@rands macOS & window positions for me - though it's not enough to push me back to using Windows.

@webhat I don't think that what's going on is limited to the US only, so I intentionally didn't ask for US only in the poll.

I'm seeing a lot of the same things from people in CA, UK, etc., so getting a rough feel for reality across the tech sector is probably the best one could hope for out of a poll like this.

@g Exactly. The real question is, how many? Based on conversations I've had, the number of people looking on LinkedIn, etc., this seems to be worse than what I saw after the .com bubble in the early '00s.

My goal with this poll is to surface what I suspect is actually happening: the number of people that are either unemployed or underemployed is actually a fair bit higher than what's being reported.

Either from not filing for unemployment benefits, amount of time spent looking, or otherwise having fallen through the cracks of how reporting is done.

Something more complex seems to be going on with employment, and especially in the tech sector. Something that's being missed in official numbers.

I suspect that current unemployment numbers are missing something. The numbers don't seem to reflect the reality I'm seeing on here or on LinkedIn. The number of people looking is higher than I've seen in my career, but the official numbers aren't that bad (4.6% in the US). So let's run a little unscientific experiment.

If you work in tech, or something broadly tech-adjacent, please vote and boost for reach.

I'm toying with an update to the design of my site. Darker colour scheme (when in dark mode), and adding a header image to the page. A photo I took of a colonial-era building near Savannah, GA.

Thoughts? Is this better? Too dark? I think it's an improvement, though while the colours line up with the image, they do seem a bit boring.

I expect software engineering will see a similar but less drastic decline driven by AI automation. We’re at phase 1 of the decline where entry level jobs have essentially disappeared and salaries have declined over the past three years (both nominal & inflation adjusted).

What’s unclear is what’s the bottom on both tech employment and compensation decline.

@Sempf In all fairness, it's probably needed. The current approach isn't exactly working out great.

@Sempf I'm still a big fan of the older user-agent model of a browser: it's acting on my behalf and works the way I want it to. For example, I use a wide variety of filters to block ads and other annoyances.

It's not uncommon for me to avoid dedicated apps so that I can user the browser with the filters I want - so that I can customise things to work for me, not necessarily the publisher.

This seems to be a move to less control / influence by users over the experience.

10 months ago, I wrote "Millions of Jobs - or: On AI, Job Creation & Destruction, and The Race to Oblivion" - a looked at the likely long-term impacts of generative AI on the job market. Looking back at the economy over the the year, I think it's aging well. https://adamcaudill.com/2025/01/30/millions-of-jobs/

I've spent the last 3 hours reworking how I handle related content in my blog, such as improving keyword extraction and the UI where they are displayed.

Thanks to ADHD, I'm pretty sure that I meant to be doing something else before I went down that rabbit hole - and I've no idea what that was now. Oh, the joys of ADHD.

@catsalad I tend to use colour, though not entirely consistently.

I largely learned to read & spell from older books written in UK English despite living in the US. So after spending far too many years trying & failing to fully switch to American English, I gave up and went with what's more natural for me - UK English (and generally older forms).

So, I'm weird.

@Xavier it was very much designed as a spiritual successor to Factorio - it’s a top of fun, clever writing, and really nicely executed game mechanics.

And just mildly addictive. I love it.

Clear sign that someone has spent too much time playing Satisfactory: seeing simple problems and thinking "you know, a conveyor belt would solve that."

For those that haven't played the game: pretty much anything can be solved with enough conveyor belts. My most recent game has hundreds of miles of them.

@codinghorror Thank you for posting this, it helped me form the ending of a blog post that I've been working on for some time now.

I used this as a quote in the post, I hope you don't mind. https://infosec.exchange/@adam_caudill/115699362394692554

New, by me: "Good Faith, Moral Duty, and Selfishness" - an essay exploring the complexities of a simple question, what we owe each other, and why some people seem to have so much difficulty with this.

This started in 2020 on COVID-19 vaccines, and has expanded to be much more. Despite working on this on and off for years, it's a short essay, and does oversimplify in places, but I do think that it should be thought provoking. https://adamcaudill.com/2025/12/10/good-faith-moral-duty-and-selfishness/

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@codinghorror/114355800643182191

If we do not stop to help each other, what will we become?

@SecurityWriter I've lived in many parts of the US, and was just talking about something related with a family member earlier today (specifically how nobody can identify my accent, as it's a mix of various regions).

The regional differences in the US are substantial, to the point that some regional mixes make it extremely difficult for people to understand each other. As an example, I'm quite comfortable with Appalachian dialects, but struggle a bit with certain mid-western variances (especially when spoken at high speed).

And this is before adding region-specific term usage to the mix (e.g. pop/soda/cola/Coke for a soft-drink).

In my experience, this is very much magnified by generation / education, as these differences tend to become a bit smoother and more subtle in both people that are younger and better educated. Some of the schools I attended as a child worked to eliminate some of these quite overtly.

@speculaas Coffee, a long lunch, and a quiet walk in a park enjoying nature. Or at least that's what I'd do.

I just got an email letting me know that a feature I requested in an application has been implemented: 15 years after requesting it.

Thanks for remembering, I guess.