Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting? • Hacker News Board

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

#751

Post by solarmist » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

wildrhythms wrote: post #351

c16 wrote: post #310

This advice won't help you right now, but when you do find your next role, try take an active role in tech interviewing. It's something I pushed hard to take part in two jobs ago, and it's shown me what good candidates and bad candidates look like, how to interview and how not to bomb the interview in the first few minutes. It's also helped me massively as a candidate.

I am registered as an interviewer at my workplace ($big tech company) and in the past 2 years I've been assigned just one interview. In the past year I've been assigned zero. Interviews are randomly assigned. Front-end web developer. Internally I can see they are hiring countless full-time PMs, PgMs, directors... but developers being hired are here on 6 month vendor contracts, and not full time employees, which is a…

This is odd to me. At LinkedIn they always needed more interviewers. And I did more than 100 in my 5 years there.

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

#752

Post by tough » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

IKantRead wrote: post #581

tough wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such an old-fashioned way to look at skills and experience. Tbh there should be real ways to measure all this but there aren't. If you can code by your own without handholding, are you a junior at that point anyways?

The idea that "experience" is an outdated concept would only make sense coming from an industry that really doesn't even really have "senior" people. Having worked in multiple fields throughout my life, I deeply miss the presence of truly experienced coworkers. For example one of the lessons of experience is that skill in the immediate task at hand is only a part of the overall engineering skillset. Experienced profe…

> One trait of experienced devs I've seen, that I've not seen in even the sharpest but less experienced ones, is the ability to see problems that will arise down the road from miles away.

This is called second (or third) order thinking btw.

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

#753

Post by WinLychee » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

taylodl wrote: post #612

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…

> It's never been harder to get a job Were you around for the aftermath of 9/11? What about the crash of 2008? Both times were considerably more difficult for job hunters.

Ah sorry this was hyperbole, let me adjust the phrasing. It's hard but probably not as hard as 2001 or 2008.

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

#754

Post by HEmanZ » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:18 PM UTC

I’m sorry this is happening to you. The job market is very bad right now by tech standards, but people are definitely still hiring. A few things I notice from my very-myopic view as a backend engineer at a large-ish tech company:

- Hiring has ground to a halt for generic FE developers. The general strategy seems to be that we should have enough FE people to move around to get new features done. No more big UI rewrites that would require an expanding FE dev force.

- Hiring for specific roles is still good, but I guess the applicant spam has gotten crazy bad, and now most hiring moves through direct recruiter interaction and other side channels. We’re still hiring a good number of backend distributed-systems devs, specialized mobile devs, and tons of the ever-popular “ML Engineer”.

- The finance industry is apparently having a great time right now because their recruiters won’t leave me alone. Multiple people we laid off on my team landed at cushy or high paid jobs in banking or finance. All backend engineers tho.

My probably worthless advice would be to start spinning your resume differently and target a new position. I suspect FE rolls are really taking a hit as companies seem saturated. Start reaching out directly to recruiters. If all else fails, consider a career move or even the classic “go back to school to weather out the downturn”. Good luck!

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

#755

Post by thrtythreeforty » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:19 PM UTC

Roark66 wrote: post #365

wizardforhire wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This and… Use your new free time by not applying to… Work on a project that interests you and share it online Exercise both physically and fiscally Spend time with people you care about and also care about you And keep working on projects and sharing them, maybe even with hn The comments on here are legion of individuals who post some project and have to then fight away recruiters…

>Work on a project that interests you and share it online This is good advice, but remember it's not the only way. Not everyone is comfortable giving their work away for free. (maybe its a new product/business idea etc). If the new business idea fails or you decide not to proceed with it you can still put it in your CV as long as you can describe it in detail and/or show potential employers your work. Assuming the pr…

Different way to look at freely shared online work: It's not giving your work away for free. It's an ad for your services. And because it has wide utility, you get seen by lots of eyeballs, possibly including exactly the people who can make a hiring decision about you.

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

#756

Post by hunterhod » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

If you have any entrepreneurial tendencies, starting a simple LLC and selling your services to local businesses can be a solid option right now.

Industries outside of VC-backed consumer technology are making money and need technology generalists to amplify their businesses. Just protect yourself with contracts and you’re good to go.

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

#757

Post by myth_drannon » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

polishdude20 wrote: post #702

jorts wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like everyone realized that they can trim down to improve margins without taking a lot of flack.

Yep, fire the devs after they've built the software. Fire them because the software is already built. Slowly your software grinds to a halt and dies because you release features too slow or your software starts to become very bad.

And some of the fired devs go to work for the competitor or start their own business. This is a natural lifecycle of software. Slowly rot and let others grow.

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

#758

Post by galangalalgol » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:21 PM UTC

dustincoates wrote: post #654

ransom1538 wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a report from facebook hiring, when they broke down how each person applied. It was something weird like %0.01 were hired by "walk in". Some person literally walked into FB headquarters and left with a job. I will say, if you walk into an office, you will NOT get ignored.

I actually got my first job out of college this way. I was trying to get a job in something completely unrelated to what I studied, so I was doing whatever I could think of to get noticed. I still can't believe it worked, but it set me on a good path, at least.

I wonder what would happen if you somehow managed to find what coffee shop the hiring manager was working from that day and sat down next to them striking up a conversation. Obviously most of the ways you could do that are super creepy if not illegal, but then so is most of what FB and crew make.

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

#759

Post by zcmack » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:21 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #715

WinLychee wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the first round is usually a timed coding interview where the goal is to get an optimal solution as fast as possible. You should not be talking much with the interviewer. The intro (if there is one) is a quick exchange of names and last job worked at, then immediately diving into coding problem. You cannot start with a naive solution, interviewer will ask you to skip and go straight to optimal (this happened to m…

This would be funny if it wasn't so sad. When people started asking these questions, the whole point was to see how people reason about a new problem they haven't solved before. There are almost no work problems that require you to regurgitate something verbatim you saw on leetcode before. It's seriously making me question the intelligence of these interviewers. Although at the same time I realize it's mainly just to…

it is very sad. i personally would much rather someone walks through their problem solving approach and identifies shortcomings/edge cases than to regurgitate a memorized algorithm.

it's really easy to identify code that is not optimal at code review time. it is far more challenging to have a conversation with a algorithm-regurgitating robot that their entire approach was wrong because they misunderstood the abstraction or that their code wasn't needed because Larry is refactoring that part of the system to a separate service already.

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

#760

Post by JohnBooty » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:23 PM UTC

neon_electro wrote: post #559

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…

> 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…

Middle aged, diagnosed with ADHD about 15 years ago, been in the industry for 25 years.

Not saying my way is best, but this is how I do it.

ADHD is nothing to be ashamed of, and IMO you have as much right to accommodations as somebody with no legs who uses a wheelchair. However, you couldn't pay me to mention ADHD to an employer or prospective employer. It's too stigmatized, and also it's just plain nebulous -- even if an employer is supportive, your manager can't intuit and extrapolate the behavioral health needs of individual employees based on their diagnoses.

    How do I best tell prospective employers I might need 
    some accommodation in this process?

During the interview process I don't mention ADHD or accommodations at all. Best advice I can give here is to either (a) just grind Leetcode until you feel comfortable with it? (b) send your resume to a kazillion places and just bail if the interview process involves some kind of live coding exercise you feel that you'll struggle with. Or, alternately, just do it anyway with zero pressure and maybe you'll surprise yourself. You will get better at live coding and interviews with time.

Once you have the job, I still never mention ADHD ever. What I do is just ask for accommodations that I need. I never worked at a company that really gave a flying fuck if I took my laptop to a spare conference room so I could code in a quieter and less distracting environment. Helps to tell your team where you'll be so it's not like you disappeared.

But from a tactical standpoint I would at all times urge people to think in terms of solutions (specific coping strategies and accommodations) instead of labels and craft your employee/employer relationship accordingly.