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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

#141
post #30

It took me 200 applications to land my job, and I think the rest of everyone I know who’s a decent programmer had similar situations. The bottom line is that everyone has employment and only had to move for it if they’re taking a high (120k+ TC for entry level) paying position. This is “falling of trees” compared to any other industry. Being able to land a middle class job directly in the field of your education with…

[deleted]

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

#142

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.

QA is a position/work that has been heavily outsourced. I know because I've met several QA outsourcing firms in Mexico and Ukraine that have really good business in the US.

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

#143

I think the job market will get better by mid January 2023, when budgets open up. TC will probably be quite a bit lower than 2021 offers, but there's work to be done everywhere.

Is this how it works at most companies where new budget leads to new headcount and hiring in January? Is it due to an annual process?

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

#144

I think this is over-generalizing I've been both on the hiring side and candidate side this year and demand is still very strong (granted moreso for more senior applicants than junior). Couple of tips that have worked for me: * Make sure your Linkedin is up-to-date, you have "open to work" turned on and that your experience is filled with direct results and accomplishments. Example of a bad bullet point (Used javascr…

I don’t agree on a few of these. I wouldn’t personalize your resume for any company, nor do I recommend writing a personalized cover letter for any of them — you have no idea the skill set that will be valued by the person reading the resume, as they are an unknown random variable. I feel it’s just a time waste and there is no proof that this sort of thing is fruitful. Also fuck leetcode. I’ve refused to do the leetc…

OP here. I agree with not customizing the resume, that's not sustainable for a necessarily high-volume job search. I'm lucky enough that my background is in a relatively popular field, so it's a much better strategy to just apply to places that are already a good fit for my existing resume. Definitely not going to do micro-tweaks to a resume based on whatever happens to be in the listing. Keep in mind recruiters spend literally seconds per resume. However a simple cover letter is generally a good idea and also a good place to add or highlight skills that may be especially relevant but not in the resume.

Strangely enough, despite what you might think from HN, I haven't run into a ton of LeetCode algorithm-type puzzles at the places I've been looking.

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

#145

I think this is over-generalizing I've been both on the hiring side and candidate side this year and demand is still very strong (granted moreso for more senior applicants than junior). Couple of tips that have worked for me: * Make sure your Linkedin is up-to-date, you have "open to work" turned on and that your experience is filled with direct results and accomplishments. Example of a bad bullet point (Used javascr…

> Example of a bad bullet point (Used javascript to build a user-facing dashboard). Example of a good bullet point (Built a new dashboard product that manages x for y number of users. Ultimately drove z result.

Master Drywall Contractor

Built walls using 5/8 in. x 4 ft. x 12 ft. Firecode X Drywall over 178,000 sq. ft. resulting in client generating $1.1b in revenue annually.

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

#146
I guess I am lucky… but I never had to “look for a job”. My fort job after graduation was the company itself that reached out while I was finishing my studies (and was not the only one… I was overwhelmed by offers). After that every time I changed job is because the company I moved to reached out to me. I am in Europe though… maybe the market in the US is tough!

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

#147

> My personal goal is at least 100 applications before seriously considering pivoting to something else. I don't think I have especially cool resume or anything, nor do I have extremely many years in the industry as well, but I'd never consider applying for 100 different companies. I don't even know deeply about 100 companies I think, which is something I learn about a company before even considering applying to it.…

No one knows deeply about 100 companies, especially 100 random companies scattered around the U.S. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.

Maybe that is the problem.

Instead of applying to 100 companies out of desperation, if a candidate practices and develops specific marketable skills and targets specific roles, he only needs to apply to 10 companies that he knows deeply and are in tune with his skills.

The law of reversed effort — When you focus on your own skills and self-worth instead of desperately pursuing random externalities, externalities that are actually suited to you in turn get attracted to you strongly.

So then even if you apply to 10 companies, the number is low but the expected value of an offer is higher than if you applied to 100 companies the other way.

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

#149
post #102

I work at Apple and my team has been “hiring” for the last 2 years with no offers so far. Why? Because even if you are a good candidate, hiring is not as easy as people think. Among the many challengues we have I can list the following: 1. The people interested in your profile have minimal influence in the process, 2. There are people who are always chasing for the shiny new object (or person, in this case), 3. There…

What's the political situation ? It may well be that some execs further up the chain don't really want your team to be hiring ? That would explain the friction.

yes, these problems sounds very solvable if/when someone up the chain actually starts to _want_ to hire.

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

#150

Honestly, this doesn't sound much different than a year ago, five years ago, or ten years ago. Companies never seem to be serious about hiring: they go fishing but never reel anyone in, they ghost you after a few communications, they reject your application with automation, and even if you have an internal referral, the referrer is usually only able to do "Go apply through the normal funnel and if you get through the…

When I looked for a job 6 months ago, I had the same experience. A dozen applications and no responses. Working with recruiters that put me in front of a hiring person was how I ended up finding my current job.
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