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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?

#71

Post by red-iron-pine »

xpl wrote: post #8

> Previously, my LinkedIn profile used to be flooded with job offers, but now it’s nearly silent Can confirm. I nowadays receive mostly messages from people who are looking for a job and curious if our team is hiring. Though it is mostly entry-level candidates (fresh grads, people who have completed bootcamps, etc.), which probably tells something about the job market. HRs occasionally reach out to me but only to try…

linkedin is mostly garbage and is hitting the same social media enshittification that is taking place on other major platforms.

only reason i still have it is essentially as a social proof to any HR person looking me up.

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

#72

Post by red-iron-pine »

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…

> 3) There's a massive offshoring push right now. Bigger than I've seen since the early 2000s. Lots of organizations are making it basically impossible to open a req in a western office while also actively moving roles offshore.

This is it, basically. COVID showed the world that a whole lotta things could be remote. Industries that might have balked at the idea 5 years ago are now onboard.

Automation and AI aren't helping, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to 120k new CS grads a year -- on top of outsourcing.

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

#73

Post by aprdm »

devgoth wrote: post #43
masijo wrote: post #39

Well, at least I don't feel so alone now. Same situation here: LinkedIn is silent, or I'm getting really bad offers. My experience being mostly in Clojure certainly doesn't help either. Plus, interviews have become really intense. I recently had an interview (the first one, "HR") that consisted of me talking about myself and my experience for 10 minutes, without any questions from the interviewer, and then it went st…

You mention that Clojure doesn't help but I would assume that knowing Clojure puts a leg up due to the buzz I see about Clojure on this site all the time. Do you think sinking years into Clojure was a net negative for you? Note: I really like Clojure and looking to invest time in it but I am scared it will not make me attractive to employers.

hackernews is not representative of the real world, you can pretty much round to zero % the amount of companies in the world using Clojure compared to main stream languages

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

#74

Post by meiraleal »

austin-cheney wrote: post #61
jordanb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

> 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.

Most of the previous innovators and wannabes of 15 years ago (HN users) are still alive and should be eager to innovate now that the market and audience is so much bigger. But we all got too domesticated by big tech. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta revenue is money lost by millions of developers.

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

#75

Post by meiraleal »

aprdm wrote: post #73
devgoth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mention that Clojure doesn't help but I would assume that knowing Clojure puts a leg up due to the buzz I see about Clojure on this site all the time. Do you think sinking years into Clojure was a net negative for you? Note: I really like Clojure and looking to invest time in it but I am scared it will not make me attractive to employers.

hackernews is not representative of the real world, you can pretty much round to zero % the amount of companies in the world using Clojure compared to main stream languages

you can also round to zero the amount of developers that are proficient in Clojure so this means nothing.

If 0.01% of the tech jobs use clojure and 0.005% of developers are looking for a clojure job that would still be a great position for the few thousands of clojure programmers.

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

#76

Post by raincom »

dxbydt wrote: post #33
scelerat wrote: post #28

Been looking for a year and a half for something full-time and permanent. No luck so far. Chopped about fifteen years off my resume, and that seemed to help get more interviews, but I think that backfired because then they were surprised by my wrinkles and bald spot and figured if I was lying about my experience, I was lying about other things too. One thing that does not help was a string of startups I worked for wh…

> Small part time gigs, some substitute teaching, bar-backing and construction work. Was in the same boat.Did the audio-to-text transcribing gig on amazon mturk. It was a tossup between that & odd jobs at Walmart at that time. Recessions in usa is pretty brutal. If you are so inclined, I suggest getting a cert & then hitting the shady indian outfits. They always have jobs so long as you have a recent cert. Can be any…

> If you are so inclined, I suggest getting a cert & then hitting the shady indian outfits.

Large companies outsourced to Indian companies like TCS, WIPRO, Infosys, CTS, etc. The latter wants to fill some positions onsite; here, TCS, et al source resumes from these 'shady Indian outfits'.

Also another phenomenon I observed: companies want presence during the US day time, so they outsourced to companies in Brazil and other South American countries. A friend's been out of job for a year, and reached out to an ex-manager at a tech company owned by a PE firm. The manager is willing hire him through the outsourcing company but for South American wages: this company pays $60 per hour to the outsourcing partner, who takes 30% cut. So, that is about $42 per hour on 1099, without any benefits. And this contract gig may last for four months.

Welcome to the new world, where we see three classes of techies: (a) those who work for FAANG and other elite companies/firms (b) those who work for non-elite companies (c) contract work force, whose contracts last for three to six months.

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

#77

Post by datavirtue »

bradlys wrote: post #62
datavirtue wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have known several people who would get contracts from those random Indian recruiter emails. If you get them coming in (like who does this on purpose,right?) and automatically filter them you can start getting good leads.

One guy I know runs two contracts at once. One of them ends...no big deal.

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

#78

Post by solardev »

oumua_don17 wrote: post #58
scelerat wrote: post #28

Been looking for a year and a half for something full-time and permanent. No luck so far. Chopped about fifteen years off my resume, and that seemed to help get more interviews, but I think that backfired because then they were surprised by my wrinkles and bald spot and figured if I was lying about my experience, I was lying about other things too. One thing that does not help was a string of startups I worked for wh…

>> Chopped about fifteen years off my resume Just a suggestion. It may instead be preferable to put a `Other Work Experience` section with a bullet point highlighting either tech skills or domain or a mix with the duration. ``` Java, J2EE, .NET Various Companies mm/dd/yyyy to mm/dd/yyyy Enterprise app development - Design and implement various travel, finance applications/modules ``` edit: formatting

Not the OP, but I'm also old, and this is a fantastic suggestion. Thank you!

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

#80

Post by theonething »

austin-cheney wrote: post #56

So it’s weird. I was unemployed for 6 months last year after being laid off. That long 6 month span was largely self inflicted. As a JavaScript developer I got tired of the hyper insecurity of nobody knowing to program in that language so I waited until I found something else to do.

What did you change career to?
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