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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)

#201

Post by VBprogrammer »

ryandrake wrote: post #187
rootusrootus wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good friend of mine spent his life being pretty frugal. Saved up a nice chunk of change, too -- his wife is also a software developer, they both made good money. Got cancer early last year and was dead 10 months later. 55 years old. Ugh. Not saying you should run out and spend your nest egg. On the other hand, I'd be reluctant to suffer too much during my prime working years scrimping and saving for a retirement th…

Sorry about your friend. My wife also had a friend in the same boat. Made it to 59 and heart attack. Statistically they are outliers, though. For every one of those cases there are probably 10 that make it long past a normal retirement age and 2 that make it beyond 90 years or so. Given the choice, I’d rather be prepared for a 30 year retirement and unluckily die early than be prepared for a 5 year retirement and liv…

You can live a long time with a very low quality of life. It's not just dying that the concern. I don't think we're really talking here about not having enough money to survive in retirement, we're saving to have the dream retirement later.

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

#202

Post by skeeter2020 »

SCUSKU wrote: post #197

Thanks for asking so that we can all vent! I have 2 YOE as a SWE, got laid off in August from a startup that was Series A and generating no revenue. I was able to get interviews in September/October, and got far at 2 companies but got rejected by one and ghosted by another. I have found it's much harder to get an interview this month as layoffs increase. I'm pretty much hoping that once the holidays are over, things…

As someone who's been ghosted as well I think you should name the company or (in my experience it was) the person who ghosted you. This is totally unacceptable and I think we should make them pay when the labour market gets tight again.

And if you don't believe in karma, I saw a linkedin post by the guy who ghosted me about how he got screwed over by the company and let go. It's not super healthy, but it still feels good sometimes...

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

#204

Post by antod »

oceanplexian wrote: post #40
throw1234651234 wrote: post #25

For those who did get laid off from F(/M)AANG, are you considering "lower" end positions or looking for comparable total comp at comparably sized, tech-focused companies? Just curious, as a flyover midwesterner, it seems like no one here is affected, nor are we getting any interviewees from FAANG into the pipeline suddenly.

There are a lot of FAANG-adjacent companies that offer competitive comp, Stripe, AirBNB, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. I left Amazon a year ago to work for one, most of my peers are AWS or Google engineers and the quality of life is much better. I interviewed at smaller companies but the main problem was they were out of touch with TC and unwilling to offer equity, and at least one place was kind of rude about it when I…

I know what you were trying to say, but calling a smaller company "out of touch" due to not getting close to FAANG compensation in itself seemed a bit "out of touch" to me regarding the business realities of small companies.

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

#205

Post by shagie »

Jach wrote: post #129
300bps wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there is a lot of space between "has savings for 8-12 months" I think there is a mentality difference here. I have savings that would easily last me 10 years of not working. But... that's kind of my plan. I will be retiring some day. I don't want to use up even a dime of that money by not working in my prime earning years.

It is largely mentality. Both for the initial plan and execution of saving up (and trying to do it fast, e.g. in 5-10 years) and then pulling the trigger and quitting. I pulled the trigger in late 2020 based on somewhat optimistic forecasting (more than the 4%/5% rule of thumb) that I might have enough for it to be indefinite at steady expense levels. TBH rocky markets this year have had me feeling like it'd be nice…

Regarding Walden and the "have to read it in high school" - I recently came across it again while playing Dear Reader ( https://www.dearreadergame.com )

If you've got an iDevice with Apple Arcade, it's something interesting to play.

It uses books that are now in the public domain that are twisted into games of word order, spelling, and passages that make you read the abridged version and to an extent, force/encourage you to become familiar with the words to better play the game.

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

#206

Post by UncleOxidant »

300bps wrote: post #20
that_guy_iain wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not been laid off either. I'm currently taking a break from jobs. I'm starting to think that it's time to go back to full-time employment. But I'm looking at the job market and think it might be better to give it 4-6 months. Let all the companies that are going to do layoffs have their layoffs and then join a company still looking for new devs in a few months.

>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"?

I'm not the OP, but I'm in a similar boat: my contract ends next month and I'm told they're not going to be able to get it renewed due to budget cuts. I'm also planning to take 4-6 months between gigs (possibly a lot longer depending on what the job market looks like then).

> How does one do this?

In my case my wife has a job that provides the health insurance (so your "dependent on another" is partly right). In addition, our mortgage will be paid off in January, so that'll make it easier to live on one (smaller) income. We'll still be running a bit of a deficit each month (between $200 and $300/mo) but we've got a good 12 to 18 months of living expenses saved up in our emergency fund (that would be 12 to 18 months of living expenses if we both were to lose our jobs). After that there's a Roth IRA we could draw upon. So not too worried at this point.

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

#207

Post by jxhdkdhdks »

sokoloff wrote: post #113
est31 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

never mind that anyone following mr money mustache advice to date, would be under water and strugling more than people that just saved in safer assets all that while.

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

#208

Post by ghaff »

SCUSKU wrote: post #197

Thanks for asking so that we can all vent! I have 2 YOE as a SWE, got laid off in August from a startup that was Series A and generating no revenue. I was able to get interviews in September/October, and got far at 2 companies but got rejected by one and ghosted by another. I have found it's much harder to get an interview this month as layoffs increase. I'm pretty much hoping that once the holidays are over, things…

As others have said, unemployment in the US is still pretty low. But that may not mean for the near future that plum tech jobs are growing on trees. Lots of openings at many companies/govt orgs (including military) for roles with tech skills but probably not at comp many have come to expect. See also 2000/2001+ era.

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

#209

Post by sokoloff »

jxhdkdhdks wrote: post #207
sokoloff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

never mind that anyone following mr money mustache advice to date, would be under water and strugling more than people that just saved in safer assets all that while.

Not if you’ve been following that advice for more than 3 years. The broad market is around the same price as 18 months ago.

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

#210

Post by poulsbohemian »

ummonk wrote: post #44
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"?

If you're not saving money on a software engineer salary, you're being very frivolous with your spending.

Or you’ve got sick parents, a sick kid, your own health problems, day care costs, student debt, a non-working spouse…
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