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

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

#541

Post by dasil003 »

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…

Yes, like any skill, communication is something you can practice and get better. The key is that it’s very hard if you can’t get out of your own head. And when it comes to communication with executives and other very busy people you really need mentorship with situational context unless you really are a natural.

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

#542

Post by bqmjjx0kac »

tetrep wrote: post #501
mightykipper wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on sector, you may find you only get traction through recruiters. I work in finance, almost everything is through third party recruiters and there are two reasons for this. 1. We are only allowed to hire through either an approved recruiter or the company job portal. The company job portal gets so many applications for each job it's absurd, and we have to sift these ourselves to some degree (HR are meant to…

> (HR are meant to confirm we only see qualified candidates, but they're idiots) My last job tried to address this by having a small technical test of skill that could be thrown at anyone as a first pass before getting any technical people involved. We got virtually no senior role "spam", so we didn't have to worry about making a challenging technical test, we just needed to weed out junior applicants who basically d…

I'm glad it seems to be working for you, but it's kind of unnerving to be asked a technical question by someone who doesn't understand the question and cannot actually evaluate your answer.

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

#543

Post by pc86 »

ivanhoe wrote: post #411
cientifico wrote: post #341

Earlier 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…

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…

Funny, this is how I (and I think most people I've worked with/for) describe a mid-level dev. "Doing the thing" is a pretty low bar but we don't really expect that from juniors, who typically need hand-holding. To be a mid-level you should be able to operate independently and provide optimal or near-optimal solutions most of the time, but your work is still going to be just focused around you. Most of what you're doing is individual tickets, refactoring, etc., nothing that influences or impacts the broader team. When your impact is beyond your individual work is when you start moving into the realm of senior, and it's part of why it takes time (not just skill) to get there.

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

#544

Post by DonHopkins »

chx wrote: post #524
rewmie wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> What's your definition of senior? I have already made the mistake you are about to make.

You've already invested a huge amount of time in learning something which became obsolete (like jQuery), then you got over it instead of giving up in frustration, and spent a huge amount of time learning something else (like Angular or React), and you've finally come to grips with the fact that it too will eventually become obsolete, and you'll be fine moving on to the next thing (like Svelte).

If you only know one system and think you're going to be able use it forever, then you're still a junior developer. If you're afraid to move on and learn something new, then you shouldn't be a developer at all.

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

#545

Post by pc86 »

m00dy wrote: post #371
cientifico wrote: post #341

Earlier 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…

honestly, I'm a senior developer and I don't give a fuck about collaboration.

Probably "senior" in the sense that you've been at the company the longest then. I've worked with a couple of these before, it's always awful.

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

#546

Post by WinstonSmith84 »

Market job is bad, but it also depends on the industry (tech had a lot of layoff) and on the benefits you are looking for. Speaking of benefits, since "everybody" want a remote position, if you're not too picky, it's probably much easier to find an on site position at the moment, without even compromising on the compensation

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

#547

Post by edrxty »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #520
Uptrenda wrote: post #275

I believe the market really is just bad right now. When I was job searching it probably took me 3 times as long. I noticed that there were hundreds of applicants per role when normally I'd have noticed less than 20 maybe? Even at my current company they told us that hundreds of people were applying. That's how many you have to beat just to get in the door. I think it's caused by a number of factors: (1) Investors are…

Very anecdotally it seems to have picked up in July/August. No major layoffs and at least I’m getting the usual recruiters spam again.

Same, I've had a bunch of flying car startups start bugging me with weird stuff plus a couple of the primes. It was all rather sudden too so I'm not sure what happened to flip that switch.

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

#548

Post by School-Cotton »

pc86 wrote: post #523
ryanbrunner wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 years for junior for better or worse is well out of step with the industry - while you're right that you can get some massively inflated titles that are out of step with the norm, the norm is that you're an intermediate developer at a minimum and most likely a senior after 5 years. It's dumb, but it is the standard nowadays.

Intermediate/mid for sure, but if I get a resume from someone whose first programming job was 2018 and they're calling themselves senior, I'm throwing that in the trash unless like you said they're from VC-funded startups that are going to have massive title inflation and they're applying for a realistic (mid-level) role.

It wouldn't be unusual to be an E5 at Facebook (err, sorry, "Meta") after 5 years, which is considered "senior" level. The point I'm making is that this title inflation has happened more broadly than just at VC-funded startups.

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

#549

Post by myth2018 »

The market is indeed not the same it was during the past 2 or 3 years. But these last years were abnormally good for IT professionals. Too much cheap money distorted the job market and, if you don't have much experience on how things used to be before that, you may find it difficult to adapt.

Suggestions:

- Try to expand to back-end and advertise yourself as a full-stack. I'd say that many companies are currently in "maintenance mode", putting their new projects in a wait list and focusing on maintaining their existing systems. A generalist developer, able to work on the entire stack, would be more valuable in such cases -- and that would also explain why UI designers are having such a hard time to find new jobs.

- Submit resumes to the "Who is hiring" lists here in HN

- I don't know if that's your case, but anyway. If you live outside US and EU, worked for companies from these regions in the past few years, and are trying to find a similar job now: it's gonna be harder than before. Those are precisely the countries where the cheap money caused the most severe distortions. Too many small companies with very little potential were full of cash and hired tons of developers from abroad. These days are over. Such jobs still exist, as they existed before the pandemics, but are harder to get and the competition is tougher. If that applies to you, I suggest you to start focusing on "traditional", on-site jobs in your country, and keep looking for better, remote jobs while you are employed and less preoccupied.

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

#550

Post by shultays »

whiddershins wrote: post #287
rsynnott wrote: post #282

It's not a good job market, but it doesn't seem normal to spend six months applying and only get _one_ interview. It might be worth asking friends or former colleagues, ideally people who actually are involved in recruiting (hiring managers etc) to take a look at your resume and LinkedIn profile and see if there's anything glaringly wrong with them. Is your resume in a weird format, or is it structurally weird/overde…

No, no one calls someone with 5.5 years of experience a junior engineer.

I worked with a person for about 3 years (and he had previous experience as well) and I wouldn't even call him a fresh-grad level or trust him more than I trust an intern. Some people are immune to learning
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