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Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

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Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#131

Post by heavyset_go »

spoonfeeder006 wrote: post #94
perfecthjrjth wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they are real jobs. But you have to make sure that it is from primary vendors. Often times, many secondary vendors source for the same job listed by primary vendor. One way to cut down secondary vendors, ask for decent rates. If someone asks you to work for $60 per hr, just say NO. Even primary vendors have outsourced their recruiting to India.

$60 per hour isn't a decent rate?

Try double or triple that at minimum.

$60/hr as a contractor is the equivalent of $30/hr or less salaried. At $60/hr, it's probably even less than $30/hr because you are not eligible for ACA tax breaks and must pay full price for health insurance. The health insurance plans available on the individual market have large premiums and deductibles compared to plans that employers subsidize. You also have a larger tax burden, including the need to file quarterly.

The rule of thumb for contracting is to take your salaried rate and double it at minimum.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#132

Post by anon50118810 »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #121
anon50118810 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contracting is not really an option that way in the U.S. market that I've seen, though I'd be interested if you've had a different experience. Either you're contracting through an agency in which case you're applying just like for any FTE job, or you're operating at the high end with an established network. Random gigs at places like Upwork don't pay enough for a major U.S. metro area unless you're willing to hustle…

There is definitely an opportunity to contract this way, but you have to think outside of the largest companies. You want to start by looking through your network and finding the folks who are at smaller start-ups or even have experience working with venture capital firms. Start there and inquire if they have any need for contract work or looking for an engineer for one of their smaller portfolio companies who might…

Sounds like a great strategy if you have a big network of people at startups or connected to VC. Not everyone is in that boat, though.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#133

Post by godelski »

mola wrote: post #69
amlozano wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding over the top accomplishments in resumes: every resume writing workshop tells you to do this. I don't think you should be rejecting these first just because someone listened to the advice of "sell yourself".

Or maybe they should, so we can stop with this nonsense and make it easier for everyone.

I think to do that we need to recognize that it is really hard to actually evaluate people. Resumes are only a weak signal.

A lot of people think they're way better at hiring than they are. Just like employees overestimate their skills (and are encouraged to because the resume process) employers also over estimate their hiring skills (and are encouraged to because the bureaucratic process).

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#134

Post by forgotusername6 »

falcolas wrote: post #27
anon50118810 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely true that almost all of the remote jobs I'm seeing are explicitly senior or above, or require 3+ years of experience. I meet this, but for entry level people looking for something immediately, I'd recommend support or QA work to stay afloat while building a personal portfolio and hoping to get lucky with an employer who is actually desperate for developers.

I'm not so sure that QA work even still exists. And I'm pretty certain it's been eliminated as a path to being a developer. There's been an insanely strong push to eliminate QA and put that work on developers (in addition to all the other specializations they now generalize in) in the past decade.

The majority of my team started their career as manual testers. We are all software engineers now and do not have a manual test team at all. We don't even have an automation test team. The company does have a few roles like that still but they are massively reduced.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#135

Post by digitalsushi »

dariusj18 wrote: post #28

My experience is it's impossible to find people who's experience actually matches their resume.

We try to hire seasoned linux admins for our ops team. This has become difficult.

I start with this technical interview question so I can calibrate quickly:

"If I run the following two commands:

mkdir a b c;mv *

What happens?"

One person so far has asked if globbing was active. Like half of people get the answer right if they assume it is.

This question is deemed as "not fair", though, because it assumes a linux admin would know about shell globbing. So we're trying to find a modern equivalent that is somehow relevant, even though we're literally hiring people to know some shell.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#136

Post by fdschoeneman »

John23832 wrote: post #92
fdschoeneman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Do you seriously believe racism is never a thing that happens in hiring? Because it is, just as it is in academia. At least some of the time. Instead of shaming people for pointing out the real possibility that racism may be at play, consider acknowledging that it may be at play but that there's nothing the op can do about it and he or she should just keep plugging away. It's a numbers game, with or without…

Because you have no proof for any “end of year” DEI target rate limiting. It is entirely what you labeled it as, speculation. I said nothing about racism in hiring practices. I was addressing the statement that was made.

Okay so let's be clear: you think it is wrong or unhelpful to speculate that race or sex may be a factor in what the op claims to be observing? Because "baiting?"

What do you mean by baiting? I read that as you trying to shame people for even discussing the possibility that racism or sexism is a factor. As if it is somehow wrong to discuss these things. If you had a different intent, please share it.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#137

Post by bityard »

ravenstine wrote: post #93

Contrasting with even just a year ago, the job market is in a lackluster state the way I see it. Don't be gaslit by all the people insisting that it's still a gold rush. It's not that there aren't jobs out there, but many companies right now are either laying off employees, under hiring freezes, or simply aren't that serious about hiring besides through nepotism. Since I got started as a software developer full time…

> To add to your point about resumes, people need to not underestimate the power of networking. Networking has been the key factor to my advancement for the last 3 jobs. It's just the way things are.

It's hard to overstate the importance of this. Without networking, your chances of landing the kind of job you _really_ want are vanishingly close to zero. Every single one of my civilian jobs has come about either through personal friendships ("hey bityard, my work is hiring and I'd like to work next to you") or due to name recognition, e.g. moving in and around the same groups of people that the hiring people are in. I have probably blindly fired off less than two dozen resumes in my decades-long career and while some resulted in an interview, none resulted in a hire.

For someone just starting out in their career, maybe blindly firing off 100 or 200 resumes for entry-level positions is the only option they have. But they should also be broadcasting their availability far and wide to friends, family, randos on the street, basically anyone that will listen. Local tech meetups. Online tech meetups. Career fairs, etc.

But if you've been in the industry for more than 2 or 3 years, and don't have a network that you can leverage in a job search, that is something you need to fix like immediately. That well must be filled BEFORE you need to drink from it.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#138

Post by fdschoeneman »

commandlinefan wrote: post #82
fdschoeneman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Do you seriously believe racism is never a thing that happens in hiring? Because it is, just as it is in academia. At least some of the time. Instead of shaming people for pointing out the real possibility that racism may be at play, consider acknowledging that it may be at play but that there's nothing the op can do about it and he or she should just keep plugging away. It's a numbers game, with or without…

> the real possibility that racism may be at play I mean... isn't that the actual justification for DEI policies in the first place?

That is literally the stated justification for dei policies.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#139

Post by Railsify »

During a period where there is a perceived shortage of new devs, existing dev teams still have to meet deadlines and move the ball, this forces streamlining of processes and thus reduces the immediate need for new team members. If someone on my team leaves and I need to back-fill engineering time on a process or app, and I can't back-fill quickly, what other choice do I have other than to reassess the entire process and change it so that it requires less commitment moving forward?

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#140

Post by wins32767 »

toast0 wrote: post #95
physicsguy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t agree - I’d rather wait than take on someone that can’t meet the standard, because they’re likely to be an active drag rather than a help. I can hire contractors if I need to fill a seat that quickly.

If you're willing to wait, I don't think you're desperate, IMHO. You're also probably right, most of the time, of course.

I once lowered my hiring bar because I was desperate. I ended up with a few bad employees that slowed us down more than the ones that turned out good accelerated us. Not worth the tradeoff IMO.
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