[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)
For those laid off, how is the job hunt going? I haven't been able
to start yet, but likely this next week I'll start studying and
getting ready.
Author : thunkle
Score : 214 points
Date : 2022-11-26 19:01 UTC (3 hours ago)
| echelon wrote:
| I know this may not be the correct thread for this, and hope it
| doesn't come across as not being empathetic:
|
| I'm paying $100/hr (negotiable) for skills in { Rust/Actix
| webdev, Unreal Engine plugin development, computer vision, audio
| processing, signal processing, ML }. These roles will convert to
| salary/equity later on, once the project outgrows my ability to
| self-fund.
|
| We're building a cloud-based AI film and music production suite.
|
| https://storyteller.io
|
| In any case, I'm sorry to anyone impacted by this down tech
| cycle. The world will get back to its senses, and tech will
| continue to eat everything else not-tech.
|
| Edit: I broke the contact form. Email me directly.
| echelon@gmail.com
| lukaesch wrote:
| May I ask why you use rust/actix for web dev?
| vogt wrote:
| Pretty cool product. I don't have any of the skills you listed
| or anything, just wanted to say this looks neat. Also looks
| like something built by people very familiar with the space
| they're in, which is always a huge plus in my book when
| evaluating startups.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I was laid off from an over leveraged startup-type company you
| haven't heard of.
|
| The search so far has been pretty bad. Probably in part because
| of the timing (a week before thanksgiving, but it's the same
| story every time. Any job I want I won't get and any job I don't
| want I can get.
|
| I expect things to maybe pick up a little in early December, but
| I'm honestly kinda defeated. My last job was far from perfect,
| but I was planning on using to save up the industry afterwards
| which ofc won't happen now, at least not in the timeframe I
| envisioned. Worst case I have to accept a pay cut that will nip
| those plans very quickly.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Hang in there, it's only been one week?
| the_only_law wrote:
| Been about two now. I imagine things will pick up in a month
| or so, but I was completely blindsided. I'm not prepared to
| apply for jobs, interview or anything and will likely have a
| harder time finding a job that's not worse than my previous.
| holografix wrote:
| tl;dr some people hiring but December is going to slow you right
| down. Wait for Jan.
|
| Applied for a small pre-ipo biz lately, I'm over qualified for
| the position and respectfully let them know that I'd expect a
| very clear and direct path to a more senior position in max 12
| months.
|
| Interview process is slow but ongoing. I was told that it prob
| won't happen before Jan.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Not great. I have been to last rounds with several large
| companies and then just get ghosted. Honestly have been
| interviewing for like 9 months (7 months before getting laid off)
| [deleted]
| fatnoah wrote:
| I was laid off as part of a layoff large enough to trigger the
| WARN act, so I was put on garden leave for 60 days.. I was
| fortunate to find a new job and start it exactly as the garden
| leave expired.
|
| It was my first job search in the post-COVID era, aka the era of
| remote work, and wow was it different. Traditionally, I'd see a
| handful of jobs that looked interesting each week, and would be
| one of a handful of applicants. Now that geography isn't really a
| barrier, there were far more options, but far more applicants.
| I'd see 20+ roles per week that were a good fit, but each would
| have 40-200+ applicants, even for the senior (Director/VP) level
| roles I was looking for.
|
| I've got over 20 years experience from startup to massive tech
| companies, and applied to 58 jobs. 12 of those led to an initial
| discussiopn with a recruiter, and 3 of those led to a full
| interview loop and 1 job offer.
|
| Since accepting the job offer, I've heard from 4 more of the
| companies I applied to and they were interested in going forward
| with the process. For each, it was at least 5 weeks since my
| initial application.
| moneywoes wrote:
| May I ask what job boards you are frequenting?
|
| Happy to hear you got back on your feat so quickly
| kristopolous wrote:
| Let me show you the backdoor:
|
| Find a company whose open source projects you are interested in.
| Dive in and and start fixing things. Then if you really like it
| after a couple weeks start nudging around for a job. If you do
| good work they'll just give it to you, no bullshit funnel
| required.
|
| I like this method because you aren't just doing l33t coding
| exercises to work on some sight unseen codebase that makes you
| suicidal and throw you into existential crisis.
|
| In this modality you are test driving each other.
| jerrygenser wrote:
| I have started using dapr by Microsoft which has a very active
| small community and increasing adoption. Becoming proficient in
| using a tool like this and also becoming a contributor is an
| example of being in demand for the companies that might be
| using it if it doesn't mean working specifically for MSFT or
| one of the other corporate sponsors.
|
| Another strategy for getting intro to users of OSS software is
| to join discord and start offering help and then possibly
| leveraging that to mention the help could be more permanent.
|
| Do be careful though not to be explicitly soliciting since that
| is usually against the community policies so a little bit of a
| needle to thread.
| turdprincess wrote:
| Curious if you have done this yourself
| giomasce wrote:
| Not GP, but I have and it worked. Pretty happy of the job I
| have, working of free software in a great environment.
| will_wright wrote:
| Im not sure why you are getting so many negative comments. For
| those that are interested in open source, and would be
| contributing to projects regardless, I think this is a great
| idea. Also, it sounds like a good way to distract oneself from
| the normal expectations/disappointment cycle of interviewing
|
| "Doing work for free", as some others have pointed out in a
| negative light, is fundamental to how modern software works. If
| you're not contributing then you're profiting off of the
| minority that does...
| darcys22 wrote:
| Can confirm, this is how i got my current job. Its a great
| path, especially for those with no experience and straight out
| of university
| SCUSKU wrote:
| What did you contribute to? And how substantial were your
| contributions?
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Yup can confirm, after a decent contribution to a known apache
| project, had three well known companies reach out, two of which
| the engineering manager was the one reaching out.
| azmodeus wrote:
| Would love to know more. What project was it? Did you
| contribute wanting a job or was interested any way? Did you
| get a job through this strategy?
| suprjami wrote:
| This is definitely one way to get job, but in my experience
| watching others do it, a "couple of weeks" is more on the
| timeframe of a "couple of years" when someone else leaves to
| make a position available.
| runarberg wrote:
| Please don't do this. We don't need workers to do our work for
| free. It will make it harder for the rest of us to find jobs
| (or even getting paid for our current one).
|
| If you want to contribute to open source, do so with the mind
| that you are helping a shared community (or maybe just for
| fun). Don't do it because you think it will help you get a job
| (I'm not even sure parent is correct that it will).
| damienwebdev wrote:
| I actively hire this way.
| culi wrote:
| Do you give the newhires backpay?
|
| Mostly joking but I don't think such a bonus is a crazy idea
| [deleted]
| throwaway20382 wrote:
| This is _exactly_ what my gardener did. One day someone went to
| my home and started mowing it. I watched. After 4 months of
| free mowing, he started doing my hedges. I started to talk to
| other people in my house: "hey we should hire this guy". My
| wife said "wtf for, he is free? right?" Eventually, I was
| worried he would start doing free work somewhere else so we
| hired him - but not for much. He is a great gardener. /s
| robotresearcher wrote:
| The parable of Linus the Gardener.
| sva_ wrote:
| This sounds like you're suggesting people work for free for the
| hope of potentially being hired by an employer. I think that is
| pretty pathetic.
| briga wrote:
| I mean, even if they don't get hired they're still
| contributing to open-source. Seems like a good outcome either
| way
| ctvo wrote:
| This 1 weird trick of doing free work and hoping they 1) have
| headcount 2) pay attention / see value in your free work.
|
| > ... you are test driving each other.
|
| Unless you think the way they run their open source projects is
| the way their entire company works, you're really not.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| If you need to practice leetcode like things for interviews,
| aren't you also doing free 'work'? Only in that case it's
| more proof-of-work than something actually useful. Perhaps
| one could point at the openly viewable results when talking
| to other companies.
|
| The strategy strikes me as a little weird but not crazy. If
| you like open source already, it might make a lot of sense.
| culi wrote:
| > If you need to practice leetcode like things for
| interviews, aren't you also doing free 'work'? Only in that
| case it's more proof-of-work than something actually
| useful.
|
| This might be true, but at least the skills are easy to
| show off on a resume and will help you with other
| interviews. Open-source contributions might vary
| drastically in nature and might be harder to leverage as
| experience/proof of skill
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Not all is lost if you don't end up getting a job with them.
| Open source work makes for great resume bullets.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Willing to try this. Know any open source projects that people
| are hiring for?
| JCharante wrote:
| I think you misunderstand
|
| Real world example: my company has our react UI library open
| sourced. I don't think outside the org uses it, but it's an
| open source project "owned" by a company. Another example
| would be something like React.
| tschellenbach wrote:
| We're hiring, but very slowly/carefully atm
| (https://getstream.io/team/). It's insane, similar companies to
| us used to raise $100-$200M with our metrics, at the moment i'm
| not even trying to raise additional capital. On the other hands
| it's nice that there is less hype and you can just focus on
| building and real progress.
| hawk_ wrote:
| Nice. What's the compensation range for toys role in Remote
| (EMEA) or AMS? https://getstream.io/careers/job/4617451003/
| zerr wrote:
| Are only the people with FANG-like compensations (200K base/300K+
| stock) being laid off or are the "regularly" compensated
| (60K-150K) devs affected as well?
| xfactor973 wrote:
| Pretty badly. I'm getting way more rejections than usual and
| positions are closing before I can get through the funnel
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| TLDR: the job market (for senior talent) is much better than
| you'd think, from my observation. But if coming from FAANG expect
| compensation cut (and that's probably ok!)
|
| I didn't get laid off, but. Quit Google at the height of the
| frenzy last December. Coasted for a while doing my own thing and
| entertaining a job offer that fell through. After that through
| the spring and summer it was actually slow and difficult finding
| work. I signed a contract that was initially very exciting and
| promising but then found there was a crypto/eth association I was
| not comfortable with, so started looking immediately and was very
| worried because of the layoffs that were starting to blow up.
|
| But in the end I actually found it not bad and I had the choice
| of basically two excellent and exciting jobs. I'm still not 100%
| certain I picked the right one, but here goes! And holy crap am I
| tired of interviews.
|
| Similarly I have a friend who got laid off from Meta in the
| latest round, and she's already interviewing in boatloads of
| places.
|
| I think the key thing is that compensation that's out there won't
| match what is made at a FAANG, esp with the latest round of
| layoffs. But I'm personally fine with that. In exchange for
| getting my soul back.
| matsemann wrote:
| > _but likely this next week I 'll start studying and getting
| ready._
|
| Studying?? For a job interview? Do you seriously need to do
| whiteboard algorithm reverse a linked list kinda coding as a
| senior in the US? Or what is it that you need to study before an
| interview?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Why does OP ask about people layd off? Are there some big waves
| of people being fired? I don't live in the US and I didn't read
| much news recently, so that's why I ask. In my country there
| aren't many people people in It (if any) layd off.
| yumbrand wrote:
| Yeah, Meta cut 11k people, Amazon has a hiring freeze right
| now, things are slower at Google hiring, not sure about
| Microsoft or any of the other big tech companies. Partially
| driven by interest rates disproportionately affecting tech,
| partially these companies are just missing earnings a lot and
| needing to cut headcount. Not sure how private companies are
| faring, but probably similarly getting pressure to cut
| headcount -- would imagine that this would start happening in
| other countries too (e.g., Canada sees lagging interest rates
| vs. U.S.)
| chihuahua wrote:
| I keep getting the same amount of emails from recruiters as
| before, mostly startups.
|
| Found a new job (non-startup) by responding to one of those.
| Signed the offer and was going to quit FB on a certain date, then
| got the FB layoff severance package a week before that date as a
| nice bonus.
|
| I also interviewed at Google and got the thumbs up to proceed to
| team matching, but no team matches after a month. This makes me
| believe that they have at least a partial hiring freeze, although
| their recruiters are pretending that this is not the case -
| they're just saying that team matching takes a bit longer. Google
| interviews were useful as practice for the other jobs, but not
| for actually getting an offer.
| ford wrote:
| A friend of mine has had a similar experience. They started the
| process in July, did onsites in August, were told they weren't
| filling roles for a couple of months, and recently started team
| matching; but it is slow going.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Took me three months for team match. I had five team match
| interviews and three selected me, two lost headcount.
| drdrey wrote:
| What did you do during these 3 months?
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| What do you mean? I had a job the entire time, and I
| interviewed at MSFT and NFLX in the meantime. Otherwise i
| would just periodically check in with my G recruiter trying
| to balance some urgency with politeness.
|
| I didn't get an offer from NFLX but they came across
| extremely well, i'm very bullish on the company solely
| based on the culture and talent I met.
|
| The MSFT experience was the exact opposite!
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but referring to
| companies by their stock tickers in casual conversation
| does not impress anyone.
| shyn3 wrote:
| If you speak the business language, which is the market,
| your potential for promotions increases. Also, your
| comment comes off as a bit rude.
| jedberg wrote:
| Pretty sure it wasn't to impress anyone, but to save
| keystrokes. In both cases the stock ticker is shorter
| than the company name, and everyone instantly knows what
| you're talking about.
| revskill wrote:
| No longer hunt for work. Instead will spend 1 year to build
| product for my own customers.
|
| Again, software engineering is such a great career, when you can
| create valuable things for others in case of crisis.
| moneywoes wrote:
| How did you find customers? This is a long term goal of mine.
|
| Trying to fit in ideation between leetcode prep and applying
| for jobs
| AviationAtom wrote:
| People actually run businesses selling businesses. They
| develop a turnkey solution to a problem, launch, then
| immediately start seeking out a buyer.
| revskill wrote:
| Hi, thanks for asking. I know this is a hard one.
|
| Firstly, build your connection based on quality software.
| Find the first customer is the most difficult task!
|
| One way, is through friend connection. If a friend's friend
| is a boss at a company, then it's first good step.
|
| The most important thing, is you need to deliver usable
| software!
| greenpeas wrote:
| This is intriguing. Can you provide more details? Did you have
| customers prior to deciding to "no longer hunt for work"? Or do
| you plan to find customers/build a new product?
| revskill wrote:
| I actually have enough credits from "potential customers",
| who always ask me to build products for them. One of main
| reason is, i told them, cloud products are shit (due to
| pricing, customization, and quality of codebase they made),
| but got no time to actually focus on building the product. So
| this is the time i want to settle down and make the progress
| for them.
|
| One example, they have no idea on how to build fast, secure
| and cheap websites!
| hizxy wrote:
| Looking to quit w/o anything lined up. Rejected a few offers
| before the shit hit the fan. Starting to hate the field and need
| some time to think.
| manish_gill wrote:
| Since this thread is the most relevant - my partner has been
| struggling for a long time to get going into the field as a Data
| Analyst/BI analyst doing SQL, Tableau, Excel and (beginner)
| Python/Pandas. She has been hunting for junior positions or even
| internships with no luck so far.
|
| Here in the EU, either her career gap (due to covid + country
| change + taking time to upskill herself) gets in the way, or
| C-level German language does, and if nothing else, they're hiring
| Seniors.
|
| If anyone is willing to hire a bright and hard-working beginner
| with an MBA in Finance, drop me an email at me [at] manishgill
| [dot] com
| holografix wrote:
| It might very well be her basic German holding her back.
|
| Any chance of upskilling her quickly through some intensive
| German lessons over the Christmas break?
|
| From memory the German market can be surprisingly insular in
| its use of German. Not as tough as the French, but close. Also,
| maybe she can work remotely for a Dutch company? If she speaks
| good English the Dutch don't care at all.
| [deleted]
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| I'd ask in a month. It's still early since the layoffs. I'd guess
| that even for people who were laid off first, started looking
| immediately, and found plenty of hits, few have accepted jobs.
|
| I'm much more curious in 4-5 months. I assume VC funding is
| harder to get now, for example, but I don't think that'll make a
| massive impact for a little while.
| bhaney wrote:
| "I've found plenty of hits but haven't accepted an offer yet"
| seems like a perfectly reasonable response to the question of
| "how's the job hunt going?"
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| Sure, but I think the implicit question-behind-the-question-
| being-asked is "we're hearing about a recession and that the
| job market is a lot harder than it was, how are you finding
| it?"
| bhaney wrote:
| Right, and that seems like a question that can be usefully
| answered right now by the victims of the early layoffs who
| might have had time to get a few offers by now. If the
| responses are all "it's been a month and 90% of the
| feedback I get is 'sorry we aren't hiring anymore'" then
| that paints a much more dire picture than "it's been a
| month and I have 4 viable offers that I need to pick
| between," both of which are potential responses we could be
| seeing by now.
| nixgeek wrote:
| I got connected to someone impacted at Twitter on Saturday,
| within 24 hours of them being notified they were impacted by
| the layoff.
|
| I talked with them for an hour that next Monday AM about the
| opportunities my teams have open, one of which was highly
| relevant to their skills, and by the time we chatted, they had
| 3-4 interviews with other companies scheduled. Joined the dots
| to the hiring manager and recruiters. They introduced us to
| lots of other Twitter engineers too which was amazing and very
| helpful to me.
|
| Our interviews happened with them 10 days later and we moved
| forward to make an offer; we are still working through offer
| details with them (and they have multiple companies making
| offers). We've also got several strong applicants for this
| role.
|
| I'm glad to see many of the impacted folks are quickly finding
| places to land because the cruelty of Twitter's next chapter
| under Elon is a stain on the industry and the world.
| starik36 wrote:
| > cruelty
|
| Layoff is a layoff regardless of whether you get fired over
| email, text or a personal call from the CEO saying how great
| you are. It was the latter for me several years ago and
| didn't sting any less.
| Xorlev wrote:
| Layoffs suck, but Elon has been making it particularly
| painful for the folks over there.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| I don't like Elon either but am happy he's blown $44m on a
| side project that it looks like is going to fail
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Billion
| culi wrote:
| and then blamed everyone "hating free speech" for why it's
| failing lol
| granshaw wrote:
| Curious if you don't mind sharing, did this candidate have
| crazy comp due to Twitter RSUs before the implosion? And if
| so, are you all roughly matching that, or they're settling
| for less?
| valdiorn wrote:
| I've just started a new job, a startup hedge fund with friends
| and former colleagues, so not really that applicable to the
| question (but also, my god how nice it is to just get a call from
| someone you know and respect, get offered a job and not even have
| to interview for it :)
|
| However, I've noticed that the LinkedIn spam is getting
| increasingly outrageous in their offers (I'm in quant finance in
| London). This surprised me given the market is supposedly cooling
| off with lots of free agent talent, but I'm getting multiple
| offers a day promising 300-500k (GBP) compensation, sometimes
| even fixed base comp! It sounds a bit too good to be true but the
| frequency of messages and the numbers in those messages have both
| been blowing up over the last 3-4 months.
|
| Not sure what's driving this but it's definitely unusual given
| the market and location. I'd say it's about double the top range
| I've seen in previous years.
| IntFee588 wrote:
| Just got hired doing firmware stuff. Core technologies seem to
| still be doing okay.
| gigatexal wrote:
| A friend of mine was doing an almost week long (thankfully paid)
| interview with Automatic for a senior data engineering position.
| These are the folks being Wordpress and Hey -- the DHH company --
| anyway.
|
| Long story short while he was working on tasks in this weird ass
| way to interview about half way into the week he gets a message
| saying the role had been closed. Suddenly. There was no inkling
| or hint that the role was tenantive.
|
| Shortly before he he process to interview and maybe hire my
| friend there was some message or rumor that they were trying to
| scoop up laid off Twitter employees.
|
| I dunno. It seems shady. Avoid Auromatic not for the politics but
| because it's not well run at all.
| piercebot wrote:
| I transitioned from full-time employment to contracting in April
| 2022. I am currently over-employed and working two gigs
| simultaneously.
|
| All leads have come from my personal network or my reputation as
| a known entity in a relatively niche field.
|
| Only trouble I've had is invoice approval and waiting for money
| to be moved, but it has always eventually come through.
|
| Cashflow remains equivalent to when I was an FTE, but I'm working
| fewer hours per day and working on more interesting things. A lot
| of that has to do with transitioning out of management, I think.
| I don't miss it :)
| marumari wrote:
| this is a terrible time of year for interviewing, most places
| won't be adding headcount until january.
| blamazon wrote:
| I recall the 'pandemic hiring spree' on my team did not start
| until Jan-Feb 2021. After that it took basically the whole year
| to complete. That company was famous for its speed and scale of
| pandemic hiring sprees.
|
| To anyone who is job hunting now and finding a slow market:
| things will change, we will get through this.
| kache_ wrote:
| Not laid off, but company was recently affected by one. I got
| recruiter interest, but that died down pretty quickly (My theory
| is that I got marked as "not laid off"). It was reminiscent of
| recruiter spam during start of covid. Looks like startups without
| talent now have the ability to get some engineers.
| abadger9 wrote:
| I'm not laid off but actively looking to change after spending a
| couple of years at my current employer. Despite being a staff
| engineer, managing 12 engineers, and having a solid revenue
| stream tied to my current team - I've mostly gotten rejections
| without interviews, 1-2 low ball offers, or radio silence. I
| cannot imagine how hard this must be for those laid-off,
| hopefully this storm passes soon.
|
| EDIT: you cannot make this up, it's a saturday and we got an
| email 1/3 of our team got laid off (I didn't yet, but I have a
| feeling it might happen soon).
| compiskey wrote:
| Freelancer here; this time of year there is always a slowdown.
| Holiday vacation absences make scheduling all the right people
| to interview harder.
|
| I set aside extra the rest of the year to smooth over the drop
| off in responses late-Oct/Jan period. By February I usually get
| swarmed with asks to tackle projects and can pick ones that are
| actually interesting.
|
| Then it happens again in summer as people with enough money to
| not work take another 2-3 months off.
| granshaw wrote:
| Curious what do you specialize in? Sounds like your
| engagements are usually like 3mos max?
| compiskey wrote:
| 3-6. But I try to line up the next one in the last 3, or
| right away if it's a 3 month gig.
|
| Lately I've been "specialized" in cloud ops mentorship.
| Lots of businesses still run monoliths, have no CICD or
| secops. I don't automatically nudge them to break the
| monolith up; some are well organized and documented and
| work for the biz. Mostly I help them establish a smoother
| "idea to deployment" pipeline.
|
| Though after 4 years it's become pretty repetitive. I've
| been tinkering with the Linux kernel internals again,
| thinking about looking for lower level gigs.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I can second this, after doing this many years the recruiters
| start to swarm your phone and inbox starting in January.
| nostromo wrote:
| People assume it's easier for more senior people to get offers,
| but it's actually the opposite. The more senior you get, the
| longer it can take to get a new job.
|
| You are much more expensive, so companies are extra cautious
| hiring you. And it's just common sense that there is an order
| of magnitude fewer managers than there are individual
| contributors. And many (most?) companies have a bias to
| promoting internally.
| fullsend wrote:
| Also so much of management is personal. Upper management
| doesn't have visibility into your day to day and needs to
| trust you'll deliver by the deadlines they set for their
| bosses/customers. It's hard to trust someone you don't
| already know.
| harles wrote:
| Yup. There's also a heavy emphasis on relevant experience.
| I've found that only a subset of staff+ engineering roles are
| open to me because of this, whereas it was all open when I
| was in a junior role.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> Despite being a staff engineer, managing 12 engineers,
|
| So this is actually a warning to me as a hiring manager. Good
| staff developers absolutely are technical leaders but if they
| have day-to-day people management skills I'm at best confused,
| at worst skeptical. Managing 12 engineers is a full time job
| before you even get to staff developer responsibilities.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Sadly I think we've barely ventured into the choppy waters of
| the storm.
|
| Considering that, minus the short period of COVID lockdowns, an
| entire generation has really only known a healthy economy
| (since ~2008): I think it's going to be a tough transition.
|
| We usually have boom and bust cycles at least every decade.
| COVID lockdown era gave people the false sense that we had
| already weathered the storm.
| ctvo wrote:
| > Despite being a staff engineer, managing 12 engineers, and
| having a solid revenue stream tied to my current team - I've
| mostly gotten rejections without interviews
|
| How do you expect the HR folks to validate (or even to have
| read what you wrote) these claims? A lot of people put the
| things you're putting on their resumes.
|
| They're also getting resumes when from Meta, Amazon, Stripe,
| ... engineers. Is it really surprising you're not getting a
| call back?
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I've not been laid off either. I'm currently taking a break
| from jobs. I'm starting to think that it's time to go back to
| full-time employment. But I'm looking at the job market and
| think it might be better to give it 4-6 months. Let all the
| companies that are going to do layoffs have their layoffs and
| then join a company still looking for new devs in a few months.
| 300bps wrote:
| >But I'm looking at the job market and think it might be
| better to give it 4-6 months.
|
| I'm fascinated by this. How does one do this? Two options I
| can think of are being independently wealthy and being
| dependent on another. Are there other ways to accomplish
| being so comfortable with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another
| 4-6 months and see what happens"?
| ojbyrne wrote:
| Some of the severance packages are pretty generous, lots of
| people got income for ~6 months (I did).
| bfung wrote:
| Severance pay from layoff and having 6m emergency savings.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I make 180k and spend around 35k a year. Easy to save money
| when only providing for yourself and living with roommates.
| I live in a major American city and don't feel like I'm
| penny pinching at all, but I'm not really into "classic"
| money spending activities like drinking and shopping. Saved
| well over 3 years of expenses this year alone.
| mwint wrote:
| Is that 180k base or TC (including stock, etc)?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I work for a startup whose equity I consider worthless,
| 180 base.
| mwint wrote:
| Can I ask what industry and your seniority (And maybe
| whether you're doing 80h weeks?) Been considering a move,
| trying to calibrate myself on what I'm actually worth.
| andirk wrote:
| Since I graduated college, I have always:
|
| - encouraged people and myself to hold on to about 6 months
| of runway because the future is unknown.
|
| - encouraged myself and others to never have a single
| source of income.
|
| - always be sharpening your skills. They get dull,
| redundant, and obsolete within ~5 years.
|
| Live by these mantras, if one has the luxury to do so, and
| being laid off is nothing more than a disappointment.
| andsoitis wrote:
| It is common financial advice (in the US) to have a couple
| of months's expensive in cash so that you can weather
| unexpected circumstances.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I don't earn a huge US salary, but my rent and bills are
| less than a third of my salary. I don't have a family. If
| you do that for 5 years, you have 10 years of savings where
| you could potentially not work!
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Honestly, German unemployment money. I'm entitled to 2/3 of
| my original salary for 360 days. 2/3 of my salary is enough
| to live on while still saving a bit of money every month. I
| paid all the taxes for 7-years, so I figure I should take
| advantage of the unemployment money.
| stkdump wrote:
| Well, you should not publicly admit that you aren't
| looking for work, otherwise you might risk that sweet
| unemployment money.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| There are also some legal stuff preventing me from
| getting a job just now so I'm in an area where I legally
| can't even look for a job right now. Germans and their
| red tape :)
| thesumofall wrote:
| To add some context: this is capped at EUR 2400 per month
| (or lower depending on state and if one has kids)
| fhd2 wrote:
| You can also only receive this for up to 12 months -
| afterwards you go into the much lower, somewhat notorious
| program nicknamed "Hartz 4". You receive funds around the
| poverty threshold, and they get withheld if you e.g.
| travel out of state unannounced of fail to attend
| interviews or seminars they book you for. If they think
| your apartment is too large for you, even if it's cheap
| enough, you are forced to move. Any savings you have, you
| are forced to spend. Unemployment life in Germany isn't
| as rosy as this post makes it sound. That said, the
| system is being replaced by a less controversial one
| called "citizen money" soon.
|
| Personally, if I get laid off, I would probably also not
| jump on the _very_ first offer I get desperately, but try
| to land something good. That's what the higher amount you
| get for up to 12 months is quite useful for.
| progman32 wrote:
| Lots of financial ideas in this thread, but I feel this
| misses one point: achieving the comfort level. For me, it
| started with focusing on my mental health, finally getting
| to the realization that I'm worth taking care of, and that
| my non career dreams are valid and important. So jumping
| out of the rat race for a year to just exist as a human was
| an almost no brainier. I'm not getting any younger.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I think it was Scott Adams he presented this formula to
| me: "Happiness = Health + Freedom". This includes mental,
| physical and emotional health, while freedom is far more
| variable and personal in definition. The key is you need
| both.
| ummonk wrote:
| If you're not saving money on a software engineer salary,
| you're being very frivolous with your spending.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Are there other ways to accomplish being so comfortable
| with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another 4-6 months and see
| what happens"?
|
| Having low outgoings. While I would prefer to have income
| (I'm hoping to be able to buy a house at some point), I'm a
| single person with no dependents, and I probably spend
| around PS1200/month in total (including rent). And that's
| in London - one of the most expensive cities in the world -
| and without putting any effort into living cheaply (I often
| buy groceries at the local store rather than the cheaper
| big supermarket for example). If I chose to live somewhere
| cheaper (even in the uk) that could probably be halved
| without completely destroying my quality of life.
| great_success wrote:
| This is very impressive and difficult to maintain in
| London. Rent for a "double" room - meaning a room in a
| flat/apartment or house that fits a US full or European
| double bed is like 900/month right now. Spending only
| 1200/month is very difficult to achieve. I have no idea
| how this is feasible. To add to rent, local stores are
| usually more expensive than the supermarkets.
|
| Maybe you ought to make a masterclass on this topic.
| richardknop wrote:
| If you took out mortgage when interest rates were really
| low, it's possible to have your own place and spend about
| that much per month if you live frugally (well at least
| until you need to remortgage in few years and rates might
| be much higher). If you are renting though I also finding
| it difficult to believe. I was spending around 1600
| pounds per month and I was living very modest live,
| spending little and trying to save as much of my income
| as I could.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Well my rent is only PS600/month which helps a lot. It's
| in a less popular neighbourhood, but it's still in Zone 2
| with good transport links and it's very nice.
| jlarocco wrote:
| You're missing option three which is to save enough money
| that you don't need to work 100% of the time.
|
| It's pretty easy to save money on a software developer
| salary in the United States.
| [deleted]
| Archipelagia wrote:
| Not sure about the OP, but I could easily spend 3-5 months
| unemployed despite not being either wealthy or dependent.
| Up to a year if I had to and decided to budget more
| carefully.
|
| Mostly comes to low cost of living in my country + being
| reasonably frugal + slowly building my savings over time.
|
| (Though note that I don't have kids yet, if I had children
| my calculations would be totally different.)
| teraflop wrote:
| Software development pays incredibly well by the standards
| of the average American. You can spend that money on
| lifestyle inflation, or you can save/invest it and buy
| yourself an enormous amount of financial freedom. Whether
| you call that "being independently wealthy" is a matter of
| semantics.
| est31 wrote:
| Yeah there is a _lot_ of space between "has savings for
| 8-12 months" and "is independently wealthy, i.e. can live
| off interest of their own savings". Former is extremely
| easy to achieve if you can save significant portions of
| your salary. If you can save 30%, you can achieve it
| after 3 years. Latter takes a bit longer.
| 300bps wrote:
| _Yeah there is a lot of space between "has savings for
| 8-12 months"_
|
| I think there is a mentality difference here. I have
| savings that would easily last me 10 years of not
| working. But... that's kind of my plan. I will be
| retiring some day.
|
| I don't want to use up even a dime of that money by not
| working in my prime earning years.
| Jach wrote:
| It is largely mentality. Both for the initial plan and
| execution of saving up (and trying to do it fast, e.g. in
| 5-10 years) and then pulling the trigger and quitting. I
| pulled the trigger in late 2020 based on somewhat
| optimistic forecasting (more than the 4%/5% rule of
| thumb) that I might have enough for it to be indefinite
| at steady expense levels. TBH rocky markets this year
| have had me feeling like it'd be nice to have a steady
| income instead of only outcome (and I should have bought
| property/gotten a low interest mortgage on something
| before quitting) but the feeling hasn't been strong
| enough to make me actually take any steps towards that,
| and anyway dollar-wise I'm still overall above where I
| was when I quit. I don't really know if I'll "never work
| again" (unless forced, and there are several forcing
| functions I can imagine apart from the market performing
| much more poorly than expected) but I can easily see
| myself enjoying the rest of this decade not working,
| maybe dabbling in some side income gigs eventually, and
| only getting back into full time employment stuff if I
| really want to in my 40s. As a man in a knowledge field
| my "prime earning years" are probably in my 40s-50s
| anyway, while until aging is solved my physical body's
| not getting younger.
|
| I wonder what sorts of things influence the mentality.
| I've been reading _Walden_ here and there recently, I
| remember being forced to read some of it in I think
| junior high, I suspect at least a little influence lies
| there but there 's no better trick to make kids dismiss a
| book's messaging than to force them to read it in chunks
| via some textbook and then be quizzed. "The mass of men
| lead lives of quiet desperation." "This spending of the
| best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a
| questionable liberty during the least valuable part of
| it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to
| make a fortune first, in order that he might return to
| England and live the life of a poet." "Yet some, not
| wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and
| unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten
| or twenty years, in order that they may live -- that is,
| keep comfortably warm -- and die in New England at last.
| The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably
| warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are
| cooked, of course a la mode."
|
| Of course by Thoreau's standards I'm positively roasting
| and happy about it, and I think 10 or even 20 years at a
| career is more than a fine tradeoff if that's all it
| takes to secure a retirement. As a teen I remember
| thinking I'd be happy enough to avoid having worked for
| 40-ish years straight like most of the adults around me
| had done/were doing (some of whom died right before or
| after their retirement age goal, too).
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| The other side of that coin is that saving for a post
| work life (particularly at normal retirement age) is a
| good way of spending all of your life working hard for a
| retirement which never comes. There is something to be
| said for spreading those retirement years across your
| lifetime rather than saving them all up for the end.
|
| Different of course if you have a plan to retire at 45 or
| something.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| A good friend of mine spent his life being pretty frugal.
| Saved up a nice chunk of change, too -- his wife is also
| a software developer, they both made good money. Got
| cancer early last year and was dead 10 months later. 55
| years old. Ugh.
|
| Not saying you should run out and spend your nest egg. On
| the other hand, I'd be reluctant to suffer too much
| during my prime working years scrimping and saving for a
| retirement that might actually not happen. I'd rather
| have jobs I really enjoy, and frankly, if I enjoy the
| work well enough why would I retire? Just take longer and
| longer vacations and work part time. So I'm willing to
| use a bit of my saved up funds when necessary to get out
| of a work environment that is unpleasant.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Sorry about your friend. My wife also had a friend in the
| same boat. Made it to 59 and heart attack. Statistically
| they are outliers, though. For every one of those cases
| there are probably 10 that make it long past a normal
| retirement age and 2 that make it beyond 90 years or so.
| Given the choice, I'd rather be prepared for a 30 year
| retirement and unluckily die early than be prepared for a
| 5 year retirement and live to see 90, eating dog food.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I've always had an extremely tenous grasp on consistently
| being employed, and know getting fired is just around the
| corner. Therefore, saving about 6-12 months of expenses
| is first step, then I'm allowed to start spending more
| than $100/m or whatever here and there on stuff. I
| usually end up needing that savings because getting a new
| job can easily take that long, and so by the beginning of
| age 30 this year I was back in the negative and almost
| homeless again with no real assets. That strategy keeps
| lifestyle inflation way down
| hcrean wrote:
| Are you choosing the right environments to work in? What
| do you find is the reason for instability in employment?
| ummonk wrote:
| Less than 3 years, since your expenses are only 70% of
| your salary.
| est31 wrote:
| Good point, I've just calculated it and you'll need 2
| years and 4 months to save one year's expenses that make
| up 70% of your salary, at a saving rate of 30%.
| sokoloff wrote:
| https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-
| shockingly-si... is a great article for those interested
| in the topic of high savings percentages.
| krn wrote:
| > Are there other ways to accomplish being so comfortable
| with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another 4-6 months and see
| what happens"?
|
| It's not that hard to accomplish for those who can be(come)
| location independent. For instance[1]:
|
| > You would need around 2,582.16$ in Budapest to maintain
| the same standard of life that you can have with 8,700.00$
| in San Francisco, CA (assuming you rent in both cities).
|
| [1] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Budapest is a very weird place unless you live in an
| expat bubble in the 5th district downtown or in a villa
| in the 2nd. The city is basically a parody of itself, for
| example they didn't have money to keep up the mental
| hospital so they just released everyone on the street.
| Even a good few years after the fact, the city is still
| full of visibly mentally ill people, who act completely
| random. You never know when you'll get spat on or some
| abuse shouted at you just for existing. One time a guy
| walked up to me and put arms up like a boxer and tried to
| fight me. It's very unsafe too. We interviewed a dev in a
| downtown cafe in broad daylight in a crowded place and he
| was robbed at knifepoint just outside the cafe.
| krn wrote:
| I agree with most of your points, even though I never
| felt unsafe in Budapest during the 3 months I spent
| there, including many many long walks after midnight.
|
| I picked Budapest as an example because it's a well known
| international destination with very high level of
| walkability, great public transportation, and affordable
| prices.
|
| Prague and Krakow are two other similar options in
| Central Europe, only much less "weird" (and, as a result,
| a little more "boring").
|
| There are also plenty of pleasant and affordable cities
| in Southern Europe, such as Porto and Valencia.
| jlarocco wrote:
| Budapest is a strange choice for comparison.
|
| Just about anywhere in the United States will be a lot
| cheaper than SF, too, without the huge inconvenience of
| moving internationally.
| throwaway20382 wrote:
| Well yeah. And it isn't America, they will arrest you and
| throw you out of the country after a year.
| krn wrote:
| I picked Budapest for comparison, because as a European I
| don't know many large, safe, and affordable US cities
| that wouldn't require owning a car for comfortable
| living.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > I'm fascinated by this. How does one do this? Two options
| I can think of are being independently wealthy and being
| dependent on another. Are there other ways to accomplish
| being so comfortable with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another
| 4-6 months and see what happens"?
|
| In my case that'd be: - living in a
| relatively affordable country (Latvia), where rent and
| other expenses aren't too high - having an okay
| income by local standards, e.g. I make around 2000 Euros
| after taxes, which is in the upper 10% of salaries locally
| https://www.algas.lv/en/salaries-in-country (many earn
| more) - saving and/or investing for many years now, I
| have about 37k Euros saved up, which isn't much for someone
| in US, but with monthly expenses between 500 to 1000 Euros,
| they might last me from 3 to 6 years (though less in
| practice, due to inflation) - having additional
| factors that make things easier, such as sharing a
| residence or living with parents, having solar panels or
| one of those energy efficient homes if in the countryside,
| having reasonably affordable ways of heating if in the
| countryside (e.g. firewood with central heating), not
| having too many subscription services and so on
|
| But then again, I live a fairly frugal lifestyle: don't use
| expensive cloud platforms for development (though I pay for
| JetBrains tools), only occasionally get video games (or
| other entertainment) on sale, don't have a car and
| routinely save about 50% of what I earn, if not more.
|
| For people with higher living standards than mine: probably
| earning more than I do, even relative to their expenses.
| medellin wrote:
| Honestly i think most devs can do this. The difference is
| in the US our tolerance for seeing our savings go down is
| super low. I can live for 3 years with my current
| savings(just cash with invested but non retirement funds
| it would be about 8) but i still don't feel like i can
| take any time off.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Also, the power of compounding interest over time. Take
| time off _and_ eat away at your savings for a year when
| you are 25, and that probably adds 5 years to your
| retirement age. Better make that year really worth it!
| dustedcodes wrote:
| As a consultant (someone who takes short-/midterm
| contracts) you can make $1000/day (probably more in the
| Valley). Many more experienced developers go down that
| route instead of being in a full time position. You work
| for a few months, make the income of a year and then you
| holiday for the rest of the year.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| How do I get those contracts? I'm a full-stack developer
| with 10 years of experience, also some data analytics
| experience. I got laid off almost two weeks ago. I would
| love to start my own contracting business. Do you have
| any insight?
| pojzon wrote:
| There is a lot of contractors and you have to be
| extremely good to do what the dude/dudette said.
|
| Like - have a unique skillset, have multiple
| certifications, recommendations, proven B2B experience as
| a consultant.
|
| Then getting contracts is easy. Probably less easy now
| tho.
| mwint wrote:
| Second this, I'm full-stack with experience on everything
| from embedded firmware to frontend. I'd really like to
| try this route, but I'm not sure how to get in the door.
| himanshuy wrote:
| Lets talk. I have recently started consulting focused on
| data analytics. May be we could collaborate.
| manimino wrote:
| I just recently took a year off to study, do side projects,
| and take care of family. It was a much-needed break
| following the many stressors of the covid era. Some things
| matter more than money.
|
| Having worked for 10ish years beforehand, it was
| financially easy. When I was ready to work again, I
| responded some recruiter emails and was hired again fairly
| quickly, at a position better than the one I left.
|
| Living in a low cost-of-living area helps a great deal, as
| do the excellent salaries US devs make.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Can you save 8-10 months of expenses as cash?
|
| If yes, then...yes this is easily done.
| bigcloud1299 wrote:
| I am looking for a senior manager at a top 5 retailer. We are
| not as shiny as big tech but pay well with great work life
| balance. Job security etc. let me know if anyone want to
| connect. I have 5 positions open for senior dev to lead dev. We
| are .net and Java shop. But all cloud based.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| I'd love to know more, but you have nothing in your HN
| profile.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| You might want to advertise in the next "Who's Hiring?"
| submission. It will be posted on December 1, so next week.
| pubby wrote:
| I wasn't laid off, but am unemployed. I've found it very
| difficult to land any interviews, or even get a response from
| companies. Even what I thought were safe bets (like a job at a
| bank, writing CRUD apps) do not respond.
|
| I've only had one interview this year. It was with a FAANG. I
| easily passed and got an offer, but then layoffs were announced
| and they had to revoke.
| elwell wrote:
| You easily passed a FAANG interview?
| pubby wrote:
| By easy I mean I didn't prep or study, and at the end they
| said I passed with flying colors. I reckon my answers could
| have been a lot better though.
|
| I've only had two software interviews in my life, so I don't
| have much to compare it to.
| addaon wrote:
| Disclaimer: This is 100% a plug (for a friend, no financial
| interest on my part).
|
| A good friend have mine who has been focusing on career coaching
| has started to put together a few articles [1, 2] targeted more
| at folks impacted by recent layoffs. Like so many of these
| articles, the intent isn't to have deep, novel ideas -- instead,
| it's to pull together things that you probably already know,
| think about them clearly, and get some comfort in the next steps
| of job search. If a small number of readers have just one thing
| "click", it has some value, in my mind.
|
| This is one of the rougher markets we've seen for engineers in a
| while, but in my opinion it's still a worker's market -- in
| almost every niche I interact with, hiring has slowed but we are
| still having a hard time filling the open positions we do have,
| and we're always looking!
|
| [1]
| https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7001201...
| [2] https://alignedclarity.substack.com/p/streamline-your-
| resume...
| MattDemers wrote:
| Garbage. I'm looking for marketing/communications/social media
| work. Those industries aren't really hiring right now, and
| despite changing/improving my resume/cover letter three times now
| (with help from a hiring manager friend, and a career coach), I'm
| still not getting any kind of non-automated response. Been
| searching for 6 months now.
|
| Strangely, I had one place basically self-flagellate at how bad
| they were at their response time (again, in an automated
| response), and never followed up again.
|
| I feel like part of my problem is that I worked in an industry
| previously that inflated my titles. I'm applying to entry-
| level/associated positions with "Director" on my resume, mostly
| because I'm trying to upskill things I didn't get to learn, in an
| environment where I'm not managing the whole department.
|
| It's disheartening to see LinkedIn say "Yeah, want to see how you
| stack up against the 100+ other applicants?"
| 6ak74rfy wrote:
| I am not laid off yet but the org I am part of, in one of the
| FAANGs, is rumored to have layoffs in December or Q1 next year. I
| have been with this company for almost a decade, am one of the
| top performers and think I am close to a promotion to the staff
| level - despite all of that, I am cognizant of the fact that none
| of this matters when it comes to layoffs and I am as likely to be
| laid of as any other person in my org.
|
| It's a bit scary. So, I am spending some time on the side
| sharpening my technical skills. For e.g., Crafting Interpreters
| and Designing Data Intensive Applications.
| hw wrote:
| Curious on how many are taking this opportunity to start their
| own company. Would love to see a list
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| For those who did get laid off from F(/M)AANG, are you
| considering "lower" end positions or looking for comparable total
| comp at comparably sized, tech-focused companies?
|
| Just curious, as a flyover midwesterner, it seems like no one
| here is affected, nor are we getting any interviewees from FAANG
| into the pipeline suddenly.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| There are a lot of FAANG-adjacent companies that offer
| competitive comp, Stripe, AirBNB, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. I
| left Amazon a year ago to work for one, most of my peers are
| AWS or Google engineers and the quality of life is much better.
|
| I interviewed at smaller companies but the main problem was
| they were out of touch with TC and unwilling to offer equity,
| and at least one place was kind of rude about it when I asked.
| Unless you're desperate, no one from FAANG is going to work
| below market for a place that doesn't give employees a stake in
| the business. Unless you're Netflix and you offer dump-trucks
| worth of cash, equity is where the upside is.
| granshaw wrote:
| We will see, but I think there's a real chance the former
| FAANG "market rate" due to their high flying RSUs might be
| gone for good for Engineering ICs, unless you're well known
| in your area
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Definitely interesting to see the perspective from the other
| side - thank you. It really is a different world. I am a (by
| all accounts decent) architect and a 23 year old junior
| (admittedly exceptionally talented) got higher TC at Amazon
| when he jumped ship after 3 months with us (his first job out
| of college).
|
| He did ask if he could come back within a week, stating that
| the work env was horrible, and we told him he is welcome to
| if he wants, but at the end he decided to stay at Amazon.
| It's also not like we have a chill team - I just try to make
| sure people don't work OT unless it's strictly necessary
| (about once or twice a year). Other than that though, we do
| expect people to put in their 8 hours on a semi-flexible
| schedule.
| heliodor wrote:
| Equity is also where the downside is!
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| One thing people tend to miss here is that 2021 was a massive
| hiring year across the board. The layoffs in 2022, while
| regrettable, are something of a correction from that. The
| number of ICs just at Google alone is still massive.
| throwaway20382 wrote:
| Yes. But that is where non-Faangs are hosed. IMHO Small
| companies see a Faang on a resume and toss the other ones
| out. Even though the Faang company tossed these people first
| layoff.
| jayde2767 wrote:
| I have been laid off since August, the options I have in front of
| me are not positive (things have slowed to a trickle where I am
| in the US), and I hope the New Year will be better, but...
|
| Otherwise I will look into non-tech related work to meet
| expenses.
| justinzollars wrote:
| I was laid off, and to be honest, I love it. I've been working on
| a side project and I'm enjoying my time.
| spike021 wrote:
| I wasn't laid off but spent Jan-Aug taking time off and then
| interviewing for a while. Even before the layoffs started things
| were getting tricky. I was mid-process with multiple companies
| between June and August that pulled out because they were having
| freezes, or no longer hiring for the west coast due to budget
| constraints, etc.
|
| I was still getting a fair amount of interviews though.
| Fortunately I landed an offer in August, because without it I may
| still be jobless. But the layoffs, freezes, and continued
| whiteboarding style interviews and things are definitely a
| trifecta.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Poor luck as a 2 yoe backend based in Canada
|
| Would love to know any good job boards if people know
| kevinconroy wrote:
| If you are job searching and reading the comments on this post,
| there's a >90% chance that "An Engineering Leader's Job Search
| Algorithm" may help you:
|
| https://docs.google.com/document/d/19fr_36WOzKlq_zyGP2RdxMEs...
|
| Good luck!
| ericmcer wrote:
| Quit voluntarily in April, have been working on my own project
| since then, if it doesn't work I will start interviewing in
| Jan/Feb/Mar based on how the job market is looking. I find it
| hard to believe there wont be some recovery and would rather
| apply during a time where job seekers have a bit more leverage.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I am not laid off but interviewing since I don't like my current
| job. Seems to be tons of jobs still if you are L6+. Below that it
| gets harder.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's the same reason many employers don't have meaningful
| programs for continuing education or conferences. The goal is
| to hire people who are perfectly suited for the role already
| (or the nearest approximation), not to train people into the
| job.
| adamius wrote:
| Which is why the same employers will later complain about the
| lack of suitable candidates.
| moosedev wrote:
| I took ~1.5 years off after 12+ years of FAANG. 1 month ago, I
| decided I was ready to work again and started talking to
| recruiters for real. It's been very slow. Most positions I've
| applied to, I've heard nothing back, even when referred by a
| current employee. I've had some flat rejections without even a
| recruiter chat. One recruiter called me to say they were on a
| temporary hiring freeze, and then _she_ got laid off.
|
| I've had a handful of tech screen interviews, but only one* has
| progressed all the way to a full interview loop so far, and I got
| a generic rejection a few days later. I have been waiting 2.5
| weeks and counting for a phone screen result from another
| (larger, public) tech company. Nothing close to an offer yet.
|
| I'm considering just taking more time off until things speed up
| again - I can afford it, but I worry about how hard it will be to
| get hired again with a "long" gap of 2+ years.
|
| * for "Senior Software Engineer" at a medium-sized pre-IPO tech
| company
| jedberg wrote:
| Fill the gap with something technical. Start a company, work on
| a tech related side project, etc.
| plants wrote:
| I have also been out of work for ~8mo for various reasons, and
| while I'm sorry for your situation, it's heartening to hear I'm
| not the only one. I've only actually gotten one tech screen in
| which I was asked a LC "hard" question, which I didn't pass
| (I'm pretty good with "easy" and "medium", but come on, hard?).
|
| So far, I have one other interview from an internal referral,
| but haven't heard anything back from the ~10-15 other
| applications I've sent out. I'm getting a bit discouraged and
| feel similarly as you - it would be nice to take more time off
| (maybe I don't actually love working in tech?), but I have the
| same worried as you. Feels good to vent in this thread, though
| :)
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| In 2017 I had taken two years off and went back into the job
| market after very solid employment history. Only one major
| company would interview me, and I passed. I got ghosted by
| regular companies I was "too good for" previously. Before
| taking time off I was a premium candidate. So yeah it can be
| hard, you do need some sort of explanation, even in a good
| market.
| HNanony wrote:
| I'm gonna let the H1B folks take first crack at things...I'll
| start looking in a week or two.
| techterrier wrote:
| any tweeps who've engineering experience with algo feeds, if you
| fancy a short stint in #techforgood i'd love to hear from you...
| dom@birda.org
| jedberg wrote:
| For those of you feeling down about being ignored, keep in mind
| this is the slowest hiring time of the year, with holidays and
| vacations, and end of year budgets.
|
| Even in down markets, hiring tends to pick up in January as
| managers get their hiring budgets for the new year and are back
| in the office.
|
| Hang in there!
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Been looking for a junior developer role for 3 months now, it's
| been rough. Planning on switching to something else temporarly.
| shyn3 wrote:
| Look into growing your GitHub rep. Juniors are risky to hire.
| culi wrote:
| What are you hiring for? Just wondering what kinds of
| companies are hiring juniors right now (I've got a little
| under a year of industry experience so I'd fall into that
| category)
| arandomJohn wrote:
| For companies that do on-campus recruiting it is the busiest
| hiring time of year. But for experienced devs it might be a
| weird time to look.
| jedberg wrote:
| This is true but sort of different. Most of them are hiring
| out of next year's budgets with start dates in May/June. The
| last time we had a pull-back in tech, a lot of those offers
| ended up getting rescinded, so if you're in that boat, don't
| start spending the money until you actually start...
| fhd2 wrote:
| Having hired hundreds of engineers, it's the same feeling on
| the other side as well: The recruiters will tell you that
| nobody wants to switch jobs around the holidays, so you
| shouldn't even try. Odd.
| culi wrote:
| Weird I did the interview for my current interview in
| December and got the offer first week of January
| cmckn wrote:
| You're totally right; but I'm nervous for my laid-off friends
| that will burn through 80% of their severance over the holiday
| season. :(
| czbond wrote:
| After that there is unemployment insurance for a while.
| They'll be fine.
| throwaway20382 wrote:
| I have 15 years experience, run large production sites, our
| company sold for near a billion dollars to a foreign company
| recently, and they are doing layoffs based on "order by salary
| desc" . My days are numbered. I do SRE mainly, but I code all day
| and run teams.
|
| Company 1: Terrible over-engineered music firm (no users). Full 7
| rounds, exams (which were easy shit), but "VP" ghosted me, he was
| a former twitter guy, seems like he wants to hire a twitter guy.
|
| Company 2: Credit card company. Full 5 rounds. Four hours of
| exams. The recruiter feedback from team was "too much of a people
| manager", then ghosted. Someone lied and said I was non technical
| - yet i passed the technical exams. I used the term "we" too much
| explaining projects.
|
| Company 3 (automatic): Finished the exam in LUA for a openresty
| opensource project (didn't even know lua). Everything worked
| nicely. I was told he didn't like how i laid out the lua.
|
| Company 4: "Not enough of a people manager."
|
| Company 5,6,7,...: Recuriters make me do calls and exams then
| ghosted. I don't think they have jobs - just recruiting cause
| that is what they do.
|
| Exams:
|
| 1) using openrusty to create a application load balancer in lua
|
| 2) using python to create a url shortener
|
| 3) using php, complex input file, then output file (sorting,
| hasing, parsing)
|
| 4) using ruby, connect to an oracle db then do complex queries
| (outer joins etc). Just for hazing sake, they named the tables
| keywords eg: "join".
|
| I will say the take home tests at these companies are fun. I have
| a family and I am very nervous.
| holografix wrote:
| Multi hour take home exams are such a shit show. I haven't done
| one in a very long time.
|
| How clearly was the marking criteria or rubric communicated to
| you?
|
| If you're getting frustrated and have the financial capacity
| for it, maybe consider a break during December?
| bm3719 wrote:
| > Finished the exam in LUA for a openresty opensource project
| (didn't even know lua). Everything worked nicely. I was told he
| didn't like how i laid out the lua.
|
| I like take-home tests too, but am reluctant to do them in
| languages I don't have a lot of recent experience in. Not that
| I can't ramp up enough to get them working, but when someone
| who writes that language every day looks at the code of a guy
| who just read a few tutorials, he's going to be irked by lots
| of little things. Not the impression you want to give going
| forward. Only exception is if I can solve the problem in a more
| academic language, e.g. Scheme, or something else they don't
| use there.
|
| That's probably a deal-breaker at places that want to hire a
| developer with X years of experience in some specific language.
| So if I found that was the case, I'd probably just pass on it,
| as it's obviously not me they're looking for. Whether they
| realize/intend it or not, they're filtering for someone who has
| said language and tooling pre-loaded into their brain.
| [deleted]
| nimchimpsky wrote:
| kyleyeats wrote:
| On a positive note, you seem to have greatly narrowed the range
| for how much of a people manager to be.
| pylua wrote:
| Maybe your lua was a bit too good. Not liking the way something
| is laid out is very subjective.
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