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Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

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Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#111

Post by [deleted] »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #79
ryandrake wrote: post #22

I've been through the dotcom slaughter of 2000-2002 as a new grad (undergrad) and the comparatively small slowdown of 2008 (grad school new grad). Get ready to hit the Submit button... a lot. The stories of "getting three job offers after four interviews at five companies" are no longer reality. My application:interview:offer ratio has always varied from 50:5:1 to 100:10:1, and I would expect something like that or w…

I'm... that's a crazy ratio. Mine sits around that 5:4:3 ratio. I've rarely even had to apply for a position -- usually just got headhunted. I started about 13 years ago, and even my first job at a big tech company (LinkedIn), I was scouted. I don't even have a CS degree. I'm curious what your discipline is in?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#112

Post by cratermoon »

scarface74 wrote: post #35
cratermoon wrote: post #25

Oh, new grads are golden, they have almost nothing worry about. The companies laying off workers are pushing out the senior, highly-paid, most expensive employees. They will quickly and eagerly replace with them with naive, low-paid (relatively), eager-to-drink-the-koolaid fresh grads. The only thing the new grads might have to worry about is that they probably won't get as much money as they would have prior to the…

If I’m trying to keep a company afloat, I would much rather have a few experienced engineers than a bunch of juniors that start off doing “negative work”

> If I’m trying to keep a company afloat

Business people run companies according to business principles. The board and shareholders will focus on the short term and the stock price. Also, are these layoffs really about keeping companies afloat, or are they about maximizing shareholder value?

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#113

Post by tflinton »

> What advice do you have for new grads in CS/EE fields looking for jobs? For example, I am finishing my PhD in AI-related work this spring. Colleagues I've talked to in several companies have told me about frozen hiring. Is this true in your experience?

Yeah most companies are still under hiring freezes, but backfills usually aren't frozen.

> Is it better to get any job than keep searching for the job I'd be most suited for?

Try and get a job remotely where you want to land eventually. Having some experience that's related to what you want to do will bode better than having nothing.

> Should I reach directly to managers in different teams?

If you know them, sure. Networking can be an incredible asset, go to meetups or other professional groups and get to know people in the industry, even if a manger isn't there employees typically are motivated to help you get a job because they may get a referral bonus.

> Who are the best people/kinds of firms to reach out to when the industry is slowing hiring?

In reality when you hear about large layoffs much of those layoffs are companies shedding full time employees and then outsourcing any work they needed from them via consulting or contract positions. So it stands to reason that perhaps contract companies / agencies may be a great place to get some experience. Some industries are somewhat immune to recessions like healthcare, utilities, government and a small subset of financial institutions.

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#114

Post by steviesands »

Bayko wrote: post #8

By spring there will be a lot of changes. The budgets will get realigned and stuff. So best advice would be to stop worrying and keep applying as generic as that advice sounds. Oh and if you are on it nuke /cscareerquestions

Can you elaborate on budgets realigned? Wouldn't that have happened in Q4 for the new year?

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#115

Post by Our_Benefactors »

ryandrake wrote: post #72
Our_Benefactors wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> New grads have it a lot easier in the open market IMHO. Maybe the top 10% of new CS grads have it easy, by virtue of having easier access to university -> big tech hiring pipelines for junior engineers. But there’s no comparison to the ease of being a senior and having job offers flood in to your LinkedIn on a weekly basis. Getting a new job becomes a function of simply contacting the past 5 recruiters and asking f…

> there’s no comparison to the ease of being a senior and having job offers flood in to your LinkedIn on a weekly basis. Splitting hairs a little here, but I've got > 25 years of experience and have not once, ever, received a job offer through LinkedIn, let alone weekly. I've had recruiters showing varying levels of interest contact me there, but never "Hi, person I've never met, great resume! Here is your job offer…

It lets you bypass the step of “I sent my resume and never heard back” which is the reality for many junior candidates. There’s a huge difference between getting to go through the motions as often as you please versus not being given the time of day.

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#116

Post by yellowapple »

> Is it better to get any job than keep searching for the job I'd be most suited for?

When you're first starting out? Yes, absolutely. The job for which you'd be most suited (however that's defined) will in all likelihood toss your resume into the nearest trash can without some actual work experience on it.

> Who are the best people/kinds of firms to reach out to when the industry is slowing hiring?

The more boring-looking, the better. You say you're about to be a PhD in AI? Find some small/medium business with leadership whose eyes gloss over at the mere mention of "neural nets" or "deep learning" or what have you, get into some boring technician or analyst role, and start using those fancy AI chops to blow their expectations for the role out of the water. If they don't rapidly promote you with the newfound success they're seeing, then you're in a much better position to pursue something that actually corresponds to your degree, with a resume item along the lines of "used machine learning to classify inventory by predicted velocity and rearrange inventory locations, improving warehouse picking throughput by 115%" or somesuch.

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#117

Post by indymike »

US DOL (look at JOLTS reports for more detail) statistics do not bear out the hypothesis that tech jobs are hard to get (demand is still very close to 2021, which was the record). There is a lot of evidence to support that layoffs are coming mostly from pure "Tech Companies", while the rest of the business world is continuing to hire. 94% of companies are saying they will add headcount in 2023...

... So my advice is to look at non-tech companies. Reality is that most companies really have become "tech companies", they don't make software or hardware, but have physical products and services -- and often are very technology dependent for operatiions.

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#118

Post by ghaff »

ryandrake wrote: post #22

I've been through the dotcom slaughter of 2000-2002 as a new grad (undergrad) and the comparatively small slowdown of 2008 (grad school new grad). Get ready to hit the Submit button... a lot. The stories of "getting three job offers after four interviews at five companies" are no longer reality. My application:interview:offer ratio has always varied from 50:5:1 to 100:10:1, and I would expect something like that or w…

I was incredibly lucky during dot bomb because of one good connection that I reached out to first thing when I was laid off and had lunch with. In the month it took them to decide they wanted to (and could afford to) hire me, I didn't get so much as a nibble from anyone else.

I know a fair number of people who dropped off the map and I assume the careers of many never got back on track.

So, while I'd be even more emphatic if the OP were a newly minted undergrad, I'd definitely recommend either extending academia a bit if practical or just trying to find something.

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#119

Post by JCM9 »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #100
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently asked "Is it better to get any job than keep searching for the job I'd be most suited for?" by a laid off Visa holder. This is even more straightforward. Yes it is. I know many who are being hit by layoffs. The situation sucks. I don't think there's any advantage to downplaying this right now whether in your own mind or through advice to others. There's a huge number of tech workers laid off simultaneo…

At this point there is no way any software company could justify, legally, hiring someone on an H1B. There are some 40k layoffs in last few months and certainly a large number of those are US citizens. Any company claiming that they can’t find a US citizen with the right skills is lying.

The Visa situation is very bad , but technically for better or worse it’s how the system was designed to work. H1Bs are meant to supplement the domestic supply of certain skills to meet demand. If demand drops (or as is happening with now supply increases) then it becomes hard to justify why one needs to hire an H1B over say someone already eligible for employment. Companies always game the system but it’s going to very hard to suggest one can’t find any SDEs at this point.

On the above I would correct that it’s not “US Citizen” but someone with full employment eligibility, which could be for example a Green Card holder.

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