When is hiring coming back? Our predictions for 2024.

By Aline Lerner | Published: December 10, 2023; Last updated: December 7, 2024

EDIT: If you don't like reading, here's me presenting the contents of this blog post in a video. Pick your poison.

Predictions for 2024

Prediction #1: 2024 is the year when hiring comes back.

Whether we like it or not, the FAANGs are driving overall eng hiring volume. As you’ll soon learn, Meta and Netflix are hiring aggressively while the other FAANGs are not, but I’m inclined to think that come next year, most of the FAANGs will follow Meta and Netflix’s lead and start actively hiring again.

Prediction #2: Mid-level & senior eng hiring will pick up significantly, come Jan 2024.

We’re less confident about this part, but we expect that hiring will be back to (or quite close to) H1 2022 levels in the spring of 2024.

Prediction #3: For at least the next 6 months, compensation at a given level will stay flat.

Prediction #4: For at least the next 6 months, down-leveling will continue because of inertia.

Prediction #5: For at least the next 6 months, recruiters are going to be increasingly stretched thin, which means that applying online is going to be an even less effective way to get into companies.

Prediction #6: The hiring bar will NOT return to where it was for a long time.

Eng jobs are recovering, and layoffs are way down

As you can see, tech jobs started to drop in May 2022 (around the time the FAANGs froze hiring) and began to recover slowly in March 2023.

At the same time, layoffs are way down after peaking in Q1 2023. The number of people laid off is down 88%, and companies doing layoffs are down 68%. Most importantly, layoffs have solidly returned to pre-downturn levels.

So, tech jobs are recovering and layoffs are way down. Woohoo!

What’s going on at specific FAANGs?

Google

Since then, Google’s hiring continued to slow, falling 90% from peak and 50% since January of this year, until it finally leveled out around July. The latest news we’ve heard is that while Google is currently hiring, it’s primarily backfills for attrition rather than new headcount.

Meta

However, unlike Google, they’re currently hiring aggressively, and if you believe that mock interview purchases are a good proxy for hiring volume, they’re up about 800% since January of this year, and are now back to pre-freeze levels.
Meta's hiring boom has one notable dark side. Meta’s hiring volume is clearly outpacing all the other FAANGs, and they’re currently treating candidates poorly.

Amazon

After a few months of basically a monopoly on eng hiring, Amazon pulled back and froze in November 2022. They’ve been flat since January of 2023 and, from what we’ve heard, are only hiring for backfills and very senior roles.

Apple and Microsoft

Microsoft hiring has been flat and, from what we know, limited to backfills. Apple’s hiring has been slow for the past year and a half but has fallen about 70% since January of 2023.

Netflix

Since then, demand (and Netflix hiring) appears to have grown, up almost 300% since January.

Salary negotiation: an important trailing indicator

There are a few important things that immediately jump out in this graph. Salary negotiation activity has roughly a 3-month delay on mock interview activity.

The changing role of recruiters, and the very practical thing it means for you

Plainly put, the number of eng positions recruiters are responsible for filling is increasing, while the number of recruiters among whom that work is distributed is shrinking.

Down-leveling

As I mentioned above, Meta has been brazen in their down-leveling of candidates. According to our survey, of the people who got offers in 2023, 33% were down-leveled.

The rising bar

To make these numbers concrete, you now need to perform 22% better in technical interviews than you did at the start of last year.

Bonus prediction about AI

Prediction #7: For a long time in the future, we won’t see major changes to interview styles, despite the advent of ChatGPT.

Predictions recap

Meta and Netflix mock interview bookings, and subsequent hiring, are way up (+800% and +300% respectively). Open tech jobs are growing (+14% since Feb 2023).

Even though hiring is going to come back, it’s not going to feel quite like the heady days of 2021 and early 2022.

Actionable advice and resources

• If you’re targeting specific companies but don’t have connections there, don’t apply online and don’t wait. Instead, reach out to hiring managers directly.
• Use our Company Intros feature.
• Prepare for your interviews. You don’t have to use us. Just find a way to do some mock interviews before your real ones.
• In this climate, negotiating is harder. Don’t set yourself up to fail.

**We’ll close this post with some more independent advice from our users:

• "Make sure to practice system design as much or more than ds/a."**