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

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

#31

Post by shmatt »

Volundr wrote: post #20

US, looking for remote. 15+ years experience been looking since early January, and I still don't feel like I have traction. Worst job market for engineers I've seen in a long time. I have hope it'll improve in March when budgets are finalized, but at the same time I'm preparing for it to be a long one. First unemployment in my career, up until now I had employers coming to me.

I suspect the remote aspect is the biggest thing slowing you down. I go in once a month, which is practically a remote job, but those who moved during the pandemic and wouldn't fly in and take a hotel on their expense once a month had to leave

There are 1000 different flavors of mixed home-office working right now, but not that much fully remote

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

#32

Post by echelon »

Firstly, I'm really sorry to everyone who has been laid off. It's such an awful experience, and I'm sorry you're going through it. You're not alone, and everyone is cheering for you! Take care of yourself. You'll get through this.

The macro environment looks to be improving, and companies are mostly doing this to put downward pressures on salaries or because they overzealously hired during the pandemic. There are lots of things being built right now that need to be scaled.

I hope this doesn't come off tonally bad - I'm able to contract to hire a few (3-5) folks. I'm building an at-home Hollywood studio, and I'm looking for remote engineers with the following skills:

- Rust/Actix for backend, web services (and a real time desktop app we've yet to launch). This is my #1 need.

- Unreal Engine engineers, preferably with animation and C++ experience. This will help us tremendously. Longer term we'd like to explore Godot, but that's less immediate - more Q3/4.

- ML, especially with generative media experience. We've got a good sized team, but we're always looking to expand it. Experience with audio, images, LLMs/NLP, video a plus.

I'm financing this myself, and we have considerable runway financed from my last exit. There will be equity and full time offers extended if you're interested in sticking with us.

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

#33

Post by NegativeK »

psim1 wrote: post #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.

I've heard from a few sources that there's a disgusting stigma of "if you were laid off, there must be a reason."

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

#34

Post by giraffe_lady »

luxurytent wrote: post #29
giraffe_lady wrote: post #6

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?

I'm old enough that in a reasonable country I could be considering retirement, and switched into this line of work relatively late. I have no degree, in anything. Each of my jobs was in a different stack so I have no obviously apparent expertise.

A lot of reasons that should be reassuring to most of the rest of you don't worry I'm sure everything will be fine :)

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

#35

Post by TheBozzCL »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #12
irrational wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you looking? How many years experience do you have? What types of positions are you looking for?

Remote US, 9 years experience, backend IC.

I wonder if the remote work could be part of it. I have the impression many companies have grown weary of remote work since the pandemic.

That being said, I have a similar profile to you and I've been getting nearly no messages from recruiters even if I'm open to on-site work. The market's just difficult right now, keep looking!

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

#36

Post by Jommi »

nivenkos wrote: post #26
PretzelPirate wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

this isn't the case in northern Europe at all.

First of all you get around 1kish a month no questions asked, more if you have bills etc. you can prove you need to pay

and if you opted into "unemployment insurance" while employed, you'd be getting 60-80% of your salary for the next 12 months

this insurance costs around 100e a year to opt into

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

#37

Post by candiddevmike »

bugbuddy wrote: post #17

I was a senior dev at a big tech and got laid off in November. I have applied to hundreds of places. Not a lot of responses. I have been doing interview preps the whole time. It has been very demoralizing and I am thinking of switching careers to something else. I have been considering skilled trades. I like carpentry in particular.

Did you give leetcode tests during interviews while you were working at big tech?

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

#38

Post by Jommi »

We're hiring at our company. We've had a lot of people come through from the recent waves of layoffs, and usually so far there has been a mix of too high expectations, remote work mismatches as well as just lots of people not making the bar (we are a small company).

Still on the lookout for senior rust engineers who want to work at a company that's remote-first with a minimal-meetings culture.

You can message me on telegram @jommi for info

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

#40

Post by mikeg8 »

bugbuddy wrote: post #17

I was a senior dev at a big tech and got laid off in November. I have applied to hundreds of places. Not a lot of responses. I have been doing interview preps the whole time. It has been very demoralizing and I am thinking of switching careers to something else. I have been considering skilled trades. I like carpentry in particular.

As someone with more carpentry experience (paid) than dev experience, but strong interests in both worlds, I’m curious how you would reconcile taking an approximate 50% reduction in comp. Don’t know the numbers for your area but knowing Bay Area salaries, senior devs make 2-2.5x journeyman carpenters.
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