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Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
121–130 of 270 posts
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
In the case of Facebook, at least, even after the layoffs, their staffing levels were just putting them back at the 2019 levels.
If Google laid off all of their engineers that were working on money losing projects that they are going to probably cancel in a year anyway, no one would see a decrease in service and their net income would increase.
As far as tech startups, they are mostly Ponzi schemes anyway where the investors were planning to pawn off their companies via either acquisition or an IPO.
Can you name one major tech company that has IPOd and created a profitable sustainable business in the last decade besides AirBnB?
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#123I like the advice here: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/advice-for-junior-softwar... (didn't write it, but it jives with my experience). I also wrote something here on how to stand out: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2022/09/19/ways-to-stand-... Finally, you ask: > Is it better to get any job than keep searching for the job I'd be most suited for? That depends on your financial situation and emotional runway,…
Great advice. The only thing that's missing is to grind leetcode as hard as you can. As much as HN and Reddit hates leetcode, most companies still use it in some form. Getting good at leetcode-style questions will allow you to get through the first few interview stages more consistently. Then, in the later interview stages, you can show off your personal projects and open source contributions.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#124I'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…
Great advice.
This is the worst time job hunting for most of us since the tech economy hasn't really cut jobs since 08. 2020 and 2021 were crazy times, I interviewed with Amazon at least 4 times, got an interview with FB even. I don't consider myself to be a great dev and wound up making 200k per year at a point.
Now it's all coming back down to reality and I'm rapidly re-adjusting my expectations. Interviews are getting much much harder, I'm getting ghosted after final stages, and it's easy to get discouraged. Looking at the news it's not just me becoming a crap dev overnight, but the entire tech economy looking like crap.
Let's hope it at least stabilizes soon. As is I think I'll have to take a massive paycut.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#125This is a numbers game.
1) Apply everywhere, literally in the hundreds. Different cities, different states, etc.
2) Make sure you are prepared. Do hundreds of Leetcode questions at least to the medium level. Do lots of systems design questions as well. The fact of life is that you need to show you can do coding questions and your competitors will all be at the top of their game here. If you don't match them, why exactly would you be a better candidate than them?
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#126My advice is to work for the largest company you can get into for your first job. The experience, either great or shitty, is capped at both ends i.e. corporate structure limits how shitty or great it can possibly get.
If the experience is positive, then great, stick around. If not, the name of a large company on your resume (ideally at least two years), will make it much easier to find your next gig, as large companies are easily recognizable for their products and branding.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#127My advice is to work for the largest company you can get into for your first job. The experience, either great or shitty, is capped at both ends i.e. corporate structure limits how shitty or great it can possibly get. If the experience is positive, then great, stick around. If not, the name of a large company on your resume (ideally at least two years), will make it much easier to find your next gig, as large compani…
I don't know that I really agree with this (based solely on my experiences). I've worked for big, medium and small companies. Big companies may tend to lock you into narrow job roles, outdated technology, and horrible bureaucracy. With medium and smaller companies, you're going to learn a lot more about actually getting things done. Likely in broader areas. But it does depend on what a person is looking for.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#128Stick to your rates.
They likely fired people not performing, they'll rehire "cheap" new grads. Make sure you get what you feel your worth.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#129I'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…
Great recession grad. 1000:100:10:1 app:phone_screen:interview:offer In general divide the first number by 10 if you have at least 12 months post grad professional experience. If you have a shiny high GPA diploma from a top school but no intern or any experience whatsoever change last two numbers to zero.
Great recession grad - similar numbers. That experience has really scarred me till today, especially because I kept being told how valuable software engineers are, and how good I personally was in this field.
Today, I'm simply grateful to have a fantastic job, and strive to live below my means assuming that things can go back at the snap of someone's finger.
In terms of practical advise for a new grad, there are tons of startups and enterpreneurs doing really interesting work. They need good programmers but can't afford to pay as much. This sort of place can be a great place to kickstart your career, at least for a few years, till the broader picture gets better.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The stories of "getting three job offers after four interviews at five companies" are no longer reality. Yikes. I have been in Software Engineering for about 11 years and never had it any other way and even then interviewing and managing applications was stressful. Having to apply to 10s, 100s of companies would destroy me. I am very, very scared of my company going under and me having to compete in this market. I…
Connections, connections, connections. Reach out to every friend, old coworker, etc. especially those that are in management now. Catch up and get a pulse for how their company situation is right now--if they're weathering the downturn well, going through layoffs, etc. If you do get laid off you can reach out to these folks immediately and get recommendations or even just feedback on your resume. The sooner you start…
> The harsh reality is that for senior positions you're either going to spend a LOT of time smashing submit on hundreds and thousands of applications while hearing _nothing_ back, or you're going to tap your connections and have a job lined up relatively quickly. New grads have it a lot easier in the open market IMHO.
I disagree with this take entirely.
* Senior engineering positions, at least looking at the layoffs over the past year, trend to be the least impacted by layoffs. Empirically this appears to be the case, and it makes logical sense: they may be more expensive, but if that person/role is capable of doing more with less then its worth that investment versus training up mid-levels/juniors, dealing with inexperience, etc. Of course, ideally companies want both, but the industry has matured well past the point of "just keep the cheapest people"; we know better nowadays versus previous recessions.
In other words; during a layoff, there's less liquidity in the senior engineering talent pool than in other pools.
* In a similar vein; when companies have openings in this recession; they want Senior people. Either in the title, or just a bias when interviewing candidates; seniority matters. I've seen this in my own small-city startup community; startups with three or four junior/mid-level engineers, put up a posting for Senior talent, and it stays up for months (I'm looking at some right now which date back to October). Great companies, great culture, great compensation (not FANG, but); just very low liquidity in that talent pool to meet the demand.
The one caveat; Senior engineers who come from a FANG-salary background may have issues if they enter interviews with that expectation. But there's a lot of numbers between entry-level compensation and FANG-compensation.
* Why do companies hire junior/mid-level talent? Its the most liquid talent pool. Cheaper. Maybe you make the argument that junior talent has more loyalty/staying power because they can grow with the company. Etc. One issue with this recession is: All of these companies still have a LOT of money. This isn't, for most companies (especially FANG), an issue of "we don't have the money to meet payroll so need to cut"; its an issue of spending the past two years blowing cheap money on as many people as they could, realizing that they got a lot of low-tier talent, managing all that growth is HARD, and in some cases there just isn't enough high-impact work to justify some roles. This recession legitimately isn't leading to layoffs which are just about cost-cutting; its as much if not more about reorganization, refocusing managerial resources on high-impact projects, cutting bloat, cutting moonshots, etc. That changes the firing/hiring dynamic; its not necessarily about saving money on hires, its about reindexing on what makes a Good Hire.
That makes being a junior engineer very hard; after all, the best way to convince a hiring manager that you're a great hire is to say "Yeah I've worked on something similar to this problem before, let me tell you about it." Junior engineers don't have that.
> you're going to tap your connections and have a job lined up relatively quickly.
But this is absolutely, undeniably true. Its universally, physically, fundamentally impossible to overstate how much impact connections have in getting jobs during a flat or declining job market.
To the point of the original post, and to junior engineers: Stop worrying so much about actual technical skills. Obviously, be competent. But: Your #1 priority needs to be networking and socialization. Go to tech meetups. Offer to give presentations. Join local young professionals associations. Make friends and get drinks with them.