Market is same as before, here in EU, but people just got a bit more cautious and economy is not exactly prospering with the war and inflation. Hence, a lot of risk aversion and tightened purses. Also, due to sudden spike in interest rates, raising investment(previously you gave a shiny pie-in-sky presentation and got money, now you need to demonstrate demand and having actual revenue and improvement plans etc..) hiring became much more slow and competitive. Also a lot of people left school due to inflation and higher taxes and scrambled to find some work as savings were abysmal due to follow your dream and get rich quick schemes(crypto/social media shills etc).
Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
841–850 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#842Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you view the list here: https://leetcode.com/problemset/all/ you will see the questions tagged by company (there is a paid option as well). If they have a name you know, they probably do this style of interview.
I don't understand what I'm looking at. Who is tagging companies? Why would leetcode know the specific questions people are being asked to whiteboard?
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#843It'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…
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…
I am likely not revealing anything new to you (nor I know much about hiring), but:
Taking a look at your CV, I notice that you have a lot of very short work stints, averaging at about a position per year.
This is probably just the nature of contracting, but I can see this putting off most companies that are looking for someone to dive deeply in the business domain and work on supporting a project long-term.
I also feel a lot of those "we need someone with experience on X technology to onboard us or fix some urgent problem" jobs are on a downtrend, given the rise of XaaS solutions, convergence of development stacks, more documentation, stuff like ChatGPT, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#844As 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…
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.
The overall quality of an individual employee has declined considerably. Mass hiring and layoffs are to an extent part of a more elaborate hiring process. Right now market dynamics are making this possible but as things tighten up there will be salary depression and more intern type roles coming back as the "hiring" process gets extended where previously it was compressed.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#845The market is bad. Since getting laid off in March, I've applied to 185 jobs. I'm a director, 25 years, and I can only work remotely.
What's new this time around is: + Nobody at target companies will respond to questions (via email or linkedin) + At least 50% of application forms require desired salary (seriously who does this for a director or VP role?); I've dropped my limit by 50k + Radio silence from companies. most never even send a rejection. Very few applications get to screenings. + For some openings, I write some test code up front top demonstrate my interest, and still no bites.
I suspect that TA teams are getting blown up by the traffic, but... for leadership roles, I would expect more careful handling.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#846Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't know their situation or work history, why reply with something so negative?
A veteran is someone who has served in the armed forces. It's like saying "I have 10 years tenure" when they're not a tenured professor, but just mean "have worked in the industry/position for 10 years".
Veteran has a broader meaning than just ex-military. Saying you're "a veteran" implies military service, while "a veteran of $foo" does not.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#847Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone uses the FAANG loop + system design + leetcode design now I don't know when that change happened but it is practically universal
Everyone? Nah that's Hyperbole. In my experience about 40% do. I've never had an issue simply showing an open source past project I created, going through my portfolio of other project examples, and my resume.
I stopped interviewing about 4 months ago because this, in my experience, is NOT hyperbole. Also, 80% of job descriptions, threw kubernetes into the requirements on top of 10 other competencies seemingly just because they can.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#848Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intermediate/mid for sure, but if I get a resume from someone whose first programming job was 2018 and they're calling themselves senior, I'm throwing that in the trash unless like you said they're from VC-funded startups that are going to have massive title inflation and they're applying for a realistic (mid-level) role.
Might be better to just ignore job titles altogether and only look at descriptions of what they actually did. Employees generally don't decide on the job titles used in their company.
I don’t even have titles on my resume. Everything is “software developer” or occasionally something slightly different if I think it’s relevant to the particular work I did there.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#849Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 10 year career veteran A 10 year career does not make you a veteran..
You don't know their situation or work history, why reply with something so negative?
Fair point that it reads negatively. I was smiling while I wrote it. A 10 year period of time does not invoke the word veteran to me. But it’s not a big deal and I’d rather not bring the negative vibes.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#850As 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…
I am seeing the same thing. I have 5 open positions. This past week I have seen a huge uptick in applications. We have streamlined our process to 3 interviews. We do not do Leetcode.
Still with even a streamlined process, we were not seeing any senior Python developers for several months.