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Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

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Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#151

Post by f1shy »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #89
throwaway908365 wrote: post #71

Have not been laid off and I am not living in the bay area, but in Germany. Still wanted to offer some perspective. ~15 years fullstack and DevOps experience, visited top local university, no degree. Mostly Python + some other languages. Have been interviewing for Lead SE/DevOps/SRE roles as well as some architecture positions. My findings about the German job market for developers: - Remote-work is here to stay. Alm…

>salaries seem to be too low. You are often getting low-balled because "it would not fit within the salaries of the other team members". Preach it! CoL in German cities is far too high for how low skilled dev wages are. 100k at 15 years work experience is an insult when you look at Munich/Berlin house prices and that new grads can get 60k. And DW posted a YouTube video yesterday about how Germany has a shortage of so…

Oh... that about "we have too few SW devs"... I've been hearing that for decades (literally) also about medical personell... Truth is, they just do not pay enough!!! As you say, 100k would be just fine for 5 to 10 years in some small city... but Munich, Berlin, Hamburg... you have to talk 140k for 15 years real experience.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#152

Post by donkeyd »

mkl95 wrote: post #104
throwaway908365 wrote: post #71

Have not been laid off and I am not living in the bay area, but in Germany. Still wanted to offer some perspective. ~15 years fullstack and DevOps experience, visited top local university, no degree. Mostly Python + some other languages. Have been interviewing for Lead SE/DevOps/SRE roles as well as some architecture positions. My findings about the German job market for developers: - Remote-work is here to stay. Alm…

> Landing lead/lower management roles seems to be difficult if you have limited experience leading people. Those seem to be mostly staffed internally. Because at most places lead/lower management is another word for yes men that have proven their blind loyalty to the CTO, usually for 2 or 3 years. They don't wanna hire a manager who may question the status quo, especially when it comes to architecture and best practi…

> That sounds low to me and attainable in Europe if you have 5+ YoE at the right places. It sounds to me like you are being lowballed. I'm getting similar offers with way less experience.

Where you at?

In the Netherlands getting anything over €70k is incredibly hard. There are very few companies offering close to that and those are often for architecture roles. Lead dev is usually €60-70k, with some €70-80k exceptions, but those usually require ~10 years focused experience.

Interestingly, over here the freelance market is much better. Those will easily get you €100-150k gross and are often quite long term. And even with €100k, combined with all the tax benefits it's very much worth it.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#153

Post by f1shy »

fxtentacle wrote: post #102
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>salaries seem to be too low. You are often getting low-balled because "it would not fit within the salaries of the other team members". Preach it! CoL in German cities is far too high for how low skilled dev wages are. 100k at 15 years work experience is an insult when you look at Munich/Berlin house prices and that new grads can get 60k. And DW posted a YouTube video yesterday about how Germany has a shortage of so…

I strongly disagree. Here's a family home with garden in the Berlin area that you can rent-to-own at 1900€ per month: https://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/135035667 So with a 100k€ annual salary, one working parent alone can buy the house and feed the entire family. You consider that an "insult"?

The problem is, when you retire, you cannot pay the rent for the house anymore... what do you do then?

The cost published does not include heating or any other utilities, that adds up pretty quick!

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#154

Post by ryandetzel »

a-bit-of-code wrote: post #10
ryandetzel wrote: post #3

Laid off from Twitter three weeks ago, lots of interest and cool companies out there. I binged interviews and have three offers to consider. Senior eng with 20 years experience

For that kind of seniority/experience, what fraction of companies asked LeetCodey stuff? Was it easy or medium/hard problems? How much time did you have to spend preparing/practicing?

I went out of my way to not do leetcode so I only had one because Glassdoor was wrong. I would ask the recruiter during the initial call where I also talked about salary so as yo not waste everyone's time. I cancelled a few interviews that I later found out were leet code, not because I don't want to do them but more I think the people you end up working with are better at testing than coding, from my experience.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#155

Post by gigatexal »

Not sure this is appropriate but if anyone wants to interview with a really cool food delivery company [1](I know, I know -- I think we can make the business model work but if not, in the mean time, come help us try!) hit me up at alexandar dot narayan at delivery hero (no space) dot com. Or check out careers.deliveryhero.com. The culture is awesome, the pay is good, the stock price has a ton of upside potential. Work life balance is amazing here in Berlin. And we work with really large datasets and there's a lot that can be improved I am sure with your experience brought internally.

The company offers work visas, relocation assistance and a relocation bonus, and stock RSUs.

[1] I applied for a startup, on a lark, on one of HN's who's hiring in such and such month and landed at a startup in Hamburg. I am now in Berlin. HN changed my life!

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#156

Post by djha-skin »

olah_1 wrote: post #134
bitL wrote: post #128

I know a guy that left one FAANG recently which was laying off people, interviewed at two other FAANGs, got offers for senior remote roles for over $600k, accepted both and is now working two jobs at the same time. Given he was doing the previous FAANG together with a tough grad school, I think he'll be fine.

Is that legal? In the interview, you basically have to lie about your employment situation, right?

If it's in your contract where you promise not to work for anyone else without telling your employer, yes, it's illegal because breach of contract is illegal. But it's not illegal in its own right. However I doubt that they didn't make him sign a contract to the contrary so he's probably double dipping.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#157

Post by nopenopenopeno »

muzani wrote: post #137
LegitShady wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this seems like a hazing ritual to make sure only those willing to be abused make it in.

From being on various recruiting positions, I believe it's usually just incompetence or laziness. Hiring tends to happen when there's not enough people. Only the people who can do the job are qualified to assess whether someone can do the job. So you have people who are already at double the workload having to take time to design and handle interviews and such. And by the time you get everyone to sign off on hiring t…

>In a recession, the least useful people are probably HR.

I think you mean recruiters, not HR. Big difference.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#158

Post by sysadmindotfail »

chlmtt wrote: post #2

I used to work at a hardware store. As in literal bolts and nuts type of tech, not software related:) Recently lost my job. Originally from Kazakhstan. Thinking of going back if I can't find anything else. No credentials to speak of other than the fact that I could probably think my way out of an undergrad level abstract algebra or real analysis problem if cornered. Maybe topology, too. Native speaker of both Kazakh…

>I used to work at a hardware store. As in literal bolts and nuts type of tech, not software related

As an SWE, this sounds way more fun.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#159

Post by bushbaba »

jasonlotito wrote: post #82

It is not saturated. Not many companies laid people off in tech. They were just big names with bigger numbers but there are a lot of jobs. Yes, if you are only looking a MANGA-like companies sure. But there are a lot of jobs out there.

Many of those jobs would be at a significant pay cut though

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#160

Post by CoastalCoder »

meibo wrote: post #40
nathias wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ghosting is pretty standard in my experience, 1-2 months of interviewing and testing then nothing is pretty standard in the industry

I went through four interviews with (insert popular encrypted messaging solution) a while ago and got a verbal offer, then proceeded to be ghosted entirely, no more replies, from multiple people. Still don't know what happened. How is this acceptable? So much wasted time, and not just for me. I basically interviewed the entire team I was supposed to be working with.

Why redact the company name? It would be a kindness to warn us away from them.
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