Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#21

Post by quickthrower2 » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:15 AM UTC

zer8k wrote: post #20

My linkedin views are basically rock bottom and the twice-daily recruiter spam has stopped entirely. From my assessment of my network anyone who lost their job is looking, or has been looking for a long time. The market is effectively dead. Even if you set your sights extremely low. Even corporate suit-and-tie programmer jobs are drying up. I don't know what I'll do if I lose my job. Construction, maybe. I can't be w…

Feels like the market is good in Sydney but alas you get lower wages and the high and rising cost of living. Stagflation is rampant!

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#22

Post by quickthrower2 » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:17 AM UTC

bluedemon wrote: post #5

[flagged]

Most companies can barely stay solvent let alone engineer a conspiracy. I admit there was wage collusion in the past but I reckon that is as coordinated as it gets. We need a new boom of startups figuring how to do useful stuff with computers without resorting to overhiring on success.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#23

Post by quickthrower2 » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:19 AM UTC

Are you only applying for front end? You might consider trying backend and devops too if not. Anything where code is written. Then if you get interviews, invest in learning the stuff that gets you past their tests and interviews.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#24

Post by ukyrgf » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:23 AM UTC

Ilasky wrote: post #2

I've had similar issues - so much so that I've created Resgen[0] just because it was tough getting call backs. It turns out I really needed to tailor my resume to each job and it resulted in a lot more call backs. [0] https://resgen.app

Wow, that design is modern but brings me back to the days of application skin sites and early digital art communities back in the early 00s. Great job. I'm going to sign up.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#25

Post by scelerat » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:44 AM UTC

Same here. 22 years experience full stack; leadership roles. Can't get an interview. Taking an ML class. I think telling some recruiters I had a baby on the way was a mistake.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#26

Post by oto9 » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:54 AM UTC

There’s a few motives in play; office leases, are part of it.

But senior workers were getting too full of themselves a social agents for good and political status quo is coddle the government agents and their lobbyist/think tank leaders.

Now it’s templated to some dependency imports, leetcode, some well known TF; they can backfill with lower paid newbs.

I’m working on a Linux distro where the install sets up an LLM and boots to GPU accelerated 3D viewport where a little entity acts as my chatbot.

Goal is to show the world we don’t need corporate controlled software.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#27

Post by tayo42 » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:55 AM UTC

Its rough and people seem picky. I've been out of work for around a year now, partially by choice. I still get interviews here and there.

Post your resume in a comment here maybe? And as much as it sucks shoot a little lower? Are you you only applying to house hold tech companies?

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#28

Post by John23832 » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:59 AM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #23

Are you only applying for front end? You might consider trying backend and devops too if not. Anything where code is written. Then if you get interviews, invest in learning the stuff that gets you past their tests and interviews.

There are, again, many qualified candidates in backend and devops as well. Changing specialties probably puts you at the bottom of the pile because you don’t have experience that speaks directly to the job.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#29

Post by RomanPushkin » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 4:06 AM UTC

It's bad if you're in the U.S. Companies hire folks in the US to fire them later if they want to. That's how it works, and everyone understands that we can hire today, we can fire tomorrow, because of "employment at will". Those high salaries don't mean anything anymore. If your salary was $200K and you spent 1 year to find a job, your salary is now $100K. Compare it to other countries - Germany, for example. Salaries are lower, but if you work, you can't be fired. You're getting your paycheck, you're protected by laws, and it's your American fella who is going under the bridge with his family, not you.

We really need to make "employment at will" illegal.

Personal anecdote from Russia (I hold expired Russian passport and have many friends from there). Auto-translated from chats (reach out if you're curious getting the origin link):

=== 8Another moment. When I was completely desperate to find a job here in our region, I published a CV on the Russian HH.ru. And there is a lot of activity there. In one day, they wrote to me vk, sber, yandex and several other fairly well-known offices. And all as one are looking for remote employees, but for some fucking reason that is not clear to me, I have to be on the territory of the Russian Federation. That's just an exception with Yandex. They can arrange in Serbia. But you also have to go there.

=== >8 ===

I don't know what they did to the US economy, so now it's even worse here than it is in Russia.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#30

Post by SxC97 » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 4:27 AM UTC

I posted something similar just a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36876485

I worked as a cybersecurity engineer for 2 years and I've applied for over 300 _entry level_ developer jobs over the last few months and still haven't heard back from most places. It's definitely not just you!

I've heard from family and friends that are still in the tech field that most companies still have a hiring freeze in place and that this will probably stay in place for the remainder of the year, maybe even into Q1 or Q2 of next year.

The best idea right now might be to get _any_ job (even entry level positions) and just hunker down while we wait for the market to recover before we can apply for jobs that are more commiserate with our experience levels.

I decided to go back to school and get my Masters in CS while I wait and I'm also planning on doing some web or app development on the side just to pad my resume a little.

I'm sorry I can't help any more, other than to say that you're not alone in this :)