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Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

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131–140 of 332 posts

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#131
post #4

No longer hunt for work. Instead will spend 1 year to build product for my own customers. Again, software engineering is such a great career, when you can create valuable things for others in case of crisis.

How did you find customers? This is a long term goal of mine. Trying to fit in ideation between leetcode prep and applying for jobs

Hi, thanks for asking. I know this is a hard one.

Firstly, build your connection based on quality software. Find the first customer is the most difficult task!

One way, is through friend connection. If a friend's friend is a boss at a company, then it's first good step.

The most important thing, is you need to deliver usable software!

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#132

Let me show you the backdoor: Find a company whose open source projects you are interested in. Dive in and and start fixing things. Then if you really like it after a couple weeks start nudging around for a job. If you do good work they'll just give it to you, no bullshit funnel required. I like this method because you aren't just doing l33t coding exercises to work on some sight unseen codebase that makes you suicid…

Willing to try this. Know any open source projects that people are hiring for?

I think you misunderstand

Real world example: my company has our react UI library open sourced. I don’t think outside the org uses it, but it’s an open source project “owned” by a company. Another example would be something like React.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#133
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not been laid off either. I'm currently taking a break from jobs. I'm starting to think that it's time to go back to full-time employment. But I'm looking at the job market and think it might be better to give it 4-6 months. Let all the companies that are going to do layoffs have their layoffs and then join a company still looking for new devs in a few months.

>But I'm looking at the job market and think it might be better to give it 4-6 months. I'm fascinated by this. How does one do this? Two options I can think of are being independently wealthy and being dependent on another. Are there other ways to accomplish being so comfortable with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another 4-6 months and see what happens"?

As a consultant (someone who takes short-/midterm contracts) you can make $1000/day (probably more in the Valley). Many more experienced developers go down that route instead of being in a full time position. You work for a few months, make the income of a year and then you holiday for the rest of the year.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#134
post #10

I’d ask in a month. It’s still early since the layoffs. I’d guess that even for people who were laid off first, started looking immediately, and found plenty of hits, few have accepted jobs. I’m much more curious in 4-5 months. I assume VC funding is harder to get now, for example, but I don’t think that’ll make a massive impact for a little while.

"I've found plenty of hits but haven't accepted an offer yet" seems like a perfectly reasonable response to the question of "how's the job hunt going?"

Sure, but I think the implicit question-behind-the-question-being-asked is "we're hearing about a recession and that the job market is a lot harder than it was, how are you finding it?"

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#135
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Took me three months for team match. I had five team match interviews and three selected me, two lost headcount.

What did you do during these 3 months?

What do you mean? I had a job the entire time, and I interviewed at MSFT and NFLX in the meantime. Otherwise i would just periodically check in with my G recruiter trying to balance some urgency with politeness.

I didn’t get an offer from NFLX but they came across extremely well, i’m very bullish on the company solely based on the culture and talent I met.

The MSFT experience was the exact opposite!

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#136

I have 15 years experience, run large production sites, our company sold for near a billion dollars to a foreign company recently, and they are doing layoffs based on "order by salary desc" . My days are numbered. I do SRE mainly, but I code all day and run teams. Company 1: Terrible over-engineered music firm (no users). Full 7 rounds, exams (which were easy shit), but "VP" ghosted me, he was a former twitter guy, s…

Maybe your lua was a bit too good. Not liking the way something is laid out is very subjective.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#137
tl;dr some people hiring but December is going to slow you right down. Wait for Jan.

Applied for a small pre-ipo biz lately, I’m over qualified for the position and respectfully let them know that I’d expect a very clear and direct path to a more senior position in max 12 months.

Interview process is slow but ongoing. I was told that it prob won’t happen before Jan.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#138
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I'm looking at the job market and think it might be better to give it 4-6 months. I'm fascinated by this. How does one do this? Two options I can think of are being independently wealthy and being dependent on another. Are there other ways to accomplish being so comfortable with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another 4-6 months and see what happens"?

As a consultant (someone who takes short-/midterm contracts) you can make $1000/day (probably more in the Valley). Many more experienced developers go down that route instead of being in a full time position. You work for a few months, make the income of a year and then you holiday for the rest of the year.

How do I get those contracts? I'm a full-stack developer with 10 years of experience, also some data analytics experience. I got laid off almost two weeks ago. I would love to start my own contracting business. Do you have any insight?

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#140
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not been laid off either. I'm currently taking a break from jobs. I'm starting to think that it's time to go back to full-time employment. But I'm looking at the job market and think it might be better to give it 4-6 months. Let all the companies that are going to do layoffs have their layoffs and then join a company still looking for new devs in a few months.

>But I'm looking at the job market and think it might be better to give it 4-6 months. I'm fascinated by this. How does one do this? Two options I can think of are being independently wealthy and being dependent on another. Are there other ways to accomplish being so comfortable with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another 4-6 months and see what happens"?

Severance pay from layoff and having 6m emergency savings.
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