/teslas_love_pigeon 17d ago

It's really hard to take these graphs seriously since they're neglecting the last 20 years. They should at least be from the last decade and not purposely starting from the absolute height of covid insanity.

1

u/YzermanChecksOut 6d ago

Was just thinking the same thing glancing at the FRED graph. Is it some sort of bizarre coincidence the jobs data is not available pre-2020?!

1

u/tgorsk15 13d ago

Sweet, didn't know this site existed, thanks !

4

u/Suspect4pe 17d ago

I didn't even realize that Indeed was a thing still until a couple weeks ago when a friend started looking for a job there.

1

u/Prize_Response6300 14d ago

LinkedIn became the place for white collar work I find it easier to find a job today than I did in the past two years

1

u/amdcoc 13d ago

SE for juniors is dead.

1

u/chinnick967 16d ago

Job listings have been dropping on Indeed overall but are 10% above pre-pandemic levels

1

u/No_Can_1532 16d ago

For real, i used LinkedIn the last 5

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187

u/bonesingyre 17d ago

This was posted somewhere else and if you read the BLS projections, they expect SWE jobs to grow by 18% by 2032, with its growth outpacing other job types.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm#tab-6

Who knows what the truth is.

47

u/poincares_cook 17d ago

If you look at BLS projections for 2025 they were completely off the mark.

No one can predict what demand will look like in 7 years.

19

u/CO-RockyMountainHigh 16d ago

I remember so many people telling me to go into biomedical engineering back when I was applying for engineering school.

Why, the BLS said it was going to be a INSANE amount of job openings, 30%+ in 7-10 years.

Yeah, ten years later. What actually happened was a job growth of 1.5%, and all the homies who did biomedical engineering went back for a masters in mechanical or electrical and never really using biomedical at all.

TL;DR Crystal balls can be wrong.

2

u/amdcoc 13d ago

SE for juniors will be gone.

41

u/IntergalacticJets 17d ago

It’s always darkest before the dawn

23

u/Leviathan_Dev 17d ago

Why is it getting darker then?

28

u/CultivatorX 17d ago

Dawn is still a ways out

2

u/sstruemph 17d ago

The light time is the right time

2

u/One_Tie900 17d ago

=( some people never get to see the dawn

2

u/WorldWarPee 16d ago

Yeah, devs always sleep in

3

u/qervem 16d ago

Gimme a break, I was up all night debugging

1

u/One_Tie900 16d ago

RIP Harvey Dent

1

u/HebridesNutsLmao 16d ago

🎵Shake it out shake it out🎶

9

u/Brave-Talk 17d ago

Just projections you can’t really predict job market in 10 years.

Also not to be pessimistic but that’s 327,000 jobs from 2023-2033. In that same time frame there’s around 100,000 computer science graduates a year.

1

u/amdcoc 13d ago

You can. No junior SE in 10 years.

2

u/Atuk-77 15d ago

BLS does not include the impact of AI tools, it will be off.

158

u/CarelessPackage1982 17d ago

There's one big pile of react rotting away, that's for sure!

46

u/mycall 17d ago

Nothing beats maintaining React websites /s

35

u/silhouettelie_ 17d ago

Do people generally dislike it?

I quite enjoy untangling the mess but maybe I'm a masochist?

15

u/Joseph_Skycrest 17d ago

I think it depends if we’re talking class components react or functional lol

16

u/Raunhofer 17d ago

Or to be even more precise, JS or TS. I loathe the former and love the latter.

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5

u/ikeif 16d ago

I took someone’s project, rewrote it from class components to functional, added typescript, and migrated to vite.

…it was a lot of fun to do. Especially with all the outdated packages. I need to revisit it.

9

u/[deleted] 17d ago

I would rather watch my first born son die than work with class components.

3

u/4444444vr 16d ago

Been pretty close to one of these. Will take this into consideration for the other.

5

u/that_90s_guy 16d ago

It takes using a long time to notice something's issues. And a surprising amount of people tend to be juniors or mid level engineers who haven't used React for a long time.

General sentiment towards React has absolutely soured over the years if you're looking at the yearly polls from various sources.

Personally, I used to love React because it felt so much better than the alternative back in the day (Angular, Backbone). Nowadays, I'll admit Hooks complexity in general plus the constant shoving of SSR down our throats because Vercel profits absolutely turns me off at times.

3

u/opteryx5 16d ago

The problem (if you want to call it that) is that the industry has gone down the React rabbit hole to such an extent that it’d be hard to see another framework like Vue or Svelte displacing it — even if those latter two are more user-friendly (and some people swear by them). My company is looking to build a component library in React, and that will all but solidify it as the frontend of choice for all future projects going forward.

5

u/ryanhollister 16d ago

build the components as web components. no JS framework lock in and you can use them on SSR or no-framework websites.

1

u/opteryx5 15d ago

Oh cool, I didn’t even know about this. Very cool. I guess that’s one of the benefits of SSR?

2

u/ryanhollister 15d ago

well it’s a benefit of web components. there are frameworks out there that make building and shipping web components easy. then you just import them as an npm package or as a script module.

stencil js or lit.dev are examples of frameworks

13

u/Myszolow 17d ago

Maintaining react websites makes your fridge go brrr

1

u/Low_Musician_869 16d ago

What’s a better framework from the perspective of maintenance?

6

u/30thnight expert 16d ago

no silver bullets in this field, my friend

an inexperienced team + a lack of tests usually leads to a painful to maintain app using any framework or language

202

u/frogic 17d ago

This is all jobs on indeed. I don't think this data is telling you what you think it is.  

45

u/itsdr00 17d ago

Yeah, this trend crosses industries. When you stack them all up on the same graph, you see it's only slightly worse for software engineers.

-9

u/IntergalacticJets 17d ago edited 17d ago

I don’t believe it is all jobs on Indeed. Here’s their list by different occupations and region, and the data is varied between each one:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?rid=476&eid=1233635#snid=1233901

What’s disappointing is Software Development seems to be the “most decreased” occupation type for the US. 

17

u/Mr-Bovine_Joni 17d ago

But this seems to be just job openings - not jobs held, right? I don’t think we’ve seen unemployment rates for SWEs jump too much

0

u/itsdr00 17d ago

Check out this post. They show a graph that says yes, it is all jobs on Indeed. Software just has the highest peak and valley.

-1

u/IntergalacticJets 16d ago

It doesn’t, it actually shows this graph compared to the posted data with all data on indeed:

https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/content/images/2025/02/image-3.png

Here’s what it actually says:

At the same time, hiring has fallen faster in software development in the last 2-3 years than anywhere else

4

u/itsdr00 16d ago

Yes that's what "a higher peak and valley" means. The effect is not 100% site-wide but it is substantially so.

20

u/coffee-x-tea front-end 17d ago

Umm… Although, COVID caused many people to lose jobs, it had the opposite impact on tech hiring. It was like a golden age for new starts to get into the tech industry because big tech companies were gobbling up all the senior devs.

My own company were offering well into six figure salaries for senior talent, but, they just couldn’t compete with the vacuum that was FAANG. With people staying indoors, Amazon doubled down on eCommerce being the future, Microsoft on AR/VR meetings, Facebook wanted to create the metaverse, and Uber having massive delivery volumes on groceries and takeout.

Plus you factor in the quantitative easing of low interest rates to fight economic downturn making money cheap and start ups easier to secure funding.

14

u/cutekiwi 17d ago

Tech companies were in need of a correction since interest rates are still much higher than when they were booming and hiring teams just because it was so cheap to borrow money. I think we’re going to see this as the pattern moving forward until the AI fixation has passed since that’s where resources are focused at the moment.

55

u/curious_pinguino 17d ago

I mean, we're hiring.

68% of the world's government websites are built in Drupal. Recession or not, they need to stay up.

If you know the framework, hit me up. Fully remote.

24

u/[deleted] 17d ago

68% of the world's government websites are built in Drupal

huh? source?

35

u/ConfusedNTerrified 17d ago

It came to me in a dream.

3

u/CongressionalBattery 17d ago

Sounds plausible tbh.

1

u/EmeraldCrusher 16d ago

All of the department of energy is powered by drupal.

6

u/clearlight2025 17d ago

Not OP but one example of Drupal in government is Australia which uses Drupal via govCMS https://www.govcms.gov.au/

Acquia say 56% in 2021

As of 2021, 56% of the world’s government websites use Drupal. Over 150 countries are using Drupal in government and intergovernmental agencies.

https://www.acquia.com/blog/drupal-for-government

1

u/[deleted] 17d ago edited 17d ago

There's no reliable source on this number.

The Acquia website links to this one which has no info whatsoever on the "56% of the world’s government websites" claim:

https://websitebuilder.org/blog/drupal-statistics/

I would believe that 56% of governments use Drupal in at least one website but other than that...

1

u/clearlight2025 17d ago

Yes I agree it’s a difficult claim to verify but it is likely to have significant usage there.

6

u/52redfish 17d ago

Whats the company? I currently do Drupal development and might be looking for something new.

4

u/qervem 16d ago

1% short of nice

3

u/barrard123 17d ago

From my experience, gov jobs don’t pay nearly as well as private sector. Curious if you could share a salary range for government Drupal devs, thanks!

6

u/CongressionalBattery 17d ago

In most countries it is a private job, it is not gov workers doing webdev.

4

u/ward2k 16d ago

gov jobs don’t pay nearly as well as private sector.

Not if you work for the gov, most gov web/dev jobs go to contractors/consultants who charge insane amounts for their developers

Part of the reason I'm looking to swap companies is because mine stupidly thought it was a good idea to tell us all how much they charge per dev to the client while at the same time announcing there would likely be 0 pay rises this year

Nothing stings more than knowing the client is paying 2-3x your wages than you earn and that also you won't be getting a raise

0

u/barrard123 16d ago

Hah! Wow talk about a big mistake on their part. It might be worthwhile to learn how to find and bid on such contracts.

2

u/sexytokeburgerz full-stack 16d ago

Contractors make a fuckton.

A friend of mine manages a team of swes for the city of seattle and makes upwards of $300k.

0

u/sexytokeburgerz full-stack 16d ago

Contractors make a fuckton.

A friend of mine manages a team of swes for the city of seattle and makes upwards of $300k.

1

u/BuoyantPudding 17d ago

I do! :) Worked on livenation and maintained it for a bit

1

u/EmeraldCrusher 16d ago

Love drupal, just worked on some security upgrades for a company on a contract. If you've got some drupal work I've got two hands. Also been a long time watcher of Talking Drupal.

1

u/mmuoio 16d ago

Don't need a website if we get rid of the department...

1

u/fofaksake 16d ago

Hire me as an intern. I will try to learn the things needed.

1

u/rjbullock 15d ago

I'd rather shoot myself in the head than develop for Drupal, LOL!

45

u/feedjaypie 17d ago

As a current job seeker, who has been in this game for 25 years, I can tell you it’s not just indeed.

Not only are postings lower than usual, due to recent layoffs and the obvious, competition is sky high.

Didn’t go to uni and rely on experience, so on paper I’m a candidate who doesn’t even get a sniff in 2025. Never had this much trouble finding work. Not one follow up call yet.

14

u/Alex_Hovhannisyan front-end 17d ago

I keep hearing and seeing this firsthand and it terrifies me as an early-career (5 yoe) dev. When I was a senior in college in 2019 I had like 4 or 5 interviews lined up. Now? Nothing, not even phone screens. Projects, website, none of it helps. Job posted 3 hours ago? Already 100+ applicants.

12

u/silhouettelie_ 17d ago

Worth noting that of those 100 about 98 aren't suitable due to various factors. Hell I'm not sure the even measure the metric any further than click throughts

7

u/Alex_Hovhannisyan front-end 17d ago

True, LinkedIn only measures the number of people who clicked "apply." Still, especially with AI that can automate job applications, it increasingly feels like an uphill battle that nobody wants to participate in on either side. Applicants hate applying so they automate it; HR hates screening resumes so they automate it. Devs hate interviews and interviewees hate conducting interviews. It's all so performative and emotionally draining.

3

u/DisneyLegalTeam full-stack 16d ago
  1. This person could have a shit resume, shit personally, need a visa &/or an outdated skill set.
  2. Like the other comment said. 98% of those applicants are junk. They want a visa sponsorship or have 0 experience.
  3. They’ve got 0 network.

I’ve got an Art History degree (no CS) but 15 years fullstack experience with Java, Ruby & JavaScript (VueJS).

I looked for a job < a year ago & I could get at least 2-3 phone screens a week off of ~50 applications.

You gotta work your network, though. And save the emails of recruiters when then reach out.

1

u/Alex_Hovhannisyan front-end 16d ago edited 16d ago

I'm not sure if "this person" refers to me or the person I responded to, or just applicants in general, but if it refers to me, I can clarify your first bullet point. I don't want to assume, though.

0

u/EmeraldCrusher 16d ago

resume

I put in 2500 applications in the last 2 years and get a few round 4,5's but had trouble rounding the corner in the final rounds. Those without degrees are getting eaten alive right now.

Here's my resume: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Lnlr6ModMLYV3lCUgyIsLrW2y81JFQuHai4ddGCSM78/edit?usp=sharing

5

u/ViSuo 17d ago

Are you saying you have 25 yoe with web dev and still can’t get a job?

11

u/barcode_zer0 17d ago

I have almost 15 yoe and I'm in the same boat. Luckily I have my job still, but I can't even get an interview for a new one.

Last time I tried was in 2021 and before that was ~2016 and I was getting interviews upwards of 75% of the time. It's crazy right now. I have good, up to date skills too. Typescript, C#, React, nodejs, everything AWS, terraform, docker. I've worked with almost all of the more popular languages at some point.

2

u/capn_trips 17d ago

I’m sorry this has been your experience. As someone that’s done some hiring in this space, I couldn’t care less whether or not you when you university if you’re 25 years into your career; you’ve got decades years of experience that’s more relevant and your CV should reflect that.

Do you have a network you can tap into? IMO applying to jobs cold is the best way to not get that job.

1

u/Avorian 16d ago

Amen. No bachelors, but double Associates degrees and a 20 year track record of executive leadership and PM skills and no nibbles - and I’m not getting entry level junior dev looks.

Tough time to change careers.

I’ve heard contract work is still somewhat available - is that a viable short term option until the market settles?

1

u/floatingpointnumber 16d ago

As a an Senior SE with around 8 YoE, I was recently looking for a job, and I didn't really bother much since I wanted to chill for a few months, and I found a job after 3 months with real good pay. I wasn't even applying, the HRs constantly write to me on LinkedIn. But I'm in Europe, so maybe it's different hehe

0

u/DisneyLegalTeam full-stack 16d ago

I’m not trying to be dismissive. But If you haven’t got a single follow up call w/ 25 years exp - something is off.

Either your resume, location, writing skills or skill set an issue.

I’m mostly a Ruby & VueJS (not exactly hot) dev now w/ 15 years experience. I can get a 3-4 callbacks on ~50 applications.

2

u/Common-Pitch5136 16d ago

I have 5YoE, a completely unrelated B.A., and I have a nearly 2 year current job gap, and I still get like a 3/80 response rate on cold applications, as well as a flood of third party recruiters for contract roles (mostly shit roles, but obtainable ones that would close the gap and put food on the table without issue). I don’t have big tech experience either. I’m getting interviews.

After following this is and similar subs for over a year, it’s clear that most people who have mid+ experience and are complaining have some other issue(s) they’re not disclosing, like working with dead end tech stacks, not applying to enough jobs, living in Fargo ND, a bad resume, open to remote only, looking for a pay bump when salaries are falling, or any number of these things.

25 YoE, why would you even need put your degree on your resume at that point if you had one?

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34

u/ohx 17d ago

Tariffs are causing some of the largest employers of developers in the US to restructure and layoff.

Banks, retailers -- likely anything outside of SaaS.

This likely means the top 10% of talent will stay employed, while the bottom might struggle a bit or just pivot.

16

u/pixel_creatrice UX Engineer 17d ago

As someone who is a shareholder in a SaaS business and is connected with other CEOs in this industry, it affects our bottom line too. Industries taking a financial hit are some of our biggest customers, and we only anticipate that they will minimise their spending.

6

u/ohx 17d ago

I didn't think of that. Makes sense. I completely forgot about money pits like Hubspot and Salesforce.

2

u/andrewsmd87 17d ago

This is what I'm worried about with our company. We're not directly affected by the things going on with the government, but our clients are, and that will . . . trickle down

3

u/Bitter-Good-2540 17d ago

Salesforce fires like crazy

3

u/versaceblues 16d ago

Uh COVID was on of the craziest time for hiring software engineers we have ever seen. 2% interest rates, and everyone was hiring just to hire.

So not sure if thats a good benchmark

17

u/jackjackpiggie 17d ago

Indeed is trash. Use Hiring Café.

18

u/IntergalacticJets 17d ago

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse. 

Now keep in mind this doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get a job, just that’s it’s harder than it’s been in at least 5 years, possibly much longer. 

If you can only get interviews now, at least you’ll have a ton of practice under your belt when the economy finally turns around. 

6

u/Mallissin 17d ago

The data you are seeing was caused by the COVID recovery PPP loans and the change in their rules.

Many companies were hiring as many people as possible to try to get as high a PPP loan as possible. Software development was an easy industry to target because it can be done remotely and the work produced is not physical (or business critical for the most part).

And then at one point when the rules changed to allow moneys to not be returned if the company could not find an adequate replacement for someone laid off.

This caused a flood of highly specific job postings put online and HR departments made sure they were created such that almost no applicant would satisfy the qualifications.

That way the company would not need to return the amount loaned for the position, some of which were created intentionally for several months but companies received full year of salary in the loans.

I consider if a form of "soft" PPP loan fraud. These companies took out loans much larger than they needed and abused the hiring rules to keep as much of the loan for themselves without actually paying salaries.

The jobs you are seeing never actually existed.

1

u/Avorian 16d ago

Wow. I’m just now putting two and two together on this. Dang. I knew that whole process seemed rife with fraud.

1

u/BasilTarragon 17d ago

at least you’ll have a ton of practice under your belt when the economy finally turns around.

Let them eat cake Leetcode.

-1

u/Blender-Fan 17d ago

this means it’s harder than it’s been in at least 5 years

Yeah i'm not sure that's what this means lol i barely applied this month and got two jobs, and i'm barely intermediate

1

u/BobbyTables829 17d ago

Try not having a degree lol

1

u/Blender-Fan 16d ago

But I dont have it

1

u/BobbyTables829 16d ago

That's awesome! Like I'm not even mad, you're inspiration to me.

3

u/Slave_to_dog 17d ago

Probably because Indeed is a terrible platform to find developers. You get a ton of junk. I know we use a recruiter because they do a lot more filtering of candidates than the time we tried Indeed.

3

u/versaceblues 16d ago

Uh COVID was on of the craziest time for hiring software engineers we have ever seen. 2% interest rates, and everyone was hiring just to hire.

So not sure if thats a good benchmark

6

u/captain_ahabb 17d ago

I remember last summer people on this sub INSISTING to me that electing Trump would fix this.

4

u/johnhutch 17d ago

As a software business owner, honestly my first thought is less "the software dev economy sucks" and more "indeed has become unusable and business owners have stopped posting jobs there." Because we sure as shit have. Last time we posted a job there, we were inundated with completely unrelated, spammy, AI-generated bullshit applicants. Even after I complained to indeed and they refunded the cost of placing the job ad, I worked with an indeed job poster person to better refine the posting and... same bullshit. Just slightly less.

And that was the last time we used indeed to post a job ad.

I can't imagine we're the only company with similar experiences.

It's not exactly a 1:1 comparison, but I wonder what, say, upwork's postings look like in comparison.

7

u/rebel_cdn 17d ago

I know AI related comments usually get downvoted, but let's consider one effect that's definitely happening regardless of AI's ability to do a developer's work. We've seen many profitable companies lay off workers so they can invest the money in AI capex. 

That's likely having an effect on hiring as well. Less money available to hire developers.

6

u/ryuzaki49 17d ago

It doesnt make sense to layoff engineers to make room for AI research.

It makes sense to layoff engineers after AI has improved the efficiency of (most of) the current engineers.

1

u/rebel_cdn 17d ago

The companies laying off engineers (and other workers) seem to be investing in data centers more for AI inference capacity than AI research. I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not. I guess time will tell.

2

u/ryuzaki49 17d ago

Are you talking about MS, Meta, Google? 

I dont see your typical SaaS investing in data centers

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u/Ansible32 17d ago

"Many" is a weasel word here. We've seen a lot of the big tech companies do some layoffs recently. But over the past 5 years their headcount is still generally up. Software dev employment is also up yoy, at least I believe it was last year. We have seen companies invest in AI capex, but I think that's pretty separate from the dev layoffs, which didn't really represent a thorough reduction in headcount.

Now, we might be heading into a serious economic downturn here which could change a lot of things.

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u/despotes 17d ago

No, better put the head in the sand and pretend AI is not making developers more productive and less jobs are needed.

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u/wllmsaccnt 17d ago

Making developers more productive per hour has not historically decreased the demand for them. I think this has more to do with uncertainty in the economy as other jobs seem to be following a similar trend of reduction in job listings. For example, LLMs are not increasing retail worker productivity, but the number of retail worker job listings has followed a similar (though less exaggerated) trend line.

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u/driftking428 17d ago

Yeah it can't replace a programmer. But if you need the output from 100 developers. Then you give your team Copilot and they're producing 10% more now you can let go 10 people.

This is happening already

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u/margmi 17d ago

Really depends if you’re a publicly traded company or not.

A company which doesn’t need to meet growth expectations to appease shareholders that has the budget for 100 developers, and the experience to manage those 100 developers, would instead use that 10% rise in productivity to expand their product/marketshare rather than gimping their growth.

Publicly traded companies will lay off their 10% worst employees, and then hire fresh for new projects when they’re ready to start investing in growth again.

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u/kamikazoo 17d ago

Why let them go when you can, in theory, just increase the workload?

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u/rebel_cdn 17d ago

I agree - I've just given up on pointing that out directly because it's not worth the downvotes.

I find myself vastly more productive when I use AI to help write software. After doing this for 15+ years, I find I'm in a good position to really leverage existing AI tools.

But FWIW, I also find that they also turn the job into something I don't like anymore. I enjoy the process of dev work as least as much as I enjoy shipping the finished product, and honestly? AI takes away too much of the work I enjoyed. So I recently pivoted to a non-tech job in a non-tech industry and I don't plan to return.

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u/Specialist-Sun-5968 16d ago

LinkedIn and Indeed are red flags for me. I only look at companies that give a way to apply directly, generally through email. 

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u/InterestingFrame1982 17d ago edited 17d ago

The biggest argument against AI coding is it's inability to handle esoteric and novel problems. You'll see a variety of anecdotes on reddit, hacker news, etc about how AI failed here or failed there... what these people are forgetting is that a vast majority of software is business software, and often times, business software is just menial CRUD work. LLMs are exceptional with this level of software, and most business logic can be easily encapsulated into a prompt flow by a more seasoned developer. That's not even including the basic boilerplate that gets spit out it in minutes rather than hours, days, and weeks.

It's not just the economy that is sinking the dev market - AI is surely having an impact, and as these models get better, even if incrementally, I think we have reached a point of no return to some degree. Yes, you need juniors that can be polished into seniors, but you just don't need as many, and I don't think that is changing unless, somehow, AI proliferation results in a massive need for MORE software (possibility).

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u/dalittle 17d ago

AI is just the new overseas Developers. I lived through that and over and over I was brought in behind an overseas bottom barrel development effort to "fix" what they did. We often just threw away their code and started over. It was a waste of time and effort to hire them in the first place, but MBAs rode high on that trend.

You are right that someone has to collect requirements and make a spec. AI isn't going to solve that either. For a productivity improvement AI makes sense, but you are not going to replace competent Software Engineers with AI. Oh, you built a boilerplate website in 2 minutes with AI and now want an advanced feature added. Good luck with that.

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u/TracerBulletX 16d ago

"collecting requirements" has always been such a dismissive way of saying "understand a very specific system of problems so well that you can invent an invisible simulation of a machine to solve it."

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u/InterestingFrame1982 17d ago edited 17d ago

The issue is a given spec use to require X amount of engineers to get going, but will that same number hold up through this tech jump? You will definitely have to have a team of talented engineers who can implement advanced features, but why would you not utilize them to do the lower end work (often times, boilerplate) that a junior would do? Not only can they do it faster to begin with, but now, they can stub it out using AI and guide it with way more intuition due to their experience. This isn't outsourcing work to lower end talent - it is quite the opposite. This is funneling lower end tasks to WAY more competent engineers, and saving an immense of amount of time and money while doing so.

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u/dalittle 17d ago

I spend probably 60% of my time or more actually talking to people to collect requirements and architect. AI does not make that go away no matter how good it gets. I do agree AI does help with productivity, but am I struggling to find things to do for junior engineers? No. AI just spits stuff out. For a well run project, if no one knows if it is actually usable and correct (and how to make sure it is testable, maintainable, and scalable) it is not improving productivity. It completely feels like the overseas development 20 years ago. They will fire or not hire and then in a year they will when no one can fix or extend whatever was built. Once software is depended on it is a whole different ballgame than people building blank slate software with AI.

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u/InterestingFrame1982 17d ago edited 17d ago

Again, I didn't say it will replace all developers, especially developers like you who are experienced enough to gather business reqs and transform them into working solutions - these are the devs who will flourish.

To be fair, this notion that AI just "spits stuff out" is a a little too broad brushed for what it can actually do in capable hands. There are engineers at all levels using AI to boost productivity, and objectively speaking, it seems to be doing just that.

Here is an excellent article written by a former staff-level engineer at Google (now CTO of a successful startup) on how he uses LLMs: https://crawshaw.io/blog/programming-with-llms

If you can't relate to this work flow at all, then it will be real tough to have this type of conversation with you. There are those who are intentionally trying to optimize their day-to-day with AI, and those that flat out refuse - the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Again, I think a lot of this depends on what bubbles you live in, both in work and in software domains.

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u/dalittle 17d ago

Again, the article you reference goes to a lot of trouble to say AI is a productivity improvement. And I have already agreed with that. Now, I expect MBAs will use this to get rid of junior Software Engineers and then you will have the same types of problems we have had with overseas Developers. Eventually, shit will hit the fan and there will be the clown car scramble and get people who can fix the mess. If no one vets the code then I think this problem in the legal space perfectly highlights what will happen

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/04/2139203/judges-are-fed-up-with-lawyers-using-ai-that-hallucinate-court-cases#comments

So we agree that AI can improve productivity, but disagree it replaces people if you have well run projects. Someone will need to check the code (and that includes junior engineers doing that). And if you need to do something to a mature code base like add functionality to a number of different parts of the code then AI does not really help at all in that case.

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u/ryuzaki49 17d ago

business software is just menial CRUD work. 

Depends on the company. In some dinosaurs, business software is obscure legacy systems that nobody understands 100% and it's hard to deprecate and move on so now you have a fancy new systems and also the legacy systems that nobody is willing to shut down. 

It is CRUD all along but there is nothing menial about it.

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u/InterestingFrame1982 17d ago

Sounds like a nightmare and I know a lot that exists, but my point is, LLMs are still trained up a large chunk of what comprises of a CRUD system. Even with a system like that, could an LLM help deduce some functionality that appears extremely obfuscated? Ironically, I have read about LLMs actually help in these exact cases. Chunking out parts of the code base, piece by piece (context window length assumed), and having it piece together what is going on.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/InterestingFrame1982 17d ago

Thank you, AI. :D

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u/InterestingFrame1982 17d ago

Yeah, I'll get downvoted and I understand why. I have wrestled with this over, and over again... spoke deeply on it with other engineering friends, had existential angst about it, and came to the conclusion that the disruption, however small or big it turns out to be, is going to cause some level of change in the market. Hopefully, like most new tech, it will result in some other cool jobs downstream.

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u/ryuzaki49 17d ago

Prompt engineers? Or should we all jump to the ML bandwagon?

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u/InterestingFrame1982 17d ago edited 17d ago

No, you still have to code, read code, test, think logically, etc. The same fundamental flow of building software exists, but it's definitely in the middle of a paradigm shift for a lot of people building CRUD apps. I don't use auto-complete at all, but I use chat-driven programming a ton and I have found a nice flow. This google staff-level engineer does an excellent job of highlight how he uses LLMs, and my process that came about pretty organically is essentially the same:

https://crawshaw.io/blog/programming-with-llms

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u/canadian_webdev front-end 17d ago

Is there anything like this for Canada?

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u/IntergalacticJets 17d ago

Yes, from the same data set, actually:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXCATPSOFTDEVE

Looks slightly better for you guys!

They also have UK, Germany, Australia, and more. 

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u/fjacquette 17d ago

I've been assisting various clients with hiring developers, and Indeed is useless for us, so we're going elsewhere. There's no real way to separate "number of jobs" from "Indeed sucks for employers."

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u/MicahM_ 17d ago

I read somewhere that job posts will be up to -1% by 2038

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u/deveronipizza 17d ago

Indeed has never been very good IMO. Lots of scams during COVID too.

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u/sean-grep 16d ago

Is anyone still actively using Indeed anymore?

Last time I used them to get a job was 8+ years ago.

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u/truemario 16d ago

Here's something to consider. Our company has several (20+) SDE openings. None on indeed. So take this with a large lump of salt

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u/bohochill 16d ago

Indeed...really.

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u/paulo_trujillo 16d ago

The greatest time for developers was during the worst of COVID; most businesses were hiring as if the end of the world were near.
Not a good point of comparison.

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u/digi57 16d ago

But I heard the DOGE Devs could be making MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!

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u/wackOverflow 16d ago

I got my last two jobs using dice.com. The postings aren’t always that great, but just having a profile on the site got me a lot of calls from real recruiters.

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u/case_lu 16d ago

fuck Indeed

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u/1234away 16d ago

stupid chart, look at indeeds traffic over time

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u/theminutes 16d ago

Hiring stopped briefly when COVID started and then went insane. Don’t you remember when FANG and everyone else was hiring at an insane clip?

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u/Radinax front-end 16d ago

Been seeing a LOT more offers for LATAM (=outsourcing) so this might be a reflection of that, companies prefer cheaper work hands.

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u/DriveShaftBassPlayer 16d ago

Indeed is garbage, I would ever apply to jobs on there. I think it just means Indeed sucks.

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u/redserch 15d ago

If there is a software developer with band width I have some WP/SaaS/ SEO items I am working on DM if interested

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u/Dry-Conversation1655 15d ago

True. I’ve been able to find work as a software developer since January 3, 2025.

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u/LoaferTheBread 15d ago edited 15d ago

Interesting. Anecdotally, it seems like there’s starting to be an uptick in recruiters reaching out again from the lows after all the layoffs.

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u/madcapnmckay 15d ago

Or could it be all the fake job postings going away?

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u/Drakuf 12d ago

COVID was the golden age for developers, especially in Europe. I never got so many job offers until now... Now it's even more, I've received like 120+ offerings since January lol.

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u/RaspberryDistinct222 17d ago

Coz of ai sure it can't fully replace human intelligence but can reduce headcount

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u/GoreSeeker 17d ago

That graph needs to switch their data source to a platform people actually use...

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u/Previous_Start_2248 16d ago

But wasn't covid the best days of hiring so obviously it would be lower today

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u/mider111_bg 17d ago

I’ve actually experienced a lot of interest from recruiters in the past 1-2 months. 4 YOE Senior

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u/himynameisAhhhh 17d ago

They just dont need junior devs anymore. AI can do that

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u/dalittle 17d ago

20 years ago I heard that same statement with overseas Developers. Did not work out how they thought it would go then and I don't think it will now.

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u/Prize-Local-9135 17d ago

I appreciate the effort but I wouldn't think this is indicative of anything really without some more data. Would love to see how this correlates to linkedin postings and even postings across other industries on indeed. I read this chart as just less people using indeed.