Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 270 posts

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

#231

Post by granshaw »

thinking4real wrote: post #165
qbasic_forever wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“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…

Yes it’s all nice and cozy to take a job somewhere an acquaintance works, but I wouldn’t be in my current high paying position if I relied on my network.

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

#232

Post by granshaw »

015a wrote: post #130
qbasic_forever wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah another point in seniors’ favor vs junior:

Say a company averages a $1M ROI per engineer, but a senior is 3-5x more likely to actually produce that ROI within a year. They’re not gonna bat an eye towards paying them 200k vs a junior at 100k

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

#233

Post by granshaw »

manimino wrote: post #179
nyanpasu64 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm unemployed and dropped out from college due to stress and burnout (still ongoing, compounded by a psychologically-unsafe living environment), and would have to fill out hundreds of job applications to find a job, and doing so is unmanageable and beyond my capabilities, is it easier to not find a job and stop trying to stay alive?

It's not really that binary, though - job or death. There's an awful lot of space in between the two. There's this conveyer-belt view of life: we are supposed to go directly from birth to school to job to kids to bigger job to death. Some people really do live that. Most people don't. But we're expected to fit that mold, so anyone who's stepped off the belt will usually keep quiet about it. So it's easy to start beli…

Amen to that. It’s profoundly sad actually when you step back to think about it. Most of mankind slaving away 40+ hours in the prime of their life, missing their kids first years, not having much time or energy to do or think about anything else, etc etc

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

#234

Post by dclowd9901 »

ryandrake wrote: post #92
dclowd9901 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Congratulations on your lucky career timing! Like many in HN's demographic, if you started 13 years ago (2010) or less, then you've so far never had to work in a bear market. Actually your timing is astonishing, entering the industry right after the last downturn. Well done :) In an extended bear market / downturn, throw that ratio out the window. Unless you're literally John Carmack or Ken Thompson, you're not going…

Ryan Drake, the person I was responding to said, in general terms, that it is not as easy to land a job as they may have expected with numbers of difficulty an entire order of magnitude higher (or 2!) than existing anecdote.

Dot com bust was 1999; I came in around 2009, right after the Great Recession, one of the worst economic periods in recorded history. That’s the data. All of it. I’m not sure who the person I replied to got their data, but we’re talking about approximately 24 years of it, and most of those years were pretty damn good. So unless that person hasn’t moved jobs in the last decade and a half, they would certainly not be warning people, in general terms, about the impacts of a downturn economy. Either that, or their experience is rather singular. Looking at posts across Reddit and Hacker News, and the general consensus of people in this industry, it seems like this person is far outside the norm of employment viability.

Tech as a developer is still, far and away, the best job market to enter.

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

#235

Post by mixmastamyk »

zackmorris wrote: post #164
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…

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…

Fist bump.

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

#236

Post by mixmastamyk »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #115
ryandrake wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It may sound like a big difference, but turns out not to be when bills start coming due. Going through the motions is worth... nada.

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

#237

Post by 999900000999 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #212
999900000999 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 get…

> 2020 and 2021 were crazy times, I interviewed with Amazon at least 4 times I interviewed with Amazon last year and was specifically informed that it isn't possible to interview with them more than once a year. How did you interview four times in two years?

I'm also counting just getting the code test, I failed a few of those

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

#238

Post by gedy »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #174
sh4rks wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> It's a process designed to filter out those who'd refuse to study to get the job.

Sure, but why exactly? I hate when FAANGs reach out to senior, employed people - then whole process afterwards assumes they're the ones begging to work there. Kind of tiring to hear the "we get soo many applicants" tone when they are the ones reaching out.

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

#240

Post by jventura »

ghaff wrote: post #217
vkou wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I’m not sure of your point. So a job I got 13 years ago largely through a contact isn’t how things work today? As in my most recent example.

I think he's saying things are more volatile now. When the industry was much smaller, it was easier to make and stay in personal contact with others. Also, it's natural that if you started your career 25 years ago, many people you've met back then (and may have also started back then) are now senior (devs, managers, etc.). A person that started in the industry in the last 5 years may not have many friends in senior positions, and personal connections are more volatile as well (more people, more competition, etc.).

It's my reading!

Post reply on HN