In a Sea of Tech Talent, Companies Can't Find the Workers They Want

US hiring plans sink to lowest since September 2009 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45450517 - October 2025

Millions of Workers Are Left Out of the ‘Low-Hire, Low-Fire’ US Job Market - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-09-29/weak-jobs... | https://archive.today/8UNQP - September 29th, 2025

St Louis Fed U-6 unemployment rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE

Hey companies, consider paying people somewhat more than two orders of a magnitude less than what you shovel at your CEO, maybe you'll find some folks who want to work for you. Stretch goal: treat them well and ensure they feel valuable and aren't going to be laid off at the next stock market hiccup.

Talent is rare almost by definition. The widespread use of the word is pompous.

When HASN'T hiring been broken? I looked back and found that networking was my main source of interviews, and jobs, if you exclude a certain fruit company, in my career.

Employers just found a new failure mode, and I see no improvement in sight, except some ideas regarding proof of work. Tough on classified work. But there were (U) tasks I bragged about. Oh, and proprietary stuff to talk around. "I built this black box"

Hoping this gets better, but not optimistic.

'[I]n their feverish pursuit of artificial-intelligence supremacy, employers say there aren’t enough people with the most in-demand skills. The few perceived as AI savants can command multimillion-dollar pay packages. On a second tier of AI savvy, workers can rake in close to $1 million a year.

Landing a job is tough for most everyone else.

Frustrated job seekers contend businesses could expand the AI talent pipeline with a little imagination. The argument is companies should accept that relatively few people have AI-specific experience because the technology is so new. They ought to focus on identifying candidates with transferable skills and let those people learn on the job.

Often, though, companies seem to hold out for dream candidates with deep backgrounds in machine learning. Many AI-related roles go unfilled for weeks or months—or get taken off job boards only to be reposted soon after.'