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Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
201–210 of 270 posts
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to jump in on this - I got canned in the last big recession and while not a new grad, I took the next (contract) job that came up, at much lower pay, and over the next year doubled my take home from the original job. Two lessons 1. Spend your lunchtimes job hunting. Treat it like a job 2. Move around as a new grad. Think of it like dating, you have to kiss a few frogs just to get an idea of what is out there. (M…
>(Most people who stay in one job really mean lots of different jobs inside one giant conglomerate) It doesn't even need to be a giant conglomerate. Roles evolve. Products/projects/priorities/technologies change. Certainly at the two 10K, give or take, employee companies I've worked for over ten years, I've done a lot of different things even though I went by some variant of the same title the whole time.
I've been at the same place for 22 years and except for 3 years I am in the same group with the same title and comparing what I did in 2001 to what I do in 2023 they are very different jobs. Sure a lot of it has to do with changes in technology but as my professional skills have grown what I do has changed significantly. There are a few of my coworkers who started around the same time I did and they are doing exactly the same thing they were doing 20 years ago, very little has changed for them outside of the travel and time keeping apps and they are happy as clams.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say, having experiences at bad workplaces can still be valuable. This isn't to say one should seek out toxic colleagues and horrible working conditions, but knowing what you do not want is valuable too. And having bad workplaces early on is cheaper than having bad workplaces later in life. All in all, I'm trying to emphasize that a job in the field you want will almost always be beneficial when you're starting ou…
One particular thing I've noticed in my neck of the woods is younger Junior devs only staying at junior level jobs for a set period. They stay only one year, almost to the day, despite good performance and good fit. That happened to a report of mine once, obviously with a previous mutual agreement, but some recruiters mentioned that trend to me as well. I think having a set date to leave is healthy, especially at thi…
A tangent to this is "management is now hesitant to hire people who have shown an established history of employment."
When you hire a new grad, and then spend a year getting them all up to speed with the process and CI system and code reviews and familiarization with the code base and they're just now starting to take on the responsibility for some of the code... and they leave a year and a day after you hired them.
And so then you hire another new grad... and {repeat}... and they leave a year and a day after you hired them.
At this point, management is a bit frustrated. They give it one more go... and they leave a year and a day after you hired them.
And now, when that position is opened up again, it is no longer an entry level position but rather a mid level. We forgo the extensive onboarding and gradual ramp up for a new grad and instead have a mid who should be able to understand the nature of a CI system, issue tracking, and so on and be able to start being a positive contributor in a month or two and so if they also leave a year and a day later, we've had several months of them being a positive contribution on the team.
... and now its just that much harder for a new grad to find a job.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#204I'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 emp…
it was pretty ugly back then but I consider it a good thing. At the time everyone wanted to be in IT, I remember cab drivers with their MCSE books and every kid with a degree could be a programmer for Anderson Consulting as long as you went through their 6 week boot camp. The dot bomb killed the weak, 2008 on the other hand was a different type of blood bath.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Reach out to every friend, old coworker, etc. especially those that are in management now.” This advice always cracks me up. Most people don’t have deep networks of people who can hook them up with a senior level engineering position. Like, even the people I know who are quite well connected don’t really have this option. Sure, everyone has a buddy who’d love to pay them half for twice the work. But we’re talking re…
>This advice always cracks me up. And, yet, all three jobs I've had in the last 25 years (including one in 2001), I landed because I knew someone senior at the company pretty well. Not strictly engineering but tech and tech ecosystem companies. Was that lucky and atypical? Perhaps. But those were my experiences. The last job I got through "normal" channels was from a campus interview at grad school.
> Was that lucky and atypical?
If you started your career 25 years ago, you were present in the field before it massively expanded. Your peers are nothing like my peers (Started 13 years ago), and nothing like the peers of someone who started 3 years ago.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are nothing like that situation. This was a common problem in the .com bust days in that the money was often just being passed around. Double Click had a similar situation where they had a good business but many of their customers didn't. But they (and other solid business) did make it through the purge and went on to be big successes. Today we have an ecosystem that is far more diverse and what I'd call "real". Y…
> We are nothing like that situation Agreed because this time the asset bubble extends well beyond tech. This is a much larger problem and will take much longer to unwind, cutting much deeper than that.
The asset bubble mostly affects valuations. The real economy is still producing and consuming, regardless of the weird shit that happened to the money supply because of COVID.
The dot-com collapse was due to a million startups selling $10 bills for $9. None of the major firms doing layoffs now have that as their core line of business.
I can't speak as to what's going on in the startup space.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#207I'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…
Came here to say the same thing, I graduated in '99 with an ECE degree when movies like Fight Club and The Matrix came out and the future was so bright we had to wear shades, right into the Dot Bomb of 2000/2001. People might have forgotten or be to young today to remember that most tech innovation stopped from then until around 2007 when the iPhone came out. Facebook was around 2004-5 ish but the PHP ecosystem it wa…
There's nothing wrong with settling, you can go a week without food but not a month. There's nothing wrong with working a shitty job or six, there's nothing wrong not working in your field and there's certainly nothing wrong with not having your dream job-do you really think all those guys who worked in the mines or built the railroad were worried about their dream job? No, what they were worried about was putting food on the table and making sure there is a roof over their head. Feed your family, put a roof over your head and then worry about getting a better job. The privilege that allows all these people to sit at home and not work because the job doesn't check all their boxes is astounding. I remember the Reagan recession and I just got out of college in time for the Bush I recession, I know what it's like when there are no jobs and it's horrible. A job is just that a job, it gives you money so you can eat. If you like to eat you need to work, how hungry you are determines how shitty of a job you'll take.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand the sentiment and there's certainly a logical and valid case for it. But I disagree with it and here's why: 1) The secular trend in falling interest rates and "low" interest rates will continue longer term. Raising rates rapidly has been disruptive but it also gives some breathing room and the ability to slowly lower rates again, which will be needed to stimulate demand again. Lower interest rates obviou…
I like your optimism about 2025. Tension around china, russia, north korea is rapidly increasing and by the end of the decade I'd expect a bigger war there. US will have to print another pile of money and then face a choice: let the economy sink in the inflation or join the war. The dust will settle by 2055.
> north korea
Given that you include it in your predictions, I would not put much stock in them. You're confusing domestic propaganda and saber-rattling with actual assessments of geopolitics. It's up there with feeling threatened by a communist Grenada.
As for Russia, it's been a year, and it's still having quite a time in failing to invade the poorest country in Europe. There's a colossal gap between how you think the world stands, and how it actually stands. Russia's a failing Potemkin village, whose only asset of note is 10,000 nuclear weapons.
There are only three kinds wars that will ever be waged between the US and Russia.
1. A proxy conflict which one or both of the sides aren't actually deeply invested in. (2. None at all.
3. End-the-world Armageddon.
None of these are a good fit for the rest of your narrative. It's just a hodgepodge of political anxieties.
Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've worked at multiple of the FAANG. Everyone acknowledges they study for the interview. You may occasionally get someone trying to make out they could pass without study but even then they acknowledged they studied. This isn't something to be arrogant about. It's a process designed to filter out those who'd refuse to study to get the job. You have to study. Doesn't matter if you have a PhD and write books on CS. St…
Study doesn’t need to be intense. I got my current job with about 6 hours of leetcode and no CS degree (although I did take a small handful of CS courses)
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Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
#210I'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.
2013 grad, no intern experience, BS, not a top school
20:5:3:1