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A comment on Domain expertise has always been the real moat. Parent comment

Re:Domain expertise has always been the real moat by ElProlactin on Sunday May 31, 2026 @09:09AM (#48345401)
> That last sentence is verifiably false if you look at SWE job postings and their recovery since 2022.

Source?

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

And it's probably worse than it looks because phantom job postings are a real thing.

> ...who nonetheless continue to hire large numbers of SWEs while paying double the market rate.

Tech companies have laid off over 200,000 people since the beginning of 2025. Even putting aside the fact that (from what I understand) over half of Anthropic and OpenAI's employees are in non-engineering roles, if you assumed every employee was an engineer, Anthropic and OpenAI could triple their staffing levels and it still wouldn't even fill a quarter of the void.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Domain expertise has always been the real moat by batshit_beaver on Sunday May 31, 2026 @02:40PM (#48348414)
Yes that’s the right source. There would be no recovery in SWE market after the higher interest rates killed it if LLMs had any major impact on SWE employability.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Domain expertise has always been the real moat by ElProlactin on Sunday May 31, 2026 @08:01PM (#48351106)
You have a very interesting definition of "recovery".
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