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28% of job postings on company career sites have been open over 90 days

302 points · 364 comments · rubatrejo

  1. Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
    This statistic constantly confuses people who haven't done hiring.

    If we decide we're going to grow headcount by 10 senior software engineers, we don't copy and paste the same job listing 10 times. We leave it open and collect resumes through that. At a large or fast growing company, we might never stop interviewing and hiring senior software engineers. The listing stays open for a year or more.

    There are also specialty roles where hiring takes months. I've had niche roles open where we didn't get any applicants with any experience on the topic for over 90 days on multiple occasions.

    1. prerok · · focus · HN ↗
      That's fair but still indicates shortage, no?
      1. flockonus · · focus · HN ↗
        Not necessarily indicates any 1 thing; it can be fake job posts to signal growth, could be an extra picky hiring manager, even a decrepit company that forgot to close it.
        1. prerok · · focus · HN ↗
          I agree with that, just responding to the parent who wrote that their company keeps the hiring listed. So, in their case it's true but in other cases it is not.

          I agree, I should have written a bit more, apologies.

      2. firesteelrain · · focus · HN ↗
        It’s a pipeline requisition or feeder requisition. Sometimes companies will close and refresh it. Can’t rely on job listings alone
      3. Bratmon · · focus · HN ↗
        No, the exact opposite! A high percentage of ghost jobs indicates that there are very few actual jobs open in the field, which suggests an oversupply of workers.
        1. vanuatu · · focus · HN ↗
          if the listings are open for the reasons OP stated, then yes it does indicate a shortage. if companies hired all the SWEs they wanted they wouldn't still have the listings
          1. pixl97 · · focus · HN ↗
            100% untrue.

            Let's say I have 50 employees working for $100,000 each.

            Why would I not want to replace 25 of them that are willing to work for $50,000 each if they are producing anywhere close to the same quality.

            In a case like this always open job listings are a warning to others.

            Also there is something called market sampling. Where you put up these job openings and look at the quality of applicants in relation to the employees you already have to ensure you're on the right track internally.

            1. jameshart · · focus · HN ↗
              > In a case like this always open job listings are a warning to others

              ‘Warning this company has management practices oriented around remaining solvent for the long term, rather than providing a sinecure for workers’?

              1. pixl97 · · focus · HN ↗
                Warning: This company will replace your ass so far without regard to your actual abilities or their current profitability.

                Companies do not have human rights. They are a pleasant fiction the population allows because it's more effective than not having said rules. We the people can revoke those rules the moment the meta-idea of corporations no longer serve the public good.

                In the US at least we seemingly have come to believe the corporation is the ultimate organism and all rights should be sacrificed for its eternal cancerous growth.

              2. johnnyanmac · · focus · HN ↗
                Not every company is a hungry startup trying to hustle their way to a billion dollars. Businesses also value stability, and stable labor is a big factor in pretty much every other field.

                You don't get stability by laying off workers every 2 years .

            2. smcg · · focus · HN ↗
              What if your $100,000 worker is actually more than twice as productive as your $50,000 worker?
            3. vanuatu · · focus · HN ↗
              because the pie grows, and if you are in a competitive market which most businesses are in, you don't want to lose talent and market prestige to your competitors
          2. rsynnott · · focus · HN ↗
            Big companies never hire all the SWEs they want, because there is always attrition. At a certain scale, there will always be people leaving and a constant need to backfill.
            1. vanuatu · · focus · HN ↗
              Exactly, hence why having jobs open indicates a shortage.
          3. Bratmon · · focus · HN ↗
            > if companies hired all the SWEs they wanted they wouldn't still have the listings

            I honestly can't tell if this a troll or not, but in case it isn't:

            Because "number job openings" are used as a signal of company health, Ghost Jobs are far far more common than job listings which companies intend to hire from!

            1. vanuatu · · focus · HN ↗
              Is this true? some of the highest aura companies have very limited jobs open to signal exclusivity, or have such a high bar that they are in perpetual shortage

              And large cos are always hiring

        2. johnnyanmac · · focus · HN ↗
          Or a lack of demand for workers in that particular region.
    2. alightsoul · · focus · HN ↗
      So you should apply to old job postings? Consensus in LATAM seems to be, they just forgot to take them down and they already have someone or in Latin America if you repost the same opening over and over the consensus seems to be the company is toxic they have a turnover problem, maybe you should say outright you're looking for 10 people
      1. mixdup · · focus · HN ↗
        > So you should apply to old job postings?

        Yes. I recently got a job (IT infrastructure engineer with a non-tech company) on a posting that was 6 months old. they had filled it, and at the same time got approval for a second headcount so they never pulled it down

      2. Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
        Some common sense goes a long way. If the job listing is from a company with 10,000 people, you can assume that they're always hiring. Submit away.

        If the listing is generic like "senior software engineer" and all of the requirements are generic like being able to program or do teamwork, it's probably a generic listing.

        Applying anyway is a safe bet, but I wouldn't invest as much energy into tailoring your resume if it's a 6 month old posting from a 50 person company with a website that looks like it's from 2009. That company probably forgot to take the listing down.

        > maybe you should say outright you're looking for 10 people

        This wouldn't help because you have no way of knowing if they've already hired 9 people or 1 person.

        The target can also change constantly. At a large enough company you continuously lose people for natural reasons, like retirement, moving for a spouse, moving to be closer to family. Past a tipping point you're just always hiring.

        1. tempest_ · · focus · HN ↗
          Often you pay to have that posting. For a smaller company they def know that posting is still up. Likely they are just getting poor applications (or need to improve their posting because the right people are not seeing it)

          In the age of LLMs every one is "tailoring" their resume to every posting.

          1. mort96 · · focus · HN ↗
            This depends a ton on if we're talking about a company's own website's job listings or if it's on some dedicated job listing site.
            1. CharlieDigital · · focus · HN ↗
              Company's own website job listings are likely actually in an applicant tracking system (ATS) like Greenhouse or Ashby because they need to manage the pipeline, not just list the job.
          2. pluc · · focus · HN ↗
            I found the "AI tailoring" on par with the rest of AI - it's completely untrustworthy. It makes shit up on my resume because it's in the job description when I have no experience in it. We've always had this technology, it's called lying. It may be great to get your foot in the door, but once you have to justify it you're gonna have a hard time.
          3. alightsoul · · focus · HN ↗
            They don't pay for it continuously. They post it once as a LinkedIn post or a recruiter does it either in LinkedIn or elsewhere. They either don't pay for it or pay for it once if a recruiter does it
        2. mort96 · · focus · HN ↗
          > At a large enough company you continuously lose people for natural reasons, like retirement, moving for a spouse, moving to be closer to family. Past a tipping point you're just always hiring.

          As an analogy it's kinda like hard drives: when one of my hard drives dies, it's An Event which I need to deal with specifically; I need to order a replacement for that specific drive. At Google's server farms, hard drives dying is just a statistic, you continuously buy hard drives just because you know existing drives are gonna die at some semi-predictable rate.

          1. Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
            Or a more morbid analogy: military casualties in a war.
            1. evilduck · · focus · HN ↗
              It's not really an analogy, it's just facts of life. In a large enough company or over a long enough time period at a job or in your career, realistically people actually will eventually die and cause vacancies. I've had two coworkers die, one because of illness, the other because of an auto accident. I stopped using the "bus factor of one" phrase as a result even and use "redundancy or succession planning" since it's not outside the realm of possibility that someone might get hit by a vehicle.
              1. Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
                Sure, but in one many more people leave the workforce by being killed and maimed than in the other.
              2. gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
                "Lottery factor" works, though it's more of a mouthful
                1. arcanemachiner · · focus · HN ↗
                  That, and nobody knows what you're talking about.
                  1. gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
                    Just the first time
            2. vkou · · focus · HN ↗
              More morbidly, military casualties in what the military insists isn't war.
              1. HeyLaughingBoy · · focus · HN ↗
                Even in peacetime, training accidents kill an expected number of military personnel each year.
                1. vkou · · focus · HN ↗
                  I'm not talking about training accidents.
        3. cindyllm · · focus · HN ↗

          [dead]

        4. alightsoul · · focus · HN ↗
          No this is not common sense. No company in LATAM has 10000 people. Large companies just aren't a thing here. Most companies here are the 50 people companies you mention so the normal thing is to hire occasionally. And LATAM never had an industrial revolution so software positions are just rare unless the company is larger than the local average. If you do find one, it's not a pure one or is service oriented, not to build a product. What I mean is, building a technological product is rare let alone as a product company in LATAM and most technical positions are service or outsourcing oriented. If you find a technical product role like being a mobile developer, it's often not at a company that offers a technological product but a service in another industry like a bank
          1. alt227 · · focus · HN ↗
            I googled and literally the first result was LATAM Airlines who have 44,000 employees.

            <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;LATAM_Airlines" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;LATAM_Airlines

            1. alightsoul · · focus · HN ↗
              Airlines and state owned companies seem to be the exception
              1. alt227 · · focus · HN ↗
                ok, that statement seems a bit different than your previous one of &quot;No company in LATAM has 10000 people.&quot;
                1. rsynnott · · focus · HN ↗
                  Except for the companies who have 10000 people, no companies in LATAM have 10000 people.
                  1. alt227 · · focus · HN ↗
                    Love the logic, have an upvote.
                  2. zormino · · focus · HN ↗
                    So América Móvil doesn&#x27;t have nearly 200k? There are plenty of LATAM companies with more than 10k people.
                    1. hatsix · · focus · HN ↗
                      This was an intentional fallacy for comedic effect, specifically &quot;No True Scotsman&quot;
                  3. bonesss · · focus · HN ↗
                    I think we can all agree No True LATAM company would have 10,000 employees.
            2. mamcx · · focus · HN ↗
              I think he means &quot;software companies&quot;.

              Large companies exist, but pure software companies or with heavy side of it?

          2. benjojo12 · · focus · HN ↗
            Petrobras?
          3. mort96 · · focus · HN ↗
            You don&#x27;t think MercadoLibre has job postings open all the time just to replace the people who are leaving? They&#x27;re around 120 000 people, is each of those people hand-picked for a particular position and not just hired because they know they need to replace some percentage of workers who&#x27;ll leave?
          4. shagie · · focus · HN ↗
            <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_largest_Brazilian_companies" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_largest_Brazilian_comp...

            While the 9th largest is 7,777 people reported... all the others are at least 40,000 people and the largest two are over 100,000.

            Itaú Unibanco <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.itau.com.br&#x2F;download-file&#x2F;v2&#x2F;d&#x2F;42787847-4cf6-4461-94a5-40ed237dca33&#x2F;cd566e80-cd88-2a79-2862-6e39caa2f3f9?origin=2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.itau.com.br&#x2F;download-file&#x2F;v2&#x2F;d&#x2F;42787847-4cf6-446... shows 80,657 employees in Brazil in Q2 of 2026.

            And for tech jobs... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;carreiras.itau.com.br&#x2F;busca-de-vagas&#x2F;software&#x2F;35299&#x2F;1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;carreiras.itau.com.br&#x2F;busca-de-vagas&#x2F;software&#x2F;35299&#x2F;...

            Is it a big list? No. Is it a bank? Yep... but then Capital One is a large employer of tech in the US. Estimates put Walmart (certainly not a &quot;tech&quot; company) at having 20,000 technical roles.

            Discriminating between technology product and technology role at a &quot;regular&quot; industry or service seems a bit biased. I (software developer) haven&#x27;t worked at a tech company for the past two decades (and frankly, while wages are lower than the tech company jobs my job stability is much higher).

          5. xtracto · · focus · HN ↗
            Lol

            Bimbo

            Femsa

            Grupo Salinas

            There&#x27;s plenty more: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;es.tradingeconomics.com&#x2F;bimboa:mm:employees" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;es.tradingeconomics.com&#x2F;bimboa:mm:employees

        5. oejxiwjxjwjd · · focus · HN ↗
          &gt; you can assume that they&#x27;re always hiring.

          You can, but you’re probably wrong and are wasting your time and effort going through lord knows how many hoops to submit a simple CV.

          Were submissions as simple as “here’s my CV, contact me if you like what you see”, then this wouldn’t be a problem. But when you have to sign up to the millionth HR service with the same 50 “please input the info that’s already on the resume you’re submitting” steps over and over again just to never hear back from the company or get rejected 6 months later, “submit away” is not an acceptable answer.

          &gt; This wouldn&#x27;t help because you have no way of knowing if they&#x27;ve already hired 9 people or 1 person.

          Yes, it would. Even if only 1 of the 10 spots is available, it still is a valid listing. Not knowing if the listing is valid at all is way worse.

          Asking for “common sense” only works if the situation you are in makes sense to begin with. Job listings are a cesspit of bad behaviour, dark patterns, disrespectful processes and incongruous offers.

          What we need is some sort of regulation on how job listings are posted and how candidates can and should apply.

          While we’re at it, it should be utterly ILLEGAL and absolutely liable to have a job listing up with no salary range or a salary range that’s too wide to give a sense of what compensation looks like—lying about it should trigger serious legal consequences as well.

          It’s about time candidates were treated with some dignity.

          1. alt227 · · focus · HN ↗
            This kind of attitude is why some people cant find jobs. Meanwhile the ones who just emailed their cv and didnt overthink it are happily working.
            1. oejxiwjxjwjd · · focus · HN ↗
              What kind of attitude? Wanting employers to respect my goddamned time? Wanting to know how much employers are willing to pay for my services?

              Yeah. I want a job listing to actively tell me how much I stand to gain in exchange for my time and skills. How absolutely entitled of me. Imagine that? A potential employee wanting to know upfront how much their time is worth in the eyes of a potential employer? Nonsense! You get what you get and you don’t get upset.

              If that’s your line of reasoning then I can only assume you’re exactly the type of employer that indulges in such practices.

              1. SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗
                Good luck on your job hunt.
                1. oejxiwjxjwjd · · focus · HN ↗
                  Very kind of you good stranger. I’m not job hunting at the moment but I appreciate the support!
              2. alt227 · · focus · HN ↗
                The UK is currently passing laws to make every job listing include salary:

                <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;ckg7gg2zdexo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;ckg7gg2zdexo

                1. oejxiwjxjwjd · · focus · HN ↗
                  That’s a good start.
                2. jambalaya8 · · focus · HN ↗
                  It would be nice if they passed a law to also make every job listing represent an actual job opening at the actual company (or their representative). There are too many postings that are all about &quot;collecting people&quot;, forming candidate algorithms, tracking applicants, and mining. It is really grotesque.
            2. Avicebron · · focus · HN ↗
              This is not helpful and untrue, if you&#x27;ve tried to apply for jobs within the laat ~6+ years you will know it&#x27;s screaming into the void. New accounts for the N+ glassdoor&#x2F;indeed&#x2F;bamboo&#x2F;handshake&#x2F;yougettheidea clones. Poorly pulling information from an uploaded resume, requiring manually editing or adding the info _every_ time. If your dilligent&#x2F;dumb you writing a cover letter for each one (no AI the signal is too bad), then you submit it and wait an arbitrary amount of time for the rejection. There is a good reason people are complaining, it&#x27;s asinine to put this on jpb seekers.
              1. alt227 · · focus · HN ↗
                &gt; if you&#x27;ve tried to apply for jobs within the laat ~6+ years you will know it&#x27;s screaming into the void

                I have applied for, and got, 3 jobs in the last 8 years. So yeah I think I am allowed an opinion on it without people telling me Im wrong.

                1. oejxiwjxjwjd · · focus · HN ↗
                  Two things can be true. I’ve applied to a few jobs in the last few years and got a few of them as well. Does not mean that the hoops I had to jump through were any less demeaning, disrespectful or downright stupid.
                  1. legitster · · focus · HN ↗
                    If OP is a hiring manager, they&#x27;re on the other side of the job market right now. It can be true that managers have no problems getting jobs and the rest of us do.
                  2. pacija · · focus · HN ↗
                    It is even weirder in my case. I am not applying for any jobs, recruiters reach out to me. After exchanging plesantries with HR ladies at video calls they ask me what are my salary expectations. I explain them there are two options. For full time employment I expect them to give me their best offer for me to consider. For consulting I expect them to give me exact goals so I can give them exact quote. I mostly never hear back from them, in rare cases they say their technical colleagues reviewed my resume and decided I am not appropriate candidate. I suspect most of them are just mining data about salary expectations.
                2. platevoltage · · focus · HN ↗
                  Nobody is allowed to do anything without someone telling them they&#x27;re wrong.
                  1. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

                    [deleted]

                3. ghostly_s · · focus · HN ↗
                  Three jobs in 8 years? Seems like a red flag, we want to hire someone who will stick around.[1]

                  1. (Actual feedback I got in an interview two weeks ago, for a position no sane person would want to stay in for longer than two years.)

                  1. alt227 · · focus · HN ↗
                    Fair enough, dont hire me. There are thousands of jobs out there.
              2. tayo42 · · focus · HN ↗
                Greenhouse saves your info and auto fills it. Companied that use Ashby are pretty much upload your resume. Only workday sucks or other random small ones that show up.
                1. ghostly_s · · focus · HN ↗
                  Workday is the only one of these I’ve heard of or encountered in the US.
                  1. tayo42 · · focus · HN ↗
                    Probably because workday sucks so much that you notice it.
              3. yuye · · focus · HN ↗
                &gt;then you submit it and wait an arbitrary amount of time for the rejection

                You get rejections? When I was jobhunting, half of the companies I applied to never replied to me.

            3. LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
              Two times I posted in the &quot;Who wants to be hired?&quot; HN thread in the past few years, I had a job within the month. Both times, I did not even have any resume or CV at all. But this year, I&#x27;ve been posting there for over 6 months and nothing. Not sure if attitude is such a big factor -- the job market kinda does what it does. You do make a mistake by not putting yourself out there though, because then there&#x27;s basically no chance that an opportunity will come your way. One comment in an HN thread could be your ticket, or you could be applying to thousands of listings for months and getting nothing but the occasional rejection (though of course, never nearly as many as you made applications).
            4. johnnyanmac · · focus · HN ↗
              &gt;the ones who just emailed their cv and didnt overthink it are happily working.

              Tell that to the last 3 years of new grads.

            5. ghostly_s · · focus · HN ↗
              &quot;Just email your cv&quot; is literally impossible at many employers today. the app process is absolutely far more onerous for the applicant than it was a generation ago. For a bit of silver lining, I have noticed the &quot;auto-populate from my resume&quot; feature actually works reasonably well on some sites, which was not the case just a couple years ago when I was last looking.
              1. ikr678 · · focus · HN ↗
                Also, in some orgs you physically cannot send the cv.

                I can&#x27;t send or recieve documents as email attachments anymore to external stakeholders, everything must be via sharepoint link.

                That, plus a decade of compulsory anti phishing training means no half competent HR person should be blind opening an attachment that says &#x27;CV&#x27;.

            6. Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
              I don&#x27;t know a single person who&#x27;s got a job by just emailing their CV. In fact, it reads as asinine as the idea that you can get a job by just showing up in person with a good handshake.
            7. ikr678 · · focus · HN ↗
              Taking time off your existing role to do multiple interviews for something that turns out to pay 10-15% less than you are currently on is insulting.
              1. red-iron-pine · · focus · HN ↗
                how are you getting to multiple interviews without having a concrete-ish idea of what the pay will be?

                literally the first thing I talk about with recruiters during an initial phone screen.

                yeah okay there may be a ~5-10k, maybe even a little more, bit of wiggle-room but if I can&#x27;t make a reasonable guess where I&#x27;ll land why would I even consider interview #2 when I already have an existing role?

          2. bee_rider · · focus · HN ↗
            It is required to post a salary range in some states. Sometimes they are quite wide, but realistically in the posting I see the posters seem to be taking the rule in good faith.

            Signing up for another page is a bit annoying (especially for places that are all using the same platform, like Workday—I understand these are probably self-hosted or kept disconnected on purpose, but still it could be nice if there was a separate global space for applicants, then we could just be imported in).

            To some extent it would be nice if it was harder to apply. Like I used to be happy to see a cover letter required, as that’d filter out some of the competition. Now people can just AI generate their cover letters I guess, so I mostly avoid postings that require them unless I’m really excited. (I think LLMs mostly review the applicants these days as well, and I’m pretty sure LLMs prefer LLM-speak, so it’s a losing proposition).

        6. locknitpicker · · focus · HN ↗
          &gt; Some common sense goes a long way. If the job listing is from a company with 10,000 people, you can assume that they&#x27;re always hiring. Submit away.

          Common sense would dictate that a company with 10,000 people has a need for a diverse set of roles, and it would be completely stupid to recycle the same template pretending the role was always the same. In fact, repeating a stale advert suggests the company does in fact not have positions opened and either forgot to pull an old advert or some recruiter is trawling for applications to pretend to be productive.

          1. Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
            I don’t think common sense suggests that at all. It’s like saying that the US armed forces requires soldiers with many specialized skillsets (which is true) so clearly it should recruit to every individual role and post separately.

            A large company may have a handful of actually-very-special-role positions open for every hundred generic &quot;our tech stack is this and isn’t going to change&quot; developer roles.

            1. platevoltage · · focus · HN ↗
              Perhaps the armed forces are doing something right, and the tech industry is not.
              1. shagie · · focus · HN ↗
                The armed forces have a service commitment of several years (if I read this correctly, US Army is 8 years). People will sometimes change jobs within months.

                They have the time to train someone into a role and typically don&#x27;t have to worry about going to work for a competitor after they get out of AIT or A school.

                1. platevoltage · · focus · HN ↗
                  People used to spend their entire careers at a single company. Something changed, and it wasn&#x27;t worker attitude.
                  1. shagie · · focus · HN ↗
                    One of the biggest changes since then is that there are companies that a different scale of revenue per employee ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wolframalpha.com&#x2F;input?i=%28google%2C+meta%29+revenue+per+employee" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wolframalpha.com&#x2F;input?i=%28google%2C+meta%29+re... ) and pay accordingly.

                    While there&#x27;s nothing wrong with those companies paying such, it drastically changes the incentives for the regular employee. Going to work in Big Tech can be like winning the lottery (in the dot com boom, I had about 6 million on paper... that I didn&#x27;t sell before the crash).

                    That there is drastically different industries with correspondingly different levels of compensation has incentivized the person who can change jobs to move from a $60k job to a $120k job to a $250k job to do so.

                    In the 90s I was making $50k&#x2F;year ($50k &#x27;95 -&gt; $109k &#x27;26 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;data&#x2F;inflation_calculator.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;data&#x2F;inflation_calculator.htm ).

                    The companies where people used to work a decade or two or three are still there and in many cases, largely unchanged.

                    1. bluecheese452 · · focus · HN ↗
                      This is so out of touch
                      1. shagie · · focus · HN ↗
                        There are companies out there where managers, mechanical engineers, marketing, and all the other non-technology roles work at for a decade or two. It&#x27;s the software developers and IT people who switch jobs after two years working there.

                        What&#x27;s the difference between those job types? It&#x27;s that software development and IT have a multimodal salary with much greater discrepancy between the companies that fall into the distribution around the lowest mode and the highest mode.

                        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;trimodal" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;trimodal

                        If you switch from working at a local area company to Big Tech, you significantly increase your salary. For other careers, going from the local job to the national big company will likely give a much smaller boost.

                        Here are the stats for tenure: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;news.release&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;tenure.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;news.release&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;tenure.pdf

                        Table 6 (last page) shows the median tenure by job classification. Computer and mathematical occupations are the ones that were going down between 2014 and 2020. The others were holding fairly constant.

                        Table 2 shows 21% of people 35 and older have 10 years or more of tenure at their employer. At 45 years old, it&#x27;s 45%.

                        I still hold that software development is the outlier for shorter tenure and the largest factor driving that is that you can quit your job and get a new one that pays twice as much.

                        Do you have an alternate explanation for this data or published data that contradicts this?

                      2. braj0 · · focus · HN ↗
                        What an incredible contribution to the discussion!
                  2. locknitpicker · · focus · HN ↗
                    &gt; People used to spend their entire careers at a single company. Something changed, and it wasn&#x27;t worker attitude.

                    The US-style neoliberal attitude towards decimating the workforce at a drop of a hat for PR purposes does have a chilling effect on any employee&#x27;s trust.

                    But don&#x27;t fool yourself: one of the most important tools anyone has to improve their life and wellbeing is the ability to switch jobs. It can create career opportunities you would otherwise not have, and even unblock career progression by sidestepping your current job&#x27;s corporate constraints.

                    1. red-iron-pine · · focus · HN ↗
                      &gt; unblock career progression by sidestepping your current job&#x27;s corporate constraints

                      no shit I work with multiple people that dipped out of their old gig, did 2 years somewhere else, and came back at a much more senior level to their old job because HR limits how often you can get promoted or increases inside a bracket.

                      jumping matters, as does the potential threat of jumping.

              2. locknitpicker · · focus · HN ↗
                &gt; Perhaps the armed forces are doing something right, and the tech industry is not.

                This shows some ignorance on the history of work relations. The bad old days of industrial guilds and company towns are not renowned for quality of life and independence. Your life was tied to the company, and all you could aspire to do in your life would be to toil in the same low paying job while mixing up your corporate structure with your life&#x27;s social structure. If god forbid you lost your job, you and your family would lose your whole life.

                Tell me how this is doing things right.

                For those in the US to understand, see how your access to healthcare is tied to your employer, and the impact this have on your life of you are forced out of your job. Now extrapolate this to every single aspect of your life.

        7. johnnyanmac · · focus · HN ↗
          My common sense is that it varies per market. In an employer&#x27;s market this bad you either need to be highly specialized or you need to get your submissions in early. First 24 hours matters a lot more than your actual skillset when job postings are regularly receiving 1000+ applicants. You know the hiring managers are going to stop after they find a few dozen qualified applicants.

          But in a good market, sure. You can throw your hat into a random general application and you still might get a call back. Old postings are worth a shot. Any connection with an internal recruiter at least guarantees you start the process.

          1. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

            [deleted]

        8. ElProlactin · · focus · HN ↗
          &gt; If the job listing is from a company with 10,000 people, you can assume that they&#x27;re always hiring.

          Perhaps true in the most literal sense, but you cannot assume that it&#x27;s true in the practical sense.

          Lots of companies have laid off significant numbers of people, particularly in certain roles. There will always be some turnover that requires hiring at a large company but this does not mean that you should assume there are always open positions for your role.

          Submitting to a large company for roles that are in secular decline within that company is mostly a waste of time.

          It&#x27;s also not uncommon for natural turnover to be used as an organic way to downsize, with a role for a person who just left remaining unfilled.

      3. maccard · · focus · HN ↗
        You should, but you should always apply as early as possible.

        The main reason the jobs are reposted are to get them to the top of the feed

      4. CharlieDigital · · focus · HN ↗
        You pay for job listings so it would be silly to not take them down.
      5. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

        [deleted]

      6. rsynnott · · focus · HN ↗
        If it’s a big company, anyway, then yeah. A FAANG type hires thousands of engineers a year. They are not going to have a bespoke ad per position.
      7. aDyslecticCrow · · focus · HN ↗
        I got a job by applying to an old listing, for the wrong city.

        Small companies may look to fill a certain set of skill-sets, and if that is filled by one person or three doesn&#x27;t matter much; can puzzle around to make the workload fit what is found. large companies may hire 10 people generically, but may stop at 5 if they don&#x27;t like the candidates, or hire 16 after a good set of resumes.

        Forcing companies to be overly specific in the roles is just making it harder to apply.

      8. jimbob45 · · focus · HN ↗
        Been awhile since I’ve been in the job hunt but doesn’t Indeed at least have an option to display the number of roles open on each posting? Wouldn’t that solve this issue pretty easily?
      9. j45 · · focus · HN ↗
        It seems like if you&#x27;re interested in a role it&#x27;s ok to apply and be in their system and that much more discoverable.

        Being able to reach out and have a chat with the HR manager either way also makes a candidate more human.

    3. tayo42 · · focus · HN ↗
      I think people just latch onto ideas that try to simplify and make sense of frustrating situations where they dont have control. &quot;Ghost jobs&quot; are thing to blame now, for a while is was that taxcode thing for software engineers.
      1. johnnyanmac · · focus · HN ↗
        Well, no one else is making sense of it (or rather, the real answer is something we can&#x27;t say), so people will do their own data gatherings and report their findings.

        The only issue is that it&#x27;s never one factor. Rising interest rates, s174, ghost jobs, outsourcing: them and many more factors all add up.

    4. guywithahat · · focus · HN ↗
      I see this for experienced roles too, especially where pay isn&#x27;t super competitive. If you need a lead software engineer in a certain city for a certain salary, that often means waiting months for them to come across it. 10 junior engineers may apply but ultimately they just can&#x27;t perform the role required
    5. rubatrejo · · focus · HN ↗

      [dead]

    6. nitwit005 · · focus · HN ↗
      Then you&#x27;d still only have a small number of roles up, not the thousands of positions the article is showing for some companies. They&#x27;d be hiring hundreds of thousands a year if they were constantly interviewing for all of them, and I don&#x27;t believe O&#x27;Reilly Auto Parts is recruiting people as quickly as a nation at war.
      1. shagie · · focus · HN ↗
        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;careers.oreillyauto.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;c&#x2F;information-technology-jobs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;careers.oreillyauto.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;c&#x2F;information-technolo...

        They&#x27;ve got a few open spots if you&#x27;re interested in relocating to Springfield, MO (and even some entry level IT positions <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;careers.oreillyauto.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;job&#x2F;R203370&#x2F;IT-Support-Analyst-I-Onsite-Position" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;careers.oreillyauto.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;job&#x2F;R203370&#x2F;IT-Support... - that one was posted 09&#x2F;21&#x2F;2026)

        1. georgel · · focus · HN ↗
          When I lived in the area about 6 years ago, I had 3rd party recruiters reach out to me about roles that they don&#x27;t list. The whole region it felt like was 70% contractors (W-2 with the contracting firm), until the company really liked you and bought out your contract and converted you to an actual employee.

          Surprisingly I had better benefits at the two contracting firms than what employees were getting.

        2. bluecheese452 · · focus · HN ↗
          That is point, these are fake roles.
    7. mindtricks · · focus · HN ↗
      I&#x27;m curious, for the niche or senior roles, have you personally read through the resumes or do you depend on the recruiter? I hear you on the entry and early-career jobs, but I see Director and VP roles also open for months. With all the layoffs, it&#x27;s hard to belief there is not SOME talent in there worth hiring or at least training up.
    8. legitster · · focus · HN ↗
      As someone with a niche job and title (and comes pretty decorated), I would expect to hear back on my applications more often and yet I get nothing either. There are some prominent companies (cough Figma, Smartsheet, Stripe cough) who literally have had an open role for exactly my job for nearly 3+ years without filling it.

      Maybe I&#x27;m thinking a bit too much of myself, but it doesn&#x27;t seem like they are that interested in really filling it.

      1. ak6te · · focus · HN ↗
        This is probably too broad a category for anecdata to mean much, but just to balance the scales I&#x27;ve recently started looking in a job category that I thought was niche, but not that niche. I&#x27;ve heard back from something like 11&#x2F;13 applications, often the same or next day.
        1. smcg · · focus · HN ↗
          That&#x27;s unusual. Most applicants are sending out dozens or hundreds of applications for a sub-20% response rate.
    9. thesuitonym · · focus · HN ↗
      This is exactly why hiring is such a mess, lazy managers who don&#x27;t want to repost job listings or put any effort into hiring. Job seekers need to apply to thousands of jobs because they have no way of knowing if a company is actually hiring. Which means hiring managers (who we have already established are lazy) now are incentivised to find ways to not look at resumes.
    10. mandeepj · · focus · HN ↗

      [dead]

      1. mjr00 · · focus · HN ↗
        I&#x27;ve done hiring at AWS and many other companies and the OP is 100% accurate, so I don&#x27;t know why you speak with such confidence

        You could argue that AWS doesn&#x27;t know what they&#x27;re doing but they also hire way more software developers than all but a handful of other companies

    11. ndiddy · · focus · HN ↗
      You also have to deal with delusional hiring managers. A few months ago I remember seeing a comment on here from someone who had kept job listings up for years while hiring because he couldn&#x27;t find anyone with the &quot;right experience&quot;. Clearly there was no actual imminent need to fill the role and he was just hoping that some superstar would stumble across it, but he kept insisting that this counted as &quot;really hiring for the role&quot;.
      1. ghostly_s · · focus · HN ↗
        aka the person willing to work for a fraction of their worth.
    12. juneyi · · focus · HN ↗
      agree. am working somewhere that does the same. we can&#x27;t find enough of the right engineers to join and it&#x27;s been a long&#x2F;slow journey. hiring can be tough for both sides (speaking of those looking for the other side).
    13. jghn · · focus · HN ↗
      Another confounder is the opposite. When I&#x27;ve been hiring I&#x27;d often open up different public recs for the same role to cast a broader net. Some people self identify with certain terms and may not realize they&#x27;d be a fit.

      So what would happen is I&#x27;d have say 10 real openings, I may have 5 different job postings, and all of them would stay open until I filled all 10 openings.

    14. robotpepi · · focus · HN ↗
      This doesn&#x27;t make any sense. You try to explain a 28% by arguing based on edge cases.
    15. probably_wrong · · focus · HN ↗
      I was recently job searching and roughly 50% of all jobs ghosted me. Just an automated email and then... silence. And when applying via LinkedIn only ~5% of companies even opened my application.

      I can believe that your company has a good reason for keeping the job up, but I also know that some job ads are black holes were no one bothers to do the bare minimum including taking the posting down. I have no idea how to differentiate one from the other.

      1. IshKebab · · focus · HN ↗
        50% is a pretty damn good response rate! I wouldn&#x27;t complain about that.

        It&#x27;s not surprising about LinkedIn. They&#x27;ve made applying for jobs too easy so there&#x27;s too much noise. I wouldn&#x27;t bother applying for jobs there. LinkedIn is great for recruiters though - just put some effort into your profile, set it to &quot;looking for work&quot;, and then reply to interesting recruiter spam. That&#x27;s how I got my last 3 jobs.

        1. juneyi · · focus · HN ↗
          extremely good, my stats have been generally 5-10% response rate for just screenings in the course of over 4 times when i was looking for new roles. each time sent anywhere between 200 - 400 applications. and that&#x27;s just for calls to get to recruiter or hiring manager
        2. perganomoly · · focus · HN ↗
          You mean “Open to Work”? If yes, did you turn on the green ring around your profile pic?
          1. IshKebab · · focus · HN ↗
            Yeah exactly. I don&#x27;t know what the green ring is so.. no!
    16. moralestapia · · focus · HN ↗
      I don&#x27;t think you&#x27;ve actually done any hiring.

      Companies don&#x27;t need a &quot;software engineer&quot; x100.

      Large companies have teams, and every team puts out a different job description based on their particular requirements, stack, desired experience, etc.

      I&#x27;ve never encountered a scenario where someone wants engineers in bulk and then they&#x27;ll decide where to place them within the organization.

      1. senordevnyc · · focus · HN ↗
        Multiple big tech companies have historically done exactly this. I got hired at a public tech company as an iOS engineer in 2020 and they made an offer, I accepted, and then I got to meet with the managers of several teams and pick the one I wanted to work with. Single job posting.
      2. sokoloff · · focus · HN ↗
        Almost every place when I’ve done campus recruiting treats it like bulk hiring of good raw talent. I hated it when I first saw it on the employer side, but it’s pretty practical.
    17. basscomm · · focus · HN ↗
      &gt; If we decide we&#x27;re going to grow headcount by 10 senior software engineers, we don&#x27;t copy and paste the same job listing 10 times. We leave it open and collect resumes through that. At a large or fast growing company, we might never stop interviewing and hiring senior software engineers. The listing stays open for a year or more.

      How on earth am I, a potential job seeker, supposed to be able to figure out if your year-old job posting is still up because you: couldn&#x27;t find anyone after a year, are constantly hiring and never take it down, actually hired your quota six months ago and HR forgot to take the listing down, the job listing isn&#x27;t for a real job and is just a trap to collect resumes, the listing is for a ghost job to placate the overworked current staff, some other reason?

      1. bartread · · focus · HN ↗
        I mean, in 26 years in the industry I’ve never worked anywhere that kept ads up for jobs that had already been filled. Not even on their own websites where hosting those ads is effectively free (as opposed to LinkedIn et al where you have to pay).

        I’m not saying there are no companies that keep non-live job ads up purely for fishing purposes but, in my experience, it’s not the norm. It would really piss jobseekers off and that’s the kind of word that tends to get around and make it harder to hire in future. Maybe not if you’re a FAANG, because so many people want to work for you anyway, but it’s going to cause problems for “normal” companies.

        1. basscomm · · focus · HN ↗
          Anecdotes are not data, etc, but several years ago I worked for a mom &amp; pop company that conducted interviews with people for a job that didn&#x27;t exist &#x27;just to see what was out there&#x27;, so stuff like that definitely does happen. (That place eventually went out of business for unrelated reasons)
        2. Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
          <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.resumebuilder.com&#x2F;3-in-10-companies-currently-have-fake-job-posting-listed&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.resumebuilder.com&#x2F;3-in-10-companies-currently-ha...

          2024.

        3. lokar · · focus · HN ↗
          I worked at several FAANG and similar companies for 20 years. We were always hiring from new grad up to principal. Just a handful of generic position descriptions.
        4. ghostly_s · · focus · HN ↗
          I think the more common case is listings that are technically &quot;open&quot; but due to slow internal processes, repositioning, etc etc, no work is being done towards filling them that is visible to candidates.

          For example, I&#x27;ve personally witnessed situations where the funding for a role gets postponed to next quarter, but my manager just kept it open anyway, either out of fear of missing out on the perfect candidate if they stopped accepting apps, or because it&#x27;s simply easier than going through the HR process to re-post it in a month.

    18. dzonga · · focus · HN ↗
      having experienced the UK &amp; US markets - I can tell you within the startup cohort those using lever &#x2F; Ashby etc - it&#x27;s not that they have multiple positions - but they&#x27;re tryna pull an illusion of growth specially in the UK market.

      because luckily in the UK market - companies books are open to the public.

    19. devy · · focus · HN ↗
      The article is a content marketing piece. The goal is to attract attention, not necessarily to be precise or accurate
    20. throwaway27448 · · focus · HN ↗
      &gt; We leave it open and collect resumes through that.

      This is really shitty behavior. If you aren&#x27;t hiring, remove the posting.

      1. shaewest · · focus · HN ↗
        How is it shitty behaviour. &quot;I are hiring 10 people, we won&#x27;t remove the job listing until 10 people are hired.&quot;
        1. throwaway27448 · · focus · HN ↗
          If I apply to a job, I expect you to get back to me within the week. Anything else is just disrespectful to me and wasting my time.
          1. sokoloff · · focus · HN ↗
            I agree that every applicant should get a response (probably 2, 1 immediately of “hey, got your application” and a second of “not proceeding” or “we’d like to talk”).

            I think one thing that job seekers often miss is just how ridiculous the firehouse of low quality applications is. They know they’re competent, but they can’t accurately estimate how many others aren’t and have built up (or borrowed) machinery that lets them apply to hundreds of job postings per day. That level of noise is what causes things to have to be automated on the inbound side as well and where automated scoring tools or gates before talking to an actual human come from.

            I still agree you should get a reply, but the first two are overwhelmingly likely to be automated.

    21. harry8 · · focus · HN ↗
      Can’t be bothered to update a job ad on your own websites. Can’t be bothered to respond to applicants.

      WTF do these people doing hiring actually do?

      I mean, naïvely you’d think encouraging more higher quality applicants would be important somehow, but no.

    22. cdavid · · focus · HN ↗
      This is not done everywhere. I&#x27;ve never hired in the US, but worked for companies in Europe and JP, from &lt;100 people companies to FAANG, and all of them opened dedicated listing for every position we had to fill.
      1. sokoloff · · focus · HN ↗
        We do a hybrid of both. Internally, we have a specific job&#x2F;position code, and externally we have job descriptions posted.

        If we’re hiring 10 senior software engineers, I’ll have 10 position IDs at the start, but we’ll only have one job posting for Senior Software Engineer (assuming there is no difference in the JD).

        I can’t imagine going onto a company site that’s hiring 10 Senior SWEs and seeing 10 identical listings. That would make me doubt their competence.

    23. justinator · · focus · HN ↗
      &gt;If we decide we&#x27;re going to grow headcount by 10 senior software engineers, we don&#x27;t copy and paste the same job listing 10 times.

      I&#x27;m not confused that&#x27;s just a red flag not to work for your company.

      1. jarito · · focus · HN ↗
        Umm...why? Consider the alternate approach. What if I listed 10 Sr Software Eng roles. What would job seekers do? If you said &#x27;apply to all of them&#x27;, you&#x27;d be right. In general, the same recruiter will be responsible for all applications for the same role (e.g. all sr software engineers). There is no benefit to anyone in having the same resume in there 10 times.
        1. justinator · · focus · HN ↗
          If you are, for a year, constantly hiring senior software engineers? That tells me you&#x27;re just throwing engineers at problems, which is not how problems are solved elegantly. That&#x27;s sliding into Brook&#x27;s Law.
          1. jarito · · focus · HN ↗
            A quick google puts the tech annual turnover rate at 13% - 25%. Let&#x27;s assume 10% just to be safe. Let&#x27;s also define &#x27;senior&#x27; engineer to be a Software Engineer 4 and above (so not 1-3) - that seems pretty common in terms of titles.

            If you have a 100 person eng team split into 10 person teams. You will likely need one to two senior engineers per team. That means you are probably replacing 1-2 a year.

            Now scale this to a larger company. Amazon has 100k engineers, Apple has 40k - 50k. Even outside of tech, Chase bank has 60k, even Target has 5k.

            At the low end of that, a 5k engineering team (still assuming 10 per team and 1-2 of those are seniors) will have 500 - 1000 senior engineers. If they are attriting at 10%, then we would need 50 - 100 senior engineers a year. Hiring senior talent usually takes 3 - 9 months, so you&#x27;d easily need 10 open recs all the time just to keep your team at the same size.

            This is pretty generous. Given remote work, the % of senior engineers has gone up, a 10 person average team size is still high, and I used 10% attrit which is low according to the average. Most large companies have large eng teams these days :).

    24. ppeetteerr · · focus · HN ↗
      As a hiring manager, I approve this message.
    25. chaosharmonic · · focus · HN ↗
      That seems like something you could pretty easily solve for by just specifying that it&#x27;s for multiple hires, or that the post is evergreen.

      I don&#x27;t think anyone reasonable is saying that you can&#x27;t or shouldn&#x27;t be able to do that -- just that there should be good faith disclosures.

    26. kakacik · · focus · HN ↗
      Yeah my hiring into current job (bank) took 6 months. I even quit the previous job, and date of start kept pushing. Job post was still there.

      At one point I flatly threatened to hiring agency I am quitting the process if this goes on further, and all was finished within a week or two.

      Corporations work in mysterious (aka chaotic) ways. Even though it usually boils down to specific manager being lazy ass.

    27. rayiner · · focus · HN ↗
      Nobody is confused. It’s propaganda to justify further immigration to flood the labor market and, these days, additionally to quell fears about AI-related job losses.
    28. _DeadFred_ · · focus · HN ↗
      Then post a disclaimer that this is a generic position post to gather resumes. Don&#x27;t publish lies to people that a role is open.
    29. red-iron-pine · · focus · HN ↗
      I dispute this. I have done hiring, and each listing was one-to-one tied to a role inside the CRM and talent trackers.

      But to find the actual candidate who fills the role? yeah potentially months.

      Entry to mid level was exploding -- 800+ applicants each time -- but for mid-to-high or manager roles we&#x27;d get 40 apps and maybe 2 were fits.

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