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Ask HN: Is the Job Market Actually Bad?

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

#61

Post by idontwantthis »

tayo42 wrote: post #56
idontwantthis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in SF. I'm making mid $100k and interviewing for remote jobs in the $170k+ range.

OK shitty job market means different things to different people. For my self, I was making over 300k, took a job (remote) at a little over 200, and now struggling to get that much and considering jobs at 170-180. I think the job market sucks, those jobs paying 300+ would normally respond to me aren't.

I don't even know what I would do with that much money. Maybe have 4 or 5 kids.

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

#64

Post by DrJokepu »

subhobroto wrote: post #13

There's no monolithic "Job Market", so specific details matter. I have not been tracking details too closely but here are two things I am tracking: - CRUD generation by running through JIRA tickets and clearing backlogs seem to be replaced by agentic workflows. So if you were an extremely productive dev who would machete your way through CRUD and API integrations, agentic workflows do it better, faster and for cheape…

But how do they scale the reviewing of the agentic output? Or they just blindly trust it and worst case scenario they get to write a sob story on HN about how Claude has deleted the production db?

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

#65

Post by idontwantthis »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #53
newsclues wrote: post #23

It's K shaped, like the economy.

Not sure why you are being downvoted. This is my experience as well. If you have experience at FAANG doing “foundational work” (read: datacenter engineering, core software infrastructure, multi zone computing, point of presence management) you are still in high demand. Many of the people I know in such areas are going to the big hyperscalers to build the infrastructure to run AI inference. There are not a lot of peop…

I created this post because my experience is the complete opposite.

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

#66

Post by noprocrasted »

It's primarily a discovery problem, on both sides of the market.

Candidate-wise, everyone is slinging ChatGPT'd resumes left and right, which just leads to an arms race where the other side has to use LLMs to filter them, which just makes the situation even worse. The bar for "senior software engineer" is insanely low right now (and no, Leetcode doesn't count - I'm talking more pragmatic skills like being able to use a *nix terminal).

Employer-wise, everyone wants a unicorn that will lick their ass but isn't willing to pay (in either money or benefits) well for said service. Then they complain that "nobody wants to work anymore" or that there are no good candidates. Well, it's just that the good ones don't even bother applying.

As a result, lucky, good actors on either side find themselves via networking, while the less lucky ones are left to swim in a sea of trash.

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

#67

Post by Esophagus4 »

paulpauper wrote: post #42
iambateman wrote: post #22

I had a friend with plenty of experience in HR get laid off. He looked for a job for 13 months. One of the top 3 smartest people I’ve ever known looked for seven months and had to take a big step back in his career, despite having Amazon and Home Depot on his resume. Both of them said that even getting an interview was almost impossibly hard. These are people in different parts of the county, and in different industr…

So much pre-employment screening and automated filtering. Getting to the interview stage is like having your paper refereed instead of desk rejected.

Cold applications are very difficult, especially because of the sheer volume of applicants.

Unless I have a referral, it’s such a low probability exercise it’s not worth it for me.

Whenever I see “100+ candidates have applied” on LinkedIn, I just ignore the job posting.

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

#68

Post by noprocrasted »

DrJokepu wrote: post #64
subhobroto wrote: post #13

There's no monolithic "Job Market", so specific details matter. I have not been tracking details too closely but here are two things I am tracking: - CRUD generation by running through JIRA tickets and clearing backlogs seem to be replaced by agentic workflows. So if you were an extremely productive dev who would machete your way through CRUD and API integrations, agentic workflows do it better, faster and for cheape…

But how do they scale the reviewing of the agentic output? Or they just blindly trust it and worst case scenario they get to write a sob story on HN about how Claude has deleted the production db?

A company can operate aimlessly for a long time and carry along due to inertia and/or monopoly position. So chances are nobody (competent) is reviewing it.

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

#69

Post by [deleted] »

talkingtab wrote: post #55

Hiring is now by filter. Corporations do not try to hire good people, they just avoid hiring questionable people. In other words they are looking for the lowest common denominator. If you do not think this is true, then ask yourself whether the company is attempting to use AI. THAT IS WHAT THEY WANT AND VALUE. The safer and easier you are as hire the better you will be. So yes. You were probably hired because you are…

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by noprocrasted »

luke5441 wrote: post #60
alephnerd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do you want to have non-complaining worker drones We want opinionated engineers. But we want engineers who will respond to a slack message after 5pm during a P1 escalation. > I'd more guess it is that there is a severe income tax advantage Somewhat but not enough to move the needle because depending on the local government, they are matching cross-EU subsidizes. > older people from those countries are good at k…

It's idk 10% for B2B in Poland and more than 50% in western Europe. Of course if you pay someone 135k vs 70k real income the first person will put in more effort. In western Europe you'd just have to specify the availability requirements and they'd do it there as well. You'd just have to pay for it. Edit: If you pay someone 150k€ in Germany what they see after-tax is just not that much. They are going to compare this…

> Why not just admit that you don't want to pay equivalent wages for accessing the western european market?

Is it his responsibility? If some countries have a better tax policy, why should he not take advantage of it, and ultimately end up in a situation that benefits both the employee and his company?

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