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Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

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471–480 of 666 posts

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#471

I've lost my job as an Unity game programmer 2 months ago. I've found another one working as a C#/ASP.NET core developer for a big multinational wholesale chain. I work here since a month ago. Payment is 2x better and I find Web stuff being more interesting and rewarding than game programming. Also it's less stressful and it's better to do something mainstream than working in a niche. It means more opportunities. I'v…

what's the company if you don't mind me asking?

I worked for Pokie Magic/Ainsworth and now I work for Metro Cash and Carry.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#472
post #44

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was time to find a new job after 10 years with my employer. I spent February doing interview prep and conducting interviews. Back then, the COVID-19 was mostly limited to China, markets and governments weren't terribly concerned about COVID-19. I accept a job offer, put in my two weeks notice, and my last day at was last Friday. Hardly anyone was seriously concerned about CO…

If it makes you feel better, I quite a cushy job and joined a startup a month ago. You're not the only one with bad timing :)

Same position here. Thankfully starting at a FAANG, so less likely to see layoffs than smaller more vulnerable companies. Scheduled to start on 3/30

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#473

I've lost my job as an Unity game programmer 2 months ago. I've found another one working as a C#/ASP.NET core developer for a big multinational wholesale chain. I work here since a month ago. Payment is 2x better and I find Web stuff being more interesting and rewarding than game programming. Also it's less stressful and it's better to do something mainstream than working in a niche. It means more opportunities. I'v…

What games have you made?

Slot machines for Android, iOS and Facebook, but just for social gaming, no real cash.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#474
post #246

I have. It was the best thing that could have happened. I've got 2 months to sit at home while being paid. The 2 months are soon over and I'm flooded with freelance work. So now I work 40-50% less for roughly the same amount of money. I should have done this earlier.

How did you find freelance work?

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#475
post #175

I've lost my job as an Unity game programmer 2 months ago. I've found another one working as a C#/ASP.NET core developer for a big multinational wholesale chain. I work here since a month ago. Payment is 2x better and I find Web stuff being more interesting and rewarding than game programming. Also it's less stressful and it's better to do something mainstream than working in a niche. It means more opportunities. I'v…

Hah I also learned C# doing Unity programming and now work as a "enterprise" .NET developer, it's a great path if it's one you want to take...

I've learned C# before getting into Unity. Afterwise I kept learning and learned ASP.NET besides Unity stuff. There are lots of things you can't use in Unity or their usage is against Unity workflow: constructors, tasks, threads, dependency injection, unit tests.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#476
post #353
post #44

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was time to find a new job after 10 years with my employer. I spent February doing interview prep and conducting interviews. Back then, the COVID-19 was mostly limited to China, markets and governments weren't terribly concerned about COVID-19. I accept a job offer, put in my two weeks notice, and my last day at was last Friday. Hardly anyone was seriously concerned about CO…

I have been laid off just before 2015 and I haven't found any stable work since then. I have been under-employed for a long while before the outbreak, and I don't even know what new change-ups in job hunting I should be doing now. For a long time, many people have said that my years of experience make me valuable so that I should have gotten offers very quickly, but the reality hasn't shown that. Heck, even the found…

“Under qualified for your years” is ageist bullshit. You’re either a capable L3,4,5,etc. Any coupling of those achievement brackets to age ranges (which cannot be completely detached from experience level) is discrimination.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you may be missing how the bonus system works at many companies. 100% is defined as the maximum contractual bonus for consistently excellent performance but there is a separate discretionary maximum for exceptional cases beyond the contracted bonus. This discretionary bonus cap is often on the order of 50% higher than the contractual bonus cap. It is for when the maximum bonus is insufficient to reflect indiv…

If the cap is an extra 50%, why did this guy only get 20% extra? In fact, he had 8 chances to get the actual max, and failed every time.

That's not the point. The point is performance reviews are poorly correlated with actual job performance, they aren't designed to measure job performance.

Would you hire someone knowing nothing other than they got 120% bonus at their previous job?

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#478

My predictions: DISCLAIMER: I'm not a expert wrt. any of this. Don't listen to me ;=). It's all just speculation. Companies which plan to downsize since a will will do it now, using COVID19 as a excuse. Companies who have shifted some "bad consequences" into the future might now book them using COVID19 as a excuse for why they exist. Companies who are already on the last straw will end now, (Such which without COVID1…

To be fair, it’s not just about finding an excuse. A company that’s struggling can run out of cash quickly during these events. Outside of SV that usually means bankruptcy of some sort.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#479
post #187
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah I also learned C# doing Unity programming and now work as a "enterprise" .NET developer, it's a great path if it's one you want to take...

I develop enterprise applications in C#/.Net Core/.NET MVC5 it is a bit boring but should be pretty stable.

Now I develop an user creation application for our data warehouse. It's not as interesting as writing the next cool trending app, but I can take what design decisions I deem necessary and I can use new technologies like.NET core 3.1 and Angular 9. That would sharpen my skills and make me more employable.

And nothing stops me to work in my free time in a more interesting project which I hope I will launch as a business in a few years. It helps that I am doing web programming at work because I don't have to jump from one tech stack to another daily and I can learn and experiment faster.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#480
The AI startup I was with just informed me that there's been a change of business directions and they needed more salespeople than a DevOps engineer so I got the ax.

Unemployment doesn't have to be bleak and depressing. With the downtime, I'm going to try to knock out two AWS Associate certifications, Solution Architect and DevOps. Got inspired by Adrian Cantrill. No affiliation, I'm still in awe of his level of detail and clarity. I would highly recommend it if you are planning on taking SAA-C02.

Hiring in Singapore for DevOps/Cloud in startups has been pretty good from my experience these past few weeks. Got more than a few interviews lined up from startups in different domains, fintech, and travel just to name a few.

It's not what you know but who you know. I still stand by those words.

Lately, Roselinde Torres, a leadership expert asked it the best. What is the diversity measure of your network?

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