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Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#541
post #44

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was time to find a new job after 10 years with my employer. I spent February doing interview prep and conducting interviews. Back then, the COVID-19 was mostly limited to China, markets and governments weren't terribly concerned about COVID-19. I accept a job offer, put in my two weeks notice, and my last day at was last Friday. Hardly anyone was seriously concerned about CO…

I quit my job in mid January because of burnout, left London for a couple of weeks and came back this Sunday. I’m looking for remote roles exclusively. Now I’m not sure if the timing is perfect or just plain terrible:) Also, I stopped reading the news. I just don’t think refreshing Twitter every 10 min whilst self isolating can be good to your mental health.

Regarding Tw: as with all social media, it very much depends who you follow.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#542
post #504

Yes, I was part of the massive Expedia Group lay-off last month. I’m finding out that a lot of the managers I reported to are becoming individual contributors again as they wind up the department. I’m a DevOps/Linux Systems Engineer/SRE with 20 years in industry, about 5 as a developer and the rest as operations. Looking for anything remote, or possibly in Austin, TX. I have worked remote before. Besides AWS and Linu…

Did you work at Homeaway?

Yes, but renamed to Vrbo and then my team was merged into Expedia Group but not re-tasked. The last six months before I was cut was an incredibly confusing time because we couldn’t even figure out how we were supposed to sign emails.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#543
post #353
post #44

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was time to find a new job after 10 years with my employer. I spent February doing interview prep and conducting interviews. Back then, the COVID-19 was mostly limited to China, markets and governments weren't terribly concerned about COVID-19. I accept a job offer, put in my two weeks notice, and my last day at was last Friday. Hardly anyone was seriously concerned about CO…

I have been laid off just before 2015 and I haven't found any stable work since then. I have been under-employed for a long while before the outbreak, and I don't even know what new change-ups in job hunting I should be doing now. For a long time, many people have said that my years of experience make me valuable so that I should have gotten offers very quickly, but the reality hasn't shown that. Heck, even the found…

Not sure if this will help you, but just putting it out there: Getting a job via a referral will boost your chances by quite a bit.

I am not sure what your core skills are, but in my case if I want to go work for a bank, via referral I get an immediate response (and even one other bank intercepts the referral).

Without a referral I don't even get a response.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#544
post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been laid off just before 2015 and I haven't found any stable work since then. I have been under-employed for a long while before the outbreak, and I don't even know what new change-ups in job hunting I should be doing now. For a long time, many people have said that my years of experience make me valuable so that I should have gotten offers very quickly, but the reality hasn't shown that. Heck, even the found…

I glanced over your LinkedIn profile, to me it looks like you need to add more 'modern' tech skills to your profile. It sucks, but the industry moves to new tech quickly and unless you are an enterprise Java developer, your skills get pretty much outdated in few years and you need to catch up at a fast pace. I would learn (or highlight it if you already know) React.js and Node.js immediately, along with Postgres and…

Can confirm this too.

Adding Salesforce, Docker, AWS, PostgreSQL, mySQL, MS SQL and stuff like that sometimes get scraped as keywords.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#545
post #44

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was time to find a new job after 10 years with my employer. I spent February doing interview prep and conducting interviews. Back then, the COVID-19 was mostly limited to China, markets and governments weren't terribly concerned about COVID-19. I accept a job offer, put in my two weeks notice, and my last day at was last Friday. Hardly anyone was seriously concerned about CO…

> 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…

Maybe you should have told every single government in the world, because none predicted that it would have this huge of an impact. SARS1 pretty much stayed in China, MERS pretty much stayed in the Middle East. It was only when a country like Italy was caught by surprise that governments started to consider very far reaching measures.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#546
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A very large portion of my circles was aware that COVID was about to explode (...) Your circles seem to be the exception then. There are a lot of factors that affect personal perception of such matters, like proximity to inflicted areas, professional background (ex: medical), experiencing similar events in the past, etc. In hindsight it seems obvious that the world wasn't paying attention. But it took until Februar…

A lot of this seems to be "I told you so". And yet, I have a hard time believing anybody could have foreseen an almost complete shutdown of the global economy over this. A lot of the "we saw that coming" can be boiled down to "it will be bad". But even if you saw it coming, how does this help now ? Right, it doesn't. That someone's circles saw it coming doesn't help. Wht you can do now helps. Unfortunately a lot of t…

SARS1 didn't have this effect. MERS didn't have this effect. And a number of other recent viruses didn't either.

But every time there were people "predicting" the worst. This time they were coindentially correct. Not because they "knew", but because chance.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#547
post #441
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…

Paying $350k to a junior just starting out isn't sustainable but those numbers look closer to what the numbers should like like or even be low. What your work is worth is a function of the level of value you produce so software developers are probably still ridiculously underpaid.

What is it that owners do that is worth billions exactly, when developers should be happy with less than the numbers you presented?

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#548
Tens of thousands of people were fired in my country just this week, across all industries.

While this periodic restructuring of the economy is probably healthy in the long term, I wish well to all individuals and families hurt by this crisis. Some people I know won't recover financially.

One consequence of this crisis, IMO, will be that people will focus on their fellow nationals for a while, and globalism will take a hit. When resources are scarce compared to the scale of the problem, you have to prioritize.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#549
post #353
post #44

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was time to find a new job after 10 years with my employer. I spent February doing interview prep and conducting interviews. Back then, the COVID-19 was mostly limited to China, markets and governments weren't terribly concerned about COVID-19. I accept a job offer, put in my two weeks notice, and my last day at was last Friday. Hardly anyone was seriously concerned about CO…

I have been laid off just before 2015 and I haven't found any stable work since then. I have been under-employed for a long while before the outbreak, and I don't even know what new change-ups in job hunting I should be doing now. For a long time, many people have said that my years of experience make me valuable so that I should have gotten offers very quickly, but the reality hasn't shown that. Heck, even the found…

Don't take this the wrong way (I'm trying to help, might fail but intentions are good) but it seems to me that the real reason you are having a hard time finding a "job" is because you have a history of leaving jobs after a short tenure.

I wrote "job" because working as a salaried employee is not the only way to make a living, or have a successful career. Consider that the freelance/contractor career you're currently having is 1) a career and 2) might be a better fit for you. Furthermore, some contractors I know make a lot more money than most of my salaried friends. The tradeoff being, of course, that you have no guarantees wrt to steadiness of your income (protip: salaried jobs come with no guarantees either, you could be out the next day, any day) and sometimes you have to chase down projects and deal with bad customers.

Sorry if something came out wrong, English isn't my first language.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#550
post #44

At the beginning of the year, I decided it was time to find a new job after 10 years with my employer. I spent February doing interview prep and conducting interviews. Back then, the COVID-19 was mostly limited to China, markets and governments weren't terribly concerned about COVID-19. I accept a job offer, put in my two weeks notice, and my last day at was last Friday. Hardly anyone was seriously concerned about CO…

I was in a similar situation. My new employer revoked my job offer on the day I was supposed to start.
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