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Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#441

Post by meritt »

dang wrote: post #391

All: a user emailed with the brilliant suggestion that HN do a "Who Is Hiring Right Now?" thread. We'll do that soon; maybe tomorrow. This will specifically be for jobs that are ready to hire, and able to onboard, quickly. If any of you have suggestions for how to make this most helpful under current conditions, please share them. I'll check this thread later tonight.

As the owner of a fully remote, revenue-funded, and profitable startup that wants to hire, my concern is one that won't be particularly well received. I don't want to hire people, yet, because they're still thinking that https://levels.fyi is realistic. I'd rather wait a few rough months, have the pool of talent grow rapidly and people will start realizing that maybe paying $350k to a green React dev isn't very sustainable.

We're going headlong into a recession and I imagine an overwhelming number of firms are going to take the same stance.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#442

Post by whitehouse3 »

Cyberdog wrote: post #180
pletsch wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are all your clients technical? If not, might want to consider a revamp of your site, make it more what your work will do for them (online presence) than your specific skill set (PHP, Drupal).

With all the time I have now, I'm certainly planning on sprucing up the site (which is currently just a flat HTML file) in the near future. When I had client work, it was sort of a "the cobbler's children have no shoes" sort of thing - I couldn't justify spending much free time on it. Perhaps that was faulty reasoning in hindsight.

Maybe I’m not the target market but I think it’s refreshing. No marketing BS. Just facts and some personality.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#443

Post by mehrdadn »

dang wrote: post #416
treve wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be very interest in a variant that's looking for non-fulltime. It's getting tougher as a freelancer too

Have you looked at the freelancer threads that the whoishiring account posts monthly? They don't get as much frontpage time but they're there. Edit: if anybody has an idea about how to let more people know about those, as well as the "Who Wants To Be Hired" threads, I'd like to hear it. The problem is that frontpage space is the scarcest resource on HN, and it's hard to justify using 3 of those slots for whoishiring…

Link for those interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22465475

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#444

Post by orionblastar »

Laid off since 2002. Became disabled in 2003. Nobody wants to hire me because of my disabilities.

Since then I've been working on getting better, but tech has passed me by to where my skills are all retro and legacy tech. I kept up with Windows and Office but did not learn C# and Python yet. I know the foundations and fundamentals of programming. Just that I am 51 now and ageism sets in.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#445

Post by CoyoteJosh »

I accepted an offer with a pharma tech company last week am am super nervous about putting my notice in this week at my current job. I have verified that everything is good to go multiple times and am now being shipped my machine to begin remotely. This has to be the most nerve wracking decision I've made in my adult life (solely due to timing). I've been told over and over by people close to me not to worry about it, but I can't help but worry.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#446

Post by alecbenzer »

bosie wrote: post #411
alecbenzer wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether this is true or not, there's much better ways to phrase this. > Your online presence is dreadfully low for a web developer. Just dropping "Sorry to say" makes it sound less condescending. > Your online presence is really low for a web developer. Dreadfully -> really. Could argue that this changes the meaning somewhat, but I think the change is more in tone (again, less pretentious/condescending sounding) than…

Not op but I appreciate the detailed rewrite. I do find your notes confusing though. The claim that your last sentence is more constructive seems a bit weak. what is constructive about it, you basically just derived a logical consequence that touching the website yields a result? Also, what does 'expanding' even mean in this context? At no point did you give any constructive feedback (what should be improved, why is…

> you basically just derived a logical consequence that touching the website yields a result?

The suggestion was pretty implicit in the original comment but I think making it explicit makes the tone of the comment friendlier. It shifts the focus away from just pointing out the bad to also focusing on how to be better.

> Also, what does 'expanding' even mean in this context? At no point did you give any constructive feedback (what should be improved, why is it low, why is it 'really low' etc).

Well sure, if I was the one actually giving the feedback, expanding even more would be even better. Even just the gestural focus on how to be better still does help the tone I think, though.

> on the note of 'really'. i find 'dreadfully' much more useful than 'really'. much stronger, gives a clearer indication of how bad it really is.

"dreadfully" is stronger than "really" but that doesn't make it clearer or more useful. "This is 5.6 bad points" is stronger than "this is 3.2 bad points", but without having any standard for what a "bad point" is, it doesn't really communicate any meaningful information. I think "dreadfully" similarly shifts the tone of the comment to being more negative without adding any real content.

> let alone be less pretentious

The pretentious-ness isn't as strong, but I think there's a hint of it that comes from using a "fancier" word without adding much actual content.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#447

Post by caseysoftware »

wbl wrote: post #395
caseysoftware wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump announced the China travel ban on Jan 31 - effective Feb 2nd - which was over 6 weeks ago. Even then he was called names and the "it's just the flu" mantra started. Huge segments of the world saw what was coming and started moving, most didn't move far enough fast enough. Ref: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/31/21117403/trump-coronaviru...

Trump had no backup plan for when, not if, a case went undetected in the US. He didn't start stockpiling masks and ventilators until much later.

I agree. He didn't move far enough fast enough. The public's awareness and preparation was slowed by the media (NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, others) screaming "it's just the flu!" until just a couple weeks ago so most weren't prepared. :(

My comment was in response to people not realizing this was a thing a month ago.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#448

Post by listenallyall »

rxhernandez wrote: post #432
listenallyall wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a weird way, getting 120% of the available bonus works against you, in terms of demonstrating you're an excellent worker. Clearly, there's more "available" than the stated amount, which demonstrates the whole thing is a fiction to make people feel good. I mean, in the real world, 100% is the maximum of any thing, then there are made-up phrases like "giving 110%" or "8 days a week" or "120% of the available bonus."…

To be fair, I dont think it's a humblebrag. If they worked at the same company as all of us, it might make sense to call it a humblebrag but, there are enough people around here in much better positions than those that get bonuses like these for it to make sense to brag about. That is, I (and probably most people on yc) would feel embarrassed talking about my best accolades when there are people on here that were abl…

It's not a humblebrag in terms of dollars. The idea being conveyed is that he (she?) should be unfire-able due to excellent performance (that's the brag), but that at-will employment negates the unfire-ability. I'm expressing doubt that 120% bonus is actually evidence he's such a great employee.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#450

Post by dillonmckay »

okareaman wrote: post #433
dillonmckay wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be the top post.

It's too early for people to hear it. Wait until unemployment runs out.

That is the first lesson.

If this is your first year in the work force (2020), there is no unemployment.

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