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Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

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Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#161

Post by theGnuMe »

Cypher wrote: post #155

I'm going through a terrible time, I'm a dev. And last 3-4 months I found the salary has decreased on all openings by a good 20-30%. I've been at the same company for 15 years. Last year we got a new line manager and he is a bully and makes a lot of our lives miserable, recently he started targeting me. I thought it'd be fine because I can move on with my experience but because of the market I feel trapped and I've n…

Sorry to hear this. Do you have any specific examples of bullying? You should keep a log of them if not already doing so. There is also strength in numbers so find allies.

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#162

Post by CableNinja »

irvingprime wrote: post #138
CableNinja wrote: post #122

On the topic of getting hired, id like to take a moment to rant at the employers, and ask you HN folk to do something. PLEASE stop applying to jobs that make you jump through stupid hoops or answer stupid questions that dont need to be asked on applications. Every person that applies and answers these questions are just helping to standardize their use on applications, and it needs to stop. Theres so many that i cant…

Yes to not answering stupid questions. One of my pet peeves about job applications is the "Voluntary self-identification" form that has all required answers. So I select "I do not want to answer" and assume they're too stupid to hire me.

Honestly, i think those 3 questions are hot garbage. They shouldnt be asked until an offer is made. Theres no reason to ask them in advance other than to allow for discriminatory decisions, but that decision is easily masked by "we found stronger candidates" auto rejections.

Really truly tired of the state of hiring

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#163

Post by theGnuMe »

aarvi wrote: post #80

Not so great. Not a single call yet. This after having spent over a decade as CTO at a startup, built all products and teams from scratch. Dont know where I am going wrong. But.. hope is what makes the world go round!

You need an agent. Also reach out to your investors if you had any and are on good terms.

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#164

Post by fy20 »

vunderba wrote: post #156
upon_drumhead wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this a ton, yet in the past decade, I’ve never looked at more than a resume before filtering into the yay/nay buckets for tech phone screens. Do you all actually dive deep on every resume?

Whenever I've been on the interviewing side of things if a potential applicant lists their GitHub profile I checked it 100% of the time for interesting side project, open source contributions, etc.

Same here. If you list a GitHub profile in your CV I expect it to show at least one repository with code you have written yourself or meaningful contributions to an open source project.

We don't do coding challenges during the interview, so I want to see you can actually write code.

But make it something useful, I don't really care to see you know how to press the "Fork" button or +1 a bug report.

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#166

Post by breakpointalpha »

notsurenymore wrote: post #110
tfigueroa wrote: post #25

Pretty bad. I’ve got a lot of experience as an IC, manager, and leader, and it doesn’t seem to matter; companies seem much more picky (“you were great but we want someone with more tenure in ”) or wedded to cargo cult methods (the leetcode places). I haven’t extensively tapped my network for referrals, but I get a bad vibe from those, too. I’ve hit up about six folks and they all came back empty - no opportunities, e…

> companies seem much more picky (“you were great but we want someone with more tenure in ”) This was my exact experience. I’ve been out of work for a year and I’m more jaded than ever. I finally got a job through what I assume was nepotism. It was the worst interview I’ve done lately, awkward, because I didn’t have any experience in the particular tech stack, but I got the offer. What pissed me off were companies gh…

Name and shame the company, my man!

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#167

Post by aarvi »

theGnuMe wrote: post #163
aarvi wrote: post #80

Not so great. Not a single call yet. This after having spent over a decade as CTO at a startup, built all products and teams from scratch. Dont know where I am going wrong. But.. hope is what makes the world go round!

You need an agent. Also reach out to your investors if you had any and are on good terms.

Thank you for responding. Whats an agent? Can you recommend some that I can reach out to? I've thought of investors, but I am an employee and the company is still in existence. So reaching out to investors may be perceived as being in bad taste

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#168

Post by aarvi »

DandyDev wrote: post #130
aarvi wrote: post #80

Not so great. Not a single call yet. This after having spent over a decade as CTO at a startup, built all products and teams from scratch. Dont know where I am going wrong. But.. hope is what makes the world go round!

Not many companies hire CTOs through regular channels, and it’s likely you’ll be seen as overqualified for lower rank jobs. I think you can basically do 2 things: try to get into contact with executive head hunters or make it very clear on your resume and LinkedIn that despite your tenure as CTO you’re very much open to EM or IC engineering roles.

Thanks for your response. I am in touch with the big names like Korn Ferry etc. But are there other individual names you can recommend?

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#169

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #152
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only success I’ve heard is from folks grinding it out and playing the numbers game I'm still early in my career despite rising rapidly, so I've never had a job search that wasn't "just" a numbers game. But it's given me reasonable success, and something I've always wondered is: instead of painstakingly cultivating your resume for each job posting you come across, why not just write 1 accurate one and put that e…

That was my strategy for most of my career. It doesn't work anymore. AI + remote positions have changed the game. Even the feeblest job description gets 100+, or even 1000+, applications. ChatGPT can generate a custom resume and cover letter for each position you apply to that's hard to distinguish from the real thing. This makes all 100-1000+ applications look like rock stars. How does a recruiter filter through all…

Probably by using more AI?

No, seriously, you make a good point. The idea of ha resume is fundamentally to de-risk the applicant; in a world where good writing no longer transmits that signal, you probably need to find new tactics to get that info across.

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#170

Post by ProllyInfamous »

BadCookie wrote: post #139
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #114

How would a forty-year-old electrician (with data center [IBEW] and private residential experience) segway into a more-technical career? I have a STEM degree, but never ended up working anywhere where college wasn't shunned by hard-working co-workers. The concept of "make six figures" while "working at home" makes literally zero sense to me, except with an image of a young `1337` coder abusing way-too-much speed perf…

If you like programming enough to do it professionally, then it might make sense to do a master’s degree in CS. Otherwise, in your position, I would try to talk my way into working at a small startup. There’s often enough work to go around that you can customize your role to include whatever area you’re interested in if you show promise. But now is a really tough time to be trying to make this switch, I’m afraid.

Thank you for this entryway idea.

>now is a really tough time to be trying to make this switch

I am grateful for immense savings (years), but eagerly anticipate an era of fruitful post-singularity employment.

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