22% Drop in Programming Jobs
63 comments
·March 17, 2025csomar
trescenzi
It is clickbait, assuming you don’t know the distinction between a developer and a programmer. If you do it’s actually a pretty solid title. I’d argue it’s worth a read because the main point is very good.
I think the core distinction is important and gets at what LLMs are and are not good at. LLMs are good at translating clear specifications into common programming languages. That is what a programmer, by the BLS’ definition, does. The hard part of being a software dev never has been writing the code.
They are claiming that the act of programming is in the process of being replaced. That seems somewhat likely. However they aren’t saying that overall tech industry jobs nor even software dev jobs are decreasing.
SpicyLemonZest
The problem is that I don't think this distinction actually exists outside the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The obvious hypothesis to me, which the source article doesn't seem to consider, is that this statistic isn't measuring anything other than a change in fashionable job titles.
williamdclt
This is literally the first time that I hear someone making any difference between “programmer” and “developer”. Hell I don’t even think I’ve ever heard a difference with “software engineer”, apart from countries where engineer is a protected title
redeux
If we assume programmer and software developer are the same job and there's been a 22% drop in programmers without a corresponding increase in devs, then it still seems like a net job loss?
trescenzi
I’ve been asked multiple times in interviews what I think the difference between a dev/engineer and a programmer is. As a hiring manager I’ve also had people ask me the question as a way to get at role expectations. These were all at smaller companies though and on the East Coast so it might be a small vs big company thing? But it’s definitively not just a BLS understanding of job roles.
I do agree with your hypothesis though. The article doesn’t even account for the software engineer title either.
jt2190
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) definitions:
“Computer Programmer”: https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes151251.htm
“Software Developer”: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm
infecto
Agree on the click bait title but it did not save me a click. For those wondering more. There is some distinction, which I still do not fully comprehend between "programming" which is grunt work and "developer" which is ingesting requirements and coding on top of working with "programmers" to implement a client needs. If someone has more insight on the distinction I would love to understand because it could be interesting if programmer was the initial stepping stone into developer.
ziddoap
>The distinction between programmer and software developer in government definition
To save the click on what this means specifically:
"In the government’s schema, programmers do the grunt work while the much more numerous — and much faster-growing — software developers enjoy a broader remit. They figure out what clients need, design solutions and work with folks such as programmers and hardware engineers to implement them."
osigurdson
>> while programmers do in fact program, they “work from specifications drawn up by software and web developers or other individuals.” That seems like a clue.
I wonder if this conclusion is drawn from keyword searches on job postings. It is true that not many position titles these days include "programmer" - usually it is software engineer or developer. Of course, there is no difference other than terminology has shifted.
onion2k
22% drop in programming jobs, but only a 0.3% drop in developer jobs. It's an interesting point of differentiation. I imagine there's a lot more developers than programmers when you're being pedantic about it.
jdlyga
I'm sure there's a more formal distinction. But I've noticed younger developers don't call themselves programmers anymore. Computer programmer was always the "what do you want to be when you grow up?" job title for kids into computers and coding, but that's changed.
rendaw
What's the difference between programming and software development? I can't read the article.
onion2k
From the article
In the government’s schema, programmers do the grunt work while the much more numerous — and much faster-growing — software developers enjoy a broader remit. They figure out what clients need, design solutions and work with folks such as programmers and hardware engineers to implement them.
jmclnx
At one time these were called System Analyst. Is that no longer a thing ?
OJFord
Honestly I'm more confused as with that. Seems like 'bureaucrats who grew up without PCs try to explain job' more than anything.
To be fair other engineering disciplines do typically separate the engineers from the technicians in basically that ('design vs do') way.
Izkata
The last part sounds to me like some sort of weird combination of manager and product owner instead of anyone who touches the code.
tucnak
I imagine it's counting the PM's, infrastructure and support staff...
conceptme
and how many software engineers, in my eyes they are still the same thing :P but I am old.
lIl-IIIl
This article is so ridiculous it really make me think of Gilman Amnesia Effect and makes me question other newspaper reporting. I definitely won't be trusting anything I read in WP's "Department of Data" column from now on.
The claim that the level of programmers is now as low as it was in the 80's is ridiculous.
The author could instead make and article about the terminology change over time but that would be a boring topic for a general purpose newspaper.
exiguus
How was the increase in descries in the last 10 years? During corona was a peak, now it goes down.
puppycodes
This article is like someone starting to do a stats problem, realizing they screwed up and then going "OK done!"
osigurdson
I remember looking at BLS statistics 10-15 years ago and pondered why they meant by "programmer" vs "software developer" jobs. After all, even back then, programmers were on the decline.
Is a "programmer" someone who enters machine code instructions via toggle switches? I suppose that could have been a job in the 50s perhaps.
aantix
This number feels too low..
I have some amazing developer friends in the U.S. that are still out of a job, 9 months later.
drpossum
Maybe your judgement about your developer friends or your trust of in the ability of the industry to evaluate developers is wrong.
belter
It's not AI:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXDETPSOFTDEVE
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXAUTPSOFTDEVE
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPITOPHE
Companies and VC's with unrealistic valuations will spin it as such.
rbultje
There's also section-174, which big corporations don't care about but kills smaller businesses left and right.
hhh
I mean, section 174 was a big deal to the large corp I'm in when it was getting started. We had to clarify R&D time separately.
jordanb
I hear a lot of static about this on hacker news and nowhere else.
I work for a large company and we were already capitalizing the time we spent developing software. From an accounting perspective it makes sense that software development effort produces a semi-durable asset that a company can use, sell, etc.
For smaller companies, the math is the same.
For startups very specifically, who expect to go to the moon or go bust in 5 years, I can believe that having a lower initial burn rate (because they could represent all developer salaries as opex and deduct in the immediate calendar year) was beneficial.
Also, the tax law changes actually disincentivize offshoring software development by requiring an absurdly long amortization schedule for foreign-developed software. Yet offshoring is currently as intense as it has ever been since the early 2000s. (If we expect the tax law changes to have a big effect on developer hiring, we would expect a decrease in offshoring given the disincentives).
somenameforme
FRED enables combining (and tweaking/scaling/etc) charts pretty easily on their site. Check out the 'edit graph' button. You can use the ID's of the individual charts (like IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE) when searching for a table to add.
Here are those 4 tables combined: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1EDHP
belter
Nice tip. Thanks.
kfk
I wonder how much of this drop can be simply explained as having reached a certain industry maturity. I assume at some point most of the fundamentals are in place, so we need less people?
AlchemistCamp
Programming isn't an industry, per se. It's a skill, like accounting, sales, communications or law. There are definitely many businesses for which it's a core strength, but any large company has some need for it.
jordanb
Maturity is definitely an issue. If you listen to what the industry is selling these days it's pretty much just AI. Before that it was DeFi and VR. There hasn't been a new smartphone since.. the smartphone.
I have more thoughts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41495082
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brianwawok
I think programmer is the last job I would replace with AI.
fancyfredbot
That sounds like something a programmer would say.
JKCalhoun
That's funny, but I also don't doubt that the industry, should it pursue this path, is going to be on a hiring spree to get engineers back to fix the mess they've wrought a few years from now.
littlestymaar
As expected, the end of the ZIRP has hit startups hard.
thr0w
And will continue to, I think. There's probably a long tail of startups that raised near the end of zirp and will have their runway diminish over the course of the next few years.
submeta
In the past week, I used Cursor to make significant changes to a larger project, which led me to cancel a contract with a consulting firm. Then, almost spontaneously, I built a digital requests platform with thirty forms for our company—an MVP that turned out to be quite solid.
On the weekend, I put together a site for my spouse where she can submit URLs from paywalled articles, receive an AI-generated summary, and get an archive.is link—just a fun side project. And since I was on a roll, I also built a new UI for my thousands of notes in Obsidian: a three-pane viewer with a list, note preview, and folder navigation.
All of this, simply because I can. It really makes me wonder what this means for the software job market. This article offers some perspective.
profsummergig
Very cool. The AI-generated summary, do you have to pay for an API for that or are these kinds of services available free these days?
submeta
I use my openai api key. Only my wife an I use the site.
In my case the app sends the summary to my Obsidian vault as well and creates a new note, if I ask it to.
I feel like we're in crazy times. I feel like I can implement whatever I think of with a hundred devs at my fingertips. The only limit is my time and imagination.
To save you wasting 10 minutes: The distinction between programmer and software developer in government definition, led to "programming" jobs dropping by 22%. This doesn't affect the "Software development" industry which saw only a 0.3% drop.
It is really a click bait.