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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?

#591

Post by epolanski »

tough wrote: post #454
blitz_skull wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whereas everyone else would call that person [with 5 years experience] a junior engineer I’ve met people with 3 years experience who I’d consider more senior than myself (8 years). Some folks just learn really fast and/or don’t do much else other than work. Not sure time is relevant to your skills or title after about 2-3 years.

It's such an old-fashioned way to look at skills and experience. Tbh there should be real ways to measure all this but there aren't. If you can code by your own without handholding, are you a junior at that point anyways?

Junior is mostly related on the scale of responsibilities. Juniors take on tasks, middles on features, seniors are responsible for products, staff for a series of related products, and distinguished engineers are responsible for huge leaps in key core parts of the business.

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

#593

Post by hoorayimhelping »

neon_electro wrote: post #559
WinLychee wrote: post #553

I've gotten plenty, though I am a decent bit more senior than you. It's very hard to get an offer right now, but for sure you can get interviews. I think I've interviewed with ~10 companies for positions since June, and all passed on me, but it's mostly because I didn't take the time required to prepare. In hindsight nobody asked anything _super_ hard, but you cannot make a single mistake, or a suboptimal solution, o…

> I've started grinding leetcode, reviewing system design, and behavioral questions. You MUST memorize perfect responses to regurgitate as fast as possible on the interview. I have been diagnosed with ADHD (and started medication, to be clear) this year. How do I best tell prospective employers I might need some accommodation in this process? I've been at it on and off for 17 months and have had the worst experience…

>I have been diagnosed with ADHD this year. How do I best tell prospective employers I might need some accommodation in this process?

As someone who was diagnosed with ADHD a decade-and-a-half ago in my 20s: You don't. You don't even think about using your diagnosis as an excuse or a shield for behavior that is unacceptable. You never consider thinking that you deserve special treatment because you were diagnosed with ADHD. You accept that there are tradeoffs that come with it, some positive, some negative, and that you will have advantages in some areas and disadvantages in other areas and you don't let it define you or your behavior.

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

#594

Post by tcgv »

I haven't been on the "applying" side, but in my company we just had four replacement openings in the tech team (after more than 9 months without having a new hire) and to our suprise we received 5x times more applicants to all positions than we used to get one year ago, and salary expectations were at least 15% lower than in 2022.

We ended up hiring five devs on the same budget of the four original positions.

We are a data analysis and digital/mobile marketing survey startup located in São Paulo, Brazil. So at leat around here the job market is much different than the hiring craze of 2022.

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

#595

Post by eric_cc »

neon_electro wrote: post #559
WinLychee wrote: post #553

I've gotten plenty, though I am a decent bit more senior than you. It's very hard to get an offer right now, but for sure you can get interviews. I think I've interviewed with ~10 companies for positions since June, and all passed on me, but it's mostly because I didn't take the time required to prepare. In hindsight nobody asked anything _super_ hard, but you cannot make a single mistake, or a suboptimal solution, o…

> I've started grinding leetcode, reviewing system design, and behavioral questions. You MUST memorize perfect responses to regurgitate as fast as possible on the interview. I have been diagnosed with ADHD (and started medication, to be clear) this year. How do I best tell prospective employers I might need some accommodation in this process? I've been at it on and off for 17 months and have had the worst experience…

> 10 year career veteran

A 10 year career does not make you a veteran..

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

#596

Post by JonChesterfield »

bpm140 wrote: post #539

It 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)

Unspecified initial cost then 12% of first year salary (RSU unspecified) on success. Think I'd better off hiring a PA but still nice to see new approaches to hiring.

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

#597

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

dkarl wrote: post #573
pc86 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't seem fair, and it doesn't seem like an effective filter, either. Titles vary wildly for a lot of different reasons, and you can't expect candidates to present themselves to you in your terms. You can't expect them to take your job descriptions at face value, either. If mismatched title expectations bother you, blame the industry, blame other companies, blame hiring managers, but don't blame an engineer w…

Along similar lines to what you are saying, I think one of the more general problems that I see with titles is that people do tend to gravitate around specific industries/sizes of companies, even within IT, and then tend to associate their own experience as "normal" when it comes to seniority.

I've moved a bit between different sizes and government vs startup vs mid-sized etc, and the titles vary wildly.

Some government jobs had people with 4 years experience be "senior" or even "tech leads" because they weren't paying enough so they simply promoted any bright spark that was going to last to senior roles so they could at least get a few more years out of them before they left, as HR wouldn't pay more money without them getting the a specific title.

Other place I've worked, your title was essentially a lottery system, others you were hard pressed to be a Senior without anything less than 10 years experience.

But each of those places, I encountered people with very specific ideas of exactly what a senior was, and they were convinced their own standards were the "accepted" ones.

There are definitely general guidelines for senior, associate etc, but they aren't normalised, just like you are saying.

So point is, in support of your post, you can't dismiss someone just based on the title they give themselves, as it might have been perfectly normal thing to call themselves in previous positions.

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

#598

Post by 65 »

ukyrgf wrote: post #24
Ilasky wrote: post #2

I've had similar issues - so much so that I've created Resgen[0] just because it was tough getting call backs. It turns out I really needed to tailor my resume to each job and it resulted in a lot more call backs. [0] https://resgen.app

Wow, that design is modern but brings me back to the days of application skin sites and early digital art communities back in the early 00s. Great job. I'm going to sign up.

To be fair this Mondrian style is a web design trend right now.

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

#599

Post by edrxty »

almost_usual wrote: post #579
edrxty wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Flying car startups?

Not going to name names but there are a bunch of flying car and "autonomous air taxi" startups trying to get to market right now. They're all going to get their PP slapped by the FAA the second they actually try to operate (a whole regulatory framework still needs to be created to make any of this remotely legal) but apparently it's enticing to the type of individuals comprising the investor class right now because they have at least some money.

Shrug...

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

#600

Post by webdood90 »

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.

great example of why hiring in tech is broken.

decision makers making blanket generalizations because candidates don't fit the mold they've invented in their own minds using only their personal experience as a baseline.

tech experience is wildly diverse. looking at candidates with a one size fits all approach is passing up plenty of qualified people, but everybody wants to hire like Google.

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