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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

#381

Post by DeathArrow »

mostertoaster wrote: post #373
skinnymuch wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people in 2010 would’ve taken a $500B or even $300B market cap FB as a major tech company right now without any expectation of getting too much bigger than that ever. $300B, $400B, $500B are still top 25, 15, and 10 in the world today.

But would’ve they predicted the that value of those 300B US dollars would be worth so much less? Many tech companies during COVID gained legitimate value, just like many housing markets, but most the increase in their US dollar price was simply the value of the dollar being less.

>but most the increase in their US dollar price was simply the value of the dollar being less

And in general, the value of a currency is less because there are more money being invented out from thin air. By central banks printing money, through the fractional reserve system, crypto and stable coins...

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

#383

Post by scarface74 »

bradlys wrote: post #371
scarface74 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because out of the 2.7 million developers in the US, most are “dark matter developers”? I know plenty of developers who “only” make $150K-$160k a year and are living in their nice house in the burbs with 2.1 kids, the white picket fence in the “good school system” with a spouse making decent money and don’t have a care in the world.

I think these folks are often very different than FAANG crew tbh. That’s why I say - why bother comparing. It’s not the same even remotely. People I work with at FAANG-etc tend to be top 10 school, upper class upbringing, want to go even higher, etc. It’s different. It’s what you’d expect from doctors. I think different types of personalities are attracted to SV than to rest of the country. We’ve built the stereotype…

As someone who can sort of see things from both sides, I have opinions…

I graduated from a small unknown college in the south in 1996. I moved to the major metropolitan area where I still live after graduating and by 2000, I was making around $70K. For reference, my rent was $600 a month and the 2700 square foot brand new build I bought in the burbs in 2002 was $175K.

Life happened and by the time salaries for SV started getting crazy around 2012-2014, I was 40 years old, remarried and I had a wife and two teenage (step)sons in another 3000+ square foot house in the burbs that we had built in the good school system. I was the dark matter developer who was quite comfortable.

By 2017, I saw the writing on the wall, I knew I was going to plateau soon locally and my youngest was graduating in 2020. I knew I didn’t want to be a 46 year old software engineer at a large company. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was going to be content bumbing around smaller companies as “the adult in the room”.

I just happen to fall into a remote role in cloud consulting (cloud enterprise application development and deployment) at BigTech (yes full time with the same compensation structure as SDEs). I have former coworkers my age that did the same calculus. They had no interest in working in software development at a large company. They already had the life they wanted.

https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherma...

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

#384

Post by glouwbug »

tomatowurst wrote: post #372
jedberg wrote: post #223

I dropped out of school in 1999, and got laid off in 2001 at the start of that recession. I couldn't get a job in 2001 or 2002, so I went back to school and got scholarships to live off of, and graduated in 2003. Recession was still ongoing but I got lucky and had a friend from the first job help me get a job, but other than that, I wasn't getting a lot of interviews. I had friends who were getting hired and then lai…

Unfortunately this will be a 3-sigma recession. Once every 100 year type of thing. The last one lasted 10 years followed by a major world war. If you want to look at what happened to advanced economies that got a taste of credit bubbles Japan is a very good example. 40 years later and still have not reached their ATH. So if that dot com bubble lasted 2 years, this recession will last a lot longer. In addition the doo…

And yet everything will return to normal in 8 months time

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

#385

Post by wowokay »

Honestly, I think it depends on where you are looking. Over in the Midwest we have had trouble finding SDEs, maybe it's because in my area starting pay is in that 65-80k range and I know alot of grads shoot for the startup/FAANG 100k+ pay but in the rest of the tech world I would say more people are moving around because there are so many open roles and not enough people to fill them.

I have been an engineer for over 10 years now, and my advice would be to widen your search and seek out experience and when your ready to level up leverage that experience to move into the pay/role/company you want.

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

#386

Post by davedx »

I already got laid off once this year because the startup I was working for had such a bad time during COVID-19 (small company, high touch sales, sales pipeline was unusually bad due to their target customers not wanting to spend).

These are turbulent times we're living through. Good luck everyone

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

#387

Post by burner556 »

justin wrote: post #350

We are still hiring at Fractal (NFT marketplace for gaming assets). We're a revenue generating company with fewer than 15 team members that just raised $35m in new funding. Founded by experienced founders. https://jobs.lever.co/fractal-is/

Worked at gaming company. Everybody I know including me extremely bearish on NFTs. Good luck.

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

#388

Post by fbrncci »

This is why I keep interviewing, while I am already in late stages of job applications and/or already have a job. This can happen to anyone at any point, whether you are applying for jobs, are in the late interviewing stage, an employee of 5 years or on a 1 year contract.

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

#390

Post by eastbound »

Solvitieg wrote: post #252
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…

> 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. The demand for software engineers was driven partly by zombie app and saas companies all competing for "top talent", dependent entirely on free cash but without sustainable business models. On top of that, the "demand" n…

At risk? We’ll just stop having overinflated salaries. The current situation is insane for employers:

- Employees are not willing to put a little extra (paid extra, I mean - and we’re at the 35hrs week here),

- Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,

- Not willing to work on legacy products where we pay them 40% more.

- In the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -> 50 -> +10k bonus, and they’ll leave for a job at 65 going 75 with a tech stack that ticks all boxes.

- You can teach them React + SpringBoot + Kubernetes, and they’ll still leave because company XYZ does AWS + Neo4j + AI… while still not fixing spelling mistakes in the UI and still in the habit of downloading and entire DB tables and filter them in the Java side, and seeing no problem asking for a microservices architecture.

This developer market is batshit crazy and isn’t tight enough to make people want to serve the needs of customers. “Do something hard and get a house in exchange” isn’t a persuasive argument today, they’ll get rich anyway. Instead, they serve their resume, which I perfectly respect and understand, it needs to be done too, but at one point, it’s a disconnect between customers, employers and developers.

A crisis is unfortunate but I can’t wait for it.

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