This graph is pretty misleading because it starts right after the ~2008 recession and doesn't include data leading up to that, or any previous boom/bust iterations such as the ~2000 dotcom bubble bursting. The correlation with interest rates is also relevant, as somebody else noted.

This contention is actually trivial to dispel. As a late 2000's HN user, I can assure you there was no secret 2009 groundswell of jobs, and that there was no HN before 2008.

Without seriously digging into the data, 2001-ish (dot-bomb) was pretty much a nuclear winter for tech and 2008-or so was enough of a general downturn that I made the decision not to play my networking cards even though I didn't feel in a good place with my then-employer. Today doesn't seem great--certainly not quit a job/have a new job by Friday great for most much less work multiple "full-time" jobs like some people were boasting of a while back. Stuff is certainly not falling into your lap to the degree it was 2-3 years ago. You have to chase it and may or may not luck out.

2008-9 was pretty bad. When I got laid off I decided it was better to take myself off the market and go back to college a few months later to finish my degree (I had 2 more years of school left) than try to fight for a job right away.

I can't pull that trick off again. But at least right now I still have a job, and don't seem to be too much at risk of losing it for the moment (work at a consulting firm and developing some highly requested features that will make a lot of money at my current client).

My contention is that pronouncing doom for hiring in the software sector based on a graph that does not include any previous boom/bust cycles is, at best, misleading.

I actually didn't see that these data are HN-specific, but that only serves to reinforce my point in two ways: 1) HN is only a small sample of the overall industry, and 2) since HN hiring presumably skews disproportionately toward the startup/VC funded ecosystem, it's likely to be even harder hit by interest rate hikes and economic downturns.

What? The contention is that jobs had booms and busts before HN. Starting off the low base of 2008, of course the graph shows growth. It does not show the 80s, 90s, or the dot com boom, or the dot com bust.

Is this data normalised to account for differences in traffic/popularity of the HN platform between 2008 - 2024?

Reason being: If the distributions of user types have changed over time (e.g. 2010 having a higher % of more entrepreneurial / founder type users vs employee-type fokls [like myself] looking for their next gig) then it could skew the results no?

Anecdotally the graph makes total sense. I'd just take the absolute ratio/differences with a pinch of salt.

I think this chart would have been greatly enhanced by adding Fed interest rates.

The way things were during the previous decade was not sustainable. The current situation too shall pass and hopefully evolve into something more sustainable.

I for one don't miss the churn fuelled by easy VC money.

This has nothing to do with you, but the experience of Imgur on mobile is miserable. Want to zoom in to look at the picture closer? Too bad, here’s some dumb other picture not related to the one you were looking at

And there we have it, thank you.

Seems too rely on very little data

I also recommend adding a search with the hiring keyword "remote". It really highlights had the pandemic not happened...

What happened that inverted the curves? Purple realized that hiring here isn't a good habit?

It's tied to interest rates. My main concern, frankly, is that those very low interest rates will not return soon and in the meantime the IT job market will be flooded with tons of candidates which will not be absorbed by the market. So at least at the lower end of the job pyramid things will be a bloodbath, which will probably also start pressuring towards the mid-levels. So overall the IT job market will start sucking and the glory days of the 2000s (except for 2000, 2001, 2008, 2009), 2010s and early 2020s will remain behind us.