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Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

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Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#401

Post by nickff »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #369
nickff wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s definitely a problem right now, but it’s still not worth hiring people just to train them and have them leave. I think this one of the reasons for the popularity of H1B, as this new normal isn’t worldwide yet.

That's why I said they tried nothing and are out of ideas.

The problem is that labor laws and practical considerations make it so that most other options are infeasible and/or illegal. Business model innovation in employment is basically illegal.

Professional sports take interesting and varied approaches to the subject, but even they are facing challenges (see ‘free transfers’ in the European football market).

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#402

Post by stickfigure »

w4ffl35 wrote: post #374
coding123 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are just suffering from ODD right now. They can't handle a world-view that makes them bad or evil, and so they will do anything they can to make you look evil/crazy/unhinged/depressed or bitter.

Its quite strange. I'm being piled on for saying that I support American workers over immigrants (which is literally Trump's position) and I am accused of being bitter. I'm actually doing great considering. Would love to have a job, but if society won't allow me, then I'll simply use the system and continue building video games, not my fault. Blame Elon etc.

You can take this any way you like, but I'm genuinely trying to offer constructive criticism. Whether you mean to or not, you come across as bitter and angry.

...also a little socially awkward? Why use my last name in this forum? Not that it bothers me; I deliberately maintain a public profile. But the convention here is to use each other's usernames, and you had to click through at least a couple links to see my name. Do we know each other? I presume not, or you would have used my first name.

There's something a little strange about it; either you aren't picking up on community social conventions, or you're deliberately trying to break them. It's just a small and almost insignificant data point, but if I had to take a totally wild guess, these sorts of subtle social issues are what interviewers are picking up on.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#403

Post by Dig1t »

ajmurmann wrote: post #196
Dig1t wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk it seems illegal to me.. the civil rights act says in very plain language that it's illegal to discriminate based on immutable characteristics during hiring. Break down a hypothetical scenario: 1. Post a job, anyone can apply. 2. Candidate applies, goes through the hiring process, the team likes them and wants to make an offer. 3. Not a woman or PoC so not allowed to make an offer yet. So at this point lets say y…

Not a legal expert, but suffice to say it's not without it's challenges. In practice, as a hiring manager, I've had the luck that it hadn't made a difference either way since I always had some promising URMs in the pipeline. (Edit: I take that back. At one point I had 4 reqs and the first candidate was a real unicorn and we hadn't interviewed a URM yet. My VP gave me an exemption on the condition that the other three…

>it's not without it's challenges

This is a nice way of saying that we are breaking the law.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#404

Post by ipaddr »

feznyng wrote: post #220

Question for those who lived through it: is this sense that not only is the market over but that it’s permanently over a point of discussion during the dot com crash or 2008? I’ve experienced the former personally but the idea that it’s never going to get better is a little harder to swallow, although that may be pure cope.

2000 or 2008 didn't feel like it was over. 2000 felt like too far too soon undelivered promises dried up the market. 2008 felt like wall street fraud killed the economy for all.

Today we are living in a reality created by FAANGs (and those who copied) who over recruited everyone so that other FAANGs could not get them. Employee count became connected to valuations. Which created insane fake demand which increased graduate numbers and let companies import people. Companies like facebook doubled their staff count in a year and a half during covid lockdowns.

Then interest rates went up and companies realized they don't need most people and then AI hit and shifted more budgets.

Recover to when? Part of the recovery is happening. Students are choosing other majors. Importing people will probably slow. The ratio of people to jobs is getting slightly better with people leaving the field. As wages and interest rates keep getting lower we'll hit a point where developers will be in demand again but AI might have taken your role by that point. Not to worry new jobs will be created somewhere doing something AI can't.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#405

Post by robomartin »

Glyptodon wrote: post #126
robomartin wrote: post #65

While I have been self-employed for a few decades, I do see and hear about what's happening out there. I have many friends who have had challenges and others who are afraid to leave their jobs, even when paid well under what they are worth. One of them finally gave up and took a job in the oil fields in New Mexico. This, after sending hundreds of applications and enduring a few 5 to 7 stage interviews, only to be tol…

I somewhat disagree with you about CS degrees. Though my data points are a bit dated. (And a couple academic CS acquaintances feel that there's are department level declines.) But the standard curriculum I'm familiar with always includes courses where you need to use C, or similar low level languages, to write an OS, compilers, networking stack, etc. And at least one course focused on a system language as a pre-req f…

While you are right, I think the evidence points to deficiencies in depth and breath.

There are plenty or published articles discussing why the mega-interviews became a thing when employers started to realize CS graduates could not develop software.

And then there's the H1B argument. If our educational pipeline is delivering people with solid skill sets, hiring H1B's should be rare because you could not justify it.

Better yet, given the cost of higher education in the US: Why are universities not graduating the absolute best professionals in the world? Every single H1B hire is one more data point in support of the idea that our universities are not doing a good job.

Before someone mentions pay, I looked around and there seem to be multiple studies indicating that H1B's are getting paid on-par with US workers.

Once again, if an H1B hire is justified, it means our universities did not produce candidates with competitive skill sets. Then, why are we paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for these degrees and financially enslaving people for decades?

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#406

Post by bdangubic »

nirav72 wrote: post #392
w4ffl35 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. Most certainly the unelected musk / ramaswamy coalition is all about that. It's really up in the air how this will go. With the recent meltdown on X, I await Trump's words and actions. His base is unhappy, as is his inner circle. Musk is flailing, telling people to "fuck yourself in the face" etc. Does trump's base matter now that he's in his 2nd term, or will he tether himself to musk for the duration of hi…

> I await Trump's words well..right now, it seems that Trump is siding with Elon on this. This hit the news today: https://apnews.com/article/trump-maga-immigration-visas-musk... Also remember - Trump doesn't need the votes anymore from his base. He could pivot on all of his promises or some of these things or make just enough of a visible attempt to give a perception of things are being changed. It wouldn't make a d…

if he is set of pilaging what he can for the next two years - this is 100% right. he’ll get buttfucked in 2026 midterms like in 2018… but I think he does want at least 4 years of full power and will want the votes for one more election cycle

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#407

Post by artistic_regard »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #118
ajb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we see PG talking up H1B on twitter. I'd like to think that if he still read HN he might not do that. Really companies should be banned from importing more people[1] if they laid off a certain number in the last year. That way the job market would be more likely to self correct. [1] I think they should still be allowed to hire people who are already in the country on a visa, as it's unfair to make their risk of b…

An argument against not being allowed to import more people after layoffs (and it’s the one people like PG and Musk are making) is that the people who were laid off simply don’t have the skills required to allow companies to succeed. They need to import labor because the domestic labor pool isn’t good enough. A quieter part is that people immigrating also expect less for their outputs.

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#408

Post by dddrh »

istorical wrote: post #304
dddrh wrote: post #173

Adding a topline response echoing the same thing. Been on the job hunt since October 1, and have done hundreds of applications, yet only spoken to 3 companies, and made it past the hiring manager once. I’m a technical product manager with 10+ years and most recently was head of product at a healthtech company. It seems like none of my experience or background matters for the initial screen. The most frustrating part…

Have you tried just saying you're a product manager instead of technical product manager? In my experience small changes in storytelling and self-marketing can create giant shifts in how you are perceived.

Actually yes! In this case it was lazy shorthand.

Same result for the job hunt progress but persisting still.

I appreciate the feedback greatly. I’m sure there is a way to tell the story better.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#409

Post by vbi8iBEX »

stickfigure wrote: post #402
w4ffl35 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its quite strange. I'm being piled on for saying that I support American workers over immigrants (which is literally Trump's position) and I am accused of being bitter. I'm actually doing great considering. Would love to have a job, but if society won't allow me, then I'll simply use the system and continue building video games, not my fault. Blame Elon etc.

You can take this any way you like, but I'm genuinely trying to offer constructive criticism. Whether you mean to or not, you come across as bitter and angry. ...also a little socially awkward? Why use my last name in this forum? Not that it bothers me; I deliberately maintain a public profile. But the convention here is to use each other's usernames, and you had to click through at least a couple links to see my nam…

You have your full name linked in your profile. Look Jeff, you've offered up backhanded advice twice now in this thread. I'll offer up my honest feedback to you: you come across as rude and obtuse. We are having a discussion in this post about H1B, job shortages etc. Nothing I've said in any of these posts or comments is bitter or angry. You're free to read my words however you wish, but you might want to take a step back from your emotions, because they seem to have gotten the better of you. I'm a pretty happy guy. I'm not really sure where you're getting any of your intel from, but you're wrong. Now I've corrected you twice. Anymore insisting on your part is just trolling. Your "constructive criticism" has been rejected.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#410

Post by ironman1478 »

feznyng wrote: post #343
ironman1478 wrote: post #248

I haven't had a hard time finding employment. I am going to start at a FAANG next week, coming from another FAANG. I work in embedded / hardware. I think what is being asked for is changing and people are being caught flat footed. We don't need more web or backend devs, we have so many of those. The world of embedded can't hire enough because the scope of embedded has increased. It's no longer just writing bare metal…

How would a junior engineer get into embedded software? Personal hardware projects with esp32s, etc? Seems far more interesting than cobbling together CRUD apps but it seems tough to get into given the experience roles require.

Having a computer engineering degree helps. Outside of the embedded equivalent of CRUD, you'll have to know the details of how a computer works. How memory visibility and synchronization works, what mmio is, basic assembly, interrupt concepts, etc. I'd actually recommend reading a book on operating systems. A lot of embedded devices that are pure compute require knowledge of operating systems because you're basically building software to enable a user to interact with the accelerator or sensor on the device.

I'd also learn a tool like yocto or buildroot, both tools for creating Linux images. They're not great tools, but they are widely used in creating embedded Linux images.

If you want to solve domain specific issues (like getting into DSP) or doing high speed networking, you have to find an entry level job in that field and have the requisite background. It's hard to do DSP without an EE background for example.

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