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Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#601

Post by traitsnspecs »

alasdair_ wrote: post #437
traitsnspecs wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we had not taken prevention measures, the economic impact would be worse? I'm very skeptical of this. Keeps in mind that the disease has a 2-4% mortality rate among hospitalized patients, and the real rate is very likely to go down, not up, since most sick people do not immediately go to the hospital and there is an unknown-but-surmised-be-very-large population of infected people with mild symptoms. There is a rea…

2% to 4% is the number of hospitalized people that die IF they get care. If the health system is overrun, and there are zero ICU beds or ventilators available, that number will go up quickly. THAT is the problem we are trying to avoid.

The numbers matter here. Go up by how much?

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#602

Post by abinaya_codes »

Remote Leaf[1] founder here, I would like to offer a free month of Remote Leaf membership to people who lost their job during this crisis, that might help you land a remote job. We hand-pick thousands of remote jobs from tons of job boards and only sends the ones that apply to you. Just ping me on Twitter(@abinaya_rl) and send me an email to avail this :)

[1] - https://remoteleaf.com

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#603

Post by traitsnspecs »

Twixes wrote: post #359
traitsnspecs wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we had not taken prevention measures, the economic impact would be worse? I'm very skeptical of this. Keeps in mind that the disease has a 2-4% mortality rate among hospitalized patients, and the real rate is very likely to go down, not up, since most sick people do not immediately go to the hospital and there is an unknown-but-surmised-be-very-large population of infected people with mild symptoms. There is a rea…

2-4% is huge for a novel highly infectious disease. Our healthcare system is not prepared for that at all, without aggressive measures that's potential for hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths in the US.

Fully agreed - but I'm wondering why the solution has been less bars, not more temporary hospitals, ala China.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#604

Post by drakonka »

true_religion wrote: post #354
nogabebop23 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Also, you could post on HN if they do withdraw the offer during this outbreak, so other people would know they suck. So every company that lays off an employee "sucks"? I guess you're welcome to stay and work for free, but if they don't have money to pay you what are they supposed to do? I agree this situation is terrible for the OP, but I don't think we need to name and shame every company that makes a prudent de…

Personally, I think employment in the US should look more like it does in Europe. People rely on work to survive, and shouldn’t be fireable easily, and unemployment should cover at least 75% of your previous salary.

I am in Europe; here it is common to have a probation period. After this period it is less easy to fire someone, but during the period they can do pretty much anything. So if you happen to be switching jobs right in the middle of an economic crisis there is not much security. In addition, in my country you get your salary covered up to 80% if you pay for extra unemployment insurance. I was stupid and did not sign up for this earlier - and you have to be a member for 12 months to get the benefit. If you do not have unemployment insurance or have not been a member for 12 months, you get <900 USD per month (where I live this is not enough to make rent).

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#605

Post by aguyfromnb »

murukesh_s wrote: post #531
ccajas wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been laid off just before 2015 and I haven't found any stable work since then. I have been under-employed for a long while before the outbreak, and I don't even know what new change-ups in job hunting I should be doing now. For a long time, many people have said that my years of experience make me valuable so that I should have gotten offers very quickly, but the reality hasn't shown that. Heck, even the found…

I glanced over your LinkedIn profile, to me it looks like you need to add more 'modern' tech skills to your profile. It sucks, but the industry moves to new tech quickly and unless you are an enterprise Java developer, your skills get pretty much outdated in few years and you need to catch up at a fast pace. I would learn (or highlight it if you already know) React.js and Node.js immediately, along with Postgres and…

Sincere question:

Does anyone else think it's crazy that you need to know: React, node, Mongo, AWS, the Python machine learning stack, golang, a bunch of databases, microservice patterns, serverless infrastructure, Docker...to get a job in the tech industry?

Who are the people that actually know all this stuff?

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#606

Post by aguyfromnb »

AchieveLife wrote: post #592
dang wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point, but let's not attack each other like this here, especially not right now with stress and fear running so high. Better to treat this as an opportunity for an uptick in how well we treat each other. " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How is the post an attack? He claimed his emotion (fear) towards a behavior that has been demonstrated by many in this chaotic environment. I interpreted his post as an observation and experience rather than an attack.

>How is the post an attack?

Perhaps by asserting the OP is trying to "exploit" the situation by not wanting to pay Google wage rates at their small business?

I'm not sure I understand why the business owner "deserves" to take the financial hit for the sake of a new employee. The market will sort it out.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#607

Post by smoyer »

wmeredith wrote: post #429
smoyer wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect time to test an alternate way to conduct interviews too. Give several of the second round candidates paid work on something you actually need to have done (perhaps pick tasks that are a sprint away). It should be a great test of both who can produce working code with tests (production code is way different than white-board pseudocode) as well as who can stay on task remotely. I can't imagine paying three peop…

This isn’t new. It’s called contract-to-hire and it’s great.

Right (I didn't say it was new). It's easier for someone who's unemployed to work under a short-term contract so I was encouraging employers to use "contract-to-hire" instead of a tech-interview.

Funny story: I actually did contract-to-hire by accident at one of my jobs. They wanted to hire me but couldn't fit me in their salary scale so I was a contractor for a while. They actually needed about three people and agreed that I could work as many extra hours as I was willing to on the other projects. So I worked 9 hours on my contract software project and most days about another 5-6 hours on the other embedded systems projects (I was young and an early riser, so I still got home before 1800 to play with my kids and have dinner). After about 2 months I got called into the presidents office and was offered a job with a better salary than the rate I'd asked for and was told I had made more than the president the last pay period and it raised the board's eye-brows. Still worked 10-11 hours a day for quite a while (and some ridiculous bursts in years after) since it was a start-up but I really was just trying to impress them enough to get hired.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#608

Post by aguyfromnb »

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…

>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.

How are you confident that this isn't exactly what's happening now, and the virus was a catalyst?

People have been talking about the froth, seriously, for a couple years. Theranos, WeWork, SoftBank, the recent IPO busts...

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#609

Post by ccajas »

idoby wrote: post #549
ccajas wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been laid off just before 2015 and I haven't found any stable work since then. I have been under-employed for a long while before the outbreak, and I don't even know what new change-ups in job hunting I should be doing now. For a long time, many people have said that my years of experience make me valuable so that I should have gotten offers very quickly, but the reality hasn't shown that. Heck, even the found…

Don't take this the wrong way (I'm trying to help, might fail but intentions are good) but it seems to me that the real reason you are having a hard time finding a "job" is because you have a history of leaving jobs after a short tenure. I wrote "job" because working as a salaried employee is not the only way to make a living, or have a successful career. Consider that the freelance/contractor career you're currently…

> it seems to me that the real reason you are having a hard time finding a "job" is because you have a history of leaving jobs after a short tenure.

Brevity is to be expected in contract jobs. But I don't know if you are purposely trying to discourage me from finding salaried work which is my main goal.

I actually don't like freelancing at all, I prefer lower risk than freelance, and it is not paying me well anyways. No exact numbers but I made under 5 figures last year. Not really great for a US freelancer. I only do this to make some ends meet while I'm searching for a FT job.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been laid off?

#610

Post by ccajas »

murukesh_s wrote: post #531
ccajas wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been laid off just before 2015 and I haven't found any stable work since then. I have been under-employed for a long while before the outbreak, and I don't even know what new change-ups in job hunting I should be doing now. For a long time, many people have said that my years of experience make me valuable so that I should have gotten offers very quickly, but the reality hasn't shown that. Heck, even the found…

I glanced over your LinkedIn profile, to me it looks like you need to add more 'modern' tech skills to your profile. It sucks, but the industry moves to new tech quickly and unless you are an enterprise Java developer, your skills get pretty much outdated in few years and you need to catch up at a fast pace. I would learn (or highlight it if you already know) React.js and Node.js immediately, along with Postgres and…

I have "hobby" experience in React, Vue and Node if that counts. My resume contains a Github link plus one open source contribution on a React-based project. I just don't put them in my LinkedIn profile because it would be confusing to say "I know XYZ" in a professional profile but cannot list XYZ for something I did at work.

I think I've seen that roadmap diagram before and I notice that in every place I've worked/contracted at, their skills needs usually stop short after the "Version control" part. They don't do packages, modules and I am left in the dark about the deployment process. And I don't know if that lack of transparency of SDLC is done to me on purpose since for a long time I've been a contract dev hired to do some specific thing.

However, not everyone is privileged enough to go through the "standard techie" experience. Some of us never even heard about Leetcode until long after graduation, some of us only have experience in companies that don't believe in concepts like testing and good security.

Looks like the ideal places for me are somewhere that bridges the gap between the haves and the have-nots. A place that still has legacy work to be done but also is up to speed with newer things in other aspects. Does working at traditional F500 companies cut it?

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