worth noting that HN skews heavily to startups, and VC funding has been in a crunch for a while now, and was hit hard to the fall in the magic bean market

i wouldn't necessarily assume this applies to the real economy of actual businesses actually making things

Thanks @U0PUGPSFR for posting this insight. This looks like a relatively clear indicator of businesses experiencing uncertainty at the moment including: Reduced VC funding (as @U13N2SPMZ mentioned), falls in stock market valuations, rising interest rates, high inflation, falling currency values vs USD, cost of living crisis and * falling GDP. Will be interesting to see the job post numbers are doing next month.

Yeah, all, just food for thought. I confess I was influenced by KPMG: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/04/investing/ceos-recession-economy-outlook

Software development is "investment". Interest rates go up? Investment goes down (other things being equal). Can't fight macro trends.

Several of the big tech companies have had hiring freezes in place for quite a bit of this year and some of them have been encouraging people to leave so they can reduce headcount.

A big shift in the industry is imminent. It's been only a few weeks since Putin announced mobilization. Shortly after, close to a million people (if not more) already left Russia. The majority of them are in IT. Those who aren't, will try changing their careers and try to learn new skills as quickly as they could. Some [temporarily] settled in neighboring countries - Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Mongolia, etc. Some will keep trying to go farther west. They can no longer work for the Russian market, the sanctions are destroying the digital, financial, commercial infrastructure and telecommunications of the country. Entire industries would collapse. Those who can, probably prefer not to focus on developing for the local markets. The economy and overall condition of digital infrastructure in those countries simply won't allow them to get paid to sustain their needs. Anyone who can speak English (even just a bit), would try to find a job in European and American markets. Just to be clear - I'm not debating if that is all good news or bad, I'm just saying that if you weren't paying attention to what's happening over there (because it's politics and whatnot), maybe you should. Some big shit is brewing.