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Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

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21–30 of 479 posts

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#21
I took 8 months off voluntarily, just started applying again last week (full stack dev):

10 applications, 2 rejections, 1 initial phone screen

Anecdotally I see very few junior/low level positions open, most jobs seem to be senior+. Salary ranges are all a bit higher than I remember them being 3 years ago. I am still a long way from being scared enough to take something I don't like or that doesn't pay well, still optimistic things will swing back eventually.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#22

Not a single interview since mid november. edit: this is rapidly becoming an interview about my job search and I don't really have the energy for it. I've answered the questions I feel like answering and I'm good for now.

Would you mind ballparking how many applications you've put out, and to what kinds of companies? That's super concerning to hear.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#23
Remember that there are many reasons why someone would not get hired despite having top work experience.

I have seen people out of FAANGs with 10+ years of experience sharing their CV after being laid off and some will struggle to get any interview, let alone get a good job, just because the format of said CV was absolutely awful.

If you aren't getting interviews, it's your CV that is the problem.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#25
Weirdly, a senior dev from my company was recruited by another company and will be changing jobs in a couple weeks. And to be clear, he is not a unicorn type. He's a good senior developer in a common language.

It's hard for me to understand recruiters "fishing in the neighbor's pond" while there are plenty of unemployed, qualified senior devs out there right now.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#26
post #8

I recently got laid off in the UK and it was really hard to find something decent. There's jobs out there, but most aren't all that great and the interviews were much harder to come by. I was ghosted by recruiters countless times after being told I would be put forward for certain roles which has never happened to me before...

I'm in the US and would love to hear about the UK expefiencd. What's it like when being laid off in the UK? Do you get guaranteed severance and some breathing room from the stress of rent or mortgage payments? Do you worry about access to high quality Healthcare? Overall, do you think being in the UK makes you less worried that a layoff will leave you broke and homeless?

It depends on your company, but the statutory minimums are awful.

You get a minimum of 2 week's extra pay if you have over 2 years service, and Job Seekers' Allowance is about 77 quid a week - so imagine living on less than $500 a month.

Healthcare access (via the NHS) is unaffected, you might be able to get free prescriptions too.

But in general it's terrible.

As always in Europe you either want to be an ultra-rich landowning aristocrat (little to no property tax, inheritance tax, etc.) or very poor/unemployed (e.g. a refugee) so you qualify for state housing, etc. - work does not pay. You pay high taxes and then don't qualify for assistance when it matters. The USA is better by far where you can just manage your own savings with your 3-4x higher salary, healthcare is still an issue though.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same thing happen. It was quite jarring, for me, as I had been quite sought-after, before (Which was why I had the job I had, at a marquee corporation). Turns out out, it was because of my age. Lot of these laid off folks, are probably gonna encounter the same thing.

it was because of my age. What do you mean? Are you young and they were interested? Or a senior level developer who was older and they were interested?

No. I'm old (I'm now 60. I was 55, when I was looking).

The ageism in tech is pervasive. People seldom even bother hiding it; even though it's just as illegal as sexism or racism.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#28
Laid off from a US remote backend/data role in a large, FAANG-adjacent tech company in early January. I have always had a high callback rate with 20+ years of experience and a CS degree from a tier 1 university. This time, my only callbacks were through internal referrals from my network or introductions made through recruiters. I ended up with two offers by the end of January, one from a growing startup and the other from a mid-market company with a conservative business model. Given the slowdown in the market, I'm thankful to have found something so quickly.

My take is that this is not nearly as bad as the dotcom crash in the early 2000s, but the red hot tech market of 2021 where companies were hiring as fast as they could with incredible comp packages is gone. There are still a good number of roles out there, but companies are being more careful in their hiring and they are not trying to compete with (the no longer hiring) FAANGs when it comes to compensation.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#29

Not a single interview since mid november. edit: this is rapidly becoming an interview about my job search and I don't really have the energy for it. I've answered the questions I feel like answering and I'm good for now.

This is very surprising. I have a few friends who were laid off and landed jobs in a few weeks, many interviews (although exhausting), similar range of experience as you (~10 years)

Why do you think you're not getting responses?

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#30
post #13

Germany. I wasn't exactly laid off, just left in a bad time. Zero applications, just recruiters reaching out, I started 8 processes, 4 are still ongoing, on 2 I got ghosted, but got 2 offers so far which I gotta answer till next week. EDIT: I got 18 years of experience, web full stack (react/vue/golang/rails/C#/haskell) + devops, if that matters.

What’s the salary on the offers you have, and in which region of Germany is that? Just curious.
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