Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's bad when you're not looking for a job, but It's great when you are imo.
why is it bad when you're not looking for a job?
You get lot of spam and some of the recruiters can be pretty unethical
Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
531–540 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. Literally every job I’ve gotten was either through a recruiter or cold outreach.
How far along are you in you’re career? The first 15 years I was recruiter or responding to ad, but after 20 mostly network.
> after 20 mostly network.
I suspect the importance of networking and the likelihood of ageism are often related.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't looked for jobs in nearly 9 years now. Is a LinkedIn profile essential nowadays? I have dropped all social media and LinkedIn is one of the most invasive. I really dislike how it notifies you for everything
You can turn off any notification settings
And proactively remove yourself from any of those people lookup databases that recruiters will use to find your direct email
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won't resort to naming and shaming here but if you ever get contacted by a UK agency that 'resources vividly', immediately request a removal of your contact info per GDPR or you will get phoned daily for months on end.
If you're referring to Vivid Resourcing, they're truly horrible, I got interrogated by them for 30+ mins and they disappear, happened twice so it can't be a one off!
when I finish one of these calls with these UK recruitment agencies I feel so sick to my stomach. they really are hustlers and grifters in the worst sense of the word. never again...
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
Recruiters get a lot of flak here and elsewhere, but having recently interacted with a few for a recent job change, their incentives are aligned to have some skin in the game, and they can do the emotionally draining part of pushing the company to speed up the process for you without having to send multiple emails or waiting for months for your rejection.
When you say "recruiters," do you mean in-house recruiters or third party recruiters? Getting an in-house person on your side certainly is a great way to speed along the hiring process, but I've literally never had a third party recruiter send anything my way that ever came close to working out. It's gotten to the point where if I get an email from a 3rd party recruiter, I just don't look at it -- although I'm not su…
I used local recruiters to find me jobs most of my career (1999, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018). I met them in person either at their office or for lunch. I met one in 2012 who found the perfect job for me in 2018. We stayed in touch all of those years.
My first job in 1996 was based on a return offer from an internship.
In 2008, I did the random submit my resume everywhere thing and in 2020 an internal recruiter from $BigTech reached out to me.
With remote work being more of a thing combined with my much stronger network and resume, I will probably lean much more on my network and resume the next time I’m looking.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do, and quite frequently. After more than a 2 decades in software development (rails/web/...), for me to consider a developer to be a senior it needs to: * Communicate: For example: can explain tech concepts to non tech people, or inform on Monday that the sprint will be unlikely to be done in time. * Can estimate and adapt to changes. Be boring and predictable. * Can work/collaborate/teach with other devs. I got t…
You think it takes 5+ years to acquire those skills?! Man, I would be driven insane in an environment like that. Such a long time and a relatively low bar.
I have worked with people who have 8-10 years of experience and are still mid-level in both skill and professionalism, know that they are, and are fine with it. They get their joy from other things in life and are totally fine coming into the office and doing the bare minimum to get by and going years without raises or bonuses because of it. Again, this is a conscious choice these people are making, they're not being taken advantage of or anything.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#537In November I was getting ~10 inbound emails a week from top-flight shops, that had been typical for at least 5 years. In December that was zero and has been since. I was an L7 in ML infra at a FAANG a few years ago.
I did some marquee loops in Jan/Feb, and my “fuck this” point was when I did a coding screen at $KNOWN_COMPANY highly recommended by a former colleague and ended up with a 24 year old in a hotel room on a MacBook Air looking at his phone for 45 minutes and the back channel was that he had flunked my trivial 50-line Python program less than 10 minutes after the interview was over.
After that I was like, I’m consulting for a while, catch you all in 2024 once Powell gets brought to heel for the geberal. :)
It’s not just you.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> Maybe it's just me, but I don't consider junior/senior to be defined by how "good" you are at programming. What's your definition of senior?
(I'm not the parent commenter), but I believe a defining quality of a senior developer is someone who I can give any problem/project to in the business domain and they return with a solution in the technical domain.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#539It sounds like you’re working with a number of services right now, so take this with a grain of salt.
Joinrelentless.com does resume review and coaching and then gets people first interviews. Not cheap, but it’s nice to literally just have interviews put on your calendar by someone.
(Not a customer, just no the CEO)
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
So much this - nearly every job I’ve gotten in tech has been due to knowing someone working there, or knowing someone who knows someone.
The problem being that when you muck up the interview, you get outed as a quack to someone you know.
> The problem being that when you muck up the interview, you get outed as a quack to someone you know.
The downvotes you got were undeserved. For most job markets: If an ideal candidate is interview-disabled, their odds of being hired are dismal.