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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?

#381

Post by zulrah »

speeder wrote: post #80
throw_aws_inter wrote: post #16

I interviewed for 1.5 months (!!!) for AWS for a senior position, went through all the stages through the end. Then silence. I kept emailing the recruiters responsible for my interview, I kept getting out-of-office replies. Then I contacted some higher ups I found, told me they assigned my interview to other recruiters. No replies from them though. I have emailed them a bunch of times including the higher up. Then th…

That is just Amazon being Amazon. When they interviewed me the first time, the interviewer didn't show to work, so they asked another guy to interview me, he ended interviewing me in a language he didn't knew, to a position using another language entirely, the whole thing was a farce. Some years later Amazon recruiters contacted me, asked me to go interview in person. Then during the interview in their offices, they…

My Amazon interview was cancelled as interviewer got ill. It was never rescheduled

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

#382

Post by alexfromapex »

notfromhere wrote: post #377
alexfromapex wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could earn themselves a criminal charge if the court decides what they're doing is fraud which it likely is if they have signed something saying they wouldn't work elsewhere simultaneously.

It's not fraud. If you are performing to expectation, no one is being defrauded. Anti-moonlighting clauses are nonsense.

If the expectation is that you're not moonlighting so you sign a contract saying that you're not but you actually are, it's fraud full stop.

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

#383

Post by throwaway5231 »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #282
westmeal wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got to be kidding... that's literally what references are for. Insane.

We don't teach pass by reference these days. Anyone you find in the real world under ~30 years old may not even be aware that you can pass a reference and modify it directly without having to make a method return a value. It's super cool to have someone explain to you side effects yet you show them a method with a null return and run it for them showing that the value has changed and they are mesmerized.

This is false and ageist. I got a computer engineering degree at a non elite state school very recently and this was covered in the first c++ and c classes. For that matter c# has an “out” variable that mimics this functionality, and the intro Java class covered primitive types vs. reference types. While reference types in Java aren’t the exact same thing, they do allow a void function to modify the state of the caller by modifying a parameter passed to the function.

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

#384

Post by soperj »

icedchai wrote: post #327
bitbuilder wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe they're saying the feature doesn't exist or never gets used, but rather it's rarely something that's taught to junior developers, and rarely something you see highlighted as a best practice. I've been developing for 25+ years in any language you can imagine, and know how to use pass by ref just fine, and know there are situations where it might be the best solution. But I can't remember the last time…

I haven't used C++ pass-by-reference in years, but I'd recognize the syntax. Perhaps the interviewer just wasn't very good.

doesn't really matter, all they have to do is run the code.

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

#385

Post by ghiculescu »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #366
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.

I'm not in the USA so I'm not sure how the W2s and SSNs are tied to job/healthcare/401k etc, but how does this double timing work? Won't the Tax office/Finanzamt (IRS) know about this?

It’s not illegal to have two jobs.

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

#386

Post by SoftTalker »

ryandrake wrote: post #338
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. In fact, I had an instructor in college that would have marked you down if a quiz/test asked this question and you wrote an entire paragraph describing call-by-value versus call-by-reference. On the final, he said "Each of these questions is answerable in 1-3 sentences. If you're writing 1-3 paragraphs, you're wasting my time and I will subtract points even if your answer is correct."

We need your professor to coach interview candidates. On the "interviewer" side of the table, I can't tell you the number of times I've asked a question that should produce a quick, simple answer, and instead got a 5-10 minute stream-of-consciousness word salad out of the candidate. Or a huge run-on sentence this-and-that-and-this-and-also-that-oh-and-this... without coming up for air. It's so common, I must assume t…

I think it's more likely a nervous candidate who may not be comfortable or experienced in conversation, as many introverted tech type people seem to be. I don't think it's being taught; it's more likely the result of the candidate not having had interview coaching at all.

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

#387

Post by ghaff »

parentheses wrote: post #332
wickedsickeune wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. If I may ask, when was the last time you looked for a job? I'm saying this because maybe you're having trouble due to ageism that you didn't encounter before.

Ageism is often conflated with higher compensation expectations.

While it's certainly very real, it's conflated with a lot of things: compensation expectations, specialization, potentially not up on current trends, maybe set in ways, etc.

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

#388

Post by mixmastamyk »

the_jeremy wrote: post #298
buro9 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we assume they started both on the same date, then they wouldn't have had to lie or mislead prior to that point. Then the question is only whether it's legal (contractually) to be employed by more than one employer at a time. But to that... would it be legal for a company to own every waking hour rather than just your employed hours? I've not seen anything that says someone has to be exclusively hired, but they wo…

My contract says I can't be employed anywhere else. Part of it is for IP reasons, because they want to own everything I create.

I hope they are paying handsomely for that provision.

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

#389

Post by ghaff »

Eumenes wrote: post #378
godtoldmetodoit wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never again interview for Amazon unless I am about to be evicted and they are the only one left in town. Interviewed for a senior dev role, went through all the rounds, took days off of work to be available, and after the final round they just ghosted me. I had to follow up to find out they had chosen someone else. The amount of time I put into those interviews was absurd, reading up on all their principles, c…

I think I'd rather dig holes over working for Amazon - I've never heard anything positive out of that place.

It seems to be a mixed bag. Don't know folks there who are developers specifically but I know people who say they really like it (admittedly fairly senior) and I know people who couldn't wait to get out after a rather short period.

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

#390

Post by jesse__ »

I've been half-heartedly looking for a new job since Jan 2022, at which time I left my last employer by choice.

I've interviewed with ~20 companies this year, usually with folks that reach out to me from the 'Who Wants to be Hired' thread. I've received three pretty decent offers (200-250k base + equity) all at small, early-stage companies. From what I've observed this year, companies that are doing difficult or low-level work are still as starved as ever for senior/staff/architect-level folks that can deliver, and are happily willing to hire them. Probably irrespective of company size, but I pretty much exclusively look for teams of ~5-20 people.

One material effect I've noticed from the downturn is I've gotten a lot less emails from recruiters advertising positions that are at companies with BS products, or that have clearly nothing to do with my skillset.

My bio: I've got ~10 years professional programming experience and consider myself a generalist. Typical projects I look for include graphics programming, language runtimes, compilers, data streaming.. low-ish level stuff that's usually pretty technical.

Anyway, since someone asked, that's my 2c :)

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