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Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?

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Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?

#61

Post by austin-cheney »

jordanb wrote: post #18
camdenreslink wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the evidence it is being offset by AI? I haven't really seen that. I think it is mostly two factors: - Companies over-hired during the COVID boom and don't need to hire as much because they still have those people. It's like they did all of their hiring for a few years ahead of time. - Interest rates are still the highest in a long time. Tech hiring is disproportionately affected by this. You can throw in off…

My opinion there are five things going on: 1) Tech hasn't really innovated since the smart phone era. VR and web3 didn't work out. All the covid B2C subscription stuff didn't work out. Big data and SaaS only partially worked out. AI is pretty transparently a pump and not many people are investing in headcount for it. 2) Interest rates raise the risk-free rate of return so there's less impetus to dump money into specu…

As a long time JavaScript developer your first bullet point is wrong. Yes, tech stopped innovating but not because of empty marketing gimmicks like Web3.

Tech stopped innovating because they stopped training developers. They attempted to turn developers into plug and play commodities via open source and large frameworks. It spectacularly backfired over the course of about 15 years.

So you have a fleet of developers utterly reliant on colossal tech stacks that cannot pivot and otherwise cannot program. Not only do the people cost more over time but the products became insanely large slow never ending debt machines.

Now the game is to off set those super expensive shitty developers with AI. It’s probably going to work because the code is was so bad and AI is already doing a better job with the framework nonsense. The problem there is that it will be bots writing bad software, possibly better than the people but still bad, talk to other bots.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?

#62

Post by bradlys »

datavirtue wrote: post #59
glorpsicle wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate?

The FTE slot has become a really bad deal. I have worked alongside people who were making less than half what I was. The company treated us slightly different in that employees time was sucked down with meetings, performance reviews, mandatory certification and team building. Lump on some more hours and demands and you have a complete shit show. Companies also have to do a song and dance about how great it is to be a…

Contract work is much harder to come by and requires a significant network. Most of the time I interacted with people doing contract work, it was because they used to be FTE at the boss’s previous company.

As far as pay goes, I don’t find many are making much more than faang pay. Most are making okay money but spending a lot of unpaid time on networking. I feel like the people I know who speak the most about contract work are those who are actually running contracting firms (not doing any work themselves), were underpaid and are now getting at market rate comparable to other FTE, and people not in the US where contract work is more typical.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?

#63

Post by VirusNewbie »

datavirtue wrote: post #59
glorpsicle wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate?

The FTE slot has become a really bad deal. I have worked alongside people who were making less than half what I was. The company treated us slightly different in that employees time was sucked down with meetings, performance reviews, mandatory certification and team building. Lump on some more hours and demands and you have a complete shit show. Companies also have to do a song and dance about how great it is to be a…

I've never heard of contractors getting paid in stock, which is arguably one of the best parts of being in tech, you can ride the price up, and if the price crashes, you can switch jobs.

I believe you that the contractor rate can pay substantially more than salaries but does it make up for the 100k, 200k, or more in stock each year a FTE might get at a really good tech company?

Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?

#64

Post by meiraleal »

b20000 wrote: post #48
teling wrote: post #16

As someone involved in hiring, there are a few factors going on: 1. There's no available headcount. No one is leaving since there are no opportunities elsewhere. Especially those on visas. 2. When we do have headcount, we get 1000 resumes within an hour or two. We also have a stack of referrals to get through first. A lot of these resumes are experienced folks with backgrounds in FAANG. 3. Supply remains high (100k C…

background in FAANG means nothing

Means a lot actually. For example, expensive and not great at innovation. But with 3 years of enshittification experience.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?

#65

Post by vednig »

xpl wrote: post #54
kajecounterhack wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you talked to any startups? Young hungry folks were historically valued at startups, especially ones who have some OGs who can spare bandwidth to onboard / grow new hires, though maybe the game has changed.

Startups today are interested in profits, not in valuation. This means they now need to crank out a working product as quickly as possible, and that means hiring only seasoned seniors with an impressive track record. Previously, they could have gotten away with having no product at all (all while hiring as no tomorrow, just to pump up their valuation). But those days are gone with the low interest rates.

That is not entirely true though, our team at doshare.me hired a lot of young graduates and we are building and iterating through product lifecycle quickly.

In my experience, seasoned seniors are expensive to get and bring unnecessary conflicts and issues to startups lifecycle.

Until startup has started to actually scale they definitely shouldn't hire seniors with a lot of experience.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?

#66

Post by vednig »

RGamma wrote: post #9
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Potentially related to ground truth shared in what was posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41493049 https://old.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/1fbhap7/sec...

You know what would be funny? If there was a free labor market for the C suite. There's probably some talented disgruntled folks with financial runway right now, who would do CEO for minimum wage just for the lolz.

It's real, I got so much disappointed by this market that I started up on my own product. Also, somehow got few people to join me and we're shipping this month.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?

#67

Post by vednig »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #53
laidoffamazon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's over Is there a good phrase for people that make sweeping definitive statements like this with fairly tepid evidence?

Probably the same phrase applies to people who say this: > Almost everything that needs to be built digitally, has been built

Tht'z true too, it just hasn't been marketed perfectly

Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?

#68

Post by chongli »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #46
chongli wrote: post #29

I graduated recently and have been looking ever since. It’s abysmal. No replies at all. Compared to co-op where I was interviewing a dozen times a week and getting half a dozen offers, it’s post-apocalyptic. No one’s interested in taking on anyone at recent grad / entry-level. Not sure what to do.

Have you talked to any startups? Young hungry folks were historically valued at startups, especially ones who have some OGs who can spare bandwidth to onboard / grow new hires, though maybe the game has changed.

A lot of the ones I’ve seen were leaning too heavily towards equity-only compensation.

I’m sorry founders, but equity isn’t going to pay off my student loans!

Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?

#69

Post by red-iron-pine »

b20000 wrote: post #48
teling wrote: post #16

As someone involved in hiring, there are a few factors going on: 1. There's no available headcount. No one is leaving since there are no opportunities elsewhere. Especially those on visas. 2. When we do have headcount, we get 1000 resumes within an hour or two. We also have a stack of referrals to get through first. A lot of these resumes are experienced folks with backgrounds in FAANG. 3. Supply remains high (100k C…

background in FAANG means nothing

depends whatchu did at said FAANG and who is doing the hiring. but generally agree.

places like the GOOG are so far out there in terms of tooling and approaches (and size, and bureaucracy, etc.) that you end up with a hire who is damn good at whatever unique internal tooling and job sets are, but can't handle anything else.

they'll expect 250k at minimum, get surly when they don't get it, constantly look to jump or climb, and won't jive with the culture, esp. once that's still using a lot of the more basic approaches that are more common in larger, non-STEM enterprise orgs.

inevitably these guys jump in 1.5 years or less, and achieve nothing of note in that time, except harping on how great tool X is at Meta, or how we did Y at the GOOG and everyone else should. or some sort of PTSD from working at Amazon.

after a couple rounds of getting burned by people with amazing resumes we are now weary of the FAANG pedigree.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Job Market That Bad?

#70

Post by red-iron-pine »

njtransit wrote: post #52
vineyardlabs wrote: post #23

Yes/No. It's probably the worst it's been in a decade, but it's my understanding it's nothing even resembling the 2008 crash or the dotcom bubble (I wasn't working during those times). With that said, it feels worse than it is because the 2021-2022 period was uniquely euphoric. Key driving factors are people who have been laid off working to find positions against the backdrop of many tech companies not adding headco…

Your understand is wrong. 2008 was not a bad time for tech at all.

bad time to be a construction project manager, but IT was humming along just fine.

maybe they were talking about the dot-com crash several years earlier?

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