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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)

#241

Post by SCUSKU »

neon_electro wrote: post #220
SCUSKU wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think $120k is a reasonable expectation for a SWE with 2 YOE in this market? That's what I am shooting for, and still think is reasonable to expect, but on the otherhand if layoffs continue, I guess I may be forced to reconsider...

It really depends on the employer, I’m a “mid level” engineer with ~10 YOE and I’m struggling to find offers in the $155k (mid-level) to $175k (senior) range. Keep fighting the good fight and don’t let yourself be under-valued.

Wow I am surprised to hear that with 10 YOE it's still tough to find work. I was under the impression as you gained more experience people would be clamoring to hire. Hope you find something soon!

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

#242

Post by ghaff »

SCUSKU wrote: post #241
neon_electro wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on the employer, I’m a “mid level” engineer with ~10 YOE and I’m struggling to find offers in the $155k (mid-level) to $175k (senior) range. Keep fighting the good fight and don’t let yourself be under-valued.

Wow I am surprised to hear that with 10 YOE it's still tough to find work. I was under the impression as you gained more experience people would be clamoring to hire. Hope you find something soon!

There is a tradeoff between people not wanting to pay much and just looking for some fairly generic skills on one hand--and people looking for specific skills, particular experience, and for someone with a given track record that one or more on the hiring team have had personal interactions with on the other.

Put another way, if you're just looking for junior with keywords that's one thing but means you're just a number. But you may be looking for specific individuals with a track record which, given the right match, may be good but you need the right match.

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

#243

Post by Existenceblinks »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #210
ummonk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Or software engineer in a 3rd world country.

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

#244

Post by brocha »

I just got blindsided two weeks back from the best job I've ever had. Not looking forward to the search (taking December off to get married) as I have extreme anxiety when it comes to live coding, and I cannot figure out why. Even basic SQL queries escape me when somebody is watching. I've always been fantastic at test taking so take home assignments or leetcode type tests I can do, and hell, even putting together a presentation of a project I've done and presenting is fine. Just that live coding portion that always sucks.

Senior Data Engineer with 15+ years of Python experience and a background in Physics and Math. Can't wait for the new "Who's Hiring"

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

#245

Post by ralphc »

culi wrote: post #172
fhd2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having hired hundreds of engineers, it's the same feeling on the other side as well: The recruiters will tell you that nobody wants to switch jobs around the holidays, so you shouldn't even try. Odd.

Weird I did the interview for my current interview in December and got the offer first week of January

But you didn't switch in December. People don't want to have zero seniority or PTO this time of year, they want their time off to spend with family if they can.

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

#246

Post by nixgeek »

granshaw wrote: post #57
nixgeek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got connected to someone impacted at Twitter on Saturday, within 24 hours of them being notified they were impacted by the layoff. I talked with them for an hour that next Monday AM about the opportunities my teams have open, one of which was highly relevant to their skills, and by the time we chatted, they had 3-4 interviews with other companies scheduled. Joined the dots to the hiring manager and recruiters. They…

Curious if you don’t mind sharing, did this candidate have crazy comp due to Twitter RSUs before the implosion? And if so, are you all roughly matching that, or they’re settling for less?

Not particularly crazy. Doesn’t seem like the Total Compensation for this person will change dramatically, although it’s worth nothing that different companies have different philosophies on how the package is structured.

What’s salary, what’s a performance-based annual bonus in cash, what’s equity-based compensation and within that what’s granted upfront and what’s performance-based and granted annually, what’s the signing bonus, etc. Vesting schedules also can differ somewhat dramatically (the Amazon offers as one example are very backloaded), some companies have a history of pricing in assumed growth in equities, there are lots of moving parts (some of which are employee-favorable, like pricing on-hire awards on a Trailing 50d Average; some of which are more employer-favorable like assuming 15% annual appreciation in equity price).

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

#247

Post by Existenceblinks »

manimino wrote: post #82
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"?

I just recently took a year off to study, do side projects, and take care of family. It was a much-needed break following the many stressors of the covid era. Some things matter more than money. Having worked for 10ish years beforehand, it was financially easy. When I was ready to work again, I responded some recruiter emails and was hired again fairly quickly, at a position better than the one I left. Living in a lo…

Are jobs via recruiter good quality? I never have desire of getting jobs through recruiters.

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

#248

Post by Existenceblinks »

jedberg wrote: post #182
KennyBlanken wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but referring to companies by their stock tickers in casual conversation does not impress anyone.

Pretty sure it wasn't to impress anyone, but to save keystrokes. In both cases the stock ticker is shorter than the company name, and everyone instantly knows what you're talking about.

To be fair, it's true and the parent point is true too. I think everyone has right to brag.

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

#249

Post by cableshaft »

DeathArrow wrote: post #139

Why does OP ask about people layd off? Are there some big waves of people being fired? I don't live in the US and I didn't read much news recently, so that's why I ask. In my country there aren't many people people in It (if any) layd off.

September: Patreon 150, Twilio 850, Ericsson 400, DocuSign 650

October: Peloton 500, Intel "thousands", Oracle 200, Microsoft 1k, Zillow 300

November: Opendoor 550, Twitter 3700+ (probably 5000+ after the 'sign the hardcore decree or be terminated'), Zendesk 350, Salesforce '100s', Meta 11000, Amazon 10000, Cisco 4000, HP 4000-6000, Stripe 1000+, Lyft 683

Hasn't happened yet but reported to do so soon: Google 10000[1]

Notice it's accelerating, both in size of layoffs and and how many tech companies are laying people off. Granted part of it may be trying to squeeze it in before the end of the year for financial purposes.

Source: https://tech.co/news/tech-companies-layoffs

EDIT: Crunchbase is saying 73,000 workers in the tech sector have been laid off in 2022, so far. Also has more companies on their list.

https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/tech-layoffs-2022/

[1] https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/another-massive-tech-com...

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

#250

Post by Existenceblinks »

moosedev wrote: post #218
plants wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also been out of work for ~8mo for various reasons, and while I’m sorry for your situation, it’s heartening to hear I’m not the only one. I’ve only actually gotten one tech screen in which I was asked a LC “hard” question, which I didn’t pass (I’m pretty good with “easy” and “medium”, but come on, hard?). So far, I have one other interview from an internal referral, but haven’t heard anything back from the ~10…

It does, doesn't it! I felt a bit bad about posting here, because the thread is ostensibly about layoffs, while I quit voluntarily, so any feelings I'm feeling about the situation now are my own fault :) But it's somehow comforting to see I'm not the only one marveling at the sudden slowdown. It eases the inevitable fear that it's just something unattractive about me or something I'm personally doing wrong.

I have a longer gap trying to build a SaaS business. I think I feel more terrible .. but lets not race to the bottom -_-a
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