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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?

#641

Post by DoesntMatter22 »

strombofulous wrote: post #80
DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo this is the worst market I've seen since 95 when I started.

Worse than the dotcom burst?

In my experience yeah. The burst was relatively quick in it's downturn, it felt like hiring and optimism came back pretty quick.

This time, there are the dark clouds of AI and lots of economic instability, along with higher interest rates to deal with. Not to mention record corporate debt.

Also this time is much different because coding was marketed as a way to just go to bootcamp and get rich, so it brought in hundreds of thousands of people on the low end.

Much diff than the dot com bust IMO.

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

#642

Post by Pet_Ant »

WinLychee wrote: post #582
neon_electro wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 hate to say it, but you're gonna have to learn coping mechanisms. I think a lot of us in tech have similar issues to be honest, so you're not alone here. Personally I HATE having to sit there and grind, but you've got to find a way to squeeze out the motivation. I also perform really poorly under interview pressure, but I think that wildly over-preparing can help you calm your nerves. Personal network is also SUPER…

The time to develop a network is when you don't need it. So for those of you with a job, work on it now. Add your coworkers on LinkedIn, message that old friend from another company for lunch.

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

#643

Post by [deleted] »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #605
dorfsmay wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked for a job recently? I don't know about you personally, but people in my social circles and employed think the job market is the same as it was from 2015 to 2020. They have no data point and assume their 2+ year old experience of looking for work is relevant today. The market is bad. I was getting calls from recruiters in 2020. I looked and found work (contracts) twice in 2022, the first time was not e…

It's strange because economically, tech is roaring back and the job market is tight as ever. Are employers hedging against this perpetually 6 month away recession? Is there a shift from growth mindset to value mindset?

[deleted]

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

#644

Post by bsima »

noodle wrote: post #602

As someone on the other side, with open positions we're hiring for: There are probably fewer job openings than there were, but I don't think my company or anyone in my network have changed HOW they're hiring, but we have definitely noticed a huge uptick in volume of applications. Earlier in the year, we were getting almost nothing. Now we're getting hundreds of resumes a week for each open position, and the bulk of e…

> Now we're getting hundreds of resumes a week for each open position, and the bulk of each one of those resumes do not come close to even being in conversation range of the posted JD.

What percentage of these resumes do you think are generated by GPT?

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

#645

Post by [deleted] »

exikyut wrote: post #278
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once took 3 years off to play an MMO game (not joking). After that had to restart from the bottom of the salary ladder, but climbed back pretty quickly. This is a universal secret weapon - drop your salary requirements, like, a lot, to get hired. You can usually climb back.

EVE Online? :P

[deleted]

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

#646

Post by nicoburns »

pwpw wrote: post #626
rsynnott wrote: post #282

It's not a good job market, but it doesn't seem normal to spend six months applying and only get _one_ interview. It might be worth asking friends or former colleagues, ideally people who actually are involved in recruiting (hiring managers etc) to take a look at your resume and LinkedIn profile and see if there's anything glaringly wrong with them. Is your resume in a weird format, or is it structurally weird/overde…

> whereas everyone else would call that person a junior engineer. Does anyone have advice on what I should call myself? I was a senior in public accounting (~3 years of experience) when I switched into software development after self-teaching for 5 years on the side. I settled for an entry-level role to get my foot in the door, but after 7 months I was made the lead of one of a few teams with the rest being led by pr…

Possibly "Engineering Manager"

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

#647

Post by criley2 »

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…

>In hindsight nobody asked anything _super_ hard, but you cannot make a single mistake, or a suboptimal solution, or give the wrong response to a question right now. >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. Again, you cannot afford a single mistake in process right now or they will pass on you.

Did they tell you that they passed on you because of your minor imperfection in the answer? Or is this an assumption on your part?

I might have passed on you based on what you've written, but it wouldn't have been because you gave a B+ answer and I required at least an A- solution or something.

Honestly this entire concept of gamifying your interview is not great. Maybe this is what gets you in at the big shops like Microsoft or Amazon these days? Totally understand that, I'm more of in the start-up world.

In my world, we're looking at personality, attitude, problem solving. I'm not looking for a robot to regurgitate a technically perfect answer. I'm looking for a human who responds like someone would in a job. Depends on the interview (up, peer, or down in seniority), but the interview is a space to basically pair something out and work together and see if you fit with how we operate. We wouldn't want someone to come in and just regurgitate what they think is perfect. We'd prefer to pair it out, talk it through, look stuff up live, and see if there is charisma/chemistry in the working relationship and the culture. Depending on seniority of course but we can teach a Jr or Mid coding and technical material but we cannot change their personality or make them better to work with.

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

#648

Post by MentallyRetired »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #624
collaborative wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't looked for jobs in nearly 9 years now. Is a LinkedIn profile essential nowadays? I have dropped all social media and LinkedIn is one of the most invasive. I really dislike how it notifies you for everything

Funny story about how linkedin's oversharing ruined a potential date for me: Recently I have been online dating, and while talking to a match, she dropped that she works a relatively high position in state government. So naturally I googled her name (only had her first name) and the position and clicked the first link. "Oh wow, she is, that's cool!" A minute later she messages me "Checking out my linkedin?" I was sup…

Proof you need to keep your resume current. lol

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

#649

Post by timacles »

cosmojg wrote: post #564
neon_electro wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? You don't. In my experience, any mention of anything resembling mental illness will result in rejection (but obviously they'll cite some other reason to avoid a lawsuit).

As a general life advice (this may sound harsh (but thats life)) ... never admit weakness or flaw to anyone that you're selling yourself to. They will immediately ignore your 99 other good qualities and only focus on the flaw you mention.

Selling yourself is a game, and the ones "buying" you dont have the cognitive head space to make difficult decisions across many candidates. They will always choose the mentally easier option.

The "game" is that you have to as quickly as possible figure out exactly the mental model of what it is they want, and frame yourself as that. All the parts of whether you or they actually fit each others needs must be done within that dynamic. You cannot explicitly mention negative qualities, you have to infer whether they will be accommodating.

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

#650

Post by Macha »

edrxty wrote: post #547
coffeebeqn wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very anecdotally it seems to have picked up in July/August. No major layoffs and at least I’m getting the usual recruiters spam again.

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.

Profit numbers caused wall street to ease off a bit and so the natural empire building and workload reducing motivations to hire more staff moved the equilibrium back a bit more to hiring.
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