Amazon Cuts Openings For Software Development Jobs To 299 From 32,692 in May 55
theodp writes: In case there are any doubts that the hiring party is over at Amazon, the number of open jobs in the Software Development category has declined to 299 in January 2023 from 32,692 in May 2022, according to Amazon's Jobs site. Internet Archive captures of Amazon's Software Development jobs category show the number of open jobs declined from 32,692 in May to 31,840 in June, 30,124 in July, 24,747 in August, 17,141 in September, 2,829 in November, and 373 in December.
The number of Software Development job openings currently stands at 299 (164 of those in the U.S.), or less than 1% of the 32,692 May job openings. Declaring that "the U.S. isn't producing nearly enough students trained in computer science to meet the future demands of the American workforce," Amazon in May publicly called on Congress and legislatures across the U.S. to support and fund CS education in public schools to "create a much-needed pipeline of talent that will carry us into the future." And in July, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy joined other Tech Giant CEOs as signatories to a public letter calling for state governments and education leaders to bring more CS to K-12 students.
"The USA has over 700,000 open computing jobs but only 80,000 computer science graduates a year," the 'CEOs for CS' explained. "We must educate American students as a matter of national competitiveness." Days later, 50 of the nation's Governors accepted the challenge, signing a Compact To Expand K-12 Computer Science Education in their states and territories.
Last fall, a new Amazon-bankrolled $15 million CS curriculum aimed at dramatically boosting the number of high school students who take the Java-based AP CS A course was rolled out nationwide (Java founder and AWS employee James Gosling recently noted that "A lot of the guts of AWS is Java, and AWS has a pretty big Java team"). And in December, Amazon News reported that "600,000 students across 5,000 schools received computer science education through the Amazon Future Engineer 'childhood-to-career' program."
The next business day, the Financial Times reported that Amazon had delayed start dates for some university graduates who had been set to the join the company in May 2023, blaming the "macroeconomic environment" and telling students they would now not be able to begin until the end of 2023. The FT article followed an NY Times report on the shrinking Big Tech job market faced by CS students.
The number of Software Development job openings currently stands at 299 (164 of those in the U.S.), or less than 1% of the 32,692 May job openings. Declaring that "the U.S. isn't producing nearly enough students trained in computer science to meet the future demands of the American workforce," Amazon in May publicly called on Congress and legislatures across the U.S. to support and fund CS education in public schools to "create a much-needed pipeline of talent that will carry us into the future." And in July, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy joined other Tech Giant CEOs as signatories to a public letter calling for state governments and education leaders to bring more CS to K-12 students.
"The USA has over 700,000 open computing jobs but only 80,000 computer science graduates a year," the 'CEOs for CS' explained. "We must educate American students as a matter of national competitiveness." Days later, 50 of the nation's Governors accepted the challenge, signing a Compact To Expand K-12 Computer Science Education in their states and territories.
Last fall, a new Amazon-bankrolled $15 million CS curriculum aimed at dramatically boosting the number of high school students who take the Java-based AP CS A course was rolled out nationwide (Java founder and AWS employee James Gosling recently noted that "A lot of the guts of AWS is Java, and AWS has a pretty big Java team"). And in December, Amazon News reported that "600,000 students across 5,000 schools received computer science education through the Amazon Future Engineer 'childhood-to-career' program."
The next business day, the Financial Times reported that Amazon had delayed start dates for some university graduates who had been set to the join the company in May 2023, blaming the "macroeconomic environment" and telling students they would now not be able to begin until the end of 2023. The FT article followed an NY Times report on the shrinking Big Tech job market faced by CS students.
Fewer openings, or integer overflow? (Score:5, Funny)
It could be they've passed 32,767 job openings...
Re:Fewer openings, or integer overflow? (Score:5, Funny)
better to ask for 299 H1B's vs 32,692 as that is t (Score:2)
better to ask for 299 H1B's vs 32,692 as that is to high and likely to be RED FLAGGED.
They're trying to start a recession (Score:2, Interesting)
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"everybody at the top is." Ooooo, a new conspiracy. Please alert the news organizations to your new insight. Play your cards right, and you can get on Fox, just spout some right wingnut mumbo-jumbo to go along, might even be able wrangle a regular visitor gig.
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Ooooo, a new conspiracy.
It's not a new conspiracy, it's an old one. You're just hundreds of years behind.
Re:They're trying to start a recession (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a very uncomfortable fact that people really don't want to face. I can't blame them. Finding out that the people in charge of our economy are actively opposed to my interests and yours is daunting to say the least.
One of the worst things that's happened is that because there is so many crazy conspiracy theories when there's an actual conspiracy even if it's right out in the open we all just dismiss it as some crackpot theory no matter how much evidence there is. When a bunch of people get together and do something bad we look the other way because Chicken Little has convinced us groups of people can't do bad things anymore
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3. IT is not an attractive option. It's grueling work, and companies would rather import Indians than pay what you're worth. If your IQ is 130+, what will make you more money, writing code, or heart surgery?
Wow, as if heart surgery is just simple stuff with no emergencies? Even easy professions like podiatrists get called in the middle of the night to fix things.
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They're trying to start a recession
Mod this person up, no mods.
To me this is exactly what is happening for two reasons. 1) They believe they are paying too much for workers. 2) They want all the Union Supporting Politicians out of office.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:They're trying to start a recession (Score:5, Insightful)
(yeah, most of them are older, but Americans don't retire, unless dying counts). Plus a ton of boomers are retiring and not coming back.
Heh. Usually when people contradict themselves, they at least try to separate the contradictions by a few sentences.
You can raise the retirement age all you want but around 65 most people can't physically work anymore, even if they're living a few more years. They're facing age discrimination or frankly they're too old.
True for manual labor, but demonstrably false for white-collar workers. I'm well past normal retirement age, but still working despite being financially able to retire because I enjoy the kind of work I do and I'm well compensated for doing it. On the occasions I murmur about retiring, my boss asks me to consider part time consulting. The boomers I know that are retiring have done well with their retirement investments and either have grandchildren they want to spend time with, or they have other compelling interests they want to pursue. I don't know anyone who wants to retire just to vegetate.
Come to think of it, COVID dropped life expectancy at least 2 years, are we gonna get our SSI retirement age lowered to match? Pretty sure the answer is no.
SSI (Supplemental Security Income) and Social Security are not the same programs; try Google for more information. If Social Security full retirement age was really tracking life expectancy, it would be much higher that it is. When Social Security benefits were initiated in 1935, average lifespan for US men was 59.9. Even with the recent decline in life expectancy in the US, average lifespan for US male boomers today is far higher [ssa.gov] than that.
Re: They're trying to start a recession (Score:2)
Where is the contradiction? (Score:3)
And yes I'm being loose with my language because it's easier that way. I'm aware that there are different programs for social security. That doesn't take away from my point.
You say you don't know anyone who wants to retire to vegetate but how many blue coll
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Where is the contradiction?
You're being disingenuous. The following two statements are obviously contradictory:
(1) Americans don't retire, unless dying counts; (2) a ton of boomers are retiring and not coming back
Those are your words. Are you now saying that when you wrote "a ton of boomers are retiring" you actually meant "a ton of boomers are dying or are being fired"? If so, I'd really like to see a source for that claim.
And yes I'm being loose with my language because it's easier that way. I'm aware that there are different programs for social security. That doesn't take away from my point.
To the extent that it leads people to believe that you don't know what you're talking about, it actually doe
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That's why other countries are demanding males work until they're 70. When health resilience deteriorates in the 40s, strength in the 50s and memory in the 50s/60s, more manual labour is not an option. That means a large portion of the workforce needs to be re-purposed. But decades of lifting bales or driving a tractor means one does not have the computer literacy, paper-pushing skills, self-education skills, or social skills for working in an office.
Employers want to provide as little training as poss
computer science for codeing job vs more hands on? (Score:2)
computer science for coding job vs more hands on?
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Bullshit Doubletalk (Score:5, Insightful)
"The USA has over 700,000 open computing jobs but only 80,000 computer science graduates a year,"
Amazon delayed start dates for some university graduates who had been set to the join the company in May 2023, blaming the "macroeconomic environment" and telling students they would now not be able to begin until the end of 2023. The FT article followed an NY Times report on the shrinking Big Tech job market faced by CS students.
So .... there aren't enough people to fill all of the jobs, there's a shortage of over 600,000, and yet at the same time, graduating students are facing a "shrinking job market".
This is complete bullshit that is being manufactured for the sole purpose of hiring more H-1Bs.
Re:Bullshit Doubletalk (Score:5, Funny)
There is, there has always been, and there will always be, a shortage of people who are under 25, have 30 years of experience and work for 20,000 a year.
If you can cut that many job openings (Score:3)
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Long term investments that wouldn't reach fruition until the market was better anyway. They have the money to ride it out too, but cutting jobs influences political decision-making and ends up making them even more money in the end.
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Or they just tried to stiff the competition for staff. Why not, if I can afford it, one of the best ways to ensure my competitor is suffering is by cutting him off from important resources that he can either only compensate by paying more for lower quality or not at all.
That of course only works as long as I can and want to afford it. And of course as long as I know my competitor has that shortage. When my competitors stop needing that resource, there's no need to hoard it anymore.
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32,000 jobs seems ridiculous. Amazon is huge but the vast majority of the employees aren't software development. What the hell do you do with 32 thousand new developers?
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That does make sense.
From "Oh look, we have all these infilled job openings, we need thousands of H1Bs," to "we need to make up for attrition". Or half of attrition, that is a quiet way to cut back.
A little inconsistency (Score:1)
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That's just the difference between long term expectations and short term expectations. Long term the U.S. isn't producing a enough STEM graduates, short term there are too many STEM jobs. I see no conflict.
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Amazon is quoted saying we need more CS exposure for K-12 because [college is expensive and we want to lower the starting pay by flooding the market at the lower end]
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Kids have plenty of exposure to computers inside and outside of school. This isn't the 80s. It's not hard for them to figure out if they're interested. It is hard for many of them to get the money for a bachelor's degree. Since that's what these jobs all demand, they should start there, along with re-evaluating their hiring practices.
I'd be interested in seeing what these K-12 CS programs even look like. My feeling is bad. The idea that our schools need to focus on this small niche when they are, by and lar
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Just one data point I sat my 7 year old nephew down to show him scratch and he said “Uhhh I already did this in school”
I was quite surprised.
Re:A little inconsistency (Score:5, Insightful)
I have not done or looked-up any studies, but what I have seen during candidate interviews is that the CS curriculum has been watered-down significantly from what it was a few decades ago. Many people with bachelor's degrees in computer science could not code simple problems. On the one hand, it IS true that the Internet is right there and people can just look up ready-made solutions while working (so, people argue, nobody NEEDS to be able to code simple problems). On the OTHER hand, people who cannot code simple problems also cannot code complex problems, even if the Internet is available.
I had one candidate discussing with me the sorts of tasks from their "algorithms" class. They learned about what various sort/search algorithms were, how they performed against each other, what "Big-O" notation was, etc., but they did not once code a single algorithm themselves, nor were they ever asked to optimize or improve any algorithms. This graduate got an A in the class but could not look at the code of a poor-performing function and figure out ways of making it go faster.
That sort of real-world ability to solve novel problems which can't be solved from memorization or by looking up on the Internet is an important part of what makes a software developer really valuable, and many kids coming from college these days simply don't have it. SOME do. We did see a few really bright ones and they got high-end offers due to their performance. But many graduates just aren't what we need.
I firmly believe that pushing people into a computer science program does not help bolster the workforce. It just floods the workforce with kids who aren't actually passionate about coding and don't actually have what it takes to succeed (and wind up switching career paths either voluntarily or after being let go a few times). The cold hard fact is that many people simply do not like this kind of work, and for that reason will never be good at it, no matter how much schooling they are given.
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A computer science degree is not a software engineering degree. Coding is engineering.
OH NOES THE SKY IS FALLING!!! (Score:2, Troll)
Re:OH NOES THE SKY IS FALLING!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Without even getting into the contents of your critique, I'm curious why you single out Larry Summers (Democrat, Harvard professor, worked for Clinton, worked for Obama), and why you single out the current interest rate actions, supported and led by President Biden (Democrat), Jerome Powell (Democrat), and Janet Yellen (Democrat)?
You target them, and then seamlessly transition into a rant about "some Libertarian or Republican[s]."
I feel like you're right on the edge of a political and personal realization, but you're still buying into the partisanship aspect.
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Larry Summers sitting in a beach house that costs a small fortune talking about how the Fed should ignore any data about inflation moving closer toward established mean, until unemployment spikes. Inflation in 2x4 lumber doesn't bother him. You think he even registers the inflation of eggs? Nope. He does hate those durty workers having barga
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You think there is a HUUGGGEEEE chasm between most Republican and Democratic members. I get it, even if you're wrong.
No, that's actually the opposite of what I believe. I actually even tossed some misdirection in my last post that you missed. Jerome Powell is nominally a Republican, appointed by Obama, appointed again by Trump, and again by Biden.
What I believe is the political class almost uniformly supports the political class. This is true in Europe, it's true in the United States, it's true in most places. To a large degree this is the elites versus others. The interests of the political class largely do not align wit
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You're braying like a donkey, lots of noise but no useful facts.
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What? Are you effing blind? Do you think Larry Summers, an Ivory tower elite, didn't implement right-wing policy? Do you think MTG is going to suddenly engage in policy that isn't to the benefit of the .1%?
That is, more or less, the point. I think you're getting distracted by the ".1%" though. This is not purely an issue of wealth, it is an issue of political class which happens to often correlate to high wealth (though not nearly limited to the .1%). The political class in America today is the professional-managerial class that is more or less universally present across business, education, non-profits(!), and government, and it is not limited to one party.
Did you think that the party that openly courts holocaust deniers is suddenly going to change the idiotic ruling that corporations are people?
Non sequitur and again, bizarre and irrelevant. Do y
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That is, more or less, the point. I think you're getting distracted by the ".1%" though. This is not purely an issue of wealth, it is an issue of political class which happens to often correlate to high wealth (though not nearly limited to the .1%). The political class in America today is the professional-managerial class that is more or less universally present across business, education, non-profits(!), and government, and it is not limited to one party.
Political class? You do know who pays the "political class" off? I'm thinking you're either being deliberately obtuse or you really don't know who runs for office. A great example would be Ron "They were just tourists, I'd have a beer with them..." Johnson. Also you apparently were asleep when they were talking about the real secret of America.
You want to know the secret of America mate? Very simple. The secret of America is MONEY! EVERYTHING IS MONEY! MONEY = POWER TO BUY OFF POLITICIANS! MONEY = POWER
Hiring party not over, despite headlines (Score:4, Interesting)
True, Amazon / Facebook / Microsoft / Apple / Google are laying off lots of workers, some of them programmers. But there has been so much pent-up demand for tech workers in the last couple of years, that many companies literally couldn't find anyone. I experienced this first-hand, trying to hire programmers last winter. I would speed up the interview process, and still have candidates tell me they had already accepted another offer, out of 3-5 options. Those openings didn't go away.
What we had, was a tech bubble, where all the "big tech" companies were hiring like mad (literally, *mad*) and paying big bucks. Now that the bubble is bursting, the marketplace is returning to something more like normal, which by comparison *feels* like a job market crash.
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
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A small handful of great programmers are worth their weight in gold. Having a lot of programmers is not needed, expensive, and sometimes counterproductive.
I like to imagine the pinnacle of programming was back in the late 80s, some Japanese guy sitting at his desk at Nintendo, smoking cigarettes, coding up a game from basically scratch using assembly.
Re:Hiring party not over, despite headlines (Score:4, Insightful)
I partially agree with you. You've stated the extremes, its true that the quality of talent makes a huge difference. It's also true that these tech companies have hired thousands of junior developers who can only due what they are explicitly told, in deal, to do.
There is a middle ground. There are a lot of programmers who have advanced beyond that junior level, but aren't among the ranks of the "great" programmers who will always be in demand. For these mid-level developers, the market is also strong.
If you're just getting in, or if your skills aren't well developed, now might be a difficult time to find a job.
My reason (Score:2)
My reason for never getting a coding job after getting a computer science degree is I found it difficult to follow other people's work, and all the languages (only really liked C). Tried a few times, spent most of my time figuring out what was going on and having to learn someone elses way of doing things rather than fixing the problem. Guess that's why people who can get paid the big bucks.
yeah right... (Score:1)
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I was frequently hearing from them too, up until a couple of months ago. Recruiters for multiple teams in Amazon, who talked about how they had streamlined the interview process and improved compensation. I feel sorry for the people who took them up on it and agreed to join the company, now the offers being rescinded and much time wasted.
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Training corporate slaves from birth (Score:2)
Lobbyist: "Art? Music? History? Sports? TRADES? You must be joking! We can't teach children to grow up and have lives without a gigantic paycheck! We need to crush their souls, and show them that being chained to a desk is the only _real_ future they have! How else will we make massive profits?!?!"
Politician: "I'm not some fancy edumacated man, all's I know is you'll give me a fat paycheck if I sign some legislation. Can you write the legislation for me too? I have a tee time at 2:00pm...."
That or... (Score:3)
How high? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The USA has over 700,000 open computing jobs but only 80,000 computer science graduates a year," the 'CEOs for CS' explained. "We must educate American students as a matter of national competitiveness." Days later, 50 of the nation's Governors accepted the challenge, signing a Compact To Expand K-12 Computer Science Education in their states and territories.
So the corporations said "Jump!" and the Governors asked the age-old question. Wouldn't it be great if they were that responsive to their non-rich, non-graft-paying constituents?
And let's be clear here - the corporations have zero interest in fostering CS careers. Their entire aim is to have such a big surplus of CS workers available that they can pay them burger-flipper wages. And even at that, as soon as whatever passes for AI these days becomes advanced enough, the PHB's will be only too happy to shit-can as many of those inconvenient humans as they possibly can.
How many of those 299 jobs are real? (Score:2)
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In the interests of "due diligence" they have to advertise the job although, it's obvious, the person who knows the job best already works there: So an advertised vacancy is looking for a better employee who, like their current employee, won't haggle over compensation. For the last few decades, most vacancies are 'filled' before they are advertised.
Is the avg CS grad able to fill said jobs? (Score:3, Insightful)
In my experience for most not really into computing the answer is no. CS is a great way to go but you still need an understanding of modern software various architechures, hands on experience and the interest and love for computing to keep learning.