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Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#561

Post by futhey »

misja111 wrote: post #514
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 t…

Is it different though, if you zoom out far enough?

Raising money a year ago was so ridiculously easy, every company I had any visibility in to just threw money at every problem they encountered. Hired like crazy, to satisfy their egos, and to keep up with their peers. Growth over profitability.

I'm being hyperbolic to some degree, every company is different. And certainly no one is adding a dotcom to their name in hopes of raising more cash with less revenue. Or maybe that's exactly what Casper and WeWork and the like were doing.

I think once we get a bit more perspective (10 years from now) it'll be a lot easier to answer these questions.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#562

Post by okareaman »

isodude wrote: post #513
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.

I found something by the English philosopher Alan Watts later that was absolutely true for me:

"Imagine, too, if you were a bus driver. Bus driver is ordinarily, ordinarily considered an absolutely harassed person. You've got to watch out for all the laws, all the competing traffic. The cops, the people coming on board giving their fares and he has to give them change and if he has it in his head that this is work, it will be hell. But let's suppose he has a different thing in his head.

Supposing that he has the idea that moving this enormous conveyance through complicated traffic. It is a very, very subtle game, and he has the same feeling about it that you might have if you were playing the guitar or dancing. And so he goes through that traffic avoiding this, and avoiding that and taking the affairs like this and he makes a music of the whole thing. Well he's not going to be tired out at the end of the day. He's going to be full of energy when he gets through his job."

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#563

Post by dangoor »

souprock wrote: post #508
dangoor wrote: post #36

Khan Academy is still hiring, though our focus is backend and full-stack engineers right now[1]. I hope you're able to find new work soon! This is an odd time for us. We're an online education non-profit. With all of the school closings[2], we're seeing a huge spike in traffic. Fortunately, our infrastructure can handle it, but we are still spending some effort staying on top of the rapidly changing traffic patterns.…

Say, maybe you could pass this along to the design team: My kids all reject the current interface. They loved the interface it had a few years back. In case you need more info to identify what I refer to, I'll describe it. I'm pretty sure there was nothing but math. Each topic was represented by a circle, and each circle was connected to prerequisites. Kids would earn points in a simple way. Kids would also earn vari…

Thanks for the input! I can pass that along. I'm not as connected to the user research and design teams, so I don't have any helpful insights to provide about the evolution.

We _do_ serve the video through YouTube by default, but we have a fallback video player that should kick in if YouTube isn't available.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#564

Post by Loughla »

dillonmckay wrote: post #360
Loughla wrote: post #168

I'm betting the best places to target for individuals who have been laid off, for the next 6-12 months at least, will be organizations who serve higher education. When the economy hits the shit, higher education booms. This is absolutely true for tech programs and community/junior colleges, less so for 4-year colleges/universities. Source: My experience with the 2001 bust and immediate higher ed boom, 2008 bust and i…

I don’t know. Alot of these schools have been on real estate development binges for the last 20 years, and there is alot of physical space that seems like it will remain unused for the foreseeable future. I see telemedicine finally becoming viable.

I'm not sure what physical space has to do with a boom in education. The long term trend is that economic downturns lead to a boom in higher education. That's just a fact of life.

Schools, right now, are being forced online with all goods and services, which is uncharted territory for most of them. Whether it's old-timey faculty dragging their feet because in-person is better than online (it is, by the way), or because some classes just can't be offered online (without critically thinking about it I would argue), or because we've just done things this way forever. Whatever the reason, higher ed is being forced to think about things in ways it never has before. Institutions are desperately snatching up online resources right now like crazy.

My argument is that when the boom comes in the next six months, all colleges and universities are going to look to build resiliency and responsiveness in certain areas related to critical student facing infrastructure. This means online. This means external services.

We're big, we're slow, we're out of touch with reality, but one thing we don't do, in individual institutions in higher education, is make the same mistake twice. That, at least, we're good at.

None of this has to do with physical space?

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#565

Post by g_langenderfer »

meheleventyone wrote: post #518
meritt wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It will give his business a better shot of surviving. This also means a better shot to continue paying current employees

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#566

Post by w3mmpp »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #35

just wanted to say that rather than updating resumes, update your linkedin profile. most opportunities i have gotten has been through linkedin. also, once you have a linkedin profile completed, you can import it into indeed and import your indeed profile into ziprecruiter. also, there are many services out there that will export your linkedin profile as a resume. good luck everyone, i might be joining you guys soon e…

Seconded. LinkedIn is a pretty good ressource if you invest some time developing your connections. A lot of SW recruiters but also small businesses for people looking for both employment and contracts (I found both through it).

Anybody interested, feel free to add me, my LI is in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#567

Post by jbjohns »

Eiriksmal wrote: post #66
Frost1x wrote: post #57

It's going to get bloody out there soon. Minimize your expenses if you don't already do this. The market was already fairly saturated from what I inferred last year when I jumped ship during a move. Most organizations did not appear to be seriously hiring, they were hunting for a labor bargain or someone to add to their future contact list for quick turnaround when demand rose. If you didn't think it was an employers…

>market was already fairly saturated ... did not appear to be seriously hiring ... an employers market This was my experience in the job market last year, as well. A lot of open listings, but curiously picky requirements for who would be considered for a role. I definitely got the impression that companies were just idly trawling for fresh meat, without seriously pursuing any senior talent (read: highly experienced a…

>I definitely got the impression that companies were just idly trawling for fresh meat, without seriously pursuing any senior talent

Well, there are also laws to consider. I can't prove this but I believe companies put out requests for super high level roles with bad conditions purposefully so they can go to the government and say they need HB1/Outsourcing/whatever because they can't fill all these open positions.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#569

Post by late2part »

CrowdStrike is hiring aggressively.

My team managers the physical and virtual server infrastructure.

I'm looking for:

Data Center Technicians (non remote) Power Analysts (looking at server, pdu, DC power - remote) HW Performance Testers (server, cpu, disk performance analysis - remote) Linux Automation (remote) VMWare Administrators (highly advanced in large scale environments with high complexity and throughput - remote) Project Managers with experience deploying telecom and circuits (remote) Network Engineers (remote) Storage Engineers (familiar w/ ZFS, iscsi, nfs, complex storage analysis - remote)

If interested, please mail me aXlaXn@crXowdstXrike.com (remove the "X"es) with your resume and a brief introduction - please put 'remote HN post' in your subject.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#570

Post by linsomniac »

lainga wrote: post #379
linsomniac wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year we were hiring, for both junior and senior positions, and had a hell of a time finding people to make offers to. We were absolutely serious and did end up hiring someone. I will say though that we were definitely on the picky side. Our company tends to have a very hard time getting rid of employees that aren't working out, so we are extremely reluctant to hire a "maybe".

Local law?

Entirely company culture.
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