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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?

#511

Post by noname123 »

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…

The one thing I never understood about in tech, people talk about so much about TC but never about take-home pay (after taxes, housing cost, lifestyle cost etc).

I have friends who work very boring jobs in the gov't or non-profits (who make 90K but have a 10% 403b matching or pension; a 750K house; and a 1 million liquid investment account of CAGR of 20%), drive beater cars but through shrewd investments and frugality are multi-millionaires. I also have friends who flex in fancy cars, fancy luxury downtown condos and fancy jobs (who make 200K+ but never contribute to 401K, no house b/c lives in HCoL and only a ~150K in savings b/c travels, eat out etc.) but spend it all and when I talk to them in confidence, am shocked they have a fraction of what I think they are worth net-worth in the bank.

I used to think these stories were some kind of Suzy Orman/Dave Ramsey made-up morality tales or exceptional one-off stories - but older I get, I realize they are not. It's just most people start off the same - and it's only after years, people's money habits dramatically compound over the years that these differences become exponentially large and comical.

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

#512

Post by dahart »

WWLink wrote: post #356
dahart wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I had a coding test during a job interview, I was left alone for an hour with a laptop that was screen-shared with a number of interviewers that was unknown to me. It felt a little like live coding in public but without any audible feedback. That might stress some people out I’d guess, but it felt chill to me. I did my usual thing, even used StackOverflow for some quick syntax & library tips, and finished t…

That's quite a bit for an interview. How long did it take? Did they gave you code to plug a piece into? Or did you have to write the whole game?

It was a whole game from scratch in the programming language of my choice. They only specified the rules. It was keyboard and console only, btw, no graphics or controllers or sound. I took the whole hour and was mostly done when I ran out of time. I forgot to write the score keeping before the interviewer came back. The AI player was “extra credit” and I finished that, so it helped excuse my scoring oversight.

It wasn’t that much or that bad, really. The setup was pretty simple, and quite doable for junior devs IMO (though full disclosure I had just left a position as a lead game programmer, so for me specifically it would have looked a little bad if I didn’t smash this particular interview question). It also helped that the problem was open-ended with extra credit features. I learned later when giving the interview myself that most people never finished the basic game, the majority never tried to write an AI player, and the interviewers were quite forgiving with their ranking & scoring - it was adaptive to the candidates. The coding part of the interview was just trying to be a bit fun and not just be pure dumb LeetCode problems. IMO it worked, I totally enjoyed the interview. The rest of the 4 hour interview included some whiteboard questions (on DB schemas, which I flubbed pretty hard) and also a lot of just talking about experiences and goals.

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

#513

Post by yolovoe »

jongjong wrote: post #478
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…

PhDs, at least in the US, are free. They actually give you a stipend, usually under $80K/year, but more than $50K/year I'd wager.

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

#514

Post by nostrademons »

noname123 wrote: post #511
UncleOxidant wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The one thing I never understood about in tech, people talk about so much about TC but never about take-home pay (after taxes, housing cost, lifestyle cost etc). I have friends who work very boring jobs in the gov't or non-profits (who make 90K but have a 10% 403b matching or pension; a 750K house; and a 1 million liquid investment account of CAGR of 20%), drive beater cars but through shrewd investments and frugalit…

You're talking about monthly savings, not take-home pay, which is usually defined as cash compensation after taxes, retirement, and deductions (i.e. how much you "take home" from each paycheck). Take home - expenses = savings.

And yes, savings and savings rate is the biggest determinant in eventual net worth. I know bond traders and FAANG engineers that make $200K+/year and live paycheck to paycheck because their expenses eat up all of that and then some. One guy literally blew it all on hookers & blow and then died of a fentanyl OD. I also know people that saved about 1/3 of their take-home on a grad student or Whole Foods salary and are now living a reasonable life as a homeowning family despite never breaking $100K/year in income.

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

#515

Post by LVB »

OliverGilan wrote: post #466
token8791 wrote: post #442

I feel everyone who's in a bad place now, uncertain about the future. My approach has been often to take a mixed-risk approach, and it seems to work out well. First, no debt. Second, long-cash. After working for about ten years in relatively low paying roles I have something like a runway of about 25 years - that is I would not need to take on any job for 25 years while keeping mostly my current standard of living (p…

This falls apart when you want to get married and have kids? It’s certainly possible to find a frugal partner but kids still cost a lot of money in general

I agree but IMO there is still a huge amount of discretion involved. My wife and I are routinely stunned at what other families spend on their kids clothing, hobbies, family vacations, etc. We hear a lot of grumbling from our kids about it too, but we both feel it is better both for our wallets and the kid’s upbringing.

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

#516

Post by UncleOxidant »

aerovistae wrote: post #470
UncleOxidant wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wouldn't say so....90k is low for someone with a lot of experience. New grads expect more than that.

Yeah, that's exactly my point. The post above mine was implying that older workers demand higher pay. But I think it's the younger workers that demand higher pay.

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

#517

Post by UncleOxidant »

bckr wrote: post #489
UncleOxidant wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Are my compensation expectations high No... You really don't wanna work for less than $150k at a startup, at least on the west coast.

I have in the past 10 years worked at about 3 startups where I was making way less than $150K, and the most recent one where I was making right about $150K. In a couple of those cases I was willing to accept low pay because the work/field was a lot of fun and/or it seemed like a socially important project if it succeeded (alternate energy in one case) and I knew that their funding was very tight.

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

#518

Post by dimmke »

dboreham wrote: post #475
FlyingSnake wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah but banks and credit bureaus also know.

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

#519

Post by RexM »

throwaway5231 wrote: post #383
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't teach pass by reference these days. Anyone you find in the real world under ~30 years old may not even be aware that you can pass a reference and modify it directly without having to make a method return a value. It's super cool to have someone explain to you side effects yet you show them a method with a null return and run it for them showing that the value has changed and they are mesmerized.

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…

C# also has “ref” arguments. The difference is that out arguments are required to be assigned during the execution of the method while ref arguments don’t have to be set.

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

#520

Post by bufferoverflow »

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…

What was the ballpark of the offers, if you don't mind sharing?
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