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Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

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Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#271

Post by jsnell »

bussierem wrote: post #268
bussierem wrote: post #60

Just to give you my own experience right now, I literally just accepted a new job yesterday after job hunting for 3-ish weeks. I had multiple job interviews, even more job interview requests. I don't say this to brag, so I apologize if it comes off that way. I just wanted to give you what could be a cancelling-out anecdata point to your own experience. I wouldn't let it get you down too much. Keep hunting and keep ap…

@dang If you wouldn't mind helping a guy out, I need to remove this link from my post but I cannot edit the post anymore. I don't believe I was supposed to post the link on HN like this and I need to prevent others from clicking it please... TO ANYONE ELSE: Please don't click that link anymore!

Sending an email to will give much better odds of dang or another mod noticing this in time.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#272

Post by gruez »

heavyset_go wrote: post #85
mathverse wrote: post #37

Can anyone explain to me how come we are about to hit recession when there is an incredible demand (as in people have the money and want to spend them) for everything (furniture, appliances, anything really..) but there's no supply?

Interest rates were raised and there seems to be a concerted effort to blame inflation on higher wages and low unemployment, so those are being dealt with with hiring freezes: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-fed-wants-corporate-a...

...except the fed doesn't have the authority to enact hiring freezes. They can raise interest rates which might cause hiring freezes, but it's also a policy tool with wide ranging effects so saying inflation is being "dealt with with hiring freezes" is still a bad characterization.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#273

Post by giaour »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #115
giaour wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every team at MSFT does their own hiring, so experiences there won't be uniform.

Do they literally do the whole hiring process, or do take use a central hiring department to help them. It sounds really inefficient to have every team duplicate hiring personnel? Though of course you need the team to be in control of the process. Do the teams organise any other company wide functions in that way? Hardware procurement, maybe?

There is a central HR department that creates job postings, employs recruiters and sourcers, and handles standardized onboarding processes, but conducting interview loops and making hiring decisions is handled by each team individually. As opposed to companies like Google, where as I understand it, you get hired and then find a specific position.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#274

Post by bussierem »

jsnell wrote: post #271
bussierem wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@dang If you wouldn't mind helping a guy out, I need to remove this link from my post but I cannot edit the post anymore. I don't believe I was supposed to post the link on HN like this and I need to prevent others from clicking it please... TO ANYONE ELSE: Please don't click that link anymore!

Sending an email to will give much better odds of dang or another mod noticing this in time.

thanks! done.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#275

Post by PheonixPharts »

scottlamb wrote: post #196

> I hope some experienced people in the industry can give some hope and advice. Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market. First pandemic, then recession? F... Overall, I'd say relax a bit. You're still in a good situation. Recessions are hard for many, but software engineers were among the best off during the last one and I expect will be this time also. > I wan…

Software will be fine for people who are in an unknown top X% of developers out there. Depending on how bad this is that might be the top 80%, it might be the top 1%.

The industry is so crazy now because of the last recession. Investors didn't know where to put their money after the real estate collapse and they decided to pour it all into funding startups hoping, at all costs, to catch the next Facebook.

We're starting to see that maybe even Facebook isn't really the next Facebook.

Additionally we never really solved the root of the last crisis: exploding credit/debt.

It's impossible to know how this will all really play out this time (who would have guessed that the pandemic would be immediately followed by a stock boom). However my advice would be to focus on adaptability. Don't chase a dead dream too long. If tech never comes back to the insane period we're in now, I think there will be a lot of former developers that suffer a long time before they realize this.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#276

Post by RhodesianHunter »

flutas wrote: post #80
tynpeddler wrote: post #21

I've had meta and microsoft cancel on me. I also went all the way through the interview loop at one company, received very positive feedback but was told that they had decided to close the position without filling it. There's definitely a pullback and it started about 2 months ago. Update: As of now, about half of the companies I've interviewed with at one level or another, have abruptly halted their process due to e…

I had a similar interview experience with Disney recently. Going so far as them telling me I would have an offer letter in hand within 2 weeks, followed by silence. When I reached back out to them they basically played dumb about it and said some phrase about how "their hiring needs are always changing."

You dodged a bullet. They're notoriously poor employer. Think Amazon's culture without the resume cache.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#277

Post by loeg »

scottlamb wrote: post #196

> I hope some experienced people in the industry can give some hope and advice. Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market. First pandemic, then recession? F... Overall, I'd say relax a bit. You're still in a good situation. Recessions are hard for many, but software engineers were among the best off during the last one and I expect will be this time also. > I wan…

> On the bright side, it's rare for profitable large tech companies to lay off software engineers, so if you get in, you're pretty safe.

Many profitable tech companies have small scale, approximately annual layoffs, even in a strong economy. That said, I agree in general.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#278

Post by Solvitieg »

iepathos wrote: post #242

This is not the situation for any startups who have already secured funding with a decent runway for expansion. As a software engineer, you're living in a golden age for your profession. Most tech companies are offering significantly higher salaries and bonuses now than pre-pandemic. There are not nearly enough engineers to fulfill the needs of all the successful tech companies. Best advice I can give you is to make…

This post comes off as dated. What you're describing is how the market was in summer 2021. Not spring 2022.

The paradigm shift occurred in March and the sentiment continues to chill each week. Any signs of a "golden age" are the remnants of decision making that occurred sometime in 2021.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#279

Post by giaour »

ramesh31 wrote: post #101
bergenty wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired?

>Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired? Nah that'll torch your resume for years. Unless you're a total rockstar otherwise, I'd be terrified to explain a 6 month stint.

You only need to worry if you have a series of very short stints, especially if there's any gap between them.

But one six month stint is fine, especially if you can explain it away with something pithy about how the economy tanked and the company shed a significant percentage of its workforce.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#280

Post by angarg12 »

I always get flak for this but here we go anyway: the key is to manage expectations in the short term.

First realize that the market you know is far from the norm. We were at the end of the longest bull run in history and the hottest tech job market in memory. These are things you can kiss good bye for a while: eye popping salaries with little experience, kombucha on tap and Prosecco Friday, headcount doubling every 6 months, 50% YoY stock growth...

Yes, your timing is bad and it sucks. Such is life. I graduated in 2008 into one of the worst economies in my country. Imagine living paycheck to paycheck working as a software engineer.

The good news is you have a few years of experience, so you are in a better position to weather this than a fresh grad. When the economy starts picking up again you'll be in an excellent position to take advantage of it.

This is a fact: big companies are still hiring and are very resilient. Deep pockets will take the chance to attract talent. Amazon still has a huge gap due to the great resignation and hasn't slowed down. Now is a good chance to join for a stable job during turbulent times.

This is an opinion: I truly believe many decacorns from the next generation will come out of this. The recession will clean up the undergrowth and leave room for the next rocketships to take off. Imagine being an early engineer at Google? that might be happening now. Of course the trick is to pick the right horse out of thousands.

What path you choose depends on your situation. If you want stability try big tech. If you want to play the lottery keep an eye open for startups.

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