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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

#241

Post by [deleted] »

ghaff wrote: post #108
nocman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but your definition of "falling off trees" and mine are very different if it took 200 applications to land a job. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying I would never use that expression to describe it.

I would consider sending out 200 applications (for someone with some experience to reasonably targeted openings) to be an extraordinarily high number. I doubt if I sent out that many form letter scattershot from pre-internet grad school. Certainly hasn't been the case since. To be sure, the few other jobs I've had have all come through personal connections.

[deleted]

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

#242

Post by nocman »

ghaff wrote: post #108
nocman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but your definition of "falling off trees" and mine are very different if it took 200 applications to land a job. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying I would never use that expression to describe it.

I would consider sending out 200 applications (for someone with some experience to reasonably targeted openings) to be an extraordinarily high number. I doubt if I sent out that many form letter scattershot from pre-internet grad school. Certainly hasn't been the case since. To be sure, the few other jobs I've had have all come through personal connections.

I had just assumed that if someone was sending out 200 applications, it was pretty much the same resume going to all of them (no catering it to the individual interests of the employer) - with perhaps some exceptions to jobs the applicant was particularly interested in.

I can't imagine sending out that many having spent large quantities of time on each one.

[edited to fix typing the wrong word]

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

#243

Post by fdschoeneman »

John23832 wrote: post #170
fdschoeneman wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I could speculate because the op is a Taurus. It holds just as much weight in the conversation because there’s no evidence that the op’s zodiac or DEI status are used to eliminate them in the hiring process. I used the word bait because unsubstantiated “DEI hate” is used on hackernews as lightning rods. I haven’t shamed anyone. If you actually read what I said above, you would see that I’m not denying racism in hirin…

"You can't speculate that a specific tree was felled with an axe rather than a chainsaw when you weren't in the woods to see it happen."

-- on the contrary, I'm pretty sure a rational person could speculate that a specific tree was felled by an axe vs a chainsaw depending on what she knows about loggers in a given area from a given culture and during a given time period. It's a question of probability. It's normal and rational and fair to discuss probabilities when speculating. It's unclear that you understand the terms you are using though so I'm gonna peace out and wish you luck.

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

#245

Post by anon50118810 »

yamtaddle wrote: post #192
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".

Have a relative who's quite accomplished in HR and recruiting and, can confirm, they don't encourage outright lying but they do insist you have to stretch everything to the max and freely imply a lot more than a very honest person might be inclined to. Judging from the results for people I know who've had this person re-work their résumés, it's extremely good advice. Non-braggy résumés seem to just get round-filed fo…

One of the twists in the software industry is that something that looks braggy to a non-technical recruiter can look irrelevant to someone in the know, or from the other direction something that looks braggy to a tech person can be meaningless to a non-tech person.

For example, if you say that you "developed software that saved the company $X million/year," that might look good to a non-tech person but a tech person will understand that could mean nothing. Maybe you spellchecked comments in a sub-subcomponent of a project a thousand people worked on. On the other hand you might say you "worked on v1 of the Frobnicator library" which might look like nothing to a recruiter but which is a legendary accomplishment in the field.

In my case I just say what I did in plain language that includes a bunch of keywords and hope that's enough.

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

#246

Post by tacheiordache »

anon50118810 wrote: post #97
guessmyname wrote: post #33

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…

I'm the OP and I don't mean to argue your experience, but my post was more pushing back on the idea that non-FAANG companies are desperate for people. In other words, I'm pushing back on the idea that anyone willing to work outside of FAANG for $100k-$150k should be able to find something super quick.

There's a surplus of devs right now, lots of layoffs and all that. I'm sure compensation is going to take a hit till the market will stabilize itself. We're going to have a how low are you willing to go in the short term future and it's going to be a bit rough for everyone.

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

#247

Post by gardenhedge »

ian_dot_so wrote: post #46

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.

This is one of the most repeated pieces of advice I see, but, as a person who reviews CVs and does interviews, I would rather see the first point. From there, we would have a discussion about the technology you used and the features built for users. It could have been a dashboard that ultimately wasn't useful for users and had little to no result - I don't care. I care that you're able to build it.

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

#248

Post by neon_electro »

mrweasel wrote: post #201
bluedino wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been getting bombarded on LinkedIn recently, but it's all low pay, low quality jobs, or things I'm only remotely qualified for and not really looking to do (generic 'cyber-security' position or some software or system I have on my LinkedIn profile involving a job from 8 years ago, for example)

That might be a little different from person to person and market to market, but I've been getting more and more qualified recruiters contact me. Overall there are fewer, but the messages are now clearly from recruiters that have read my resume and aren't reaching out in bulk. That being said, I think operations people and SREs are currently doing better than developers.

Wishing you well and success. Been at it 9 months now, full-stack Web, plenty of contacts, dozens of interviews and tech assessments, one offer that was shit, zero signed agreements.

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

#249

Post by alexpotato »

Every time I see people mentioning that they've sent X00 applications for jobs, I always think of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__lvS2pjuSg

Recap:

- Think of a job search as social engineering your way into an organization

- Use that framework to figure out what the org cares about, who cares about it and then how to position yourself so that person sees your "work"

- "Work" b/c it's not your resume, it's something that CLEARLY identifies that you are the perfect person for the role.

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

#250

Post by DarrenDev »

heywherelogingo wrote: post #83
_ed7m wrote: 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…

I'm not in the US; if I had to send out 200 or even 100 applications I would change career. If I had to send 50 I would be starting to investigate other careers.

I'm also very surprised by these numbers. I'm a senior dev in Ireland and my success rate over the past number of years would be around 1 in 5 CV submissions lead to a first interview / tech screen. And once I reach that stage around 1 in 3 lead to an offer.

I'm a reasonably good developer, but not top tier by any means.

But my starting point is usually a recruiter contacting me. It's been a long time since I've chased a recruiter or company. And I've never sent out 100+ applications in my 22 year career.

Maybe geography plays a part. London and Dublin are full of tech jobs. Isolated cities in the US might be different, with moving or commuting to a different city not an easy option.

I'd like to see some of the CVs that keep getting rejected or passed over, because that volume (100-200) doesn't feel right to me.

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