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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?

#151

Post by philjohn »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #34
luxurytent wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Working in totally different tech stacks should be spun as a superpower. You're a polyglot, not wed to one technology, but can quickly and easily get up-to-speed on the best tool for the job!

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

#152

Post by jvanderbot »

Engineering manager, 10 years experience robotics

I had multiple concurrent interview tracks start pretty quickly, and ended up with 5 competing offers. I was lucky to be able to tolerate that many interviews, and it worked out for me. Though I think I disappointed some employers by being honest about how many I had going concurrently.

I moved back to hands-on work as well, which has been really nice.

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

#153

Post by metadaemon »

dixie_land wrote: post #90
jaxomlotus wrote: post #66

Here's the flip side: I was hiring (at a stealth vc-funded startup). I reached out to every designer and coder laid off from Twitter and Amazon (one of my investors sent me a spreadsheet that those laid off folks added their contact info to). I didn't receive a single interested response to my reach outs. Now granted, I'm sure they were bombarded with lots of startup offers and being picky what company/stage they wer…

My observation is that recent layoffs affect engineers with different seniority very differently. Senior devs I know who got laid off are just enjoying their time off (with pay! if you consider the severance) after the rocketing market in 2021 (and maybe even H1 22) made them whole and financially secure. And they won't be entertaining a startup unless significant equity or big leveling up (eg Principal or Director).…

I guess if you are used to the security (or lack thereof) and coast-ability of large tech companies, you might be inclined to stick to the big names. However, I've recently discovered how fulfilling startup work is. Ironically, I feel more secure in my current role at a startup than I ever did at big tech. That's thanks a lot to the industry I'm in, but regardless senior devs are missing a lot if they completely discount startup roles.

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

#154

Post by shmatt »

jaxomlotus wrote: post #66

Here's the flip side: I was hiring (at a stealth vc-funded startup). I reached out to every designer and coder laid off from Twitter and Amazon (one of my investors sent me a spreadsheet that those laid off folks added their contact info to). I didn't receive a single interested response to my reach outs. Now granted, I'm sure they were bombarded with lots of startup offers and being picky what company/stage they wer…

Wild guess says you're not paying Amazon/Twitter compensation. And thats fine, they shouldn't be your target

It would not be smart of them to accept a lower paying job immediately. A lot of them have life expenses directly tied to the amount of money they're making. Maybe those who haven't found anything for 3 months can join your company, move to a new place, change their childrens' daycare, and do a lot of life changing decisions based on their new income

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

#155

Post by teacpde »

mikeg8 wrote: post #40
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.

As someone who has no carpentry experience but has spent a lot of time on woodworking as a hobby, I absolutely don't look forward to a carpentry job, even if the tech job market goes further south. Jobs take the fun out of your hobby sooner or later, and I have learned that lesson with software development.

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

#158

Post by metadaemon »

shaftway wrote: post #103

Senior SWE, 20+ years of experience, based in the bay area, laid off from Meta in November. I reached out to my network and had a couple applications in same-day. One of those panned out and I just started this week. I also did a bunch of cold job applications, but didn't get a callback from any of them. The whole process led to a ton of anxiety and was really nerve-wracking, especially reading about layoffs from oth…

Man, there's definitely something broken with the cold application process. I'd estimate my success rate of getting an interview from a cold application is something like 1-5%. I almost always resort to referrals or getting lucky networking with recruiters.

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

#159

Post by moffkalast »

__jambo wrote: post #144
moffkalast wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every programmer eventually becomes a woodworker, whether they like it or not.

Haha, are you suggesting all products eventually break and we resort to solving problems with small hand-crafted turing machines made of sticks?

Well I'm not saying that the most satisfying way to bash a server isn't with a meticulously lathed bat.

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

#160

Post by aviditas »

jonnycoder wrote: post #49
iLoveOncall wrote: post #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.

Can you give some examples of bad format?

9/10 resumes I have been seeing are the default auto generated ones from LinkedIn. Sometimes those look alright but the rest are 5+ page monstrosities.
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