"Can we say the job market is only good for junior developers?" No, not at all. It's hardest on them.
Thanks
Ask HN: Experienced devs (20+ yrs exp), are you getting interview calls?
41–50 of 51 posts
Re: Ask HN: Experienced devs (20+ yrs exp), are you getting interview calls?
#42Yeah (18 years of exp here, so not quite 20+), I'm getting lots of messages on LinkedIn. I turn the more promising ones into interview calls. The interest is mostly based on a combination of fairly strong CV overall and familiarity with a couple of technologies which are currently in vogue in my niche (Scala development). I'd say you need at least one of those, and preferably two. Without it, you don't seem to bring…
Thanks. By familiarity, do you mean using it in the day job?.
Re: Ask HN: Experienced devs (20+ yrs exp), are you getting interview calls?
#43Well you're not really on LinkedIn it sounds like. I thought the job market wasn't super hot because I was only getting a trickle of recruiters pinging me on LinkedIn for the longest time, but back in April I flicked the switch to say I was open to new work on LinkedIn and got 19 recruiters contacting me that first day, and another 12 the next day, and ~8 a day for the next week or so after that. And now that I have…
Thanks for the useful info. I am not sure open to job is a good thing to do. People might assume the person is desperate for a job
Re: Ask HN: Experienced devs (20+ yrs exp), are you getting interview calls?
#44Yes. I've tried to remove all contact info from LinkedIn as well as job details (other than company, tenure and title) and I still get 5+ recruiters contacting me per week.
Thanks
Re: Ask HN: Experienced devs (20+ yrs exp), are you getting interview calls?
#45Posted this comment on a previous thread. Recently switched jobs. About to start week 9. 40+ years of experience. Strong LinkedIn profile. Tired Github profile that needs an update. I applied for only one job at the insistence of my wife because it was with a renowned company. I had to actually write out a C.V. to apply, and as of today, nine weeks into my new job, 13+ weeks later, my application is "still under revi…
Thanks. Interesting
Re: Ask HN: Experienced devs (20+ yrs exp), are you getting interview calls?
#46May have more to do with your experience or how you are selling it
Thanks
Re: Ask HN: Experienced devs (20+ yrs exp), are you getting interview calls?
#47Not a dev, but dev bg -- looking for all these dev-adjacent roles -- i'm old as rocks, but there are a lot of us out there, especially in big boring non-tech companies: * Solutions Architect * Technical Product Owner * Sales Engineer * etc. i'm now getting blown up, but i'm keeping up my 250+ applications/day, and mixing in studying (aws, etc.), company/market research, NBA (a little too capitalist and exploitative a…
Thanks. Thats very useful.
Re: Ask HN: Experienced devs (20+ yrs exp), are you getting interview calls?
#48Hiring and recruiter outreach mostly happens on LinkedIn. Your unwillingness to use the platform is holding you back severely. I suggest you work on updating your profile and using it for job applications.
You are right. I am a little reluctant to do so because my current employer/colleagues will also notice it. Anyways, lets see
FYI there is a setting under Privacy that will prevent notifying your current connections when you make changes to your profile.
Re: Ask HN: Experienced devs (20+ yrs exp), are you getting interview calls?
#49Yeah (18 years of exp here, so not quite 20+), I'm getting lots of messages on LinkedIn. I turn the more promising ones into interview calls. The interest is mostly based on a combination of fairly strong CV overall and familiarity with a couple of technologies which are currently in vogue in my niche (Scala development). I'd say you need at least one of those, and preferably two. Without it, you don't seem to bring…
Thanks. By familiarity, do you mean using it in the day job?.
That is ideal, yes.
Re: Ask HN: Experienced devs (20+ yrs exp), are you getting interview calls?
#50So, the unfortunate truth is that the #1 recruiting tool in the industry is LinkedIn and recruiters aren't going to look farther than LinkedIn 95% of the time. They are also going to take an application and then look up the person on LinkedIn and, if they don't see any information, they are going to pass more often than not.
I know you don't want to do it, but if you are serious about finding new work then I'd strongly urge you to make your LinkedIn shine. You can always remove it after you find a new job.
What are recruiters going to look for?
First and foremost it's going to be about technology affinity. If they work for a Java shop, they are going to be looking for people with Java or C# backgrounds. If it's a ruby shop then for ruby, python, node.js, etc.
Second, they are going to look to see if what you've actually done matches what they are looking for. Are they looking for someone to do machine learning pipelines? Are they looking to decompose a monolith into microservices? Those should show up in your descriptions.
Third, and probably way less important for many places, but they are also going to look for your company history affinity. Do they think of themselves as "IBM-lite"? Then they'll look for people who have lots of big company experience. Are they a rapidly growing Rails shop? They are going to look for places like Shopify, Stripe, etc.
If they can't find you on LinkedIn, you are putting yourself in a bit of a hole. Not one you can't get out of and be successful without, but it's a handicap.
As an example, and not to try to be self promoting, I received a notification this morning that 445 people had viewed my LinkedIn last week (I'm being generous and assuming LinkedIn is telling the truth here...i know i know). I've been in the industry for 20 years. I'm mgmt now, which makes it slightly different, but out of the 445 views I received 10 or so solicitations for jobs, 5 or 6 people reaching out looking for a job, and 100 or so sales pitches.
Anyway, I wish you luck. I'm hiring (rails, monolith -> SOA, postgres, APIs, etc). Happy to chat if you want to learn more.