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Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

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Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#111

Post by great_success »

nicoburns wrote: post #46
300bps wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I'm looking at the job market and think it might be better to give it 4-6 months. I'm fascinated by this. How does one do this? Two options I can think of are being independently wealthy and being dependent on another. Are there other ways to accomplish being so comfortable with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another 4-6 months and see what happens"?

> Are there other ways to accomplish being so comfortable with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another 4-6 months and see what happens"? Having low outgoings. While I would prefer to have income (I'm hoping to be able to buy a house at some point), I'm a single person with no dependents, and I probably spend around £1200/month in total (including rent). And that's in London - one of the most expensive cities in the world -…

This is very impressive and difficult to maintain in London. Rent for a "double" room - meaning a room in a flat/apartment or house that fits a US full or European double bed is like 900/month right now. Spending only 1200/month is very difficult to achieve. I have no idea how this is feasible. To add to rent, local stores are usually more expensive than the supermarkets.

Maybe you ought to make a masterclass on this topic.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#112

Post by moosedev »

I took ~1.5 years off after 12+ years of FAANG. 1 month ago, I decided I was ready to work again and started talking to recruiters for real. It's been very slow. Most positions I've applied to, I've heard nothing back, even when referred by a current employee. I've had some flat rejections without even a recruiter chat. One recruiter called me to say they were on a temporary hiring freeze, and then she got laid off.

I've had a handful of tech screen interviews, but only one* has progressed all the way to a full interview loop so far, and I got a generic rejection a few days later. I have been waiting 2.5 weeks and counting for a phone screen result from another (larger, public) tech company. Nothing close to an offer yet.

I'm considering just taking more time off until things speed up again - I can afford it, but I worry about how hard it will be to get hired again with a "long" gap of 2+ years.

* for "Senior Software Engineer" at a medium-sized pre-IPO tech company

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#113

Post by sokoloff »

est31 wrote: post #41
teraflop wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software development pays incredibly well by the standards of the average American. You can spend that money on lifestyle inflation, or you can save/invest it and buy yourself an enormous amount of financial freedom. Whether you call that "being independently wealthy" is a matter of semantics.

Yeah there is a lot of space between "has savings for 8-12 months" and "is independently wealthy, i.e. can live off interest of their own savings". Former is extremely easy to achieve if you can save significant portions of your salary. If you can save 30%, you can achieve it after 3 years. Latter takes a bit longer.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si... is a great article for those interested in the topic of high savings percentages.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#114

Post by moneywoes »

kristopolous wrote: post #37

Let me show you the backdoor: Find a company whose open source projects you are interested in. Dive in and and start fixing things. Then if you really like it after a couple weeks start nudging around for a job. If you do good work they'll just give it to you, no bullshit funnel required. I like this method because you aren't just doing l33t coding exercises to work on some sight unseen codebase that makes you suicid…

Willing to try this. Know any open source projects that people are hiring for?

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#115

Post by nostromo »

abadger9 wrote: post #7

I'm not laid off but actively looking to change after spending a couple of years at my current employer. Despite being a staff engineer, managing 12 engineers, and having a solid revenue stream tied to my current team - I've mostly gotten rejections without interviews, 1-2 low ball offers, or radio silence. I cannot imagine how hard this must be for those laid-off, hopefully this storm passes soon. EDIT: you cannot m…

People assume it's easier for more senior people to get offers, but it's actually the opposite. The more senior you get, the longer it can take to get a new job.

You are much more expensive, so companies are extra cautious hiring you. And it's just common sense that there is an order of magnitude fewer managers than there are individual contributors. And many (most?) companies have a bias to promoting internally.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#116

Post by tschellenbach »

We're hiring, but very slowly/carefully atm (https://getstream.io/team/). It's insane, similar companies to us used to raise $100-$200M with our metrics, at the moment i'm not even trying to raise additional capital. On the other hands it's nice that there is less hype and you can just focus on building and real progress.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#117

Post by moneywoes »

revskill wrote: post #4

No longer hunt for work. Instead will spend 1 year to build product for my own customers. Again, software engineering is such a great career, when you can create valuable things for others in case of crisis.

How did you find customers? This is a long term goal of mine.

Trying to fit in ideation between leetcode prep and applying for jobs

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#118

Post by robotresearcher »

throwaway20382 wrote: post #106
kristopolous wrote: post #37

Let me show you the backdoor: Find a company whose open source projects you are interested in. Dive in and and start fixing things. Then if you really like it after a couple weeks start nudging around for a job. If you do good work they'll just give it to you, no bullshit funnel required. I like this method because you aren't just doing l33t coding exercises to work on some sight unseen codebase that makes you suicid…

This is exactly what my gardener did. One day someone went to my home and started mowing it. I watched. After 4 months of free mowing, he started doing my hedges. I started to talk to other people in my house: "hey we should hire this guy". My wife said "wtf for, he is free? right?" Eventually, I was worried he would start doing free work somewhere else so we hired him - but not for much. He is a great gardener. /s

The parable of Linus the Gardener.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#119

Post by Alifatisk »

jedberg wrote: post #34

For those of you feeling down about being ignored, keep in mind this is the slowest hiring time of the year, with holidays and vacations, and end of year budgets. Even in down markets, hiring tends to pick up in January as managers get their hiring budgets for the new year and are back in the office. Hang in there!

Been looking for a junior developer role for 3 months now, it's been rough. Planning on switching to something else temporarly.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#120

Post by moneywoes »

fatnoah wrote: post #85

I was laid off as part of a layoff large enough to trigger the WARN act, so I was put on garden leave for 60 days.. I was fortunate to find a new job and start it exactly as the garden leave expired. It was my first job search in the post-COVID era, aka the era of remote work, and wow was it different. Traditionally, I'd see a handful of jobs that looked interesting each week, and would be one of a handful of applica…

May I ask what job boards you are frequenting?

Happy to hear you got back on your feat so quickly

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