[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
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Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
I'm steadily looking for new opportunities, but am increasingly
annoyed by the LinkedIn / Indeed grind. I feel like half the jobs
are recruiting firms or very bloated positions with >500
applicants. I love the monthly "Who is hiring?" thread -- these
positions almost always yield more responses and suffer less from
false advertising. Are there other sites I'm not considering?
Methods I'm not using? How do you find _good_ (defined as not
bloated and optimized for LI) job opportunities in the current
market?
Author : charxyz
Score : 160 points
Date : 2023-08-13 16:13 UTC (6 hours ago)
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Honestly just look for companies that have bounties on tickets in
| their open source software and make a name for yourself that way.
| They'll know your name when you apply. You'll start to make money
| right away too. [1]
|
| [1] https://github.com/djadmin/awesome-bug-bounty
| frfl wrote:
| Bit of a tangent, but what has been everyone's experience so far
| in 2023 trying to find a new job? I got really interested in this
| and have been passively researching it (HN, reddit posts).
|
| My conclusion, so far, is unless you've got strong connections
| it's hard right now to find a job. Most job posting, as OP
| mentions get hundreds if not thousands of applications. Other
| times, I've personally also notice, candidates with perfect
| skill/experience matches get the same generic rejection ("we
| respect your experience but we're going to go with another
| candidate") or worse getting no response at all. There have been
| mentions of pseudo job posts (ie companies are just falsely
| advertising positions they are not actually look to fill).
| Ultimately, a really crappy situation for those looking for a
| job. Even experienced people, think 7,8,10+ years of experience,
| are seeing similar things unless they have a strong connection
| that get them to the final stage(s) of the internet process.
|
| Happy to provide a links to relevant online discussions and
| articles about this situation if anyone is interested. Let me
| know.
| its_a_random_ac wrote:
| Yes, that's mostly been my experience (6 years + masters, Bay
| Area/remote positions.)
|
| A few other things I've noticed:
|
| 1. Yes, I've had the "candidates with perfect skill/experience
| matches get the same generic rejection" but I've also had times
| when I'd apply for something that I had only a little bit of a
| match for, and still get pretty far through the interview
| process.
|
| 2. Related to #1, I can't get a good feeling of how qualified I
| am for these listings. Sometimes I'll apply to something that
| is in the low 100ks with a customized resume that echos all of
| their reqs and get rejected, but other times I'll just blind
| fire out my standard resume to something with a base in the mid
| 200s and get selected for a full interview loop.
|
| 3. It feels like some places still have the same "standards"
| for each part of the interview process, leading to a lot of
| candidates getting to the end, which then leads to some weird
| "you did well but we chose someone else" responses.
|
| 4. Sometimes I'd have an interview lined up, but then right
| before it I get a "due to shifting requirements, we have to
| postpone this by a bit" email. This has happened several times
| now (and they never have actually un-postponed it.) Same thing
| with spending a day or two interviewing at a place, not hearing
| back, and then reading of a large layoff at that company a few
| days later.
| whateveracct wrote:
| The ones I looked into didn't get past intros due to
| compensation. My last new job was before all the interest rate
| increases and all that stuff, so I think I pinned my salary
| solidly above my current market. I'd have trouble getting a
| lateral compensation move, let alone a bump. Between that and
| my house, interest rates have been kind but also I'm kinda
| bound by it.
| nine_k wrote:
| It's been more than 3 months since I've started looking for a
| job.
|
| Back in May and June, things were really bad. Layoffs
| everywhere, basically no open engineering positions. Late July
| and early August were / are much better, some recruiters even
| reaching me, instead of me reaching them.
|
| Still pretty hard; about a hundred companies rejected me, of
| them a couple dozen after several rounds of interviews, and
| several after apparently successful final rounds.
| potsandpans wrote:
| my experience in 2023 is that I applied to a single job at
| fastly, got a referral through blind.
|
| the only reason I applied was because it was uncanny how much
| the position matched my skillset.
|
| this position was 1:1 what I've been doing in my career, pretty
| much an open req tailored to my experience.
|
| dude on blind told me that it got fast tracked to the mgmt team
| from hr screening. I waited two weeks, and got a boilerplate
| rejection email. there were probably thousands of people who
| applied to that position.
| terminatornet wrote:
| I'm still employed, but just started looking for new jobs as of
| a few weeks ago. I've similarly had the generic rejection with
| every position I've applied for so far.
|
| I suspect that my biggest hurdle is that my resume isn't
| tailored enough to get through whatever criteria their
| applicant tracking system is using. Really annoying that I have
| to try and game the system just to get my foot in the door.
| frfl wrote:
| I keep track of where I apply and if I get a no-response or a
| rejection or an interview.
|
| Right now, 70 applications over 2 months, I had a ~4%
| interview rate. Slightly lower than normal. July and August
| were absolutely dead. June I had some interviews. Fall it may
| pick up from what I've read.
|
| I don't know how well tailoring works. If it's a special job,
| maybe it's worth it, otherwise, it may me more efficient to
| submit a comprehensive but otherwise non-tailored
| application. Maybe run an A/B test to see what gives you
| better results. You could also have a few pre-tailored
| resumes you can use for the typical positions you apply for
| (for eg Frontend, Backend, Fullstack, DevOps) instead of
| recreating one each time.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > but what has been everyone's experience so far in 2023 trying
| to find a new job?
|
| I'm done. Not even trying anymore. After a year of bullshit I'm
| convinced the only reason I ever made it into this field is
| because that stupid guilder age in the 2010s driven by cheap
| money, cargo culting, and naive idiocy. Even the non tech
| companies aren't hiring much anymore.
|
| Seriously I had an easier time finding a job when I was 18, had
| no formal education, and no real work experience.
|
| I used to console myself with that fact that if I didn't have
| anything else, I at least had a decent career and now I don't
| even have that.
|
| Recruiters disappeared over night. I occasionally get a few
| every once in a blue moon, but they always end up with nothing.
| I did my last interview a couple weeks ago, only for the
| recruiter to call me back as confused as I was whether the
| answer was yes or no. Cold applications are worse. I did
| managed a couple interviews out of those, but was rejected
| within a few days. Not sure why, those were some of the best
| interviews I've had recently. And the worst are the companies
| who send me an email months after I've applied just to say "we
| cancelled this position, lol". I've also had family friends and
| others reach out and ask me if I'd like to consult for them,
| only for them to ghost me as well.
|
| Now to be fair, some of this was my fault as well. I didn't
| recognize how fucked the market was quick enough. I was
| desperately focusing on remote jobs, primarily because I really
| didn't want to incur that costs and work that come with a move.
| I did a few interviews that were for in site positions, mostly
| for practice, and usually progressed further in those than for
| the remote roles, but ultimately didn't seriously pursue them
| for the reason I just stated.
|
| Meanwhile I'm in one of the worst real estate markets in the
| country, with my savings having been battered by all sorts of
| unexpected emergency expenses. I'm honestly half convinced that
| 2023 is trying to kill me. At the very least, I suppose I won't
| have much left to lose sooner rather than later.
| frfl wrote:
| Your experiences are too similar to what I've seen. I don't
| think the public preconception has yet to realize this is
| what reality if looking like for many people rather than the
| headlines about no-recession, jobs everywhere, low
| unemployment.
|
| I was going to link my other comment,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37112093, but you
| already read and commented on that. Just try to hold out,
| it's just absolutely terrible right now, perhaps dotcom/2008
| bad, but those were both before my mind so I can't
| necessarily give a good account for the experience during
| those two periods.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Your experiences are too similar to what I've seen. I
| don't think the public preconception has yet to realize
| this is what reality if looking like for many people rather
| than the headlines about no-recession, jobs everywhere, low
| unemployment.
|
| Both can be true. Many people can have a reality of not
| being able to find buyers for remote work performed on
| computers. And the data indicating non remote work,
| possibly not performed on computers is widely available
| (albeit at an undesirable pay to quality of life ratio for
| those in the former category).
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > And the data indicating non remote work, possibly not
| performed on computers is widely available
|
| The initially reported jobs numbers each month always
| claim that, and then those numbers are consistently
| revised down over time so that jobs have been lost the
| whole time, and our perceptions were more accurate than
| the initially reported data.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Presumably, this chart is using revised data, and it does
| not show any material upward movement in even the most
| expansive definition of unemployed for almost a year:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate
| base698 wrote:
| As someone that skated through 2008 employed, this seems
| worse to me. I've seen people that are good take a year to
| get a job. Some even left willingly last year only to
| faceplant into the current situation.
| [deleted]
| justinzollars wrote:
| I think the market is ice cold right now. I know many highly
| qualified people - great engineers, who get things done, who
| are looking for work.
| camdenreslink wrote:
| I have applied to 90 jobs in the last 3 weeks as a senior
| software engineer looking for a remote position. These have
| been from LinkedIn, and the HackerNews who's hiring thread.
|
| I'd say I've had ~10-15% recruiter screen response rate. I
| think a lot of my rejections have been companies filling the
| position before I get a chance to interview.
| teirce wrote:
| Been looking since about February. I've probably sent out at
| least a hundred apps for positions I was interested in and met
| qualifications for.
|
| I think I've made it to a recruiter screen around ~10 times,
| and I've had less than 5 actual interviews follow.
|
| I have 6+ years in industry, 4 and some change of which were
| FAANG (which everyone believes is a golden ticket into any
| company). And I can't even get an interview.
|
| I'm with OP. The grind is straight up depressing, demoralizing,
| soul crushing. I'm close to moving in with family just to
| preserve my money at this point.
| alexpotato wrote:
| >which were FAANG (which everyone believes is a golden ticket
| into any company).
|
| In a past job, I saw a LOT of former FAANG candidates as a
| hiring manager (SRE @ hedge fund) at a past job.
|
| In my experience, FAANG folks have a somewhat barbell
| distribution where it's either:
|
| A. "This person is incredibly talented, well spoken and will
| probably find a job anywhere"
|
| B. "This person spent 5 years at a FAANG and worked on
| basically two projects that would have taken <6 months at a
| hedge fund"
|
| There doesn't really seem to be an in between.
|
| I also distinctly remember learning that Google had 100K+
| employees. To me, that is moving into "big bank" size
| territory and it's clearly impossible for EVERYONE who is
| former Google to be amazing.
| ecshafer wrote:
| > I also distinctly remember learning that Google had 100K+
| employees. To me, that is moving into "big bank" size
| territory and it's clearly impossible for EVERYONE who is
| former Google to be amazing.
|
| Ive worked at 3 places, sizes: <10, ~10k, and ~20k.
|
| I cant even imagine 100k. 100k for Toyota or Walmart, sure,
| that makes sense. But at tens of thousands of engineers you
| must have a lot of people not doing anything. Even at 20k,
| so maybe 5k engineers you only have so many people pushing
| on new stuff. Most are doing maintenance on crud and batch
| apps and keeping up with whatever "initiatives" are being
| pushed while attending meetings.
|
| Most impressive to me imo are the instagram type companies
| that have 20 employees when they are sold/ipo or whatever.
| ghaff wrote:
| When I was an industry analyst and had more exposure to
| large companies at fairly high levels, the thing that
| impressed me was that they were able to function at all.
| So many layers of management, so many moving parts, so
| much coordination needed.
|
| It also wan't unusual for me to be consulting with some
| group and some topic would come up and we'd be--you do
| know that so and so at your company is working on this,
| right? And they usually wouldn't.
| dehrmann wrote:
| My experience with FAANG candidates, especially those with
| only FAANG experience, while at a startup is they often
| have isolated skills and experience with bespoke,
| idiosyncratic ecosystems.
| russh wrote:
| > Isolated skills and experience with bespoke,
| idiosyncratic ecosystems.
|
| Sounds like a good tagline for my Resume.
| outrun86 wrote:
| "I have a very specific set of skills"
| ghaff wrote:
| At conferences and the like I've always been super-
| impressed by the Google folks I've spoke with and listened
| to. But it's also my understanding that Google doesn't let
| just anyone "out in the wild" so I assume I'm pretty much
| seeing one end of the barbell (or probably a smallish slice
| of it).
| master_crab wrote:
| Yeah all the FAANGs do this. They won't sponsor their
| bottom half to go to conferences, much less speak at
| them.
| oldtownroad wrote:
| We hired a former Googler recently, great hire. Your resume
| couldn't be more different from his: yours is so generic that
| my only takeaway is "oh he worked at Google". I fear you've
| taken resume advice along the lines of "...explain the value
| of what you did..." (which is great advice) but should be
| used to augment technology experience, not replace it. I have
| no idea what you're good at.
|
| Find some former Google colleagues who have managed to get
| new jobs and ask to review their resumes. Google is
| noteworthy on a resume: it won't guarantee you a job but
| it'll mean someone reviews your resume. If you're struggling
| so much with a 4 year Google stint under your belt, there's
| something wrong with your resume.
| teirce wrote:
| > but should be used to augment technology experience, not
| replace it.
|
| Do you have some specific feedback or bullets that stand
| out to you? Most of Google tech is all in-house stuff that
| nobody would recognize, outside of a few open-source
| counterparts (Blaze -> Bazel). I'm confused how my resume
| could better convey what I'm good at. I can say I worked
| with Java, Angular, Typescript, etc. But that's all
| exceedingly generic.
|
| If I say something like "automated X thing in WombatLand
| using BlogSplort tool, saving 20% of engineering time" I
| don't see how that is more useful than saying "Automated
| the creation of full stack internal web-apps to launch in a
| production environment [...] saved hundreds of ENG-hours
| for teams launching internal applications"
| oldtownroad wrote:
| You're describing work that has no relevance outside of a
| megacorp like Google which even amongst megacorps is
| quite unique because it invents technology and can afford
| to do so.
|
| If you look at the type of work being done at "normal"
| companies you're applying for, you'll likely see work
| that is much more at the coal face and so experience at
| the coal face is worth much more than work that most
| people can't even conceptualise -- even if it happened at
| Google.
|
| In a competitive hiring environment, you need your resume
| to tell the person reviewing it why you're a safe bet.
| Your resume tells me that if I need someone to build
| internal full stack web-app automation then you've got
| experience of doing that at Google... which is great
| except Google is pretty much the only place where that
| work is required.
|
| Don't think of your experience as a list of things you've
| done, think of it as evidence for why you're the right
| candidate to fill a role. If you're applying for a
| company that has an internal customer support system then
| absolutely shout about how you did exactly that at
| Google, it'll get you an interview... if you're applying
| for a company that builds AR furniture previewing for
| e-commerce, it's probably not worth even mentioning.
|
| The perfect resume is a copy-and-paste of the job spec,
| you need to get as close to that as is possible. If you
| did a random weekend project at Google that can be framed
| as relevant to the job you're applying for, that will do
| more for you than the hundreds of engineering hours you
| saved by automating the deployment of full stack apps.
|
| Google is valuable to have on your resume because it
| lends credibility to the work you did, but that work has
| to be relevant to the job you're applying for.
|
| > I can say I worked with Java, Angular, Typescript, etc.
| But that's all exceedingly generic
|
| For example, if you're applying for a company that uses
| Angular, the focus of your experience section should be
| having used Angular at Google. A single paragraph that
| says "Google created Angular, I worked every day with
| Angular at Google. I built web apps that help support
| millions of Google customers via a customer service team
| processing thousands of calls per day. I used angular
| features x y and z and contributed code to Angular
| itself." would be an order of magnitude more effective
| than what you have now.
| tayo42 wrote:
| > In a competitive hiring environment, you need your
| resume to tell the person reviewing it why you're a safe
| bet. Your resume tells me that if I need someone to build
| internal full stack web-app automation then you've got
| experience of doing that at Google... which is great
| except Google is pretty much the only place where that
| work is required
|
| This is so incredibly dismissive and naive about the work
| being done. I can't believe you actually think this way.
| Its almost insulting
|
| These kinds of projects require everything any other
| project needs. He learned a new tech, was able to
| identify a real problem then solve the issue with real
| measureable results. All of this within an organziation
| where you need to design and plan correctly
|
| all of this is generalizable to almost any software work
| being done. and important skills for experienced
| engineers
| asfasdfaaaaaaa wrote:
| I didn't even notice you worked at Google until i spent
| like a minute reading your resume. You really need to
| remove that gigantic wall of text and briefly summarize
| things better and add some visual hierarchy.
|
| When i look at this resume i get the impression you
| wouldn't be able to communicate very well.
| mushbino wrote:
| I did exactly this. Moved back in with my folks and I'm
| almost middle aged. There has been zero job security for the
| past year and a half at least. Also periodically over the
| years put especially the past year and a half. Otherwise, I'm
| burning through money for rent, paying bay area prices and
| health insurance and everything else. People in tech usually
| scoff at the idea of unionizing, but I feel like we will have
| to at some point. At least for some amount of sanity and
| security.
| iknowSFR wrote:
| How is this possible? Surely at this point you would have a
| network to lean on that wouldn't leave you applying for jobs
| online? I'm hesitant to believe you don't have a network and
| more willing to believe you don't realize you have that
| network and maybe even not sure how to use it. I truly don't
| mean this to be critical and instead curious: Why would you
| spend that much time applying for jobs with that type of
| success rate?
| zlg_codes wrote:
| I'm sorry but this comment shows an immense amount of
| social privilege. Most of us _don 't_ have networks that
| can get us jobs. Those are exclusive cliques and it's
| foolish to assume everyone can lean on nepotism. Also,
| isn't it a bit scummy to keep someone in your life just in
| case you need a job?
| Solvitieg wrote:
| It's normal to leverage your connections to find a job.
| Arguably it's the preferred way for both employees and
| employers.
|
| "It's not what you know, it's who you know"
|
| You too can acquire this "privilege" by building
| relationships with people.
| laurels-marts wrote:
| This is true. The better you're at networking and
| building relationships the easier it gets in almost every
| domain of life. There's a point at which when you have
| enough connections and relationships you'll likely never
| need to write another motivation letter. You can just
| leverage your network.
| teirce wrote:
| > How is this possible? Surely at this point you would have
| a network to lean on that wouldn't leave you applying for
| jobs online? I'm hesitant to believe you don't have a
| network and more willing to believe you don't realize you
| have that network and maybe even not sure how to use it.
|
| It's possible because of a couple reasons. The market is
| cold right now, and most of my network is _still at
| google_. There are a few folks I've worked with that have
| left for other places - but those places are either in
| hiring freezes or actively laying people off for the last
| few months.
|
| You're partially right, though. Maybe I don't know how to
| utilize this network efficiently. Friend of friend etc, is
| probably something I need to work on more.
|
| > Why would you spend that much time applying for jobs with
| that type of success rate?
|
| Because I need a job?
| [deleted]
| jitl wrote:
| At this point I'm more hesitant to hire FAANG employees who
| are used to really strict guardrails both culturally and
| technically to keep them "on track". Most startups don't have
| the guardrails and need people who make good choices without
| the bumpers. Hiring a bunch of FB and Google people did not
| improve Airbnb's average engineering skill, rather it sank
| because a substantial part of our population only cared about
| promo and promo projects.
| teirce wrote:
| I agree with that assessment, but with the caveat that I
| think this mostly applies to new-grad hires. In my
| experience, people who brought outside experience into
| FAANG weren't nearly as affected by these guard-rails
| outside of things I think most firms would approve of
| (mandatory code reviews, unit/integration tests, don't
| write inscrutable wizard code golf changes, don't be an
| ass).
|
| I've spoken with recruiting firms before that literally
| told me companies asked them to stop sending people who
| were hired as a newgrad to FAANG.
| bennyg wrote:
| Are you filtering before the interview?
| araes wrote:
| Interesting from a couple perspectives (taking the above as
| honest about AirBNB). Confirms a bit about what's been
| weird with the economy and hiring.
|
| From the man on the street's perspective (and apparently
| teirc's view above), FAANG work is where you want to go,
| and what you want to have on your resume. Per the quote, "a
| golden ticket". Pretty much all the news talks about.
|
| However, if you talk to the rest of the tech community,
| they're like: "We tried poaching a few of them. We didn't
| really like the results. You work at one of those places
| and you get infected with something that's 'not startup'".
|
| This seems a lot like Stanley and Neck's recent work [1].
| The people you've historically been most likely to get as
| hires are the people most likely to ditch FAANG's for
| anything shinier. The people who don't "only care about
| promo", don't actually leave.
|
| Other note, also similar to other recent posts [2] and
| comments about the change in Google. Like people finally
| realized: "wait...they're just like MS. All that 'Don't be
| evil' stuff was just corp-speak. Two decades later, and its
| strategy deja-vu with Android / Search / Ads. With MS now
| being the caring innovator who values your freedom of
| choice."
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S
| 00221...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37111317
| tayo42 wrote:
| my job search is miserable. I want to post a well thought out
| rant about my experience but idk how to do it anonymously
| without ruining my chances to get a job looking like a dick
| online.
|
| Every part is horrible:
|
| recruiters that don't know the industry beyond buzzwords. this
| is frustrating, they cant think outside their box "oh you
| havent done exactly this for 10 years, so i guess youll never
| do it." I dont think people know how bad of a filter these hr
| people are. I wrote code that handled tens of millions of
| requests a second, then you get "oh but were really looking for
| a sr backend api engineer, this doesnt seem like a good match"
| like what do you think I was doing?
|
| random interviews with no clear goals. "system design" wtf is
| this, i have no idea what anyone is looking in these within an
| hour. you want me to design facebook in 45min on a clunky ui?
| it takes 20 minutes just to talk about some of this stuff. you
| have to hope to hit their random keywords, but you have no idea
| what it is. leetcode has been beat to death, that to is
| horrible. we need you to optimize this exponential algorithm on
| the fly. basically if you haven't seen the exact problem
| before, you are not passing these interviews. or you run into
| the sr engineer, been with the company for years, that seems
| stuck in their local maximum that's interviewing you, your
| subjected their random questioning and expectations.
|
| the slow pace of everything. schedule an intro call a week
| ahead with a useless recruiter, schedule your tech screen
| another week out, now 2 weeks to get 3 engineers to screen you,
| talk with a hiring manager another week out.
|
| > worse getting no response at all.
|
| yeah, some company sent me an offline question, one question
| was write a k8s yaml file, right now, along with 2 other
| algorithm questions. like wtf was that looking for. no, i
| havent heard anything back. cant believe i wasted 1.5 hours on
| that. i dont think ill do any take home assements anymore,
| there is no guarantee anyone will look or respond.
|
| the low balls, "were looking for a staff/team lead, pay is
| 140k" you are out of your mind with these.
|
| I can keep going, the whole thing is horrible. thanks for
| reading my mini rant
| frfl wrote:
| It seems to be a culmination of all the worst the hiring
| process throws at you right now. Your frustrations aren't
| unique right now unfortunately, as far as I can tell. But at
| the same time, either to keep up appearances or for whatever
| other reason, others don't seem to be freely describing the
| same frustrations.
|
| The public perceptions don't seem to reflect this side of
| reality either -- the job reports and unemployment rates at
| all time lows, yet the frustrations you're expressing seems
| more common that you'd think just looking at the headlines
| and reports of the job market.
|
| For what it's worth, I think it's best to try and ride it
| out, until the tides turn for the better. I don't know the
| root cause, but the economic situation (high interest rates)
| would seem to be the likely root cause, but that's just a
| guess.
| tayo42 wrote:
| > Your frustrations aren't unique right now unfortunately,
| as far as I can tell. But at the same time, either to keep
| up appearances or for whatever other reason, others don't
| seem to be freely describing the same frustrations.
|
| The only thing that keeps me going pretty much is knowing
| it isn't just me
|
| I wish more people felt ok to speak out. publicly or
| online. it doesnt look good to be the person who says I
| cant find a job. It makes everyone else look at you like
| there is something wrong
| the_only_law wrote:
| > the job reports and unemployment rates at all time lows
|
| I think this is because the issues described are
| particularly to software right now. Unemployment is pretty
| low, but I see a lot more people complaining about barely
| scraping by or hurting financially. My guess is that it's
| mostly crappy jobs. Particularly in my locality there's a
| massive divide between rent/property costs and average pay.
|
| I was trying to do some basic analysis on my local job
| market. Sadly, that data is not easily available, but I
| hand compiled the jobs posted in my area for a few days.
| There were plenty, but they tended to be low wage, low
| skill work, or work requiring expensive credentials or
| extensive experience.
| frfl wrote:
| /r/antiwork and /r/recruitinghell both have accounts of
| people being rejected from non-software jobs as well.
| Additionally, crappy wages and unrealistic job
| descriptions. Of course I read those posts knowing
| there's a certain amount of echo-chamber effect in those
| subreddits and a small number of posts may not give a
| clear indication of the overall job market. But certainly
| provides some perspective.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Additionally, crappy wages and unrealistic job
| descriptions.
|
| What's interesting, is from what I've seen, a lot of
| stuff is paying _a lot_ better than I remember seeing a
| decade ago. However, the costs, notably the cost of
| things you _need_ to survive (especially housing) has
| managed to far outpace those wage gains in a much shorter
| period of time. Although that might be specific to my
| location.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > However, the costs, notably the cost of things you need
| to survive (especially housing) has managed to far
| outpace those wage gains in a much shorter period of
| time. Although that might be specific to my location.
|
| It's not. That's everywhere. The difference is in the
| degree in awfulness.
| frfl wrote:
| That makes sense. In any major city, where most of the
| jobs are, houses, rents, food, all the typical things,
| are well above what minimum wage pays so you're likely
| living pay check to pay check even if you do find
| something, even if it's above minimum wage.
| confidantlake wrote:
| I don't believe the unemployment rate is as low as they
| claim. A low unemployment rate would mean employees would
| be less picky but they aren't. It is almost impossible to
| find a job right now.
|
| It is definitely tough to do research. A lot of the jobs
| posted are fake.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Something to consider is that unemployment rates only
| account for people who are actively in the job
| market/applying for jobs, and the workforce participation
| rate dropped significantly with Covid. If you get so
| discouraged that you stop looking for work, you are no
| longer counted as "unemployed"
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I see lots of employers who are not picky. Hotels,
| grocery stores, hospitals, warehouses, construction
| crews, transportation businesses, etc.
|
| Employers in one sector being picky is not evidence of
| all employers being picky.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > I see lots of employers who are not picky. Hotels,
| grocery stores, hospitals, warehouses, construction
| crews, transportation businesses, etc.
|
| Jobs aren't getting filled because they're in places
| people can't afford to live. Right now that's most places
| - including places that had been affordable for
| generations but aren't any more.
|
| This all should be easily understood but it often isn't.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Insufficient pay can surely be a cause for some employers
| not being able to be picky, but that does not mean the
| official unemployment rate is false.
|
| I think what people are dancing around is percent of
| people employed with minimum "acceptable" pay to quality
| of life at work ratio, which includes the location of the
| work. This figure may very well be trending down, but is
| not an official figure, and it seems like a difficult
| metric to calculate anyway.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| The 'official' unemployment rate doesn't include people
| who aren't actively looking within X time. I would not
| trust the government to accurately report on a statistic
| that makes it look bad.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There is an official unemployment rate that includes
| people who are not actively looking within X time. See
| U-6 unemployment rate:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm
|
| >U-6 is the broadest measure of labor underutilization.
| In addition to the total number of unemployed and all
| people marginally attached to the labor force, U-6
| includes people at work part time for economic reasons
| (also called involuntary part-time workers) and is
| expressed as a percentage of the civilian labor force
| plus the marginally attached.
|
| >U-6 is calculated as: ( (Total Unemployed + Marginally
| Attached to the Labor Force + People at Work Part Time
| for Economic Reasons) / (Labor Force + Marginally
| Attached to the Labor Force) ) x 100
| zlg_codes wrote:
| And most, if not all of those jobs, are bad for your
| health and don't pay anywhere close to what's necessary
| to make up for the stress on your body. Most jobs are
| crap, and so are most employers. They want warm bodies to
| wear out and make money.
|
| Generally, unpicky employers point to a high-turnover,
| high-stress, low paying environment.
|
| You couldn't pay me enough to work those shit jobs.
| [deleted]
| yu3zhou4 wrote:
| Maybe the salaries are down and there is higher
| competitiveness between candidates because people are able to
| work remotely from low cost of living countries? I'd be happy
| to take fully remote staff eng/tech lead for 140k USD,
| because in my country I can make half of it for the same
| position
| tayo42 wrote:
| Maybe on a small scale but I dont think this is the case. A
| lot of roles are US only even if they are remote. Hiring
| out side the US when your exec team and related are all US
| based isn't as easy as just doing it. Language is hard to
| deal with. There are also issues with taxes following
| employment for where the hiring is being done that I dont
| think a lot of companies are going to put with. Companies
| can also be conservative about security, not everyone is
| going to want to have their data in a third world country.
| Also it seems like europe is cracking down on things you
| can get away with in the US
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I very reliably get callbacks and many unceremonious rejections
| _after_ the technical round
|
| and yet the very first job I interviewed at in person hired me,
| matching my experience pre-pandemic. No compromise on my
| compensation bands, as I was really questioning my world by
| then
|
| But turns out the humans didnt change, the mode of interaction
| did and it has less inputs with different biases
| mdekkers wrote:
| I'm 53, and I doubt I'll ever find a job in tech again. I only
| started getting responses when I removed the earliest 15 year's
| experience from my CV, and as soon as I hit the screening stage
| and my age is known they lose interest.
|
| Ageism can get fucked.
| corethree wrote:
| I believe it's illegal to talk about age or even consider it
| in the US. You need to make it to the technicals. Say webcam
| is broken for the screen.
| bilsbie wrote:
| How do you take that off your resume? What if they ask?
|
| I didn't realize you could do that.
| szatkus wrote:
| Huh? You could just say that you got a first job in tech
| when you were 35 or something.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Don't have to say anything. Sadly no one is interested in
| experience with Netware in the nineties.
| gedy wrote:
| Don't lose hope, it's just a downturn. At previous company (a
| year or so ago) we hired 61yo who had gotten in to tech a few
| years before. He turned out great.
| farmeroy wrote:
| That's the kind of positive sentiment I need to hear!
| justinzollars wrote:
| Out of curiosity - if this is actually true (I doubt it -
| that is you will never have another tech job; not ageism.)
| What is your plan?
| mdekkers wrote:
| My plan? I'll go out on my own terms. I fought my entire
| life to escape a bad childhood of poverty and homelessness.
| Not going back.
| windowshopping wrote:
| I don't know how you meant this to read but it sounds to
| me like you're saying you plan to commit suicide.
| darksofa wrote:
| Heh, I got a tech job at 56.
|
| But ... there is a lot of ageism out there. Which I've never
| understood.
| mdekkers wrote:
| Well done. I really don't understand it either. I have
| close to 30 years experience, and have always stayed
| relevant in terms of approach, skills, and knowledge.
|
| According to the folks I've worked with in the past, I've
| done great work, and I'm still in regular contact with many
| of them.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| This is a lot of people's experiences right now, young or
| old. As a manager who hires a lot, I could not care less
| about your age, would not even cross my mind as a criteria.
| Not saying agism does not exist, but not everywhere. It is an
| absolute buyer's market right now.
| SamPatt wrote:
| Been looking seriously for ~4 months now, no luck yet.
|
| My degree is in political science and I worked at a DC think
| tank as a research fellow focused on technology policy before
| leaving to co-found a VC-backed tech startup. After five years
| it failed.
|
| Now it seems difficult to find a place which needs my mix of
| skills, a combination of communication and technical. I don't
| know if it's my unusual career path or something I'm doing
| wrong, but it's been tough so far.
| herewego wrote:
| This is the time to try your hand at entrepreneurship again.
| Most private investors I know are investing purposefully
| right now. Forget VCs and bootstrap - build the future you
| want - show you have grit. I work with a lot of exited
| bootstrapped founders and many of us are excited for the
| future.
|
| Most are not willing to struggle, sacrifice, survive, and
| grind for a decade or more. Be the exception and build
| sustainable value. Money follows; perhaps trite but true.
| Sadly, this is excellent advice that many ignore (this may
| not actually apply to your specific circumstances, of
| course).
|
| Your career path makes you top talent in the eyes of many.
| Honestly, your journey sounds like a leader's narrative in
| the making. No excuses, get in there and get it done. I look
| in the mirror every morning and say nearly that exact thing
| to myself: "get in there and fight, today like all the other
| days before and all the days to come". This is not
| figurative, I do this literally every single day as part of
| my daily routine and I don't let up, even in my darkest hours
| of which there have been many over the years. I attribute my
| success to this mentality, perhaps it can work for you.
|
| Be well!
| SamPatt wrote:
| Thank you for the encouragement. I don't have an idea I'm
| sufficiently excited about, but the longer I'm unemployed
| the more I begin considering them.
| Nurbek-F wrote:
| I'm in a similar position. Been 3 months. Good luck!
| deprecative wrote:
| I'd been looking for months before layoffs finally hit my team.
| At this point I've been looking for 14 months, plus or minus.
| I've made it to the final round once and barely get anything
| from applications. It's enough to make me want to apply for
| roadkill as I'm pretty sure I'd land that job and you can't
| beat the pay.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| My experience was an absolute TON of jobs that had no idea what
| I do as a Staff+ engineer, or what it costs to get someone with
| my experience and skills. I'm talking many many recruiters
| fishing with 75% off my total comp.
|
| My take is there are lots of open roles, but companies are
| being slow to hire because they know they have the upper hand
| and want to wait out the market and get a great hire at a lower
| price. And right now with interest rates companies have lower
| opportunity cost (ie they're not incentivized to deploy capital
| as fast as possible) .
| dehrmann wrote:
| A startup with a tech team of 50 doesn't really need a staff+
| engineer. They don't know what you do because these aren't
| things they even think about.
| corethree wrote:
| That's dumb then the great hires have no loyalty they will
| quit.
| base698 wrote:
| Most of my unemployed friends have taken 10 months or longer to
| find employment. Some are even local in California where it
| seems like there should be more opportunities than seeking
| remote only.
| shadowfoxx wrote:
| Its rough out here. I've got 8+ years of experience and I've
| worked a breadth of experience as well. I'm scouring the posts
| here on "Who's Hiring", I work applications on LinkedIn, Speak
| with some recruiters, and I utilize Remote Rocketship. My network
| of connections is a bit smaller than could be useful (this is my
| own fault.) but I have also reached out to people I personally
| know who could vouch for me. A number of those are still working
| at my last job.
|
| Sent out upwards of 500 applications, 10, 20, maybe 30 interviews
| even fewer that have gone to the 'final rounds' and even some
| very close calls. No offers yet.
|
| I'm also spending this time learning new tech that interests me
| and working on a portfolio site that is true to those interests.
| This is slow going but I don't let it get me down (if I can help
| it) because I help my partner garden, raise our dog, and work on
| my other hobbies as well.
| codq wrote:
| I'm in a similar boat.
|
| I'm a marketing guy, and have started to regret my career path.
| I've made it to several final rounds in the past year, but only
| wound up with rejection at the end--at the final stages, it can
| be real subtle things that lead them to make that final choice
| of one candidate vs. another.
|
| On top of that, I'm taking care of a toddler full time, since
| we can't afford a nanny since I got laid off, so I have even
| less time to dedicate to the job hunt / skill advancement, and
| honestly I'm so exhausted by the end of the day that I'm too
| drained to work on projects that require real brainpower. It's
| been a slog, but I'm hanging in there and not giving up.
|
| Otta.com has been a great, easy resource for job hunting.
| shadowfoxx wrote:
| Thanks for the arrow, I'll definitely add Otta.com to my
| rounds. If you're not familiar you could also try Remote
| Rocketship
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| What feedback or retrospect have you gathered about why you're
| not making the final rounds?
| shadowfoxx wrote:
| Well its a mix of things. I struggle with "live coding",
| y'know fight,flight, or freeze? I freeze up. So on that front
| I think I need to do two things:
|
| 1. Slow down and ask for a few minutes to collect myself.
| "I'm not in this context, do you mind if I have a minute to
| organize my thoughts". And then do a little "whiteboard" in
| my notebook or something. Some people might say to verbalize
| your thinking process and I agree but there shouldn't be
| anything wrong with taking a few minutes. (I mean, this
| doesn't even necessarily test for how I'd do on the job
| because I'm at _least_ competent at coding)
|
| 2. Practice more situations. Any time I struggle with a
| problem after the interview I make sure I understand that
| tech. Right now I'm studying up on class components and
| websockets. (Two technologies I either don't really see
| anymore: we use functional components on my latest projects
| or stuff you set and forget)
|
| I think #2 is part of what people mean when they say that
| interviewing prepares you for the next one.
|
| - Some places that I get far with I've literally reached out
| afterward and asked for pointers. One piece of feedback I've
| gotten is, "We didn't get a good sense of what drives you."
| which, that's fair. I think of software engineering as more
| of a technician => "I have the skills to solve your problems"
| and not so much, "My passion is building the front-end for
| X,Y,Z business" I mean, I'd obviously like to find work with
| meaning but I'm not _driven_ by that meaning. I don 't think
| we'd ask our plumber to show their passion for the work (Not
| that they can't have that) but instead we're more concerned
| with, "Are you competent?" - That's something I need to work
| on for sure.
|
| - Lastly, I've learned that an interview is for both parties.
| The person interviewing me is also representative of the
| company. The last two interviews I had a bad feeling about
| the fit post interview and I think I should have reached out
| and rescinded my interest because our values didn't align.
|
| Most of the time though, I check all the boxes and don't even
| make it to interview stage so its hard to really glean
| anything useful most of the time. Could it be a bad market?
| Is it because the only box I don't check is having a CS
| degree? (I have a bachelors but not in CS) Is it my
| experience is too varied? Who knows. Best I can do is to keep
| at it.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Lmao do people get that? The only thing I've ever gotten
| after final round lately have been ghosted or a useless
| generic rejection email. Even when a recruiter is involved,
| they don't seem to get that sort of information.
| starttoaster wrote:
| I usually don't get direct feedback. But if you're even
| slightly socially conscious you can usually pick up clues
| by not having great answers to interview questions. Seeing
| their face or hearing their voice express some involuntary
| emotion that says, "ah he doesn't know this."
|
| I usually pick up the hints, read between the lines, and
| study up on those things, whatever they may be.
| [deleted]
| cebert wrote:
| Conferences are a great place to network and find companies or
| people working on projects you're interested in. These past two
| years, I've purchased my own ticket to the AWS re:Invent
| conference. I've made new connections and gained new insights by
| attending. I've also learned of some companies I'd be interested
| in working for in the future. Even though it's expensive to
| attend, I view it as a good investment in my own career for
| networking and continued learning.
| georgeoliver wrote:
| I wonder what's a rough estimate of how many people find a job by
| first finding a company they want to work for?
| stevekemp wrote:
| The last time I was looking for a job I did just that. I came
| up with a list of five companies that either came well-
| recommended by friends-of-friends, or seemed like they were
| doing interesting work.
|
| I applied to three of them, interviewed with two, and accepted
| an offer. Had those initial three companies not worked out I'd
| have gone down my list of two more companies, before starting
| the process again with another small list.
|
| (I've not the patience for juggling many applications at the
| same time. I've learned I can apply to two-three companies and
| keep all the names, details, and things I've said to them
| straight in my head. I guess if you're desperate for _any_ job
| then applying for more all at once would probably be a safer
| approach.)
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Are there companies that people want to work for?
|
| I feel like the magic has gone from most companies.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Yeah I don't think I could make a company offhand that I love
| so much I'd want to work for. I've definitely been browsing
| jobs and found companies/roles that look cool that I think
| I'd enjoy, but there's I reason I'm not and have not worked
| for them.
| dangerwill wrote:
| What companies are out there doing something worth caring
| about? It feels like everything is some variation of the same
| setup:
|
| Developing, deploying, and managing HTTP """REST"""
| microservices running behind a loadbalancer, running on k8,
| written in a garbage collected language (Go/Python/Java/C#),
| that hits either a "legacy" mysql database or a "new" nosql
| datastore, emitting metrics for big data reporting (aka middle
| manager reports that are useless other than being fodder for
| political fights), and writing some resulting messages to kafka
| at the end for other microservices to consume. The main
| technical issues are debugging application level coupling
| between microservices and having to deal with the ping pong of
| debating system ownership between teams.
|
| I wish there were more positions for doing something else with
| my software engineering skills, but embedded development seems
| really hard to get into and if you manage to it pays a lot
| worse
| teirce wrote:
| I was able to succeed in this, but I had basically a perfect
| storm of conditions. It was a smaller local company, I had good
| internship experience, and the head recruiter had previously
| worked at (and recruited me for) the company I interned at.
|
| If you are a new-grad and you're targeting a 'glorious' FAANG
| position, I would imagine the percentage is quite low.
| Madmallard wrote:
| Tech is a choked industry right now. Pivoting is probably smart
| if you're able to do so. If you look on /r/forhire nearly 50% of
| posts are devs looking for work
| convolvatron wrote:
| It certainly seems that way. But why are there so many postings
| that don't get filled given that everyone says they are
| drowning in applicants?
| Madmallard wrote:
| Companies are being as picky as they can get away with.
| convolvatron wrote:
| It's weird seeing the same posting I got rejected for 6
| months later. Surely work needs to start sometime?
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Jobs that are posted on companies' web sites (not on recruiting
| web sites) give a much greater response rate.
| Cypher wrote:
| I've done a lot, got a load of interviews and it's all just dried
| up. It's pretty depressing too. I'm fortunate I can retire in a
| couple of years but I'd love a change to sink my teeth into
| before I finally put my feet up.
| mikece wrote:
| 1. Personal network of non-recruiter acquaintances.
|
| 2. Recruiters (it's popular to hate them but they _can_ help you
| land a job).
|
| 3. Scan the "open jobs" on LinkedIn and apply for them.
|
| 4. Post on some big board like Indeed (I set up a junk email
| account for this because 98% of the replies are junk/low-ball
| offers).
| m4thfr34k wrote:
| LinkedIn's easy apply helps mitigate how tedious and soul
| crushing item three can be.
|
| Set up an alert for new jobs that meet your requirements and be
| consistent. Set a goal of applying for five a day. If you apply
| to more then great but meet your goal. I'll add each
| application to a log that has the company, when I applied, the
| position, and something I found interesting about the posting.
| Helps remind me in a month when I hear something back.
|
| Just remember, you have zero information on where the company
| is in on the hiring process for this position. They could still
| be in the 'collecting applications' phase and won't really take
| a look at the applicants for days or weeks.
|
| In my experience, very few companies look at applications as
| they come in. They have a target date where they do a first cut
| and then move onto the next. This creates those situations
| where you hear back from an application weeks and months later.
| This also creates that soul crushing feeling of "I've applied
| to 20 positions this week and haven't heard ANYTHING."
|
| Apply to a few each day and move on. The companies are doing
| everything they can to maximize their efficiency with this
| process, including bad behavior's like ghosting / posting jobs
| just to meet regulations when they already have who they are
| going to hire / etc., so there is nothing wrong with you
| maximizing your efficiency where it makes sense. Apply and move
| on.
|
| Side note, don't forget item one above, personal network. It
| feels great to me to get a job offer from some company where my
| personal network wasn't involved in any way, but the reality is
| that most jobs are filled by someone already aligned in some
| way, aka personal network was involved.
| Oras wrote:
| Do not be put off by the number of applicants of jobs on
| LinkedIn.
|
| I hired two developers in the last few weeks via LinkedIn job ads
| and I can tell you out of 200 applicants there were less than 10
| who fits the requirements.
|
| I would also say make sure your resume fits the job, add your
| phone number and email address. Start with what's important, your
| experience and things that you're really good at.
|
| Changing the resume to fit each JD would hard, but apply for jobs
| that your experience fit well.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| A lot to unpack in the comments here and I'm ready for the
| downvotes!
|
| First of all the credit market is in a crunch now and has been
| for some time. This makes investment rounds for small to medium
| sized startups both more difficult yield less. That means that
| hiring is slowing down if not straight up stopping for these
| startups.
|
| Second, there's a lot of pessimism here but I think the future is
| still bright. We definitely have more developers looking for work
| than ever before which is part of why there's such a crunch. The
| good news is that most of these develops are boot-campers who
| only got into coding because they heard somewhere they could live
| in a van and make hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their lack of
| talent, is your ticket in.
|
| Why do I throw them under the bus? Well, I think the industry has
| found that the truly 'talented' are actually passionate about
| software and didn't go into it just because Obama told them
| everyone needed to learn to code. We're seeing that although the
| market is flush with developers most of them can't code their way
| out of a paper bag. If it's not a basic CRUD system they're lost.
|
| So invest in yourself and you should do well. Diversify and show
| your potential employer that you can wear MULTIPLE hats. Someone
| who can spin up a basic react app, debug a firmware project over
| JTAG, and train their own model with Pytorch is going to catch my
| eye in this market where everyone and their mother knows how to
| make a website and code up some JS.
|
| Long story short - the market is tight right now. Low investor
| cash meets huge pool of wanting developers. Solution? Invest in
| yourself, diversify, stand out.
| frfl wrote:
| > stand out
|
| Given what everyone in this thread has said, this is harder
| said than done, especially right now, when recruiters ghost, HR
| is drowning in applications, people are getting rejected even
| after good skill matches on paper, good interviews and 5+/10+
| years of experience.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| > this is harder said than done
|
| Definitely. I don't mean to mislead anyone here, its not an
| easy path forward right now.
|
| The combination of a reduced capital market and a swell of
| engineers is going to make the coming years more challenging,
| but the only path forward is investing in yourself and your
| skills.
| mochaki wrote:
| [dead]
| willio58 wrote:
| Indeed. Last year I more than doubled my income by applying with
| the "click to apply" feature on indeed with a 4 sentence long
| cover letter.
|
| Later I had a couple short zoom culture interviews and a take-
| home project which I sunk 10 hours into and outshined 30 other
| applicants. Offer in my inbox in less than 7 days. Mind you, this
| was after a grand total of like 20+ hours of interviews at other
| companies, with on the spot algo tests and all.
|
| Here's what I've learned: I will not subject myself to algo
| interviews. I just don't think that's what I want the companies I
| work for to value most in their devs. I want take-home projects
| with clear instructions. I want culture interviews where they are
| truly trying to see if I'd be a good fit.
|
| Since I got hired I've actually helped hire a couple devs. Even
| as someone who went the traditional route of majoring in CS at a
| university I'll say this: I don't care how you got your
| knowledge. I just want to see real projects you've worked on. The
| sheer amount of people who apply even from prestigious schools
| like Stanford who have a mostly empty GitHub is staggering to me.
| I don't care how much money you spent on education, show me the
| code!
| bags43 wrote:
| I am programming since 1995. I got my first job in 2007. Pretty
| sure that not single line of my code is online. Maybe except
| couple forum/reddit snippets.
|
| I have two kids, couple family friends, one hobby and I like to
| watch basketball and old movies. Outside of work I spend some
| time here and couple subreddits. I do not have time for the
| side projects on GitHub or to prepare for silly LC tests. I do
| not have time to create LinkedIn account and keep it updated.
|
| I have CV with average EU Uni and uninterrupted 16 years across
| many different domains and with different tech stacks.
|
| I refuse to do following:
|
| - LC tests
|
| - take home.
|
| On another hand we can have interview for 6 hours about your
| business domain or system design.
| willio58 wrote:
| I think that's a fair take. People feel comfortable with
| different things. Even in school I always surpassed others on
| take home assignments and struggled during tests.
|
| There's another aspect in your comment too, and that's
| seniority. I was born a year after you started programming,
| so GitHub and online portfolios were just a natural thing for
| me to take on. If you have people that will vouch for you and
| you have decades under your belt, you can more easily get
| away with no leetcode and no take home.
| bags43 wrote:
| Actually I am only 12 years older than you. :) I had a lot
| luck to get my first computer early and was exposed to
| QBasic in dad's company.
|
| >you can more easily get away with no leetcode and no take
| home.
|
| Current rate in the last three months is around 75%. (which
| demands LC or take home)
| dalmo3 wrote:
| > I just want to see real projects you've worked on.
|
| This gave me a business idea (AI business perhaps): anonymize
| your employer's codebase, enough so you can post it on GitHub
| without violating your terms of employment.
| jsty wrote:
| Ah yes, getting sued as a service
| willio58 wrote:
| Here's a slightly different take: uniquely ai-generated
| project idea that you can do, get graded on, and use when
| applying to multiple companies. No issue with anonymity at
| that point, and it would be much less work on the programmer
| than multiple take home projects
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Once you've moved beyond a junior-level of experience, I'm not
| sure if there's a better way than working your network for
| opportunities. In my experience there is never, and will never
| be, a shortage of business people looking for technical problems
| solvers.
| alexpotato wrote:
| Joel Spolksy has an interesting quote about this:
|
| "Third, and trust me on this, there's still an incredible
| shortage of the really good programmers, here and in India.
| Yes, there are a bunch of out of work IT people making a lot of
| noise about how long they've been out of work, but you know
| what? At the risk of pissing them off, really good programmers
| do have jobs"
|
| From: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/02/advice-for-
| compute...
| ilc wrote:
| Wow... did you take that out of context IMHO.
|
| It is a whole paper about how becoming a programmer is a good
| choice, and that good programmers can find a place in the
| world.
|
| To my eyes: There are two things needed for a "great
| programmer" to happen.
|
| 1. A programmer with good to great skills.
|
| 2. A company that they fit into.
|
| You may work out in company A, it works well for you. You can
| hit max productivity there.
|
| For me, A may be one of the worst ideas EVER, for various
| reasons. I'd do better at B, where you might fail.
|
| A and B might even just be a large company and a small
| company, there is a big difference.
|
| ... So while I agree with Joel in context. I disagree with
| YOU.
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| Dan Luu has an interesting post about it as well.
|
| https://danluu.com/hiring-lemons/
| rr808 wrote:
| > really good programmers do have jobs
|
| Maybe when he says "reall good programmers" he means the
| super productive people he's friends with. I know everyone on
| HN thinks they're in the top 10% of programmers, but
| realistically most of us are average or worse.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > At the risk of pissing them off, really good programmers do
| have jobs
|
| Which doesn't at-all reflect the reality implied by abysmal
| hiring practices - recited on this page again and again and
| again.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| That's from 2005.
| ardit33 wrote:
| Joel is wrong. The 2001-2003 timeframe was very hard to find
| a job, even if you were a really good engineer.
|
| There is a good reason Open Source development exploded
| during those years, as there were a lot of unemployed or
| 'underemployed' good engineers that had time to do some open
| source work while looking for a job.
|
| By 2005 (when that article was written), the market had
| already recovered, and what he said is true (good engineers
| had already found a job), but that doesn't negate the fact
| that 2001-2002 was bad even for good engineers.
| acdha wrote:
| One big confound was the gap between national averages and
| the Bay Area. I knew a ton of people who ended up finding
| jobs at large businesses, higher education, government,
| etc. which they weren't looking at during the height of the
| dotcom bubble. None of those places had had an easy time
| hiring then, but also that almost always meant relocating.
| ghaff wrote:
| The jobs I've had since the one out of grad school have all
| been through people I knew. Not sure how typical that is but
| it's certainly one path.
| farmeroy wrote:
| Reading about all you engineers with years of experience
| struggling to get a job is incredibly painful, but in some ways
| it's relieving to hear that even experience engineers are finding
| this market difficult. I managed to land my first job during the
| pandemic on a combination of self-education and a bootcamp. That
| job is over due to lack of funding and I have been applying non-
| stop for 6 months, 300-400 applications and just one interview.
| In the meantime, I'm pursuing a BSc part time, building personal
| projects, and working in the service industry. Finding that next
| role seems like it will an epic journey and I certainly don't
| count on finding a role, or giving up, any time soon...
| supertofu wrote:
| I'm also pursuing a BSc. My original degree is a BA and
| employers/recruiters see me as an "alternative" self-taught
| engineer, despite a decade of experience. I think a lack of
| STEM degree can really hurt a resume.
| xiasongh wrote:
| I'm a new grad and I was extremely scared because of all the doom
| and gloom on HN and reddit. I also felt like new grads would be
| hit the hardest.
|
| Come application time... it was totally normal. Had some
| interviews and some rejections. Ended up getting multiple offers
| with very competitive compensation.
|
| While I may be the exception rather the norm, there are
| definitely companies that are still hiring and some that are just
| getting head count for the upcoming quarter. I would not give up
| hope.
| paddw wrote:
| Where did you go to school? In my experience, there is never a
| slowdown in demand for elite schools, but outside of that track
| it's a lot tougher.
|
| Of course, a lot of it is your own skills/resume and luck
| igloopan wrote:
| In the sense that it's primarily startups, YCombinator's
| workatastartup and Wellfound's job board are similar to the "Who
| is hiring?" threads, so you might have more success with those in
| terms of replies. Though as someone applying for 2024 New Grad
| positions neither seem particularly great for that,
| unfortunately.
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| For all of you hiring managers out there, what's your opinion on
| product-focused engineers? Is that a desirable trait? Or would
| you prefer a candidate who could care less about the product he
| works on and only cares about the technology?
| mzmoen wrote:
| It's far too situational to give a blanket answer. I run a 15
| person startup, and my preference is product focused people
| because of the breadth they can cover. However, we have a
| number of people who aren't that way and are just good
| developers, which is great. My sense would be the narrow/deeper
| technically a space is, the less preference there is for
| product focus, but again just my personal guess.
| joewhale wrote:
| You're probably not used to thinking with a "sales" hat, but you
| are selling yourself. Find the contact of your potential manager
| (engineering manager or whoever) and find a way to directly reach
| out to them and pitch them and the call to action is a phone
| call.
|
| Cut through all the noise. This is the way.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| My data suggests that wages are down about 15% from their peak 2
| years ago.
|
| When I see people with 10+ years of experience struggle to get
| jobs right now it's almost always because they're filtering out
| good opportunities with their comp expectations.
|
| For more junior folks the market is tough right now. It's going
| to be a grind but I'd highly encourage you to consider working
| with a third-party recruiter. You may need to try a few different
| ones before you find one that can get you placed but a good one
| will be worth it. All the normal advice applies: leverage your
| network and debug the problem. Consider where in the process
| you're dropping off. Are you not hearing back at all? Are you
| getting interviews but not offers? Work from there.
| fuckthisshit3 wrote:
| [dead]
| wskinner wrote:
| 1. Make friends with people at work
|
| 2. Eventually, some of those people will get new jobs, and they
| can refer you to their new employer (and vice versa).
|
| 3. Repeat for a few cycles and you have a network full of
| potential job opportunities without ever going through a job
| board.
| dehrmann wrote:
| This is going to bite a lot of the hardcore WFH people in the
| next decade. They just won't have even watercooler-level
| connections with former colleagues.
| nineplay wrote:
| I'd modify #1
|
| 1. Make friends with _everybody_ at work.
|
| That includes the guy who brags about himself all the time.
| That includes the person who you only give the easiest tasks
| because you don't trust them with anything complicated. That
| includes the person who doesn't suffer fools gladly.
|
| You never know. I had a constant braggart coworker who everyone
| else avoided. I smiled and listened politely. He was the one
| who got me my next job.
|
| Exceptions, obviously, for coworkers that are actively
| corrosive or abusive. I'm not cozying up to the guy that the
| female interns refuse to share an elevator with.
| mronetwo wrote:
| Make friends with Talent Acquisition. Nothing like having a TA
| that moves to another company.
| endemic wrote:
| Hah, I went this route a few jobs ago. The TA loved the
| place, but unfortunately their engineering culture turned out
| to be complete trash.
| tetris11 wrote:
| 4. Never burn any bridges. That boss or coworker you refuse to
| work with can and will actively block you in future employment
| possibilities. Also know that if that person is making your
| entire life hell, you might just need other things happening in
| your life to make your life more varied. Smile to the end (if
| you can).
| ghusto wrote:
| Disagree; stay true to yourself. Try to be nice to everyone
| regardless, but also don't hold back on honest criticism for
| fear of reprisals. Doesn't matter how high the other person
| gets in the chain, you can't hide what you are (neither them,
| nor you).
| nixgeek wrote:
| It's a difficult balance, isn't it? When you're applying to
| a future opportunity, leaders there will *often* reach out
| to people in their network who worked with you previously,
| whether you declared them on a resume or to a recruiter as
| an official reference or not. That either happens through
| looking at common connections on LinkedIn, or you came from
| SomeCo and they know someone in engineering leadership over
| at SomeCo.
|
| If SomeCo is a huge company then LinkedIn might find a
| connection who actually knew you, but just "know someone in
| leadership at Amazon" wouldn't usually get you a hit.
| Whenever SomeCo is a smaller outfit, the likelihood someone
| knows of you increases
|
| If whoever you hit up starts the conversation with, "Yeah,
| that ghusto, er, they weren't the best engineer we had" or
| even just "I don't think I can give you reference for that
| person, sorry", your chances of getting the job plummet.
|
| If one person at SomeCo (a larger company) is not going to
| say you're amazing then the probability of that person
| being asked might be quite low. If many people at SomeCo (a
| smaller company) are going to remember that "honest
| criticism" more loudly than all your other contributions
| then that is trickier.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Sometimes you have to chose which bridge to burn.
|
| Hopefully not, hopefully you're leaving for greener pastures,
| or because of something systemic that you can critique on
| exit without throwing anyone under the bus.
|
| But sometimes not. Sometimes you have a responsibility to
| your peers to honestly describe the problem that prompted you
| to leave, even if it means burning a bridge.
|
| The alternative is to squander the organizational growth
| opportunity that your resignation represents, and
| subsequently burn all bridges except the one with the
| problematic person.
| DonsDiscountGas wrote:
| Corollary: Don't burn bridges, but if somebody else sets the
| bridge on fire don't hurt yourself trying to rebuild it. Less
| snappy but hopefully it gets the point across.
| alexpotato wrote:
| This can also be extended to:
|
| 1. Go on LinkedIn and find past co-workers and friends. Make a
| list of those people.
|
| 2. Prioritize based on companies you want to work for and
| people who had a good experience with you
|
| 3. Reach out to them with a generic opening like "How are
| things going?"
|
| 4. After some back and forth, you can ask "Hey, are you guys
| hiring by any chance?"
|
| I also wrote a recap of mistakes and lessons learned from
| trying to find work at a hedge fund here:
| https://twitter.com/alexpotato/status/1663668616233885699
|
| It has some more general recommendations as well.
| ghusto wrote:
| This.
|
| I haven't bothered with non-word-of-mouth jobs for over ten
| years. If the job's not recommended to me by someone I already
| know, I'm not interested. It saves sooo much time.
| angarg12 wrote:
| Cool as a long term strategy, but hardly helpful if you want a
| job this year.
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| I was laid off 2 months ago as a fallout from pandemic and war
| (fullstack dev with 17y experience). i sent my resume to about 30
| job posts on linkedin (nearly none with cover letter, as i just
| cannot possibly write 30 unique cover letters even with chatGPT)
| and wrote a "looking for job" post in 3 tech discord servers i
| was an active member on. The 30 linkedin applications totaled in
| one job offer and the three discord posts lead to one interesting
| job offer each. it took 1,5 months from start to first offer and
| 2 months to competing offers, decision and signing a contract.
| Pre pandemic it would take about 2 weeks for a first offer and i
| would mostly get them by recruiters contacting me on linkedin
| which is completely absent now. Bottom line is be active in tech
| communities you are excited about and reach out in the dedicated
| job channels on discord.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Also worth discussing: once you start interviewing, what can you
| do to get an offer?
|
| Personal anecdote: I was laid off ~4 months ago. It wasn't _that_
| hard to get interviews. But then I _bombed_ the coding interviews
| for several appealing positions.
|
| I'm a very experienced developer, but I didn't realize just how
| much my programming-during-an-interview skills had atrophied.
| IMHO those coding tests were properly weeding me out, because it
| really looked like I couldn't program.
|
| I'm now making time to work on practice problems, and I think
| they're really helping. I expect future coding interviews to go
| much better.
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| UPS is paying $100-200K for drivers and I can't find a decent
| plumber, electrician, roofer or concrete installer without paying
| insane costs and/or waiting for months. Something to consider!
| blamazon wrote:
| UPS is only paying experienced drivers (with experience at UPS)
| those rates, at the entry level it's more in the neighborhood
| of part time work 20 dollars an hour, which is a common entry
| level rate in warehousing and logistics these days.
|
| Similarly, it's a long road to being a skilled laborer that can
| pull those large contracts, and even then the margins can be
| utterly ruthless to small operators.
|
| Just seeking to be realistic - both can be great career paths
| for the right person.
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| UPS is paying $170K on average per driver this year per
| renegotiated contracts. True, like any job, you start off on
| the lower side, but unlike other companies, UPS pay begins
| going way up after just a year and that doesn't include the
| incredible amount of overtime available to even new drivers.
|
| You don't need to pull in large contracts or even be the
| business owner of a skilled-trade to do well. Literally every
| tradesman I speak with is telling me the same thing: we're
| desperate for bodies; we're willing to hire kids out of high
| school, train them and pay them > $100K and we still can't
| fill the seats.
|
| My overall (unpopular point) is that a lot of people are
| complaining that their high-paid cushy remote job isn't
| available anymore, while ignoring that there is a huge need
| for skilled labor in other areas of the economy. This strikes
| me as a huge opportunity for lots of people, and I don't see
| it changing anytime soon.
| caminante wrote:
| From my research, $170k is a headline number to make the
| unions and UPS sound like they're getting and giving a
| great deal.
|
| The fine print [0] is more like $92k base plus pension,
| overtime, medical benefits, and other items that have
| value, but aren't exactly going into UPS driver pockets.
|
| [0] https://www.distractify.com/p/ups-driver-explains-
| ups-170k-p...
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I must be incredibly lucky, because every job I've gotten the
| past years have been through the "normal" channels, meaning that
| I found the job listing on some rather huge classifieds website.
| I then just typed up a honest job application, updated my resume,
| and applied for the jobs. Always got a reply, and eventually a
| job interview.
|
| Should be mentioned that I live rather rural, and have experience
| (analysis and engineering) which makes me stand out from most
| other applicants.
|
| Since 2004, I've sent out under 20 job applications. The past 5
| years I've switched work twice (better jobs and higher salary) -
| so I don't know if I'm a good representation of the job market.
|
| But most of my ex-colleagues that work as devs seem to get their
| interviews through their network. Usually goes something like
| this:
|
| 1) Company needs something fixed, or increase their headcount to
| meet goals
|
| 2) Dev: "I know this one guy/gal, I've seen his work and we
| worked briefly on a project"
|
| 3) Manager: "Great! Reach out to them and see if they're
| interested!"
| base698 wrote:
| Have you gotten a job in the last year?
| rr808 wrote:
| > The past 5 years I've switched work twice
|
| The last 12 months is very different to early 2022.
| Ilasky wrote:
| My own search has been on LinkedIn, as well as sites like Otta.
| The key for me to get more callbacks has been to personalize my
| resume for each job description (I even made a tool to do it for
| me [0]) and then to follow up with the hiring managers for the
| job.
|
| Out of the stacks of resumes that get submitted to the black
| hole, it really does feel like a grind, but the little bit extra
| by reaching out to the recruiters/hiring managers seems to make
| the boost to at least get to the first round screen.
|
| [0] https://resgen.app
| casenmgreen wrote:
| 1. The numbers LinkedIn show apparently track _clicks_ , not
| applications.
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mitch-king_have-you-been-put-...
|
| 2. My take on applying for jobs is that it's become so easy now
| to apply, that recruiters and companies are utterly, utterly
| swamped with applications. I suspect normally at most only the
| first 20 or 30 are examined.
|
| 3. I work as a contractor, and I'm on good terms with a number of
| agents. Speaking to one last week, he said his application email
| inbox has like 700 unread emails. It's impossible to process.
| Most of those emails will never be read.
|
| 4. The approach I'm now taking is to contact the good agencies I
| know, have a chat, explain what I do, and leave my CV with them.
| I think the majority (75% perhaps) of roles are filled before
| they are advertised.
|
| 5. A key necessity I've found is being prepared to relocate; it's
| often unlikely work will be where you happen to be living.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| The truth is, most jobs these days are rather bloated themselves.
| I do wish you luck in finding a job, but I would also give you
| this following piece of advice: at the same time while trying to
| find a job, think about strategies where you can work less and
| contribute more to society in your local community.
|
| I truly believe that the real opportunities out there are those
| which are mostly divorced away from the typical LinkedIn posting
| where it's just some company trying to push more consumerism on
| the world.
| rhyme-boss wrote:
| I was offered a job coaching under-12 soccer for the top local
| club where parents pay thousands a year. The offer was $700 a
| month to run (by myself) 3 practices a week plus a game on the
| weekend. So less than $20 an hour, which doesn't even cover
| transportation costs.
|
| Similar story applying to work at a bakery down the street, and
| same for working for animal control.
|
| I agree doing work in your local community is rewarding, but it
| amounts to full time volunteerism. Our economy is truly
| horrific for the middle class and below.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Yes, it is true, sometimes it is hard to find alternatives
| right away. It is not easy because the price of everything is
| so high. Our high-growth economy has given us two things: a
| high paycheck, but in exchange for selling our soul and
| becoming drones. I left full-time work a while ago, but I
| admit, it can be VERY scary, especially after being exposed
| to so much capitalistic propaganda.
| mronetwo wrote:
| Ideally, this. Realistically, not sure about this. It might be
| a bit of a crapshoot. It might yield very rewarding "jobs" but
| it's difficult to put your mind into it, when you just want to
| make a living. It just feels like you have to cross certain
| wealth threshold to do this. It might not reflect reality but
| this feeling of "I need a 9 to 5 to just keep myself afloat" is
| real.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| You're right about that. And this is something I've been
| thinking about for quite some time. My rejoinder is that most
| people have a set of compromises they can make that might
| make them a lot wealthier than they think.
|
| For example, a friend of mine was complaining that he had to
| work hard to afford a house. However, he was dead-set on a
| set of ideals and a location he wanted to settle at. Maybe
| part of that was preference, but it was clear that part of
| that was some sort of preconceived notion hammered into him
| by society and peer examples.
|
| Instead, he could have aimed to buy a cheaper house in a
| smaller town while working/renting in the current town and
| just moved out. In my home town, even smaller houses cost at
| least 400K but there are plenty of nice places where the
| houses are 60K. So, buy one of those instead and move away
| once you've saved up enough...
|
| By taking a month and seriously going through what's
| important to have a happy, "basic" life, most people will
| find things that they can give up, but that will make them
| happier in the long run. Like living in a certain
| neighbourhood, buying this or that, taking a certain number
| of vacations, having an extra child, a dog, etc.
|
| Most people end up saving TOO much for retirement...and while
| caution is good, our society hammers this idea of an
| extremely consumptive lifestyle that these endless 9-5 jobs
| support.
| madengr wrote:
| [dead]
| verve_rat wrote:
| >Most people end up saving TOO much for retirement
|
| I have a bridge to sell to you.
| nineplay wrote:
| Most single child-free people perhaps. "Move somewhere
| cheaper" is about as helpful as "stop buying Starbucks" for
| an out of work breadwinner. Moving my kids away from their
| friends and school is an absolute last resort.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I do appreciate what you are saying. And, I never meant
| my post to be a quick-fix. It may be that it would only
| work a little later when your kids are older. But it can
| still work as a general life plan.
| nineplay wrote:
| I think you're making the mistake of thinking that you
| know what people want better than they do.
|
| The attitude of "keeping up with the Joneses" is almost
| an urban legend. People are not moving to the suburbs and
| having kids and dogs because they aren't strong enough to
| stand up to societal pressures. They move to the suburbs
| and have kids and dogs because that's what they've done
| throughout human evolution. The person who thinks they
| can leave and live independently is the oddball.
| ctoth wrote:
| > there are plenty of nice places where the houses are 60K.
|
| Citation super needed. Where in the US can I buy a house
| for $60,000? Does it have a roof?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Well, I was thinking of Canada. I found quite a few nice,
| basic houses (by this, I mean a place you can actually
| live in, not reno projects) for around $60K USD. I'm
| talking about sparse provinces like Saskatchewan. I also
| found some now with a quick search in Alabama (US) for
| around $70K. Check out sparsely populated, small places
| in the US, and search for small houses. Hey, I never said
| it would be a mansion.
| frfl wrote:
| Houses under 100k CAD are either
|
| - So far away from a major (by Canadian standards) city
| you're basically living in the middle of nowhere
|
| - Run down and you're looking at 100k in renovations and
| upgrades
|
| - Unless you're working remotely or are already well off,
| there are no well paying jobs out in the middle of
| nowhere
|
| - Education is an issue: far away from schools for kids
| and only southern BC, southern Ontario, southern Quebec
| have high ranking universities/colleges
|
| Any house in a desirable location is out of reach for
| many people. More and more people are now looking further
| out, thus driving prices higher in those locations as
| well. I don't think these people are looking to
| necessarily move out into the middle of Saskatchewan or
| other middle-Canada provinces where they can get those
| 100k homes for the reasons listed above.
| swader999 wrote:
| 100k house in Canada is a mobile home.
| frfl wrote:
| Not really. There are actual homes, but they're old and
| no where close to major cities
|
| Couple of examples
|
| https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/25857143/101-galway-
| stree...
|
| https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/25917262/323-pottery-
| stre...
|
| https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/25938347/3-pacholok-
| avenu...
| its_a_random_ac wrote:
| Spoiler alert: be prepared to spend a ton of money of
| gas, and hours for driving to any kind of doctor's office
| beyond a GP. A friend of a friend commuted for 4 hours
| each day to go to school as a kid because her family
| lived so far out.
|
| I still agree with the general sentiment though. I'm
| happy with living in a 1br condo and taking public
| transport, but I had coworkers that "needed" a detached
| house with a back yard and a moderately expensive car.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Yes, you are very right and point out some valid
| criticisms. Because the typical 9-5 style has been so
| effective (it out-competes other life-styles because it
| is the most useful for our capitalistic, consumerist
| society), our entire infrastructure is designed around
| it, which further eliminates alternative options or at
| least makes them more scary.
| darksofa wrote:
| I always though the 9-5 style was because a lot of work
| is easier when it's light outside and people are awake.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > I'm happy with living in a 1br condo and taking public
| transport, but I had coworkers that "needed" a detached
| house with a back yard and a moderately expensive car.
|
| Where it takes 4+ typical incomes to make basic
| bills(kind of everywhere), most apartments are a tough
| option.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| You can occasionally find a $60k house in a second or
| third tier city with a good hospital, but it will be _the
| ghetto_. Not "the hip up and coming part of town", but
| the actual ghetto.
| rr808 wrote:
| Dev wages have to come down. The last 10 years have been crazy.
| Lots of devs are paid like doctors, without the limited supply or
| years of expensive training. It wasn't going to last.
| ArcticLandfall wrote:
| As someone genuinely passionate about technology who sees the
| 90% in it for just the easy money at college, I'm very happy.
| Less superficial monetary incentive means people who are truly
| passionate about the craft will have more of an opportunity to
| shine.
| grumpy_coder wrote:
| The wages went up precisely because of the limited supply and
| years of training needed for devs.
|
| You get a really biased view when working in a tech company,
| but the vast majority of people can't code, and when they try
| to learn don't get beyond hello world.
| rr808 wrote:
| > but the vast majority of people can't code,
|
| The vast majority of people can't fix their car engine, teach
| a classroom of kids or cook in a restaurant. Doesn't stop
| those professions from being 5 figure jobs.
| gidorah wrote:
| I'm a UK accountant, so not IT. But I never apply direct. I
| always use recruiters. I think the benefits are:
|
| - recruiter usually only sends 2/3 resumes to employer, so better
| candidate-job match
|
| - recruiter has relationship with the client, so is more trusted
| - recruitment is a sales job, so they want a better match.
|
| - your first interview is with the recruiter, so less formal. If
| that goes well, they will make more effort to see your skills and
| expertise over other candidates.
|
| - better jobs come thru recruiter. These are ones that dont get
| publically listed
|
| - recruiter will pre-screen roles based on your salary
| expectations, so you do not apply to roles that have no salary.
| Saves everyone a lot of time
|
| - you can ask recruiter more about the person the client is
| looking for, so know how to angle interviews and sole the clients
| problems
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah I also had a good experience with recruiters. I've only
| got one job through them but it went pretty well. The two best
| things I found using a recruiter were:
|
| 1. They know about all the jobs. Despite searching quite hard I
| didn't know that some big companies had offices in my city.
| They are bad at advertising this.
|
| 2. They _want_ you to get the job. That 's how they get paid.
| So they are (mostly) on your side and will tell you things like
| details about what to expect in the interview. Surprisingly
| useful.
|
| 3. They bypass the normal nonsense application process. You
| just need a CV.
|
| Would use again.
| frfl wrote:
| Where do you find a recruiter or identify a good one? Going
| on Linkedin and just asking random people who say their a
| "recruiter" sounds like a bad idea, you'll get a lot of duds
| and not the type of recruiters you're describing.
| akudha wrote:
| Every recruiter I have interacted with, in the last decade, has
| been nasty individuals. Changing my resume without my
| knowledge, stealing my wages (been fighting two years now, to
| get it back), paying late consistently (we are talking 4-6
| months late, on top of net60) and above all - lying about
| everything, even silly things that don't make sense and are
| easy to verify.
|
| Maybe it is just my dumb luck that I attract shitty recruiters,
| I dunno. Maybe UK recruiters are better than American
| recruiters? Whatever is the reason, these days I assume the
| worst about every recruiter I interact with (I am very trusting
| of people otherwise), I am still waiting to be proven wrong :(
| IshKebab wrote:
| Sounds like UK recruiters work differently to American ones.
| I don't understand how they would steal your wages. They
| don't pay you in the UK.
| gidorah wrote:
| That sounds like a totally different arrangement. More like
| how working as temp or contract staff would work in the UK.
|
| For perm staff, recruiters are usually paid a fixed
| percentage of your annual salary as a one-off fee.
| sputr wrote:
| Question for the community: we're building a "talent pool" on top
| of our mass psychometric testing SaaS (hrpotentials.com). Our key
| thing is testing cognitive ability(ie ability to learn and
| problem solve) with computer generated tests, remotely.
|
| Anyway: would you join such a talent pool (and submit yourself to
| free testing that takes an hour)?
|
| We know it works in less in-demand fields as a way for employers
| to more objecitevly rate candidates. But the question is, if we
| can turn it into a tool for employment-seekers to get better
| opportunities.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Isn't psychometric testing voodoo astrology? I think you might
| have a hard time convincing software engineers to sign up to
| more bullshit testing that doesn't actually reflect what the
| job entails.
| zuhayeer wrote:
| Check out our job board at https://levels.fyi/jobs
|
| We're constantly iterating on it and the cornerstone of our board
| is the ability to filter opportunities by compensation. You can
| also set alerts for specific filters, and we're always open to
| feedback!
| lubujackson wrote:
| I really like the levels.fyi search, but I wish it would
| actually restrict San Francisco results to SF.
|
| Seems to be an issue with all the job sites that even after
| specifying SF and not "bay area" I still see roles in San Mateo
| and Mountain View.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Related gripe: allow me to filter remote jobs to positions
| that will hire people that live in my country.
|
| It is incredibly frustrating to see "Work from anywhere you
| want!" Only to find see "Remote (US Only)" in the job text.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| The first step in looking for a job is not "apply for a position
| online"
|
| If you are experienced, you're much better off with: reach out to
| anyone you've ever worked with who is now at a company you might
| want to work at.
|
| Google for them, guess their new company email, contact them on
| LinkedIn, DM them on Instagram.
|
| Once you have a warm intro your chances of landing a job go up by
| 2-20x depending on the company and their funnel.
| 4kimov wrote:
| Besides all the already mentioned, solid responses about looking
| for new opportunities (personal network, consistent daily
| applications, etc), it's worth noting this one too:
|
| Become a regular contributor to specific open-source projects
| (esp if it's a growing and/or funded startup).
|
| This approach might work better for those that are already
| comfortable w/ OSS and don't yet have connections. When applying
| to that company a bit later, obviously mention all the merged
| PRs.
|
| For example, here's Posthog [0] showing you what you could help
| with thru a job post. You can find more companies like this one
| at Fossfox [1], shameless plug: I maintain that index rn.
|
| [0] https://posthog.com/careers/full-stack-engineer-
| growth#typic...
|
| [1] https://fossfox.com/
| teirce wrote:
| Thank you for this suggestion. I think it's infinitely more
| interesting than the meme-y, parroted 'grind leetcode' response
| to improve job prospects. And it can give you more direction
| than trying to think of hobby projects to put on github.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I know people who have joined AWS because their OSS
| contributions opened doors for them.
|
| It is a great suggestion imho.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| The cost of everything has risen tremendously the last few years.
| Profits are soaring. Do not accept a job that doesn't pay you
| more than you made at your last job. Investors are making a
| killing right now.
| pythonbase wrote:
| I am a freelance software developer. While most of my work is
| from repeat customers or referrals, I actively look into the HN
| 'Seeking Freelancer' thread for interesting opportunities.
| rr808 wrote:
| No one else has mentioned it but my last role was applying on the
| website of a company I wanted to work for. I chose 20 big
| companies, applied for 1-2 jobs each. This relies on internal
| recruiters that in many companies do nothing but some companies
| actually works.
|
| Usually the form was one of those oraclecloud forms that take a
| while to complete. Half the companies I never heard anything but
| a few I got phonecalls and ended up with something I really
| wanted I was lucky. This was still early 2023 though.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| I don't. I gave up. It became an impossible task for me due to
| the lack of feedback in any possible action I take. I feel like
| I'm playing tennis alone in the court.
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