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

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

#471

Post by ohgodplsno » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 12:27 PM UTC

abathur wrote: post #430

nelsonic wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nelsonic I will help you fast-track this.

I have a parallel-universe version of the question--from a universe where I've ~idealistically refused to create a LinkedIn account. How would you go about finding a recruiter sans LinkedIn? :)

You could go out, network, go to hiring fairs and various places.

At which point you're pretty much always going to be asked for a LinkedIn, and pretty much noone will want to put work in for someone not doing something has simple as creating an account. So, unfortunately, as the other comment said, swallow your pride.

These networks have made it so that the cost of idealism is being cut off socially, whether that's friends or employers.

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

#472

Post by dudul » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 12:29 PM UTC

Paul-Craft wrote: post #199

esquivalience wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't understand this comment and wondered whether you had misread the parent. The point is that they are posting job openings and getting thousands of applicants per role i.e. They are oversubscribed.

That literally cannot be true unless the supposed "more or less qualified" applicants actually aren't qualified. Now, I suppose it's possible that thousands of people are lying on their resumes just to get a chance to work at Dropbox, but given this year's layoffs, I find it far, far more likely that people on the hiring side have gone off the deep end. You can disagree with me on that, and that's fine, but stay with…

Man, that's some serious black belt level overthinking.

One open position, 1000 resumes received, pick a handful to interview, hire 1 after a few weeks, 999 come to HN to ask if the job market is tough and say they can't get hired anywhere.

No need for some weird conspiracy theory.

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

#473

Post by ZephyrBlu » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 12:30 PM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #463

ivanhoe wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're discussing has little to do with seniority - those are some personality traits that are great to have, but you either have it in you or not - people who are bad at explaining stuff will usually stay bad at it for the rest of life (but can still be fantastic in e.g. architecting things). Being a senior dev is IMHO much simpler. It's all about being able to solve problems independently, without needing supe…

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…

Can concur, the bar for senior at tech companies is usually that you are involving in scoping requirements and work, or even possibly owning the whole project.

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

#474

Post by itsoktocry » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 12:32 PM UTC

misja111 wrote: post #198

Dylan16807 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now having been on the other side it is very apparent when someone hasn't prepared and practiced interviewing. It really is a skill in and of itself. And now that you can recognize that skill in isolation, do you use it as a major factor when choosing candidates? If you do, why? Do you think the people interviewing you could recognize that you were specifically bad at interviewing, and not at everything?

> do you use it as a major factor when choosing candidates? If you do, why? Definitely. Motivation is of major importance in whether a new employee will be successful or not. And if a candidate obviously has put a lot of effort in preparing for the interview, then this indicates that he/she is motivated to get the job. Ofc it is not the only factor to take into consideration, but surely an important one.

>And if a candidate obviously has put a lot of effort in preparing for the interview, then this indicates that he/she is motivated to get the job.

Well, yes, desperate people are going to be "motivated" and work really hard to get the job.

But remember this cuts both ways: people who aren't desperate with have no problem leaving you you for the next big thing. Being an employer doesn't put you in some default superior position. You need workers and workers need work.

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

#475

Post by scarface_74 » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 12:33 PM UTC

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #404

azangru wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there's a step between a junior and a senior?

We typically use programmer, developer, or software engineer as synonyms as a whole, but I tend to view those titles as more junior/intermediate/senior. A programmer can program code good enough, but that doesn't mean they are good at solving the goals business requires and communicating it. A developer can program and develop a small enhancement with good communication. Sometimes can also break things down so other…

> An architect is someone who comes up with a plan to build something without any real care about budget, labor costs, or labor skills - both in software and in buildings.

This is definitely not true. I always have to balance on time/on budget/meets requirements and the skillset of the people who are using my designs.

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

#476

Post by bibabaloo » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 12:33 PM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #462

blitz_skull wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whereas everyone else would call that person [with 5 years experience] a junior engineer I’ve met people with 3 years experience who I’d consider more senior than myself (8 years). Some folks just learn really fast and/or don’t do much else other than work. Not sure time is relevant to your skills or title after about 2-3 years.

> Some folks just learn really fast and/or don’t do much else other than work. Maybe it's just me, but I don't consider junior/senior to be defined by how "good" you are at programming. Obviously the hope is that senior > junior, but there are other, softer, skills involved with being a senior.

No matter how you define it, there's people that start working at a senior level much faster than others.

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

#477

Post by giovannibonetti » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 12:34 PM UTC

EddieJLSH wrote: post #226

The market is pretty horrible right now, in my experience. Speak to a recruiter and it should be a little easier to find something. I used to have roughly 1/2 of applications leading to interviews and around 3/4 of those leading to offers but this year had a 20 application dry streak. I think the market is pretty flooded with good talent from the large tech companies layoffs and the number of people going through boo…

> I think the market is pretty flooded with good talent from the large tech companies layoffs and the number of people going through bootcamps for junior positions too.

I believe this is the key part. I see many people coming from coding bootcamps with a lot of experience with frontend dev in React, since that is (was?) probably one of the few fastest things you can learn to go to the market get a job fast.

Now the market is flooded with people in this situation, since their qualifications are so generic that they become more easily replaceable.

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

#478

Post by RhysU » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 12:34 PM UTC

CoastalCoder wrote: post #385

noitpmeder wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is only really an option for some sub-spaces of tech. As someone in a middling HFT shop my linkedin inbox is flooded with recruiter spam. But most of my friends in frontend work don't get any of this.

> As someone in a middling HFT shop Hey, since we're on the topic of HFT developers... How do people break into that area? I've done a lot of performance-optimization work, so I thought I might be a good candidate for some of those roles. But for all the job postings I've seen in the past ~4 months, they want significant prior experience developing low-latency systems. Is this just a temporary thing, where the pool o…

It's like a middle school dance. If you ask enough people, someone will dance.

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

#479

Post by sanderjd » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 12:36 PM UTC

herbst wrote: post #355

icemelt8 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you are not social enough to understand this, I regularly get mails or messages from past colleagues who I've never talked to in years suddenly ask me that they are looking for a job and if I know an open position. I absolutely understand their quandary and go out of my way to help them out, cuz we're humans.

Well ok that's one thing. But op was suggesting to cold reach sales people, vendors and anything you had contact with plus basically creating a list of 'humans you might have use for in future' and their birthdays for your personal benefit.

> But op was suggesting to cold reach sales people, vendors and anything you had contact with

No, it's not "cold", the point is that you had contact with them, they know you. It is totally normal to say, "hey not sure you remember me but we worked together on XYZ project in 2017, and I noticed you're at a company now that is interesting to me, can we grab a coffee to catch up?"

> plus basically creating a list of 'humans you might have use for in future' and their birthdays for your personal benefit.

No, keeping track of people you enjoyed working with and reaching out to them periodically is not "keeping a list of humans you might have use for in the future", it is having a network of professional connections that you haven't lost touch with.

I think something you might be missing here is that this is not a unidirectional selfish benefit. You know what I love? When people I enjoyed working with reach out to me. I'm glad they kept track of me and I'm glad they thought to reach out, and I'm glad to both catch up personally and see if I can be helpful to them professionally.

This is what makes the world go 'round, and it's not weird distasteful or nefarious, it's a very good system.

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

#480

Post by a_square_peg » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 12:37 PM UTC

I think regardless of the job market situation, the time-to-hire has become unreasonably long and I'm not optimistic that this will change for the better anytime soon.

The trouble with job-hunting these days via web is that the signal-to-noise ratio has decreased dramatically over the years. Being able to apply to hundreds of jobs is a double-edged sword where hiring managers also have to filter through thousands of profiles so now everyone pretty much have to play resume-seo of some sort.