Ask HN: Is the Job Market Actually Bad?

Post by AlexeyBelov » Thu, May 14, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #25

alephnerd wrote: post #7

It isn't. As someone who has made hiring and firing decisions at the Board level, the people who are the most severely affected were either (in no order): 1. Working remotely in North America but demanding Bay Area salaries without the chops to justify it. 2. Working in Western Europe (they complain more about stuff irrelevant to the business but shy away from business critical decision making when offered the opport…

I feel so much disdain for workers coming from your words. I hope to never work for someone like you

He's a resident clown who thinks he's hot shit because he's "a VC". Doesn't understand he has no respect from anyone here, lmao.

Post by mbgerring » Sat, May 16, 2026, 2:50 AM UTC

bcbb7 wrote: post #180

mbgerring wrote: post #27

My current job search has been the longest and most difficult of my career (5 months so far). Caveats: - I’m only applying with climate tech companies - I’m trying to transition back to engineering after a detour into product - I’m trying to pivot into more hardware-focused roles Most companies I apply to don’t respond at all, and I’ve had about 6 phone screens, two technical interviews, and one “we’d love to hire yo…

How was your detour into product? What kind of skills/instincts you developed being in product? I always imagined it being kind of freeing -- leaving behind engineering implementation details and thinking more in terms of the final results.

A lot more of my time was spent fighting to keep the resources I needed to execute my roadmap than I liked. I spent waaaaay too much time explaining why my product area, which covered business critical data and internal processes, was worth funding to an audience that didn’t understand what I did, and by extension, did not really understand their own business.

When it’s ideation from customer interviews with a designer and an engineering manager, it’s fantastic. I like solving problems and I don’t really care about the specific technical approach, so that’s where I want to be. However I will happily write the code (or review it, or just wrote specs or whatever it is we do now since December 2025) if there’s no one else around to do it.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market Actually Bad?

Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market Actually Bad?