How Is The Current IT Job Market Going?

Late last year I asked the same question as the IT market seemed to be dead:

https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/816949

Now, it could be a coincidence that it was getting close to Christmas, so the market died down.

So fast-forward half a year to now, near the end of this financial year and the start of the new financial year (and new budget!!!). How is the IT job market for everyone? Is it getting better or even "deader" than last year? How long have you been looking?

Is your company providing more IT funding for the next financial year? Is your company hiring more or cutting people?

Comments

  • +6

    I’ve heard it’s f##ked

    • +1

      If you have a masters in cybersec and want to earn $55K a year it's great

      • doing call centre work "hi, have you tried turning it off and on again?"

  • +4

    Time to become an NDIS provider

    • aren't they cracking down on that soon?
      .

      • -1

        Motivation to grind harder and make the rort less brazen. you might even end up doing good for others

  • +5

    Dead, full of immigrants that converted a work sponsored visa to a Perm/Citizen

    • +4

      I have heard loads of international student crying that IT jobs only accepting PR/Citizens… Seems to be some conflict here

      • I have heard loads of international student crying that IT jobs only accepting PR/Citizens… Seems to be some conflict here

        I've worked in many financial institutions mate, and i've seen it all with my own eyes.

        1. Immigrant X comes on a sponsored visa and works in Y company
        2. Completes a 3-year minimum period and applies for a PR
        3. Granted a PR, submits resignation from Y company and applies to Z company as a PR
        4. Comes back to Y company for better pay and secured one role which a tax-paying, Australian citizen can no longer apply for.
        • +2

          It is the effing government and big corporate (essentially the big 4 banks ) allowing the big consultancies to bring in developers from overseas rather than hiring local first.

          Capitalism FTW, just focus on maximising the profit don't give a sh!t about anything else.

    • +2

      Not anymore. The tone of r/Indians_StudyAbroad, which is full of STEM types who'd historically work for peanuts, is pretty dire. There are no jobs in the west, and all the entry level IT busywork that used to be off-shored to India is about to be gutted by AI.

    • I have worked in IT for quite some time. Just my two cents and questions:
      - What gives immigrants an advantage over local counterparts when they apply for deeply technical jobs?
      - Cutting immigration might help provide locals some opportunity, but are they equipped well, or are they even interested?

      I ask these questions because for the last 10 years that I've worked, more than half of technical jobs (rough figure, no statistics, just what I saw!) are filled up by Asians (some immigrants, some grew up here). I've asked my managers about it - unfortunately, there's not much local interest in our field. Maybe the locals are going for other jobs, so IT would probably be filled up with more Asians (mostly immigrants) for the near future I guess.

  • +1

    AI is taking over the jorbs

    • AI

      All India?

      (I'm from India but Aussie since last year and I do work in IT.)

    • -1

      AI is taking over the jorbs

      American Idol ??

  • Disclaimer: I work at a recruitment company, although not as a recruiter (so please no one PM me, I can't help you find a job).

    It's dependent on skill level and what you're providing. If you have something specialised, things are as great as always. However roles that are even remotely generic the number of applications coming through are astonishing.

    Anything growth related isn't doing well. Everyone is battening down the budget and outside of core IT services there's not a lot of hiring. The big IT companies are cutting staff expecting a recession and that has a flow on effect. Security is a better place to be than development, basically.

    There's also a lot of government cost cutting going on, which always hurts the industry.

    • +19

      PM sent. Cheers

      • +6

        Please make sure you put 400 key words in size 4 font and white text in your resume. Really helps the process.

        • Yeah a skills section at the end of the cv (so no one actually reads it) - copy paste the bullet points of the job ad there, 80% of thee time you will receive a call.

      • -1

        PM sent. Cheers

        Cheers…

    • I know this is a long shot and I don't expect you can answer it… but grateful if you can:

      what job field does your company focus, and out of those fields, could you list a few that's going relatively good right now?

    • +1

      I bet your inbox is now full of overqualified applicants looking for entry level jobs.

    • If you have something specialised, things are as great as always.

      Spot on mate. I am a dev with several years exp in integration, I get at least a dozen calls a week. I have a friend who's a manual tester, that was made redundant from his last 2 jobs and has been unemployed for over a year now.

      • Can't just be a manual tester. Have to skill up and be able to do automation or performance testing.

        • Yeah I told him to start with a graduate developer role or at least invest into automation or performance testing but he’s adamant that he’ll have to learn again. Regardless, even those testers were made redundant from my current company and the previous one as well and the expectation was to implement that into DevOps or something by the devs.

  • It’s booming in Russia & North Korea

  • Lots of work available in Canberra.

  • Recently there was a news like >30% IT workers got fired …

    Yesterday I read a news that even some Korean companies outsourced IT to south east asian countries like Vietnam, Myanmar and Cambodia. Software devs in Vietnam get around USD2,500-3,000 a month, Cambodia around USD 500-700 a month. In South Korea is around USD 4,250

  • +1

    Outsourcing is booming at the moment, but the quality of the outsourcing sucks and will bite allot of places in 2 years. Normal cyclic crap.

    • +2

      Outsourcing is booming at the moment, but the quality of the outsourcing sucks and will bite allot of places in 2 years. Normal cyclic crap.

      It's not just outsourcing dude, it's this floppy, noodle-spined government's migration policy.

      They've recently (2023) signed a new immigration deal which would super fast track visas from India to Australia, apparently for """labour""" hire lol

      https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/australia-and-india-have…

      I'm all for immigration if Australian citizens can get jobs and have access to home ownership at a reasonable rate.
      However given most Aussies are priced out, rented-out and worked-out from the industry, immigration should be paused for minimum 5 years

      • I know this, but allot of IT visa's are for outsourcing.

        Migration policy affects way more than IT.

  • Three things;
    Big development projects are offshored at least 50-50 and this is driven by major employers of the sector to cut down the cost.
    The second issue is the record influx of migrants in the past 12-18 months.
    The economy is sluggish and companies are either firing people or delaying the hiring of new people.

    The hiring managers are so spoiled as they have so many choices now :).
    Recently, For a Single developer role, we got over 150 applications.
    For a single BA role, we got over 200 applications.

    As others mentioned, cybersecurity is an area of growth as companies are afraid of bad publicity and financial penalties for cyber breaches.

  • Fed Gov is a lovely gravy train. However, security clearance (or lack thereof) prevents many people from entering that market.

    However, they're pretty money conscious these days, so your rate has to be reasonably sharp to get an interview.

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