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Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by buppermint on Saturday May 02, 2026 @02:23AM (#47983851)
Worth seeing the whole chart in perspective:

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

Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by rogual on Saturday May 02, 2026 @02:27AM (#47983868)
Worth also noting that this chart has the bottom of the Y-axis cut off, exaggerating differences and making visual intuition basically useless.
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by pembrook on Saturday May 02, 2026 @04:18AM (#47984485)
But it essentially shows the same thing, the covid overhiring boom and then layoff cycle post-covid is over. And jobs are rising again.

What’s absolutely mind blowing to me though…the idea AI isn’t causing software engineering jobs to collapse…which you would think would make people here happy…is something that makes software engineers upset??

It’s almost as if everyone here has married their identity to the idea they are victims of AI progress and any suggestion otherwise is ego destruction.

”What??? You mean the job market is expanding and the reason I can’t find a job is…me? That can’t possibly be true I’m a genius, the data is clearly wrong!”

Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by ajb on Saturday May 02, 2026 @03:17AM (#47984121)
The format is editable. The line chart seems always to be scaled so the minima is at the bottom, but you can get the zero point by changing it to bars.

The options do seem a bit idiosyncratic, but I guess they are useful for the kind of data the site users usually look at.

Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by teiferer on Saturday May 02, 2026 @03:39AM (#47984269)
"Minimum". That's the singular. "Minima" is plural.

Similar with "criterion" or "phenomenon".

Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by emil-lp on Saturday May 02, 2026 @05:20PM (#47990662)
Are you assuming a unique minimum?
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by teiferer on Monday May 04, 2026 @08:01AM (#48007625)
Yes, cause grammar. Parent wrote "the minima is". Not matter one or multiple minima, that expression has a problem.
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by wlonkly on Sunday May 03, 2026 @03:01PM (#48000221)
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by euroderf on Saturday May 02, 2026 @03:01AM (#47984035)
The art of putting wavy lines across an axis to denote a range skip has atrophied, probably because few charting software packages support it ?
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by foxglacier on Saturday May 02, 2026 @05:01AM (#47984699)
Broken axes aren't the solution. Starting from 0 is but nobody making graphs seems to understand or, in the case of journalists, they're trying to mislead their readers. I suppose readers enjoy being awed by dramatically changing graphs too.
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by everforward on Saturday May 02, 2026 @09:28AM (#47986232)
It would also be nice to include a shaded area for the first standard deviation over a relevant period of time to get an idea of how far outside normal it is.

In my unhinged pipedreams, we’d have some sort of standard for conveying the data directly so users could use browser settings to decide how to display the data. There like a dozen people in the world that would use it, but they’d really really enjoy it I bet.

Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by foxglacier on Tuesday May 05, 2026 @05:39PM (#48028974)
It's usually intentional so they're not going to show more information to reveal that their narrative is weak or wrong. It's up to the reader to think critically because journalists are constantly trying to fool them with true facts presented in a misleading way.

Readers are guilty too - they like to see wiggly lines wiggle. Nobody wants to see a graph that's just a horizontal line or shaded band. We want to peer harder at it to tease out any sort of signal that can tell our emotional brains "good" or "bad".

Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by abirch on Saturday May 02, 2026 @04:20AM (#47984504)
This graph was scaled to 2020=100 so not as bad as excluding 0 for raw numbers.
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by Animats on Saturday May 02, 2026 @02:44AM (#47983953)
Wow. Huge crash between 2022 and 2023, from 230 to down around 80. Why? That's the real question. What happened? It's post-COVID.

Then stuck in the 60-80 range since 2023. The sample period chosen by Citadel is wildly deceptive.

This is an important question and these crap stats are not helping.

Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by mbgerring on Saturday May 02, 2026 @03:50AM (#47984340)
There was a change in US tax law that revoked the ability of software companies to classify engineer salaries as an R&D expense, which massively increased the tax liability for many software companies.
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by mgkimsal on Saturday May 02, 2026 @04:10AM (#47984443)
This is under-recognized by many folks. That full impact of the that aspect of the 2017 TCJA was hard to predict when it was so far in the future, and when it hit, we were dealing with the latter economic impact of covid in addition to these deduction changes.
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by rsanek on Saturday May 02, 2026 @08:05AM (#47985681)
This was reverted for us employees in OBBB and companies can refile taxes for what they couldn't use as an expense in the intervening time. I think the impact of this is generally overstated
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by ahoka on Saturday May 02, 2026 @03:02AM (#47984043)
It’s not a crash, but a huuuge peak around ‘22.
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by loeg on Saturday May 02, 2026 @03:52AM (#47984344)
Well, yes, but we're still sitting at ~80% of 2020 levels. Perhaps just hangover from 2022, perhaps the end of ZIRP, but it's still depressed relative to 2020.
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by sublinear on Saturday May 02, 2026 @03:15AM (#47984112)
There was a hiring bubble in 2022 just before the Fed raised interest rates. I'm not understanding what the mystery is.

The link you're responding to has the option to zoom out more to 2020. If you scroll down to view the other related graphs, you'll find that they also index 2020 as a starting point because they're all tracking this hiring bubble.

Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by tarsinge on Saturday May 02, 2026 @02:42AM (#47983947)
Interesting chart that confirms hiring dynamics for SE have not much to do with AI despite all the PR, as in 2023 models and agents capabilities were quite limited, and now that capabilities increase hiring is picking up. I hope more journalists will start to challenge that narrative.
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by ido on Saturday May 02, 2026 @03:15AM (#47984113)
Click "max" to see its the corona peaks that's the outlier.
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by georgeecollins on Saturday May 02, 2026 @02:39AM (#47983939)
Wow, that says a lot with data. Thank you.
Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by samrus on Saturday May 02, 2026 @04:59AM (#47984695)
"Whole chart"

Graph starts with a black swan event

Re:Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising by blharr on Saturday May 02, 2026 @11:19PM (#47993003)
Unfortunately that's when they started recording the data