Unraveling of the tech hiring market • Hacker News Board

Re: Unraveling of the tech hiring market

#11

Post by tosseraccount » Fri, Mar 18, 2016, 5:51 PM UTC

elemeno wrote: post #5

tosseraccount wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do their hedge funds perform compared to benchmarks?

They're proprietary traders (that is, they trade with their own money and don't have clients - unlike a hedge fund), so they're very unlikely to tell the world what their performance looks like. If it's bad, they'd not want you to know, if it's good they'd not want their competitors to know!

It looks like they are a high frequency trading outfit.

It would be interesting to know how these private black box firms actually performed compared with the returns on a transparent security like the Vanguard S&P 500 fund.

Re: Unraveling of the tech hiring market

#12

Post by Arcten » Fri, Mar 18, 2016, 5:52 PM UTC

aptimpropriety wrote: post #3

"But this year it seems like the seal is broken, and we've seen major companies delivering internship and full-time offers with 2 week (and less) hard deadlines. Other companies now routinely deliver expiring bonus offers for signing early. Many of these offers circumvent or outright break the guidelines set down by schools, and if past matching markets are a model for this one, next year will come with even earlier…

From personal experience, I can say that Google was only willing to extend an internship offer a week past their initial two week deadline. This is despite the fact that I was still interviewing with other companies at the time. From speaking with my university's career center I am not the only person this happened to.

Re: Unraveling of the tech hiring market

#13

Post by busterarm » Fri, Mar 18, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

hackaflocka wrote: post #10

The blogger is writing about what's happening in maybe 4 (top) schools. The rest of the country doesn't have this "problem." Why the downvotes?

It's happening outside of schools. In my own network I know roughly 100 or so junior to mid level devs who have sought jobs in the last year and roughly 25% of them have dealt with exploding offers from NY and SF companies -- most frequently from the smallest and/or lowest-paying companies.

One of my friends saw an offer explode in less than an hour. They had emailed him at 3pm on a Friday and had made another offer and received an acceptance from somebody else by 3:45 and didn't tell him till he emailed his acceptance around 6pm. I've never seen someone so pissed off.

Re: Unraveling of the tech hiring market

#14

Post by golemotron » Fri, Mar 18, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

> In a matching market each person wants only one of each item, each item is unique, and each item can be given to at most one person at a time. Jobs are a classic matching market, and just like any market, matching markets can work well, or poorly.

People may be unique but the dynamics of unraveling are showing either that they are fungible or that recruiters can convince themselves quickly that they are seeing someone better. The latter psychological dynamic is more of the problem but fungibility is too.

Unraveling probably happens in dating too. Dating is a matching market. Maybe the job market is Tinderizing.

Re: Unraveling of the tech hiring market

#15

Post by tikhonj » Fri, Mar 18, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

tosseraccount wrote: post #11

elemeno wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're proprietary traders (that is, they trade with their own money and don't have clients - unlike a hedge fund), so they're very unlikely to tell the world what their performance looks like. If it's bad, they'd not want you to know, if it's good they'd not want their competitors to know!

It looks like they are a high frequency trading outfit. It would be interesting to know how these private black box firms actually performed compared with the returns on a transparent security like the Vanguard S&P 500 fund.

They're not really a high-frequency firm by most definitions. They use some high-level strategies that high-frequency firms also use (ie market making) and have some automation, but don't optimize for latency. Nothing about that is high-frequency trading per se—in many securities, you can make markets manually or semi-manually.

Market making as a strategy is more like providing a service on the markets than it is like investing. You don't make money by holding a security until the price moves; indeed, you try to limit you exposure to the security as much as possible. Instead, you maintain offers to both buy and sell a security at any given time and make money on the differences between them (the "spread"). The main value you provide is liquidity, making it easier for other people to buy and sell the security quickly, rather than price discovery or the like.

While Jane Street does a lot of different things, they're mostly known for market making on ETFs. This makes them more a normal company that happens to operate on public markets than a fund of some sort.

Re: Unraveling of the tech hiring market

#16

Post by kafkaesq » Fri, Mar 18, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #13

hackaflocka wrote: post #10

The blogger is writing about what's happening in maybe 4 (top) schools. The rest of the country doesn't have this "problem." Why the downvotes?

It's happening outside of schools. In my own network I know roughly 100 or so junior to mid level devs who have sought jobs in the last year and roughly 25% of them have dealt with exploding offers from NY and SF companies -- most frequently from the smallest and/or lowest-paying companies. One of my friends saw an offer explode in less than an hour. They had emailed him at 3pm on a Friday and had made another offer…

What makes it really fun sometimes is when a company ignores you or just dithers for months and months... and then out of nowhere comes at you with "Ummmm, so we'd like to hire you, can you decide in the next 48 hours?"

Re: Unraveling of the tech hiring market

#17

Post by newman314 » Fri, Mar 18, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #13

hackaflocka wrote: post #10

The blogger is writing about what's happening in maybe 4 (top) schools. The rest of the country doesn't have this "problem." Why the downvotes?

It's happening outside of schools. In my own network I know roughly 100 or so junior to mid level devs who have sought jobs in the last year and roughly 25% of them have dealt with exploding offers from NY and SF companies -- most frequently from the smallest and/or lowest-paying companies. One of my friends saw an offer explode in less than an hour. They had emailed him at 3pm on a Friday and had made another offer…

While that absolutely sucks, I would say that he dodged a bullet there.

If a company is willing to pull an offer in a hour, there's a very good chance you don't want to work for them.

Re: Unraveling of the tech hiring market

#18

Post by pandaman » Fri, Mar 18, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

joshavant wrote: post #8

This has always been a difficult challenge when job hunting for me, and I'd be curious to hear how others deal with this in their careers. Nearly every job offer I've encountered expects a response within a few days. In practice, I'm usually interviewing at multiple places and at different stages of the interview process at each. The 'exploding offer' system makes applying to multiple companies near impossible for th…

It depends on the job. For a rare skillset the rational strategy is to ignore the explosive nature since it's very unlikely there are any other candidates lined up and the explosiveness is just a way to make you take a worse offer than the current market. In fact, getting this offer is a big clue to shop for better offers. There is no rational reason to go through with rescinding the offer after the deadline so, if it actually happened, you could be relieved that you have dodged the bullet of working at a crazy house.

For a commodity skill it can be legitimate. There are likely other candidates who will take the offer if you pass the deadline. However, the market for these skills is also more transparent so there is usually enough information to decide if the offer any good.

Re: Unraveling of the tech hiring market

#19

Post by busterarm » Fri, Mar 18, 2016, 6:27 PM UTC

newman314 wrote: post #17

busterarm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happening outside of schools. In my own network I know roughly 100 or so junior to mid level devs who have sought jobs in the last year and roughly 25% of them have dealt with exploding offers from NY and SF companies -- most frequently from the smallest and/or lowest-paying companies. One of my friends saw an offer explode in less than an hour. They had emailed him at 3pm on a Friday and had made another offer…

While that absolutely sucks, I would say that he dodged a bullet there. If a company is willing to pull an offer in a hour, there's a very good chance you don't want to work for them.

Total agreement there. There's so many indicators like that though and it's hard to find a company that doesn't tick one of them during the interview process. I lucked out with my current job, for sure, because even though they're sometimes disorganized, my work and my person are valued and treated with respect.

Re: Unraveling of the tech hiring market

#20

Post by pklausler » Fri, Mar 18, 2016, 6:27 PM UTC

Is this not a self-correcting problem? The companies that impose the unrealistic deadlines are going to be more likely to miss out on the better candidates, who are more likely to have other offers, and in the long term that will be self-defeating for those companies.