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Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

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Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#91

Post by j33zusjuice »

tfsh wrote: post #36

Wasn't laid off (end of contract) but spent ~3 months looking and interviewing for jobs. Applied to about 30 positions, heard back from 3 and received 1 offer for Google. Didn't exactly give me confidence about the future when I may be looking for another job... YOE: 3

Dude. You got an offer from Google. How do you not have confidence for the future?! Google took you! Who cares what the places that didn’t take you think? *GOOGLE* thinks you’re good. That’s a hell of a statement.

But getting a job at Google tells you that your overall skillset was not the problem. You just didn’t match the other positions as well as some others for some reason. FAANG level jobs are always hard to get, always hyper-competitive. You’re obviously good enough to be there, so the worst case scenario is likely that you’d have to leave the prestige of FAANG and similar. You’ll be employable for as long as you want to be, I’m sure.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#92

Post by andy_ppp »

base698 wrote: post #19
robertlagrant wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since with the recent release of ChatGPT now gives the excuse for managers to be inclined to hire less engineers and programmers as the cheap money has essentially evaporated I don't understand the relevance of ChatGPT to this.

I assume because I've seen ChatGPT successfully: - write a Gitlab ci job that tests python code and outputs a junit test report. - can you add code coverage? - write a sql table that has users, age, and a biography - write python that parses the above output from the table - now use a lexer and parser - create a unit test to verify it's correct. - write a perl one liner that parses a list of users and phone numbers I…

On being able to replace a real programmer I'd say ChatGPT is about the same distance lane assist is from FSD.

Why you ask? Well it's because most of what a programmer does is more complex than the AI can handle right now. For example my job involves the following:

a) multiple interacting systems and management of the relationships between them

b) > 90% of my work does not involve writing new code

c) the programming part is mostly about changing existing code

d) or debugging (and sometimes setting up a debugger and running code)

e) reading hundreds of articles to figure out why the trivial example these systems are good at doesn't work (sometimes on someone else's machine or staging only)

f) taking product requirements and making small alterations to allow them to become reality (and knowing when to tell people about the decisions you made and when not to)

g) talking to people who might know more about the specific problem you are facing and when to battle through

h) sharing ideas on how to do things with the wider team

i) fighting the good fight and sneaking in refactoring when people are not looking

I don't think we are anywhere near these things yet.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#93

Post by throw_aws_inter »

speeder wrote: post #80
throw_aws_inter wrote: post #16

I interviewed for 1.5 months (!!!) for AWS for a senior position, went through all the stages through the end. Then silence. I kept emailing the recruiters responsible for my interview, I kept getting out-of-office replies. Then I contacted some higher ups I found, told me they assigned my interview to other recruiters. No replies from them though. I have emailed them a bunch of times including the higher up. Then th…

That is just Amazon being Amazon. When they interviewed me the first time, the interviewer didn't show to work, so they asked another guy to interview me, he ended interviewing me in a language he didn't knew, to a position using another language entirely, the whole thing was a farce. Some years later Amazon recruiters contacted me, asked me to go interview in person. Then during the interview in their offices, they…

Oh yeah, I didn't mention everything, I had analogous experience. At the second interview video call the interviewer didn't show up, because the recruiter forgot to tell him about it. At the fifth video call with a different interviewer, he was an hour late because of the daylight savings change, again the recruiters' fault.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#94

Post by cahoot_bird »

Not laid off, but webdev I've been applying about a year. About the past 3-4 months have been harder to land interviews than early on, even if I write sample code in company's stack/language and contact them. Have an online portfolio and contract work experience.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#95

Post by orthoxerox »

kybernetyk wrote: post #85
throwaway908365 wrote: post #71

Have not been laid off and I am not living in the bay area, but in Germany. Still wanted to offer some perspective. ~15 years fullstack and DevOps experience, visited top local university, no degree. Mostly Python + some other languages. Have been interviewing for Lead SE/DevOps/SRE roles as well as some architecture positions. My findings about the German job market for developers: - Remote-work is here to stay. Alm…

Is this 100k gross or net pay?

100% gross

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#96

Post by badcppdev »

ryandetzel wrote: post #3

Laid off from Twitter three weeks ago, lots of interest and cool companies out there. I binged interviews and have three offers to consider. Senior eng with 20 years experience

Sorry for slightly off topic response but is there a site (twitter account?) you can recommend for (unsubstantiated) gossip about what's happening inside twitter?

While I'm obviously guilty of wanting to know details about the 'car crash' I'm also curious on a professional level about the challenges and changes that are happening to the engineering teams in this extreme situation.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#97

Post by yarky »

kmac_ wrote: post #70
0xsnowcrash wrote: post #14

I'm regularly getting enquiries but I do DevOps (AWS, Kubernetes and Istio) so I guess my skillset is still in demand. I guess what's more important for me is the type of work. I'm looking for startup work that's a bit more secure now, if that's possible, lol! Doesn't seem so easy to find.

Bunch of companies migrate their stack to Kubernetes or other orchestrators (side effect of moving to microservices even when not needed) so you are safe and in demand for long.

> even when not needed

Examples? Every time I see kubernetes pop up it's because of better performance or lesser costs.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#98

Post by manmal »

kybernetyk wrote: post #85
throwaway908365 wrote: post #71

Have not been laid off and I am not living in the bay area, but in Germany. Still wanted to offer some perspective. ~15 years fullstack and DevOps experience, visited top local university, no degree. Mostly Python + some other languages. Have been interviewing for Lead SE/DevOps/SRE roles as well as some architecture positions. My findings about the German job market for developers: - Remote-work is here to stay. Alm…

Is this 100k gross or net pay?

Gross. Net depends on various factors (kids, spouse etc) so isn’t usually used for comparison. Personally I‘m living in Austria, where things are quite similar - I‘d say 100k gross should work out to 55k net for a freelancer. That’s after having paid for a deductible company car and hardware etc, so, again, hard to compare to others.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#99

Post by fxtentacle »

throwaway908365 wrote: post #71

Have not been laid off and I am not living in the bay area, but in Germany. Still wanted to offer some perspective. ~15 years fullstack and DevOps experience, visited top local university, no degree. Mostly Python + some other languages. Have been interviewing for Lead SE/DevOps/SRE roles as well as some architecture positions. My findings about the German job market for developers: - Remote-work is here to stay. Alm…

100k€ for 15 years of experience seems about right for me. If you factor in all the freebies and tax refunds and stuff, that's roughly equivalent to earning 1000€ per billable day as a German freelancer, or the equivalent of about $150 per hour in the US.

Typical freebies in Germany include:

- 13th salary as a Christmas gift (so +8.3% salary)

- only half of your health insurance costs are included in the nominal salary

- tax refunds if you buy a PC, do courses, or drive to work with your car

- company pays for children's daycare

- government-backed retirement fund with generous payouts. If you pay in 83€ per month now you can expect to receive at least €450 per month later.

Also, with a bit of searching, you can rent a house with garden for €2000 per month even in large cities like Hamburg or Berlin. As a result, an 100k€ annual salary will be enough for you alone to comfortably bankroll a family of 5 - something that's almost impossible in the bay area due to high rents and insane costs of living.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#100

Post by century19 »

adamcharnock wrote: post #15
a-bit-of-code wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that kind of seniority/experience, what fraction of companies asked LeetCodey stuff? Was it easy or medium/hard problems? How much time did you have to spend preparing/practicing?

Not the OP, but with similar experience levels and I’ve never done a LeetCode interview, and even regular interviews are pretty light. I mostly contract though, and they generally offer me full time after a little while if I want it.

Contracting interviews are nothing like FAANG though, I literally had one that was a 30m chat with a couple of softball questions. Compared to FAANG they are all a walk in the park and barely need any prep.
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