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

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

#901

Post by scarface_74 »

noodle wrote: post #896
scarface_74 wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think my suggestion is, do what you can to stand out Really, once you are unemployed and looking for a job, it’s too late to do anything to stand out. The time to do something to standout is while you are working. How will emailing someone directly help if he doesn’t have a unique set of skills that helps him stand out? If he is just another generic developer (no offense intended I don’t know anything about him a…

Strongly disagree with this. Its very easy to stand out, in many different ways. > How will emailing someone directly help if he doesn’t have a unique set of skills that helps him stand out? Because they will indicate their very direct interest in the company in a way that people who are spray-and-praying 100s of resumes a day won't. Because they get to briefly demonstrate their soft skills to a potential teammate in…

So what are these many ways to stand out that aren’t based on what you did when you were working?

> I'd hire a generic skillset developer who is a great communicator and teammate over a technical genius asshole who shreds teams apart 99.9% of the time.

How would you determine that if they can’t demonstrate their communication skills and their ability to work well with others based on their past experience - you know the standard “tell me about a time when…” questions?

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

#902

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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.

A past employer had a memorial page for its founder where one employee related a story of how he did this and ran into a man at the reception desk who accepted his resume and promised to pass it along but wouldn't give his name. He got the job and discovered that he managed to run into the founder at just the right time.

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

#903

Post by dorfsmay »

sigotirandolas wrote: post #843
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…

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 fe…

Thank you for taking the time to look at it and commenting.

It is indeed the nature of contracting and project work. Note that there are 3 times where I have done contracts back to back for 4 or 5 years for the same company, which should show that I don't just jump ship all the time and am able to commit for a long time.

It made more sense to highlight each project individually in an economy with a lot of need for contractors for short stints, but point taken, I'll see if I can highlight the fact that 2, or 3, or 4 consequent contracts are for the same company. Maybe even just bold the company names.

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

#904

Post by yieldcrv »

vasili111 wrote: post #792
noodle wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to give you my POV - my company is still hiring because the business fundamentals are still strong. We're making money and using that money to pay people. But I have friends in network who had to lay off because they were hiring against VC cash instead of revenue, with the expectation of raising another round later. But they now don't expect to be able to raise that next round so easily so they have to slow the…

> Money WAS cheap and easy for a while, and with everyone trying to use that money to grow, you could throw cash around easy to hire/poach/etc. and had to compete heavily for talent. Now you can't, money is much more expensive and tougher to get and you have to be more deliberate. Why it changed? What happened?

basically the mechanism that the Fed uses to keep interest rates low involves creating a lot of new money and using that to buy bonds from other people, manipulating the market for bonds (high priced bonds = low interest rates).

Most of those bonds were government treasuries, but other bonds were corporate bonds - sheets of paper that say I'll pay you back in 10 years - and sold directly to the fed for newly created money. so the corporation printed money and got newly created money in exchange. they just have to pay it back in 10 years at like 2% interest a year. Many of those corporate issuers parked that money in private equity firms, or were private equity firms themselves, if they weren't directly hiring employees for pet projects - the private equity firm would be investing in newly formed pet projects.

All of that has stopped now, as the fed stopped buying bonds and doing the most to get interest rates high. Doing everything except selling the bonds they bought.

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

#905

Post by dorfsmay »

nonethewiser wrote: post #613
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…

Yeah its tough. But something like 3 interviews a month (and tough to pass) is more what I’ve seen. With less experience. 1 in 6 months could be bad luck but Id wager he just isn’t applying to enough places.

He and I both, apparently!

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

#907

Post by mixmastamyk »

noodle wrote: post #896
scarface_74 wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think my suggestion is, do what you can to stand out Really, once you are unemployed and looking for a job, it’s too late to do anything to stand out. The time to do something to standout is while you are working. How will emailing someone directly help if he doesn’t have a unique set of skills that helps him stand out? If he is just another generic developer (no offense intended I don’t know anything about him a…

Strongly disagree with this. Its very easy to stand out, in many different ways. > How will emailing someone directly help if he doesn’t have a unique set of skills that helps him stand out? Because they will indicate their very direct interest in the company in a way that people who are spray-and-praying 100s of resumes a day won't. Because they get to briefly demonstrate their soft skills to a potential teammate in…

Ha. I think back to all the times I had a "direct interest" in a company and it never amounted to anything. That and twenty nickels would buy a dollar.

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

#908

Post by openplatypus »

expertentipp wrote: post #728
djsegal wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey is there a way to reach out to you? Living in berlin and currently looking for a tech job here

OP only want's you to buy a EUR 600 ticket, and probably a EUR 8000 bootcamp as well.

Not sure why I deserve this petty attack.

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

#909

Post by cpendery »

pwpw wrote: post #626
rsynnott wrote: post #282

It'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…

> whereas everyone else would call that person a junior engineer. Does anyone have advice on what I should call myself? I was a senior in public accounting (~3 years of experience) when I switched into software development after self-teaching for 5 years on the side. I settled for an entry-level role to get my foot in the door, but after 7 months I was made the lead of one of a few teams with the rest being led by pr…

I’ve seen Team Lead for a technical individual who drives/scopes projects and manages SWEs.

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

#910

Post by [deleted] »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #907
noodle wrote: post #896

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly disagree with this. Its very easy to stand out, in many different ways. > How will emailing someone directly help if he doesn’t have a unique set of skills that helps him stand out? Because they will indicate their very direct interest in the company in a way that people who are spray-and-praying 100s of resumes a day won't. Because they get to briefly demonstrate their soft skills to a potential teammate in…

Ha. I think back to all the times I had a "direct interest" in a company and it never amounted to anything. That and twenty nickels would buy a dollar.

[deleted]
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