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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?

#471

Post by timmit »

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…

I was planning for applying for AWS as well, but since their lay off, I didn't

Thanks for sharing.

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

#472

Post by timmit »

tarokun-io wrote: post #257

Interviewed with about 28 companies for almost 3 months, without a single offer! I was starting to get really worried about money and burned out from interviewing. In the past I've never interviewed with more than 2 or 3 before getting an offer I now this is incredibly privileged. I'm not humble-bragging, just observing the change in the market. As things usually turn out, during the last week of the 3-month search I…

Thanks for sharing, last year or early this year, job hunting is very easy, one month I got about 2 or 3 offers, but not it seems hard, and my current company planned to lay off people as well.

Probably need to repeat your journey

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

#473

Post by euix »

For those of you on long breaks or have been unemployed for a 6+ months, what do you do with all your spare time? I resigned from my position in Jan 2022 and have been developing a computer game in C++ as a way to level up my programming skill and release it as an (eventually) paid product. The process has been very satisfying and I am learning a lot. I keep to a 9-5, Monday-Friday schedule and treat it like a job.

I have a some life events coming up next year so I have started to turn the gears on my network and contacts but I am pretty much only interested in consulting and contract jobs that can be worked remotely. Right now, I primarily see it as a means to raise some cash, so I can make the occasional splurge purchase. I have honestly thought of doing DoorDash.

Someone in the thread talked about the importance of a runway and I totally agree. I spent 6 years doing a STEM PhD and about 6 years working in industry on okay but not great salaries and even at that rate I have a runway of about 10+ years of savings before I run out of money (living frugal).

After my last job I think I promised myself to never just take a job because I am offered or out of prestige - I am turning mid-30's and I feel like I can't waste anymore time just doing time - i.e. waging for a paycheck without a higher purpose.

This causes tension with my partner and probably my future father-inlaw doesn't like me but long term I intend to be my own boss and run my own company. Especially since the pandemic I feel increasingly the urge and need to be the master of my own destiny - especially with regards to income.

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

#474

Post by actusual »

sgt101 wrote: post #359
ryandetzel wrote: post #3

Laid off from Twitter three weeks ago, lots of interest and cool companies out there. I binged interviews and have three offers to consider. Senior eng with 20 years experience

Not OP but similar level of experience. I had the leet code once, interviewing for Meta. I didn't prepare because I thought that it was pointless, but I was curious about what it would be like to do it. So, I went through with it and to my shock and awe I managed to do it. The feedback was that I didn't ace it but I did more than well enough for the interviewer. I didn't get the job though. The last step was a really…

> The last step was a really strange and uncomfortable 1-1 chat with a "very senior employee"

I had one of these once. The chief product officer came into the room, stared at me for awhile, then asked "tell me something you've thought really hard about...". It was a classic case of a narcissist exec. Glad I didn't get the job, as they are struggggggggggglin' right now.

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

#475

Post by dboreham »

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?

The US system is setup such that employer A doesn't see any information that would reveal employer B.

The IRS knows but they don't tell employers.

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

#476

Post by klipt »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #457
parentheses wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ageism is often conflated with higher compensation expectations.

I'm in my late 50s. When I hear about the salaries that much younger folks are pulling down in the FAANG companies I'm generally pretty shocked - I've never made anything close to that and don't have any expectations to. My expenses are way lower than most of the younger folks in tech because my house is paid off (will be in about a month), we drive 20 year old cars and we're quite frugal. For most of the past decade…

Compensation in the SF Bay Area is another level but so is cost of housing in the SF Bay Area. So it's kind of a wash. Although if you're willing to rent and live frugally in the Bay Area you can save a lot.

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

#478

Post by jongjong »

euix wrote: post #473

For those of you on long breaks or have been unemployed for a 6+ months, what do you do with all your spare time? I resigned from my position in Jan 2022 and have been developing a computer game in C++ as a way to level up my programming skill and release it as an (eventually) paid product. The process has been very satisfying and I am learning a lot. I keep to a 9-5, Monday-Friday schedule and treat it like a job. I…

Which country are you from? I don't see how it's physically possible to save 10 years of runway with a PhD's worth of debt and only 6 years of work. I did 10 years of labor with only a Bachelor degree's worth of university debt and my net worth is only enough to get me through 2 years if I liquidate everything... But my startup shares are illiquid (pre-ICO) and all my cryptocurrency is locked to earn forging rewards so in practice I only have about 2 months of liquid runway.

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

#479

Post by joeyaiello »

oneplane wrote: post #393
throwaway5231 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 call…

I doubt that you can make an absolute "this is false and ageist" statement in any context, but here on HN, I would have at least expected you to supply information on what location in the world and level of institutional schooling you have. Here in north-west EU C and C++ haven't been a part of the core curriculum for over 25 years (unless you do embedded work), and code with side-effects in desktop-class systems has…

I'm a PM and I ended up graduating with an econ BA instead of a CS degree, but I took a few intro CS classes at UCLA in...2011/2012.

Intro to Programming 1 and 2 were taught in C++. Can't remember which one taught pass by reference, but it was definitely in one of those two.

Third class I took was Intro to Systems or something like that. The whole class was C and x86 ASM. Lots of binary operations in that one, used K&R a fair amount in that class (also learned debugging assembly in GDB and some other "low-level"-ish stuff).

Just looked it up, can't say 100% it's still C++, but the syllabus looks about the same as I remember for both class. It gets to pointers by week 7, and then in the second class goes deeper:

* https://web.cs.ucla.edu/classes/spring22/cs31/syllabus.html#...

* https://web.cs.ucla.edu/classes/spring22/cs32/syllabus.html#...

And again, I didn't even get a CS degree. This was all lower-div CS work at a public university, and I'm not even a career engineer.

> So no, not knowing the difference between passing references or values, or pointers and dereferencing them is not as strange as you seem to think it is. It is not a piece of knowledge or experience that is seen as valuable enough by the people that create the curriculum or the companies that employ the largest quantities of inexperienced workers in this part of the world.

This attitude is why you're getting flak in this thread. Your claim that "We don't teach pass by reference these days" was too absolute, and not accurate for a ton of people. Then someone came back and told you that, and you told them that their claim was too absolute.

I'll also say that it's something that was absolutely valued around the orgs I worked in at Microsoft (Azure, DevDiv, Windows, very roughly bottom half of the stack teams). If not C/C++ pointers, than __absolutely__ passing by reference in C#.

Point being: __knowing__ about pointers, passing by ref vs. value, etc. is not as strange as __you__ seem to think it is.

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

#480

Post by nolevels »

the_jeremy wrote: post #171

Not laid off, but got an offer this month. All I did was turn on "open to work" on LinkedIn, respond to >400 recruiters, ~3% of which were offering good enough compensation. Had 4 on-sites, 2 rejections, 1 I rejected before offer stage, and 1 offer. Senior SRE, no leetcode / system design, but they did have a take-home project.

What was the salary range?
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