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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?

#251
What I did in 2003 was stayed in school a semester longer. Then many of my friends graduated and had jobs. So they helped me find a job. The market began to pick back up gradually and there were more options.

Not an option for everyone (college is more expensive now for sure!) but it worked.

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

#252
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add to this, I've had 5 jobs within 5 years of graduating. The first 2 jumps were due to compensation, was able to get a nice raise each time. The third job was a good fit, however the role evolved into something I didn't like as much and didn't fit my career goals. I took the fourth job to try something new, quickly found out the role had nothing I enjoyed doing. All of the experiences were valuable in terms of…

An average tenure of 1 year in a job is a red hot flag I'd almost immediately reject. Life's too short to spend a month wasted training an employee that's just going to jump again. It's my number 1 no-hire criteria. Good on you for convincing so many hiring managers that you're worth the risk though I suppose?

I think if the employee is experienced and independently motivated enough to ramp up and become productive quickly, you can get considerable value from someone like that. But you're basically talking about a highly specialised perma-contractor, W-2 in name only...

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

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wait, why are you getting that much filtered from the phone screen to the interview? From my experience, it's just a bullshit step with a recruiter just to check you're not totally dumb.

Maybe I was totally dumb, idk. I don't really count recruiter phone screens as phone screen, usually I have 2 (one easy one from recruiter and one more critical one from the hiring manager/company)

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

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bad attitude. Would you rather be unemployed and receiving no callbacks, or unemployed and still having your pick of which recruiters to engage with?

It made absolutely no difference for me at one point. At least the first is not a waste of time. Could have directed to a floss project.

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

#255
post #216
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Move around as a new grad. ... but not too much/too soon. Best to understand what you can/should learn and try and achieve that before looking for a change.

No one smart is expecting critical work from a new grad. If you move once every 1-2 years then you are fine. Once per year will raise flags after 3-4 jobs due to fear that you are being terminated on every job for some reason.

I didn't mean don't do it because of impact on your resume, I meant don't do it prematurely because it slows down your progress.

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

#256
post #217
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.

To clarify - a random SWE's random peer from 25 years ago is much more like to be in an influential senior position, than a random SWE's random peer from a job 13 years ago, or a random SWE's random peer from a job last year.

Your friends are statistically more likely to be closer to the top of the pyramid than mine, and my friends are closer to the top than a fresh no-name college graduate's.

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

#257
The job market is going to suck in tech for the next year, maybe less but the market is flooded with qualified people right now and that will take time to settle.

I would do what you can to kill a year, sign up for post-doc work, spend a year teaching, go travel etc.

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

#258

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…

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could be talking about different things, but networking at conferences and professional events has been productive for me. I'm talking real-life socializing here, not LinkedIn. You can size people up quickly and determine whether they are competent/sane without a lengthy interview process. It's less about having friends in high places than sharing war stories and establishing a rapport with like-minded people in a…

I've been going to tech meetups and talking to people there for, well, many years. It has never made any difference whatsoever in my job search. It hasn't surfaced any companies for me to apply to, it hasn't introduced me to any hiring managers, and it certainly didn't give me any behind-the-scenes insight into what working somewhere is like. I've been going to events in the SF Bay area. Maybe you meant something dif…

I mean mostly yearly professional conferences and staying active in those respective organizations.

It could be that SF is just an outlier due to the competition and that so many are transient.

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

#260
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

This is an HR problem. If they’re happy with their job, it’s not possible for them to get a raise with the current company that likely comes anywhere close to what they can get jumping ship. If HR would be willing to say “Hey, we recognize that this person is doing good work and want to keep them, but also recognize they can realize a 50%+ increase elsewhere. Let’s open the checkbook.” Instead, they’ll say that the m…

This is public sector. They knew the pay grade when they got hired (stating the pay range has been a requirement ever since the web page was launched) and it can't be changed without an act of the legislature.

With new grads, we can't hold 'em at all. For people who came in with 5+ years of experience, the average tenure here is 15 years. People are more likely to retire than quit. (Seriously, I've got 200 hours of "manager makes sure you use it" vacation, sabbatical accrual, an honest to goodness funded pension, and one of the better health insurance policies).

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