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Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#511

Post by reidweb »

Miktor wrote: post #349

This is probably a long shot - and I'm sure you'll see quite a few posts like this over the coming weeks - but I'm going to swallow my pride and ask nonetheless. I've been a data entry clerk for the past twenty years, working for a major bookmaker in Northern Ireland. With the coronavirus pandemic hitting recently, many businesses have decided to lay off large numbers of staff. I've just become one of the unfortunate…

hi there,

Fellow NI resident here

I can recommend joining the NI tech slack if you want, there's a jobs channel and plenty of other people who'd be willing to give you advice. https://nitech.herokuapp.com

all the best in the coming weeks and months for both you and your family

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#512

Post by californical »

eropple wrote: post #486
smnrchrds wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By and large, both the general public and organizations were caught by surprise. If most people knew, the stocks would have tanked in January, not these past few days. Which brings an interesting question: how many of all the people you know who knew, yourself included, put their skin in the game and are now rich from the options they bought in January? If it is not many, I would argue it is better to say people susp…

It's a real big stretch from "certain enough to take personal precautions" to "is a stock head and wants to throw down puts". You get that normal people don't really give a damn about the stock market, yeah? Put a gun to my head and I can't tell you how a put works and I don't really care--I'm too busy buying a house. I did, however, rebalance almost entirely out of stocks three weeks ago and while I am not "now rich…

+1 to this. I'd been worrying since mid-late January, and aggressively telling people since early February that this was going to be bad... but even a week ago, tons of people that I talked to were thinking that this was such an overreaction and would blow over. Just couldn't believe it, even after seeing how it went in Italy, a majority of people said the US would never have that problem.

I didn't even know that a "put" on the stock market was a thing until last week, and am not particularly interested in figuring out how to do that... But I did back out of buying a car because I thought I'd be better off to have the cash when this gets bad, and here we are now in this thread... Maybe next time (hopefully there isn't one) I'll figure out more of what a "put" actually is and how to get one

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#513

Post by isodude »

okareaman wrote: post #387

Not to scare anyone, but myself and many of my highly capable friends were laid off after the dotcom bubble burst in the early 2000's. It took many of us 1, 2 sometimes 3 years to get back to the same level of job we had before. Prepare for a long haul. Get over your ego immediately and take whatever job you can get now, while you continue to look for work in the software industry. I drove a city bus (surprisingly to…

Oddly enough this is the story of many bus drivers I talk too.

Stressed out, changed careers, became bus drivers and _love_ it. Mostly related to meeting people and not having goals but a proper timetable to relate too.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#514

Post by misja111 »

okareaman wrote: post #387

Not to scare anyone, but myself and many of my highly capable friends were laid off after the dotcom bubble burst in the early 2000's. It took many of us 1, 2 sometimes 3 years to get back to the same level of job we had before. Prepare for a long haul. Get over your ego immediately and take whatever job you can get now, while you continue to look for work in the software industry. I drove a city bus (surprisingly to…

Still, in 2000 the situation was quite different. IT companies had been hiring like crazy based on the assumption that infinite Internet growth would require infinite resources. And then, it turned out it was all a bubble and most of the IT workforce was not needed.

Right now there is not much fundamentally wrong with the economy, there is just a temporary setback because of the Corona lockdown. Things will go back to normal after the epidemic is over, provided that it doesn't last too long and except for some companies who were not doing too well beforehand already.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#515

Post by meheleventyone »

jeremyjh wrote: post #502
WFHRenaissance wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apply for jobs at defense contractors, they're always looking for people that know C++. It will not be glamorous work, but I think it might be a good bet for you. Raytheon Missile Systems is hiring in Tuscon Arizona, inquire about remote work. Also, I recommend you learn SQL (just learn SQL Server or Postgres).

I've never seen a job listing for C++ development that doesn't require professional experience in that language.

Then the only way to get professional experience without it is to apply to them anyway and it’s a pointless qualifier.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#516

Post by sylk »

Tushon wrote: post #15
kwhat4 wrote: post #5

Got let go about 3 weeks ago now, not sure if my employer saw this coming or if their timing was just spot on. No one is interviewing at the moment and it looks like it's going to be at least another 2 weeks before people are even thinking about hiring. The employment situation is going to get much worse before it gets any better. Hang tight, keep applying and hope for the best.

My company is interviewing and hiring still, depending on what you want to work on. HQ in Alexandria, VA and main other office in Lakewood, CO are most positions. Working remotely for now in all offices. https://careers.fool.com/

I live near lakewood and just got furloughed, perhaps I'll give I'll send in an application. Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#517

Post by ImaCake »

asdfman123 wrote: post #291
lamberciak wrote: post #138

Really sorry for everyone affected by the current situation. We have open roles at DuckDuckGo for SREs and director level hands-on engineers (in mobile and frontend). There should be a senior frontend engineer role coming up soon too. Check out all open roles at: https://duckduckgo.com/hiring/#open . We're a fully distributed team of 85 aiming to raise the standard of trust online and have been profitable for over 5…

DuckDuckGo is a great product and it's great you're doing well, but apparently I'm conditioned now to feel sick after looking at exponential graphs.

>apparently I'm conditioned now to feel sick after looking at exponential graphs.

If it helps, all the exponential graphs of Covid-19 are just logistic curves in disguise. China and South Korea have already shed their disguises. Italy might begin to do so this week, but maybe not yet.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#518

Post by meheleventyone »

meritt wrote: post #441
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 sust…

It’s kinda scary people with the ability to react and reduce suffering whilst also benefiting in kind are willing to exploit a global emergency and use that suffering to justify coming out a little ahead.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#519

Post by RangerScience »

sqs wrote: post #200

Sourcegraph CEO here. We build universal code search for developers. Our team is all-remote (all countries and timezones OK). We're hiring for engineering, design, and product roles (+ others): https://github.com/sourcegraph/careers/blob/master/job-descr... https://github.com/sourcegraph/careers/blob/master/job-descr... and https://github.com/sourcegraph/careers#readme for a full list of roles. We are growing quickly…

Oh fantastic! I'll hit you up for the Customer Engineer. Love that kind of gig.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#520

Post by cmurf »

traitsnspecs wrote: post #329
eropple wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in February, there wasn't any sign of an economic downturn. Everyone was enjoying the bull market. First: I’m super sorry about what you’re going through and I hope things work out with your new employer. Second: I worry that “nobody could have known” will be the narrative. A very large portion of my circles was aware that COVID was about to explode and that the prevention measures would either drastically slow…

If we had not taken prevention measures, the economic impact would be worse? I'm very skeptical of this. Keeps in mind that the disease has a 2-4% mortality rate among hospitalized patients, and the real rate is very likely to go down, not up, since most sick people do not immediately go to the hospital and there is an unknown-but-surmised-be-very-large population of infected people with mild symptoms. There is a rea…

Free market knew of this possibility, but pocketed the profits for shareholders instead of making investments to prepare. And the government didn't intervene. This is a culture problem. We weren't listening.

SARS experienced countries made very different decisions, over the past few months, and since 2003.

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