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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?

#951

Post by kaycey2022 »

underlipton wrote: post #816
kaycey2022 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calm down V for Vendetta

No, they're right. The only saving grace is that it's not limited to the private sector; our political processes basically run on bribes, too, so they're just following our leaders' example. Just need to get bureaucracy in on the act, and we'll have the "Eastern Europe on the Eve of Collapse" trifecta.

I don’t think the problem is just easy corruptibility. Organisation leadership may have let this fester by not paying any thought towards aligning the incentives of their workers at every level and their own incentives correctly. Corruption is an easy explanation. But it’s probably just human nature to subvert and rebel.

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

#952

Post by 0xfedbee »

expertentipp wrote: post #267
azangru wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do fiscal exercises look like?

You invest in Apple or Tesla, get hit with 30% tax, and receive communication from IRS while living in Europe and having nothing to do with USA. Then try to clarify the whole mess.

TradeRepublic

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

#953

Post by eastbound »

ItsBob wrote: post #85

I thought I'd add a data point to this discussion. I'm in the UK and the traditional dev/tech job route was via something like JobServe, Indeed etc., where you see a role advertised via an employment agency and you send your CV hoping for a callback. I'm in a stable contract so I'm not looking but two weeks ago, I was contacted by two agents, one day apart, both unrelated to one another, completely out of the blue. T…

France here (not Paris). I’m a small startup, I spent 1 year going beyond 2 employees, and I needed to be 9. I had the income for 9, so I’m not a flimsy startup, wages are cool, tech stack is state-of-the-art.

- Indeed easily costs 500$ per month without result,

- Employees know it so they slack around. Not only they performed bad work during this period, but I also had to deal with firing one to show the other that bad work in unacceptable.

- Took recruiters at 7-10k€ per recruitee, for 1 year, didn’t work out, their candidates kept failing the basic Java tests (like they can’t align 2-for 1-if),

- Took an inhouse recruiter, 3000€ per month for 8 months, he overhauled the communication, wording style, videos, blogging, LinkedIn news, and did those 30-minutes calls before our 2 rounds of interviews.

Now we’re 8 and employees are actually pumped up motivated at work. And thanks to this, work is also more interesting than when we were few, because we have time to innovate, we’re not struggling under support workload or having to run around keeping the servers hot.

—-

I attribute the new fashion of 30-minutes calls to 1. scarcity due to Covid disorganization, 2. radios and media, even business shows, blasting out that the newnormal is 32hrs a week, 100% remote, and that if you haven’t been promoted to management in the last year you are wasting your life with your employer, 3. Students have been incredibly badly taught during Covid, so they suck at programming during interviews, 4. Therefore, employees are not worth spending the money on, and we’re better off spending the money on recruiters. So those 30-minutes call are a redistribution between who provides the value; the employee provides less value, the recruiter does.

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

#954

Post by herbst »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #519
herbst wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be totally weird out if some of my past co-workers suddenly reaches out to me with bullshit smalltalk to ask for a job. Or random people from my past sending me happy birthday ever year. I am probably not social enough to understand that, but that sounds like a lot of work just to stand out as kinda weird.

The job market as a whole and the industry as a whole doesn't give a crap about you. Your ability to extract a decent life out of working in software in the long run depends on the relationships you make. It's rare to actually work on a team that executes well and where you enjoy those people's company. In my 20+ year career it's only happened less than a handful of times for me. So if any of those people reach out t…

That's a really interesting POV and I totally get where you are coming from.

It just never happened to me, I picked my jobs myself, bootstrapped my companies without promoting it in a inner circle.

In fact most people I know got their job by just applying for it or recruiting companies.

I wonder where I would be at if I had networking skills, when my coding skills already brought me everywhere I wanted to be.

Maybe it's cultural, maybe it's just my social circle.

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

#955

Post by expertentipp »

0xfedbee wrote: post #952
expertentipp wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You invest in Apple or Tesla, get hit with 30% tax, and receive communication from IRS while living in Europe and having nothing to do with USA. Then try to clarify the whole mess.

TradeRepublic

Not available in some EU countries I need it, but thanks!

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

#956

Post by sukki07 »

SCUSKU wrote: post #170
mrcnkoba wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you describe the process of learning the skill of being interviewed?

For me, I was actually just really bad at selling myself (job interviews are not where you should have false humility I learned). I was very fortunate in that my girlfriend helped me a lot here. But quite frankly what she did was very straightforward. She would do a 30 minute mock interview with me, and ask me pretty standard behavioral questions. Questions like: - Can you tell us about a time when you had to work on…

definitely use chatgpt to get the typical behaviour questions, works like a charm.

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

#957

Post by laichzeit0 »

solarmist wrote: post #720
laichzeit0 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is weird. Work is not just a place where you transact time/utility for money. You can also get to know people and form friendships. I still regularly chat with past work colleagues and meet up with them when I travel. In the last 20 years I’ve interviewed for exactly one job, and that was my first one out of university. Since then it’s always been people I know offering me new positions. People don’t just h…

>I’ve interviewed for exactly one job I hear this every so often, but do you mean that literally? It's so far outside my reality I can't believe it still happens. I've never seen anyone get a job at an established company without SOME kind of interview. Even Guido van Rossum (creator of Python) has needed to do some interviews when changing companies. Even if they are the hiring manager at a new company I've never se…

The interviews were meeting the people, having a chat about what kind of work they’re doing, what I’d be responsible for, etc. Nothing technical. More like an informal chat where it was like them trying to convince me to come over, not me trying to convince them why they should hire me.

As for the HR process, yes there’s always HR. It’s usually a few days after the chat and just a formality to tick the boxes and explain leave policies, the medical cover, run background checks, but HR really has never had any influence over the decision.

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

#958

Post by [deleted] »

Varqu wrote: post #671
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…

Yes, the market is pretty bad right now, and Indeed's data shows it quite well: https://www.hiringlab.org/data (go to Sectors and choose Software Development) We are currently at -64% from the 2022 peak job market and even -20% compared to pre-covid number of job openings.

[deleted]

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

#959

Post by prepend »

injb wrote: post #938
prepend wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do you have your work experience dating back to the 80s? I kind of disagree. It’s not like people are printing out or even reading back that far. May as well include it, but certainly don’t expect people to read it. I’m currently hiring and reading a lot of resumes. I rarely read past the first 2-3 pages, but sometime when I’m curious go back to learn more about career path. Has someone been programming for 30…

I'm not an expert but your implicit premise that it's OK for a cv or resume to have multiple pages surprises me. One page! Put the most recent relevant stuff on one page and send that. I don't agree with the idea that it's OK to include more info because people don't have to read it. They do have to read it because it might contain a red flag. Every word you type is making work for someone, and if it's not then why w…

With digital files, I don’t think it makes more work. Different people want different things and it’s hard to know who will be reading.

For my resume, I add on new items after each position or paper or new thing or whatever. So I’m just adding on new sections every few years. If I was starting fresh I probably wouldn’t write pages and pages.

I agree that the first page should contain all essential information. But as for the extra pages, people only read if they have some reason.

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

#960

Post by prepend »

scarface_74 wrote: post #948
prepend wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do you have your work experience dating back to the 80s? I kind of disagree. It’s not like people are printing out or even reading back that far. May as well include it, but certainly don’t expect people to read it. I’m currently hiring and reading a lot of resumes. I rarely read past the first 2-3 pages, but sometime when I’m curious go back to learn more about career path. Has someone been programming for 30…

The issue what that is I have no idea what his focus is and how does it help you determine whether I would be a good hire for your company to know I did C (and FORTRAN) in the 90s?

I would like to know if you did C or FORTRAN in the 90s because it’s different than if you were building houses.

Someone who has been programming for 25 years, starting in the trenches is different from someone who changes careers in the 00s and learns programming.

And I prefer some context to know what someone means as if it was just a line for “FooCorp 1995-2000, Programmer” does that mean FORTRAN or excel macros?

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