The format is editable. The line chart seems always to be scaled so the minima is at the bottom, but you can get the zero point by changing it to bars.
The options do seem a bit idiosyncratic, but I guess they are useful for the kind of data the site users usually look at.
Broken axes aren't the solution. Starting from 0 is but nobody making graphs seems to understand or, in the case of journalists, they're trying to mislead their readers. I suppose readers enjoy being awed by dramatically changing graphs too.
It would also be nice to include a shaded area for the first standard deviation over a relevant period of time to get an idea of how far outside normal it is.
In my unhinged pipedreams, we’d have some sort of standard for conveying the data directly so users could use browser settings to decide how to display the data. There like a dozen people in the world that would use it, but they’d really really enjoy it I bet.
It's usually intentional so they're not going to show more information to reveal that their narrative is weak or wrong. It's up to the reader to think critically because journalists are constantly trying to fool them with true facts presented in a misleading way.
Readers are guilty too - they like to see wiggly lines wiggle. Nobody wants to see a graph that's just a horizontal line or shaded band. We want to peer harder at it to tease out any sort of signal that can tell our emotional brains "good" or "bad".
But it essentially shows the same thing, the covid overhiring boom and then layoff cycle post-covid is over. And jobs are rising again.
What’s absolutely mind blowing to me though…the idea AI isn’t causing software engineering jobs to collapse…which you would think would make people here happy…is something that makes software engineers upset??
It’s almost as if everyone here has married their identity to the idea they are victims of AI progress and any suggestion otherwise is ego destruction.
”What??? You mean the job market is expanding and the reason I can’t find a job is…me? That can’t possibly be true I’m a genius, the data is clearly wrong!”
