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?

#801

Post by formulathree » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:56 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…

There are so many leetcode problems most people can't fully memorize them all and many people just don't.

I actually think interview questions that are more qualitative are worse. I have to freaking guess the "design philosophy" of the interviewer and cater to his viewpoint which is often pointless or just flat out wrong.

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

#802

Post by rsynnott » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:57 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #667

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…

> bulk of each one of those resumes do not come close to even being in conversation range of the posted JD I've wondered about that. Sometimes I see jobs that sounds super interesting, but I only match maybe 50% of the unique bits of experience they want. Then I see 200 applicants and think ... how many people are just applying for the hell of it, because the job sounds cool, even though they have none of the right e…

Unfortunately, it depends on the company. Some job descriptions are sincere “we actually need this”; some are a wish list.

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

#803

Post by cableshaft » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 4:02 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #647

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…

My Facebook phone screen many years ago consisted of an HR-sounding woman asking me three questions, the first two I answered correct (according to her), and the third one I answered correctly (I checked afterwards) but didn't use the term that was apparently written down in front of them, was told 'wrong, it's ', was thanked, hung up, and got a rejection email a few days later.

In that case I think it's pretty clear I was rejected based on getting one answer incorrect. The phone call wasn't even that long at all.

And while other interviews have been longer, I suspect I've been rejected a few times based on me struggling with one particular Leetcode problem.

One guy didn't even let me finish it beyond five minutes of trying to figure out the recursive function, just rejected me on the call. That guy had a huge ego and I already wasn't certain I even wanted to work for him anyway (but I didn't have any other offers yet so I gave it a shot anyway), so not a huge loss there.

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

#804

Post by formulathree » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 4:02 PM UTC

evantbyrne wrote: post #763

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…

That is fascinating. I wouldn't even show up for an interview if they told me to prepare for that kind of exam. What kinds of companies are these and where are they located? Sounds like an interview designed by an omega nerd nightmare boss.

Have you been interviewing recently? The qualitative interviews that test design are actually the ones that are unreasonably challenging now. You have to cater to the interviewers design philosophy.

For example I tend not to prefer putting data into a class if it's not needed, but we had one interviewer who wanted all my logic as methods on a class even though it's fine to have functions operating on a data structure. Not a big deal either way right? But there it is... With the influx of candidates they measure this bs.

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

#805

Post by BrandonM » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

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?

In the past, I would have also found it strange to see tech blowing up in a tight job market. After a decade on the team-building side, though, I feel different.

Interviewing and onboarding are a huge distraction. Interviewing and onboarding done well require hours of attention from the more senior folks on your team.

When a company is hiring, the senior folks involved might be spending 6 hours a week interviewing. For example, I might have 4 45-minute interviews, another 15 minutes prepping for each interview, 15 minutes writing up feedback for every interview, 30 minutes in hire/no-hire discussions for candidates who are close, and another 30 minutes in hiring or interview meta-discussions.

Onboarding takes even more time. If I'm a new hire's onboarding mentor, I'm likely spending their first couple of days close by to answer any and all questions. After that, my work is frequently interrupted for a few weeks as I help them through issues (totally legitimate issues, BTW). We'll be spending extra time pairing with the new hire during the feature development process. Code review for new hires' code takes a lot longer, too.

When you factor all that in, a hiring freeze can realistically free up 10 or more hours of experienced employees' time every week. These are some of the most productive employees on the team.

In that context, it's not especially surprising to me that giving the most productive engineers 33% more productive time would lead to rapid improvements for tech companies, in the short term anyway.

Of course, in the medium-to-long term, a company that's not hiring is building up a huge "personnel debt" that is going to come due eventually. The product improvements will lead to new business, more clients will require more support, the new business will lead to more feature requests, and some employees will move on. The company will find itself without enough personnel to make headway on their product. Then they will have a hiring blitz where they wreck everyone's productive time and the team culture. The new, bigger team will make some headway, but they will still look less productive than the team was during the hiring freeze. The business will stagnate. The company will enact a hiring freeze, or perhaps even lay off team members. And then we're back at step 1.

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

#806

Post by the_only_law » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

I’ve been out of work for about a year. I was never a top player in the field, most of my experience has been enterprise work and non tech companies, with some tech companies (including the one that laid me off. I have a bit more YoE than you.

For the first several months, I screwed myself by operating in a 2010s mindset “I’ll have a job in I was exclusively interested in remote jobs, mostly because I still had a lease and breaking it would be very expensive, as would keeping it and having to pay two rents. Remote roles were also scarce, adding that single filter could significantly cut the amount of jobs I saw.

I did interview for a handful of on-site roles, mostly for practice, and those tended to progress better, but again, they all wanted me to move to even more expensive areas when moving at all was going to be expensive.

After a while though it got worse and worse, my professional confidence flatlined. There were hardly any recruiters reaching out anymore, cold apps went to the void, and the few interviews I did get never made it past the first round. Never got any feedback. The few recruiters I could get were equally useless, usually showing off some roles that I looked like a good fit for before completely ghosting me.

I wondered if my resume was the issue, and had several people, as well as ChatGPT look at it, and got nothing but good feedback with minor nitpicks.

A lot of the jobs I saw within my area of experience either wanted high senior people, or people with very niche skill sets, and apparently they can afford to be picky right now.

Most recently, I’ve had interviews that seem promising and people (family friends) now claiming they can get me a job, but unfortunately this year has battered me, with large expenses left and right My lease is up now, so I’m looking at on site roles, but the rental market is so bad here I’m afraid it’s too late.

One one hand, I was never happy with my career, and now the golden handcuffs are off, on the other hand, I have nowhere else to go, and the shit that matters just keeps getting more and more expensive

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

#807

Post by dustincoates » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

CodeSgt wrote: post #770

dustincoates wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How long ago was this now?

16 years now. Not sure if it would be as effective today. I doubt it was truly effective even back then.

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

#808

Post by the_only_law » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

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?

It is pretty funny. During Covid I heard all sorts of doom about inflation and the economy, while I was chugging along great.

Now, no one will shut up about how there are so many jobs and how the economy is doing great, but I’m fucked.

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

#809

Post by the_only_law » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

firefoxd wrote: post #63

I hate to say this, stop applying. Find a recruiter on LinkedIn. This is what it has come to. There are thousands of resumes being sent at my company, yet the recruiter can't find anyone. Why? Because no one is applying through her link. The regular resume channel is reserved for bots at this point. Contact a person and you have more chances.

> Find a recruiter on LinkedIn.

They keep fucking me over. Had one a few weeks back that messaged me with 2 roles that looked like a perfect 1:1 fit for my resume. Never heard from him again.

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

#810

Post by foobiekr » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

hunterhod wrote: post #712

MentallyRetired wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this tech downturn is all a collusion amongst tech leaders to bring down software developer salaries. How are so many places hiring yet so many are laying off thousands, and most of them in tech/development? Even the places laying people off are still hiring those positions.

How would such a joint-coordinated effort work? Is such collusion possible at this scale?

Well, one arm of it is the H1-b program.