Tough year for tech hiring comes to a close
December 2023 Hacker News Hiring Trends
December Highlights
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.
With 322 job postings (top level comments), December had a 34% drop year-over-year vs December 2022's 489. And, compared to November's 375 postings, a 14% drop month-over-month. Going back two years, December 2023 is down 58% vs December 2021 with 759 postings.
Tech-wise, mentions of AI made another big jump to nearly 24% of postings, cementing AI as the top tech term in the analysis after it surpassed React a couple months back.
Top 10 Programming Languages
Rankings and movers
| Tech | Rank | Last Month | Change | Last Year | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Remote | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Senior | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Onsite | 3 | 4 | +1 | 10 | +7 |
| Full Stack | 4 | 3 | -1 | 4 | 0 |
| AI | 5 | 5 | 0 | 14 | +9 |
| Back End | 6 | 7 | +1 | 3 | -3 |
| React | 7 | 6 | -1 | 5 | -2 |
| Python | 8 | 8 | 0 | 7 | -1 |
| Machine Learning | 9 | 12 | +3 | 13 | +4 |
| Front End | 10 | 11 | +1 | 6 | -4 |
| Hybrid | 11 | 10 | -1 | 17 | +6 |
| TypeScript | 12 | 9 | -3 | 8 | -4 |
| Postgresql | 13 | 13 | 0 | 12 | -1 |
| Staff | 14 | 18 | +4 | 26 | +12 |
| AWS | 15 | 15 | 0 | 9 | -6 |
| golang | 16 | 19 | +3 | 15 | -1 |
| Cloud | 17 | 14 | -3 | 11 | -6 |
| Security | 18 | 16 | -2 | 16 | -2 |
| Terraform | 19 | 33 | +14 | 30 | +11 |
| Open Source | 20 | 17 | -3 | 19 | -1 |
| Tech | Mentions | Rank | Last Year Mentions | Last Year Rank | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | 7 | 49 | 2 | 147 | +98 |
| Ansible | 7 | 50 | 5 | 91 | +41 |
| API | 9 | 38 | 8 | 68 | +30 |
| Tailwind | 5 | 59 | 5 | 87 | +28 |
| Redux | 5 | 57 | 7 | 75 | +18 |
| Robotics | 6 | 53 | 8 | 70 | +17 |
| AngularJS | 6 | 51 | 8 | 67 | +16 |
| GCP | 12 | 32 | 13 | 48 | +16 |
| .NET | 9 | 41 | 11 | 57 | +16 |
| Mongodb | 9 | 40 | 11 | 54 | +14 |
| Tech | Mentions | Rank | Last Year Mentions | Last Year Rank | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Android | 5 | 60 | 21 | 31 | -29 |
| Kafka | 6 | 52 | 16 | 40 | -12 |
| Processing | 5 | 56 | 14 | 45 | -11 |
| Java | 14 | 30 | 36 | 20 | -10 |
| Distributed Systems | 5 | 55 | 14 | 46 | -9 |
| AWS | 29 | 15 | 75 | 9 | -6 |
| C | 8 | 45 | 17 | 39 | -6 |
| Cloud | 26 | 17 | 73 | 11 | -6 |
| DevOps | 19 | 23 | 42 | 18 | -5 |
| TypeScript | 39 | 12 | 83 | 8 | -4 |
