(Commonwealth Union)_The slowing economy is starting to cool the hot developer employment market, which could mean fewer job opportunities for developers in the coming months. According to CompTIA, a group that studied U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data earlier this month, the tech industry continued to hire at an elevated rate in October. However, the hiring landscape shifted in an instant. Since then, dozens of tech firms, including Amazon, Twitter, and Meta, have cut employment or set hiring restrictions.
Developers on the job market will find it more difficult to get work as competition heats up. According to industry experts, options worth exploring include updating resumes with cutting-edge technologies and looking for organisations with recent venture capital cash infusions. “Everywhere you look, the news ranges from the terrible – hiring freeze – to the [worse] – layoffs,” said Shiva Nathan, founder and CEO of Onymos, a supplier of features-as-a-service.
Amazon, for example, announced a halt to incremental hiring in a blog post on Nov. 3; Twitter announced major layoffs the next day; and Meta cut 13% of its personnel the next week. According to layoffs tracking site Layoffs.fyi, dozens of other tech businesses followed suit, including Avast, Cisco, InfluxData, Intercom, OwnBackup, and UiPath.
The job market in the IT sector is cooling. This is especially true when it comes to hiring developers for larger, well-known firms in the sector, according to Nate Nead, CEO of Dev.co, a Seattle-based software developer talent services company. “While some may regard Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft’s hiring freezes and layoffs as a ‘canary in the coal mine,’ they are more analogous to the bloat that is commonly associated with high-growth, publicly traded firms aiming to placate growth-hungry investors,” he said.
However, the tendency will continue, albeit at a slower pace, down to midsize firms. According to Nead, such businesses are often less aggressive in terms of growth and more conservative in terms of resource management.
However, Paola Martinez, vice president of people operations at Jobsity, a New York City-based developer talent organisation, said she is already witnessing a trend in hiring freezes and layoffs. “Clients are either concerned and making decisions based on conjecture and market news, or they simply decide to postpone hiring to be safe and protect their budgets,” Martinez explained.
