Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

As a frontend developer, with the usual caveats of anecdotal experience etc, I'm somewhat inclined to agree when talking about regular employment. Over the last decade or so I've worked in companies that range from a few employees in total to thousands of people, and most of the time I'm either the frontend guy or one of a very small handful. Most of the time the value you bring to the table from the technical side is unblocking other people, that is, making sure the design system is consistent, everything builds, nasty frontend-specific bugs are fixed, etc. Everything else can be delegated to generalists which gives the company a lot more flexibility around how to hire and arrange work.

The one place where this trend does not hold in my experience is contracting. I've done a fair bit of it throughout my career and being a frontend development contractor or similar is like selling hot cakes if you bring a lot of experience to the table. The main customers are generally companies who don't have that one guy who figures out frontend stuff and in the end they have a critical mass of mess that they hire someone from the outside to come in and fix pronto.

This is really off the mark.

I was horrible at communicating succinctly in both written and oral form and bad at PowerPoints and diagrams until 2016 - at the age of 42. I definitely wasn’t comfortable talking to “the business” and customers.

I got my first dev lead job and watch how my manager - the director of IT - at a mid size non tech company was able to translate my technical designs and challenges to the higher ups. I learned a little from him through osmosis.

I changed jobs in 2018 and I started proactively working with my CTO (my manager), sales and the documentation writers to become a better communicator.

By the time a chance to interview with BigTech in the cloud consulting department (yes full time job) fell into my lap in 2020, I had no problem passing a 5 round mostly behavioral interview where I had to describe technical accomplishments, business impact, scope, etc in STAR format - over video conferencing without the use of a white board.

I was still a little rough around the edges. But three years later, I consistently get great feedback from customers about my presentations and my ability to explain concepts and challenges to technical and non technical audiences at the same time. I’m not bragging just saying that it can be learned like anything else.

On another note, being able to work independently when spoonfed business requirements is considered mid level behavior according to the guidelines at every single major tech company that I’m aware of.

> I would be totally weird out if some of my past co-workers suddenly reaches out to me with bullshit smalltalk to ask for a job.

What, why? This is what professional connections are all about! Sure it is weird when like a social friend from childhood reaches out with an ulterior motive, but it's not weird when professional connections reach out for professional reasons. You're the weird one on this one :) And you're probably limiting your own career with this hang up.

I love it when past colleagues reach out. Even if I'm not personally hiring or don't think they'd be a good fit for my current company, I probably know of other people and companies to introduce them to.

Good tip, but to offer a counter-point: I skip a lot of text when reading job descriptions because 99% of the time they are packed with marketing nonsense. It's so dull, meaningless and repetitive that it's sometimes comic.

Ie toilet paper company: "Here at XYZ corp we believe we will change the world forever through market-leading technology that inspires generations. We hire innovators, explorers and change-makers. We're non conformists on a mission. blah blah blah"

The real job role: "be some sysadmin for an ancient legacy platform".

Its combination of location, experience, salary expectations and sectoral business conditions.

In a good market everybody needs warm bodies, the standards drop, the pay levels rise.

In a poor market people focus on the absolutely required positions (e.g. replacing critical vacant roles) and pay levels drop.

Location (country / region) is quite important too, there are places with chronic and dire shortages in IT expertise (but salaries might not be great).

These are the fundamentals. Then you have the overlay of market making / matching which is clearly totally broken and only gets worse.

What is important is to find the discipline and energy to keep developing while job searching. Maybe work on a open source project or learn something new, expanding your expertise by going deeper or broader.