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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?

#251

Post by rr888 »

usrusr wrote: post #105
rr888 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is seemed pretty standard practice now, small companies, big companies, recruiters, FAANG. Actually Amazon for me was the best - I deliberately followed up a week later and they actively apologized and provided some feedback.

Could it be a deliberate test for being persistent? "Candidate does not jump through hoops to follow up, if they are not sufficiently interested we aren't either" Then on the other hand, nobody ever got promoted for being nice to rejects. If their processes select for ambition (and they sure do), nothing that does not promise promotion will ever get done and that should qualify as explanation three times over.

Well they didn't change their mind. :) I think providing feedback is work which also requires coordination from more than one people, so is easy to avoid.

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

#252

Post by SpeedilyDamage »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #161
olah_1 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How many CEO's are CEO'ing for more than one company? If they can do it, why not the plebs?

Because the plebs sign contracts saying they won’t.

It’s not illegal, just highly unethical. It’s also not true, he does not know someone doing this.

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

#253

Post by mylons »

thefreeman wrote: post #121
adamcharnock wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but with similar experience levels and I’ve never done a LeetCode interview, and even regular interviews are pretty light. I mostly contract though, and they generally offer me full time after a little while if I want it.

How do you find contract opportunities? Is it the same as regular job searching? Do you use a firm? Do you apply to full time job posts but say you prefer contract to hire once you have an interview?

the canonical way is reaching out to anyone in your work history that you had any sort of positive working relationship with. i just went through this exercise and saw a tip in a similar thread to ask something like this in the email, “do you know anyone who is looking for contractors?” this way you don’t create a potentially awkward situation for them where they have to say they can’t hire you. and, in my case, this led to referrals that ultimately ended up in signed contracts.

there are sites online, like the whoishiring threads here. i’m running https://hourly.fyi/jobs/

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

#254

Post by ARandomerDude »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #241
CWuestefeld wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing this for 30+ years, and I've found the same. It's not just whether the candidate can answer correctly, but how they answer. Back when I was doing C/C++ interviews, I'd ask questions like: What's the difference between single and double quotes? A meh candidate answers something about you need single quotes for just a single character. A good candidate answers about how the data type for a double-quoted…

I just realized that my above model answer gets broken by the formatter. the first question should get answered with char-star, that is, pointer to char.

This is why I don't use C. ;)

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

#255

Post by bitL »

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #252
tvanantwerp wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many CEO's are CEO'ing for more than one company? If they can do it, why not the plebs?

Because the plebs sign contracts saying they won’t. It’s not illegal, just highly unethical. It’s also not true, he does not know someone doing this.

It's true, I know the guy. He's an outlier for sure, but he exists. Moreover, he moved from the toughest FAANG to more relaxed ones.

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

#256

Post by single_identity »

fxtentacle wrote: post #230
single_identity wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, 100k EUR is _before_ tax which I believe you might be confusing here. After tax you get maybe 50-ish % of that so you end up with something like 50k EUR per year. In no European country that would be enough to "buy the house" and even more so in Germany. Secondly, I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts here. What if you: * Lived in the EU * Being salaried 100k EUR (which is probably around 90th percentile)…

The offer I linked to was literally a "buy the house with monthly installments and no upfront payment" offer. So yes, you can "buy the house" if you can afford those 1900€ per month in addition to food and heating. Also, with 2 kids and 2 adults out of which only 1 is working, you'll get heavy tax deductions, so I'd expect an effective tax rate of around 15%. That 100k€ gross will turn into 85k€ after taxes. Deduct a…

> so I'd expect an effective tax rate of around 15%. That 100k€ gross will turn into 85k€ after taxes.

Your calculus is far far from reality so your further reasoning is therefore flawed from the very start. 4-4.5k EUR is probably more realistic.

Moreover, property prices around EU are generally speaking anywhere from 3k EUR to 15k EUR per sqm. For a 100sqm home that's 300k EUR for the cheapest one, 700-800k EUR as a median and more expensive ones over a 1M EUR. Even with the 90-th percentile salary such as 4k EUR per month (after tax), how exactly do you envision buying a home with that sort of prices?

Software engineers are being grossly underpaid in Europe and all this recurring bullshit around housing prices, living costs etc. is just a bullshit that capitalist companies will spread to convince people such as yourself to start considering your colleagues as a "threat" and not just human beings who want to be paid what they are deserved.

My purchasing power, even with the 90-th percentile salary in EU, is _nowhere_ near the purchasing power I'd have with the same skills I have if I had lived in the US and that's where all the discussion can stop. If we take some of the other European countries as an example that gap is going to be even much larger. Purchasing power coefficients are a real thing you know.

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

#257

Post by tarokun-io »

Interviewed with about 28 companies for almost 3 months, without a single offer! I was starting to get really worried about money and burned out from interviewing. In the past I've never interviewed with more than 2 or 3 before getting an offer

I now this is incredibly privileged. I'm not humble-bragging, just observing the change in the market.

As things usually turn out, during the last week of the 3-month search I received 3 different offers all at once.

For reference and if it matters: I've got 14 years of experience.

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

#258

Post by MaxBarraclough »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #212
ARandomerDude wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite as experienced as you (I’m in the 10-15 year bracket). I never ask LeetCode questions because it’s far easier on both sides to ask experience-based questions like “what do you like/dislike about ?” If I get superficial answers that tells me something. If i get well thought-out answers from people who have clearly spent time in the trenches that tells me something too.

I've been doing this for 30+ years, and I've found the same. It's not just whether the candidate can answer correctly, but how they answer. Back when I was doing C/C++ interviews, I'd ask questions like: What's the difference between single and double quotes? A meh candidate answers something about you need single quotes for just a single character. A good candidate answers about how the data type for a double-quoted…

> If I want to pass a variable into a function, and have its value changed by the function, what do I do? A lousy candidate says "put an ampersand in front of it". A meh candidate says to pass a pointer to the variable. The best candidate will talk about the difference between call-by-value versus call-by-reference.

I agree it's good for a candidate to demonstrate a solid understanding of evaluation strategies, but the way you phrased the question, the 'meh' answer seems about right. You asked what do I do? which invites a narrow answer specific to the language.

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

#259

Post by KptMarchewa »

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.

Yeah, seems so - 80k is on the higher end, but possible in Poland, while the CoL is laughably low compared to Germany.

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

#260

Post by meibo »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #160
meibo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I still respect what they do, I don't respect their hiring practices or representatives. They are quite present on HN, for what it's worth.
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