Tracking the most popular programming languages, databases and software development tools on whoishiring
After a few months away, it's time to check back in on the "Ask HN: Who is Hiring?" trends. In May's thread, there are signs of growth again, a 35% improvement over April in fact. May saw the first 400+ posting month since May 2023. Not all that surpisingly, the rise of AI appears to be driving the growh. AI is mentioned in nearly 25% of job postings now and is the top technology term.
When I started this project ten years ago, I was mainly interested in studying and sharing the trends of techonologies used in the Software Development field. Now, after this decade of trend watching, it's interesting to reflect on the some of the other interesting aspects, non-technological, of the Software job market.
We can witness the impact of Covid on the job market in two big ways, both on the big cuts at the beginning of the Pandemic, as well as the move to majority remote work.
We can see the standardization of job levels across the industry, with the now ubiquitous Senior Software Engineer role.
We can see the rise and fall of job posting counts reveal booms and busts in the Startup and Venture Capital ecosystem. This is the one happening again right now, as January's thread, with 285 postings (top-level threads), had the lowest number of job postings in over 9 years. We have to go all the way back to 2015 and before to find levels this low.
I wasn't expecting big things from December's Ask HN: Who is hiring? thread. December is typically a slow month anyway in the hiring cycle. But, with November's thread showing a little upwards momentum, December's results would be an interesting sign if that growth could be sustained after a year of steady declines.
November's Ask HN: Who is hiring? thread showed continued growth with 375 postings, up 20% from the near all-time low in September, and up 10% over October's thread. This is a positive sign after months of declines. However, on a year-over-year basis, we're still way off of the 2022 numbers (down 30%) and the 2021 numbers dwarf where we are today (down 61% since November, 2021).
The term AI can mean many different things in the context of software development and programming. However, its significance in the current tech job market cannot be understated. The data reveals that for October's "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" thread, AI is the most mentioned technology term. AI was mentioned in nearly 20% of the postings. It has doubled, from 10% of postings in October, 2022, to the new peak. The only terms more popular than AI are location aspects (Remote vs onsite), experience level (Senior), and area of focus (full stack). For October, AI was more popular than any technology tracked in the history of the "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" thread. More popular than Python and React, the long-time dominant tech terms.
September's "Ask HN: Who hiring?" thread hit an eight-year low, as job posts continued their downward trend. We have to go back to January 2015 to when the number of postings was this low. But, September is in thet past and a new thread goes up tomorrow (Monday) morning. With Summer now over, October's thread could be a chance for a nice Fall bump.
It should come as little surprise that the number of job postings on whoishiring threads continues to slow heading into summer. Between the general market slowness and summer vacation season starting, June dropped to a new longtime low of 359 postings. Perhaps the lowest of what I consider the modern era of "Who is Hiring?". The last time postings were this low was January 2015. "Who is Hiring?" had only surpassed 500 postings once before then though, so its popularity as a job board was nowhere near where it is today.
These charts show what's popular and trending in programming languages, frameworks and technologies used to develop modern software applications as indicated by Hacker News activity. Using the HN Search API and a dictionary of software terms, all of the the comments (job postings) in the "whoishiring" submissions from April 2011 to the latest month were processed to count the number of times each software term was mentioned.
