[HN Gopher] Laid off tech workers quickly find new jobs
___________________________________________________________________
Laid off tech workers quickly find new jobs
Author : cmbailey
Score : 169 points
Date : 2022-12-28 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| throwawayhhh wrote:
| of course, software engineers are the most talented and high in
| demand. We dont have to worry about job security at all
| ghaff wrote:
| There's some glass half full/glass half empty in that story. So
| workers are still finding new jobs. But it's taking months on
| average (which is actually fairly normal for a lot of
| professional workers--though many US tech people probably
| consider that long). And this says nothing about what
| compensation packages look like.
| okdood64 wrote:
| > taking months on average
|
| It takes me almost 2 months of interview prepping (SRE:
| Leetcoding, brushing up on Linux syscalls, and low-level
| networking concepts) to pass FAANG+ interviews.
|
| I'd say 3 months sounds about right as someone with 8 years of
| experience.
| fatnoah wrote:
| I'm in the 20+ years of experience bucket. It took me about 3
| months to find a new job, and luckily my start date coincided
| with the end of my WARN act garden leave. Compensation at the
| new role is about 50% of my previous comp, but I'm also much
| happier in the role.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Only in tech would someone casually take a 50% pay cut
| without it absolutely destroying their life.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is not that uncommon for a household to earn $150k, lots
| of fields pay at least $70k+ per year.
|
| And families can live on $100k or less per year, so one
| partner can take a 50% pay cut without it destroying their
| life.
| aix1 wrote:
| Tech or finance
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| It might also be related to equity. I was laid off and went
| from a mature startup to an earlier stage startup, and on
| paper my TC dropped by 50%. But neither company is public
| yet, so who tf knows what either company will be worth at
| the point either of them IPO. My base pay went up by about
| 5%.
|
| So I guess depending exactly on the specifics, "my TC
| dropped by 50%" might not really be a very meaningful
| statement without more context.
| arcbyte wrote:
| What blows my mind is how are companies turning you down? You
| have 20 years of experience. You can do literally anything.
| It's crazy that companies are so broken they pick subpar
| candidates over you, even at similar compensation levels.
| black_13 wrote:
| [dead]
| rboyd wrote:
| seems like there's a thin line between "This person would
| be a valuable contributor / I could learn a lot from
| working with this person" and "This person threatens my own
| career progression", especially towards the staff+ roles
| psychphysic wrote:
| Hell kill it I've they're looking for people with 20year
| experience.
|
| But most jobs are looking for 2-10 years.
|
| At 20+ years if you're not headhunted you're kind of
| screwed.
| gedy wrote:
| A lot of companies don't want or need strong engineers,
| even ones that claim they do. They want cheap worker bees
| to do the Jira tickets without question.
| treve wrote:
| A less dire way to express this is that companies have
| needs for devs at different levels of experience. Very
| experienced people are going to be bored and feel
| unchallenged doing work that's not appropriate for their
| level.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| In larger companies, hiring decisions is made by managers
| with a career agenda and projects in mind.
|
| People who will bring new ideas, rock the boat, offer to
| do the same task but in an easier way... Don't make good
| peons for these managers.
|
| That's why Microsoft loves contractors. Contractors will
| do what they're told and have very little leverage.
| Empire-building managers there can easily control their
| contractor work force even if speed and sometimes quality
| is sacrificed.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| My wife just hired someone with 36 years of experience. She
| is probably not getting past the 90-day probationary
| period. 1) Too many opinions, 2) no breadth: more like one
| year of experience repeated 36 times.
| RhysU wrote:
| #1 and #2 feel like a contradiction. Does the individual
| have the same opinion too often? Lots of distinct
| opinions suggests (some) breadth.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| I've encountered this, in real life and on HN, way too
| much. Nothing worse than overly opinionated people with a
| superiority complex to boot.
| baron816 wrote:
| I would rather work with someone with a lot of opinions
| than someone with few opinions, even if those opinions
| are very different from mine. Someone with few opinions
| isn't really going to contribute new ideas. They're not
| going to foster debate, or try to teach others. They need
| to not be stubborn though, and willing to go along with a
| decision that they didn't support.
| ejb999 wrote:
| I agree - I like when people disagree with me - as long
| as either I learn something from them, or they learn
| something from me - if we both dig in our heels, no one
| learns anything.
| phil21 wrote:
| The absolute best and absolute worst people I've worked
| with so far in my career are the 30+ year veterans.
|
| I've often pondered on this, likely some survivorship
| biases involved as well.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>You have 20 years of experience.
|
| That means nothing (and I say that as someone with much
| more than 20 years of experience) - unless all that
| experience is in exactly the area the hiring company wants
| - someone with 20 years of the wrong experience (cobol for
| example) is going to be passed over for someone with 3
| years of javascript experience, if you are looking for a JS
| developer. You probably won't even get passed the HR person
| if the skills and keywords on your resume don't line up
| exactly.
| pm215 wrote:
| As somebody who has 20 years of experience: I think I'm
| pretty good in my specific niche; there's wide areas to the
| sides of it where even if I haven't done that before I
| could get up to speed pretty rapidly; and there are some
| kinds of software work that are so far out of my field that
| you'd be much better off going for somebody with 2 or 3
| years in that area rather than me. Programming is a massive
| field these days, and it's not all 100% interchangeable.
| roflyear wrote:
| I work with people who have 20 years of experience and
| cause more harm than they do good. Experience is not a
| great indicator of skill in tech, beyond a certain point:
| like, I'd prefer someone with 2 yrs of experience over
| someone with 0, but not much preference for someone with 8
| yrs over someone with 2.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _You have 20 years of experience._
|
| I've heard it often said that it depends on what kind of
| experience, not necessarily its length. Someone could have
| one year of experience twenty times, or be working in old
| tech and hasn't kept up with modern practices, costs too
| much to hire, or a myriad of other reasons for not being
| preferable over greener candidates.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| My recent experience lines up with the article's stated average
| of three months. But I would hardly call that "quick". I did
| close to 50 interviews, and some companies' processes took nearly
| a month, only to lead to a rejection without feedback.
| okdood64 wrote:
| > without feedback
|
| Beyond a simple rejection, never expect any feedback; just move
| on.
|
| I've only ever gotten real feedback once (from Square) many
| years ago.
| chasd00 wrote:
| When i was hired at my last job i made a phone call to a higher
| up that ended with "yeah we'd love to have you, consider
| yourself hired. We just need to work through the process". Even
| then, it was 30 days until an offer letter and start date was
| in my inbox. If you're starting from scratch then 2-3 months
| sounds about right to me.
| ghaff wrote:
| In my current role, which I've been in for quite some time at
| a tech company but not a developer, it was similar. Called
| someone (very) higher up I knew and, as far as I know, the
| whole process went smoothly but it still took a couple months
| with travel schedules etc.
| autotune wrote:
| Took a whole two weeks or so to go from reaching out to
| recruiter to offer letter with the current org.
| Coincidentally, I am now making more here than I have in
| any previous role while living in a MCOL area.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The speed of the process seems to depend entirely on the
| company, and it has nothing to do with how weak or strong the
| hiring market is. We've all heard stories about you-know-who
| in FAANG who's notorious for taking months and months to go
| through the process.
|
| I once applied for a really interesting incubator-within-
| telcom-giant role, which I thought would be a cool and unique
| experience. First red flag was it took about a month to just
| set up a phone interview, but I dealt with it because of how
| unique the role sounded. Then, after about two months, they
| flew me down to San Antonio for the onsite. They informally
| told me "You're a great match, we're going to get our ducks
| in a row and then call you with next steps!" Then... ghosted.
| After a few months, I gave up and found a different job.
| Moved my family across the country, signed the rental lease,
| and so on. Then, out of the blue, about _a year_ after that
| initial interview, that telcom called me back with "Hi,
| [candidate], I'm calling to schedule a second interview for
| that [incubator] role. When would work for you?"
| joegahona wrote:
| A few observations:
|
| * Weirdly vague headline to the article -- no specificity, and
| could be talking about 2 people or 200,000. (To emphasize, I am
| not dogging the person who posted this on HN -- the HN thread
| title is a mirror of the article title.) Feels click-baity, but
| perhaps I'm being too rigid or cynical.
|
| * The subhead is unrelated to the title. "Openings exceed
| unemployed Americans" is a different topic from "people who were
| laid off quickly found a new job.
|
| * The article is based on 1 survey conducted by an online job-
| hunting portal (ZipRecruiter), and it took place in October,
| before ~5k people left Twitter, ~10k people left Facebook, and
| ~10K people left Amazon. 2,550 U.S. residents were surveyed.
|
| * I'm guessing another person will notice this, but "tech worker"
| seems to be used loosely. I would not call a videographer who is
| now pivoting to social-media work a tech worker.
| tschellenbach wrote:
| Hard to say how bad it will get. VCs I talk to seem to expect it
| to get much worse.
|
| At the end of the day though, as long as you make sure you're
| excellent at your job, you'll be able to find something new in
| any market.
| matwood wrote:
| > VCs I talk to seem to expect it to get much worse.
|
| Of course they would say that because it's what they want. They
| hoped to wrestle back power from the worker in 2000, then 2008
| and now they think maybe this time. The fed is actively
| attacking wage growth this time around, so maybe?
| ericmcer wrote:
| What? VCs want the insanely optimistic no-interest rate
| environment. Giant speculative investments, overvalued IPOs
| and insane acquisitions are how they get rich, and those
| things all coexist with huge salaries for engineers.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| Big part of it is politically motivated economic reasoning,
| imho
| rr808 wrote:
| > as long as you make sure you're excellent at your job
|
| The problem is everyone tries and thinks they're doing well.
| Realistically only 5-10% are "excellent at their job". 50% of
| us are below average.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| 50% of us are below the median. Depending on the
| distribution, there could be many of us or few of us below
| the mean.
|
| Now, does the employer use the median or the mean to evaluate
| their employees? Interesting question..., I don't know.
| sbuccini wrote:
| My personal opinion is that the crunch will hit towards the end
| of Q1 2023. My thinking.
|
| 1. VC market was frozen towards end of 2022. VCs will point to
| seasonality; my guess is they were waiting for valuations to
| stabilize.
|
| 2. 2023 headcount has already been planned. While there are
| still some openings, many companies no longer seem to be in
| expansion mode.
|
| 3. Blitzscale startups will be hitting Sand Hill Road in a few
| days. Many will take severe downrounds and have to drastically
| downsize as a result; others will implode altogether.
|
| 4. There still might be a more severe market downturn, in which
| case even larger companies will be forced to make cuts.
|
| Of course, there's a feedback loop in play here so the
| situation can change very quickly.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I can't recall any recessions / downturns that were known in
| advance with such certainly. I question if it will really
| materialize for this reason.
| eastbound wrote:
| The global trend is that the world consumes too much
| according to Greta-type of people, and those people are
| leading the world in EU and in the Biden admin. In parallel
| we have eased too much money with Covid and we'll take it
| back. Third, GPT shows awesome advances. Fourth, China has
| production issues due to Covid so scarcity will reappear.
|
| All this together: The VC money will get redirected from
| blockchain-type of startups to climate startups first,
| which doesn't create as many jobs for devs, and then to AI
| startups if they show some results, but again this employs
| very different profiles from simple programmers. The rest
| of the economy will keep inflating a little, despite
| anything the Fed can do, because scarcity causes inflation.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I think this one is a little different because the Federal
| reserve is trying to induce a downturn, i.e. lower consumer
| demand in order to fight inflation. In spite of the Fed's
| efforts, consumer demand remains stubbornly high, as are
| unfilled job openings.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| No one knows anything with certainty right now, but that
| doesn't stop people from speculating. Some people
| speculating will be right, some will be wrong.
|
| I see almost as much speculation that "we've already seen
| the worst" for this recession as I do that "it's going to
| get much worse". Even among the crowd that thinks it's
| going to get worse in 2023 before recovering in 2024, they
| can be right and also wrong (it could continue to get worse
| until 2025)
| chasd00 wrote:
| i'm doing a presentation in Feb for a large, public sector,
| project scheduled for two years. If we win the deal then I
| can ride out the downturn there. If we don't then things get
| a bit more spicy. /fingers crossed
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > 3. Blitzscale startups will be hitting Sand Hill Road in a
| few days. Many will take severe downrounds and have to
| drastically downsize as a result; others will implode
| altogether.
|
| What does this mean (blitzscale, and sand hill road) ?
| scudd wrote:
| Sand Hill Road is a road in the SF bay area where a lot of
| VC firms have headquarters. People use "Sand Hill Road" to
| refer to the SF VC industry the same way people use "Wall
| Street" to refer to NYC based finance.
|
| I'm not really what the official definition of blitzscale
| is (or if there is one). I assume it means scale
| (specifically grow head count) really fast.
| sbuccini wrote:
| My main issue with these types of articles is that "tech workers"
| != SWEs.
|
| Of the people profiled in this article:
|
| - 1 videographer
|
| - 1 "systems engineer" (not sure what this means, but doesn't
| seem like it involves programming since they taught themselves
| Python after getting laid off)
|
| And that's it. The article makes the point that the number of SWE
| job openings are way down, -50% YoY. It's clear that there is
| less slack at the moment. What's unclear is when it will become a
| full crunch.
|
| I heard the same thing in 2020 when I got laid off, and it took
| me __a year_ to get back on my feet. I speculate on why this was
| the case in Hard Truth #3 in a post I just published.[0]
|
| Good luck to everyone searching! It was a really rough time for
| me, but I learned a lot about myself and, as trite as it sounds,
| forced me to take a hard look at my skills and be more targeted
| in my outreach. Now I'm the happiest I've been in my entire
| career. Feel free to contact me if you need to vent, contact
| information in profile.
|
| [0] https://www.stevenbuccini.com/8-hard-truths-on-getting-
| laid-...
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| How many jobs did you apply for over that year?
|
| Did you work with a recruiter?
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| When I was a paralegal at a FANG I was referred to as a "tech
| worker" and I never understood it either..
| shams93 wrote:
| I'm 50, this is really screwed up for me not sure what I can do
| they have blocked me from getting any unemployment but here in
| LA the economy is breathtakingly horrific.
| csa wrote:
| > The article makes the point that the number of SWE job
| openings are way down, -50% YoY.
|
| I wonder what percentage of those cut job posts were actually
| needed by the company versus being vanity job posts or a "we're
| always looking for random superstars that may apply, but we
| don't really _need_ anyone right now" posts.
|
| Obviously some slack has been removed from the market, but I
| don't really get the sense that a lot of postings in the "hot
| hiring market" were serious about filling the position with a
| market clearing candidate (i.e., the quality of applicant that
| would work with that specific company at the offered salary).
| spritefs wrote:
| > 1 "systems engineer" (not sure what this means, but doesn't
| seem like it involves programming since they taught themselves
| Python after getting laid off)
|
| I met someone who was a "systems engineer" at a job orientation
| about a year ago. I thought that they did lower level
| programming or something, apparently they didn't know how to
| program at all
| [deleted]
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Someone who knows how to wrangle linux and cloud systems
| expertly may only know "scripting" and sometimes will claim
| not to know programming so as to defer to programmers but if
| they ever had to they would probably pick it up real real
| fast. Scripting is programming in my opinion.
| weakfortress wrote:
| Depends on your targets. I got laid off in 2020 and got a job
| right away. Within 3 months, and that was because I took a
| month and a half off afterwards.
|
| There is no crunch right now if you have a degree and can
| program. Companies are tightening their belts and recruiters
| are not aggressively spamming you. This does not mean jobs
| aren't there. The only thing an environment like this changes
| for me is all extra expenses are cut hastily and I begin
| hoarding money.
|
| Companies with infinite VC money are certainly slowing down
| hiring. FAANGs are slowing down hiring because they used PPP
| money to overhire and are now trimming down the fat. There are
| PLENTY of companies that fit in neither of these categories.
| The work may not be pretty, but it'll keep you fed and insured.
| I have friends in outsourcing jobs and they have have gone
| gangbusters the last two years. If there's one thing I fear
| it's not this alleged "slow down" it's that every job is slowly
| being filled by foreigners working for pennies on the dollar.
|
| The article gets their data from Indeed. I do not use such a
| site, and I know of no one who uses such a site. I generally
| only take jobs through my network of friends I've made and only
| after that exhausts do I begin the process of asking recruiters
| whats up. I don't believe job-farm sites are a good proxy for
| actual industry jobs.
| samtho wrote:
| I would argue that a Bachelors degree is more or less
| obsolete for a 90% of job listings that require that if you
| have 2-4 verifiable experience in the field. Unless you need
| formal certification or clearance for the nature of the work
| you would be doing, you can get by without it.
|
| That's not to say there isn't value in having a degree, like
| every component of a resume, it's part of someone's story on
| how they got to now. When I am hiring for tech roles, I
| staunchly cut back almost all requirements, limiting entry
| level SWE roles to something so basic as "Comfortable working
| with (almost) any programming language."
|
| People can learn the basics of Python in a weekend, but even
| senior engineers take some non-trivial time to onboard to how
| a sufficiently complicated and interconnected system works,
| team works style and dynamics, and repo/project layout and
| organization.
| bluedino wrote:
| I agree with you for the most part, but there are a huge
| amount of employers that simply won't look at you without a
| degree.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| Yeah that's not been my experience, that's just what they
| put on the req.
| flutas wrote:
| > there are a huge amount of employers that simply won't
| look at you without a degree.
|
| I wish that was always the case, but not the way you
| initially read it. I WISH they wouldn't look at me if
| they cared that much.
|
| I've had 4 interviews at places with "degree required"
| but been told to ignore it by the people recommending me.
| I explicitly state I don't have one in my resume, to the
| initial recruiter screen, and anyone else that will
| listen.
|
| Only one of them actually mentioned it at the initial
| screen and said they were firm on it.
|
| The rest of them have ended during negotiations, with
| someone in HR saying something like "oh you don't have a
| degree?" and all communication instantly being dropped.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > FAANGs are slowing down hiring because they used PPP money
| to overhire and are now trimming down the fat.
|
| Do you have any evidence that any FAANGs took PPP money to
| overhire? I searched the PPP loan datasets (using fairly
| terrible online tools) and couldn't find any instances that
| would be aligned with your claim above. Did I miss some?
| sangnoir wrote:
| FAANGs overhired because they incorrectly assumed that the
| lockdown-induced revenue increase was the new normal.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| indymike wrote:
| BTW, I really enjoyed reading your article. There's some good
| advice there.
|
| Tech skillsets are in demand because there's a huge backlog of
| unfilled positions at non-tech companies (take a look at US DOL
| JOLTS reports for November). Non tech CEOS talk about talent
| shortages and flyover states have government funded programs to
| repatriate tech workers. The tech worker shortage is really
| hitting the bottom line for many non-tech companies who can't
| bring product to market, can't complete integrations or can't
| keep up with business demands (the problems at Southwest
| Airlines are what happens when you understaf IT for an extended
| time). If the DOL's numbers can be believed, barring GPT-4
| making tech workers obsolete, you are still in a market where
| even with layoffs, demand will remain high for skilled tech
| workers (and not just SWEs).
|
| All businesses are becoming tech companies, or are dependent on
| tech and looking for talent to move them from on-prem to the
| cloud, looking for talent to integrate SaaS tools with their
| existing systems and in many cases, looking to launch new tech
| enabled products. Most companies hire slowly (my company makes
| software to fix that), and so yes, if you get laid off, the
| average company will take 43 days to go from "Hi" to "Offer",
| so expect it to take at least a few months or more... but the
| prospects of a .com era style labor market collapse are minimal
| because the labor market is actually shrinking while demand for
| workers is growing (US DOL says this will be the case until
| 2045).
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Non tech CEOS talk about talent shortages. [...] The tech
| worker shortage is really hitting the bottom line for many
| non-tech companies who can't bring product to market, can't
| complete integrations or can't keep up with business demands
|
| In my experience, there has never been a shortage. Some
| legacy businesses have wildly out of touch expectations and a
| cargo cult mentality regarding tech.
|
| In the end, they typically end up with contractors because
| they simply can't operate the culture shift requires to have
| good engineering (or get pushed out of the market by real
| tech companies).
|
| > and flyover states have government funded programs to
| repatriate tech workers
|
| I assume by having California-style non-compete, top 5
| universities and a world class VC ecosystem? Else what are
| they doing?
| matchagaucho wrote:
| _Tech skillsets are in demand because there 's a huge backlog
| of unfilled positions at non-tech companies_
|
| This is the crux of the problem for many younger job seekers,
| is that they see "tech-first" / FAANG as the only career
| path.
|
| But _every_ Fortune 1,000 company today is fundamentally
| "tech-first". And it could be argued that "advertising-first"
| companies no longer offer the cutting edge tech opportunities
| of say, Financial Services or Transportation, who have all
| shifted to Cloud/GPS/AI in recent years.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| > Non tech CEOS talk about talent shortages and flyover
| states have government funded programs to repatriate tech
| workers. The tech worker shortage is really hitting the
| bottom line for many non-tech companies who can't bring
| product to market, can't complete integrations or can't keep
| up with business demands (the problems at Southwest Airlines
| are what happens when you understaff IT for an extended
| time).
|
| A big problem is that most of these non-tech companies are
| offering far less pay for a much worse working environment,
| and then wondering why they can't hire people. Even if they
| could hire, the aren't structured to let software engineering
| be involved with the product closely enough to actually have
| a reasonable ROI on their investments. I live in a medium
| sized city in the Midwest, and anecdotally the medium and
| large non-tech companies here are capping out at compensation
| far below even the cash part of the offer you could get at
| many series A tech companies working remotely. I know more
| than a few people working at non-FAANG companies whose stock
| price have taken a beating in the last few years who still
| have a TC roughly 10x the absolute top of market for these
| non-tech companies. Even if they can get close on comp, they
| still tend to use outdated tech, offer very little individual
| autonomy, and be highly bureaucratic environments.
|
| All in all, I think that if working for companies like this
| is the fallback position for software engineers right now, it
| would count as being a fairly dire situation for the job
| market whether or not there are theoretically jobs to be had.
| gcheong wrote:
| "1 "systems engineer" (not sure what this means, but doesn't
| seem like it involves programming since they taught themselves
| Python after getting laid off)"
|
| It's something of a catch-all term I think. When I had that
| title at an investment management firm many years ago I was
| mostly setting up external data feeds with bash and Perl to be
| loaded into a database and republished as datasets (in SAS) for
| consumption by portfolio managers and research so it did
| involve programming in that instance; probably closer to what a
| "Data Engineer" does today.
| Throw4949 wrote:
| [dead]
| wirthjason wrote:
| You're going to have to grind Leetcode. Yes, even the dynamic
| programming problems. You will have to interview
| for jobs where you will use a language you despise. Maybe even
| Java. Definitely Javascript. You might need to
| commute to the office again. Perhaps every day!
|
| These were the best lines of your article. I laughed at the
| dynamic programming quip. :)
| jackmott42 wrote:
| A lot of people view this stuff with cynicism but I found the
| leetcode practice to be useful, and learning new languages to
| be useful. Fun too! But I'm still young at 44....
|
| Commuting though, oh no...
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I think it's fine, I wish they would just do one interview
| about that stuff though. Having to get lucky enough to
| solve 5 in a row is just cruel
| thrownaway561 wrote:
| a "systems engineer" is synonymous with "system administrator"
| and is someone who manages "the machines" (servers,
| workstations, laptops). this involves using some sort of asset
| management and rmm (remote monitoring and management) like
| NCentral, SCSM, Ninja RMM, Connectwise (you get the picture, as
| there are dozens in this space) to make sure that machines are
| setup, patched, accounted for and protected.
|
| i don't understand why this term is so foreign as i literally
| all the time.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| At my last corporate job, it meant I was in charge of
| maintaining and writing software for test stations in a r&d
| facility. That mainly meant Labview.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Systems Engineer can also mean someone who designs jet
| fighters, robots, or medical devices
| auspex wrote:
| Systems Engineer can also mean a presales role as well. The
| technical counter part to a sales rep.
| bearjaws wrote:
| As someone working hiring engineers (4+ positions open), it's
| been about 10% easier than mid-2022.
|
| Like the article states, way more open jobs than people looking
| for them still.
| feudalism wrote:
| If I've learned how to code on my own but lack professional
| experience, what site(s) would I have the best chance of
| finding employment as a software engineer / QA / etc.?
|
| I've been looking on Indeed, HN: Who is Hiring, and angel.co
| but have had zero luck this past year. I get that companies
| don't want to take on the risk of a potential bad hire but
| c'mon. I can't even get an interview.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Do you have any professional experience at all, or just no
| coding experience?
|
| There's a lot of jobs where coding is part of it but it's not
| called coding.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| If you have no experience as a software developer, it would
| probably be a lot easier for you if you have some other
| method of displaying your work. Extensive open source
| contributions, where I can read your code and see how you
| interface with other developers, is far more valuable to me
| when choosing a hire than even the recommendation of some
| other manager at another company that I don't know and can't
| really tease out what their inner team workings are like.
| okaram wrote:
| You may be better off going to physical sites. Go to meetups
| for a few programming languages, meet some people etc
| pryelluw wrote:
| Mind sharing an email address or link to postings? Have people
| looking and happy to send them your way.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Same
| xvedejas wrote:
| Is the pool of open positions shrinking or growing? That might
| give a better idea of the rate that companies are able to hire
| now, compared to before
| ghaff wrote:
| My first hand observation is that many companies are still
| hiring. But it's much harder to get reqs for positions and
| the hiring is much more selective.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| The hiring _can_ be selective. My group is hard to hire for
| (we are looking for a rare combination of skills). We had
| unlimited reqs before the crash. We are lucky enough to
| have unlimited reqs now. But we can be choosier now.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| What's a 'req'?
| ghaff wrote:
| Requisition. In this context it means an approval to hire
| someone for a position.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| hiring requisition. Basically approved headcount to hire
| against. And a job description for the recruiters to post
| and also use as guidance for matching people to openings.
| mkhpalm wrote:
| My take is there are always positions open but only if you
| aren't paying market rates. The MASSIVE spike in whats
| considered a normal salary after inflation and COL has made it
| so a bunch of employers are perpetually looking.
|
| If they raise their salaries to become competitive again they
| will fill their positions. If they keep going with normal
| compensation from 3+ years ago they will keep looking to hire
| and losing their best employees.
| bradlys wrote:
| Yep. If there was such a big issue with hiring - we wouldn't
| see these insane leetcode and system design interviews that
| require months of dedicated studying in order to pass them.
| (Even though you're a perfectly adequate engineer and working
| already) This process isn't just FAANG either. Most of SV
| does this and so do many other startups outside of SV.
| adrr wrote:
| We haven't been ghosted on interviews since September. First
| half of the year was another story. Candidates wouldn't show up
| to interviews and when we tried to contact them, they didn't
| respond.
| bogwog wrote:
| There are engineers complaining about not enough jobs/getting
| ghosted by employers, and employers complaining about not
| enough candidates/getting ghosted by candidates. It's easy to
| assume that the complaining engineers aren't qualified, or
| that the complaining employers have bad hiring processes.
|
| In the end, I've learned nothing about the state of the job
| market.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I lost a contract position in September. I'm a Linux Admin
| guy who does DevOps with Ansible. I've mostly worked in
| Enterprise environments. I took a job in March with a
| Federal contractor and I ran into some difficulties getting
| up to speed with Terraform and a mac devops environment.
| I've always developed on Linux in the past.
|
| There were, and still are a ton of recruiters hitting me
| up. Most of them are garbage, probably 95%. I still feel
| like a broke the salt circle by telling people I was
| actively looking for a new opportunity.
|
| I have a family and need insurance for one of my daughters
| with special needs, so I went hard at interviewing. It took
| a solid 6 months, but I had half a dozen offers for
| Sysadmin work that met the pay I needed. The hardest part
| about comparing offers is the benefits... Different copays,
| deductibles, OOP max, and premiums. Also different pay
| schedules can make it difficult to compare premiums. Then
| you have waiting periods...
|
| I ended up with an excellent opportunity and I've been
| super impressed, but it was a rough 6 weeks.
|
| The majority of offers I received were from companies I
| applied to directly. I had some I cut short in early
| interview phases because I started my new job. Stability
| trumps the chase for afew more dollars. The market is still
| good, but remote hiring is slow, although in person wasn't
| really much faster at most companies.
| lovich wrote:
| I took the past six months interviewing to find a place I
| wanted to work at so went through quite a few companies. My
| observation was that most places haven't adapted their
| hiring process successfully to remote interviewing or
| engineers being in high demand. Even for places that were
| "desperate" to hire their golden path interview processes
| were fairly onerous or just really long calendar wise with
| all their gates.
|
| They pretty much fell into two categories.
|
| The first was person companies who wanted you to commit 1-2
| days of in person interviewing after completing the phone
| screen and a at home test. If you are interviewing at
| multiple companies and are already employed, this is pretty
| much a no go unless you are already really enticed or want
| to work there. Even interviewing at just 3 of those places
| means taking off so much time from work that you'll either
| tip off your boss that you're on your way out, or use up
| all your PTO that you ideally use to have a life and not
| burn out.
|
| The other category was remote interviewing companies. I
| observed that they did the same number of interview steps
| as the in person companies but instead of a day or two
| gauntlet they schedule an hour here, an hour there, an hour
| another day. This worked well for interleaving interviews
| in the regular work day without disrupting your current
| job, but it meant the full interview cycle would take 3-4
| weeks on average as both your schedule and the schedule of
| their mandatory interview members(hiring manager, heads of
| various departments, whatever their companies "important"
| person was, etc) had to align. And that is all before
| there's interruptions like illness, or getting paged to an
| on call event.
|
| Every company was doing a minimum of 4 hours and an average
| of 6 hours of interviews with the common gates being 30
| minute phone screen, 45-60 minute take home code interview,
| 60 minute technical interview with 1-2 engineers, 60 minute
| system design with 1-2 senior engineers/architects, 60
| minute interview with equivalent people in product to make
| sure you have similar philosophies, and then another 45-60
| minutes with the hiring manager. Occasionally companies
| would also add in an hour with prospective teammates to see
| if you click, and/or an hour with some specific department
| they felt it was important to have engineering work
| directly with.
|
| Its frankly a lot of work when you also have to prep for
| the typical interview questions that exercise a different
| skill set than the common job, and are likely doing this
| gauntlet with multiple companies simultaneously. Its also a
| high amount of spend on the company side when you add up
| all the man hours they are using per perspective candidate.
| My take is that the ghosting seen on both sides is because
| no one wants to deal with all of this once a match has been
| found.
|
| It's really on companies to fix this. Candidates aren't
| clamoring for more and more interview time. When I speak to
| friends in professions outside of tech they are
| flabbergasted at the the length and depth of the interview
| process the tech industry has developed. Bad hires can be a
| problem but I think our industry has overcorrected for
| that. I won't believe that companies are truly "desperate"
| until I start seeing this interview process scale back.
| Desperate companies would be trying to hire a quickly as
| possible, not tick off all the checkboxes on a list of
| tests.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Hit the nail on the head. Look at what companies do, not
| what they say. A company doing multiple day interviews is
| not "desperate".
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| In normal conditions - I wouldn't be surprised if >20% of
| people interviewing aren't really interested in working at
| the company.
|
| You need competing offers to get a good offer - so you need
| to interview at places you have little interest in actually
| working for.
|
| I would expect a lot of these people either got a good
| enough offer, or good enough competing offers, or just
| didn't get an offer from where they actually want to work -
| so don't need competing offers.
|
| Additionally, there's a lot of people that interview for
| practice just to keep fresh for when they do need a job,
| and a lot of people that interview at a few places as
| practice before they interview at the places they're really
| targeting.
|
| I'd expect a lot of no-shows from this cohort.
| Akronymus wrote:
| Over here we have requirements for applying for jobs to
| receive unemployment, to a ceetain degree. There are
| quite a lot of people who "just gimme the stamp".
| (Usually those got reported to the AMS)
| fzzzy wrote:
| What's the AMS?
| Akronymus wrote:
| Sorry, somehow had that one slip in.
| "arbeitsmarktservice" basically the austrian unemployment
| office.
| ryandrake wrote:
| On the other side, in normal conditions, I wouldn't be
| surprised if >20% (probably far higher) of companies
| interviewing candidates aren't really interested in
| hiring anyone. They may be getting a pulse check on the
| hiring market. They may be interviewing simply to check
| off due diligence, but intend to only hire their already
| pre-determined candidate. They may need to have backup
| candidates if an offer they just extended falls through.
| They may be trying to pre-vet candidates so that they can
| quickly hire later if headcount suddenly opens up. They
| may be doing it because simply company policy is to
| always be interviewing.
|
| A lot of the process seems to be performative and not
| really being done for the purpose of matching a real job
| seeker with a real job.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Possibly 20% of companies - but I really doubt 20% of
| positions.
| [deleted]
| siva7 wrote:
| I doubt that is true. Interviewing candidates is a huge
| time sink for which every manager i know of would rather
| want to skip.
| anikom15 wrote:
| I would be surprised by this, given every time someone
| left at a company I worked for scrambled to get someone
| new and seemed to have no real infrastructure for
| actually hiring someone beyond maybe automated resume
| software. If a recruiter was involved at all it would be
| a contractor, bur otherwise everyone involved in the
| hiring process were just people with enough experience
| who 'volunteered' their time to do interviews and rate
| candidates.
| adrr wrote:
| They are ghosting on the call screen where I go over comp,
| process, role etc. Most of the times they took another job
| offer but have the common courtesy of telling us so I am
| not sitting on zoom by myself for 10 minutes.
| [deleted]
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| We had trouble hiring last year because in Seattle the
| competition is fierce and we're not the top of the pile. Today
| it's yeah maybe 10% easier but we're still can't be too picky
| cmbailey wrote:
| https://archive.vn/20221227114050/https://www.wsj.com/articl...
| black_13 wrote:
| [dead]
| GingerGator wrote:
| [dead]
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