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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?

#281

Post by disordinary »

Volundr wrote: post #56
shmatt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not so sure, at least I know plenty of people in tech hubs that are in a similar position. Certainly anything that reduces the number of jobs you can accept will limit your opportunities, but I'm not sure being open to in-office would immediately solve the problem. In the end it doesn't matter. Due to family concerns relocation is not an option, and anything local would be a huge pay cut. I'll go that route if I…

You might have to take a paycut even working remotely. A lot of companies now pay what you'd expect locally rather than in a tech hub. So, if you worked remotely from San Francisco you'd earn more than if you worked remotely from somewhere rural.

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

#282

Post by pcthrowaway »

titanomachy wrote: post #177
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…

I’m a low-senior engineer recently laid off. I got lots of emails like that and politely declined. I have a bit over four months of severance pay. For the moment, I’m enjoying other fulfilling activities as well as spending some time upgrading my tech skills through independent study. I’ve considered some startups, but it seems like it’s often difficult to enforce boundaries on work… I benefit a lot from being able t…

Curious if there could be repercussions are of joining a startup, enforcing your boundaries, and if they don't respect them, quitting early (just leaving them off your resume).

You get a bit more cash, and I can't see it impacting your career negatively (though you do end up trading some of the time you could be resting and collecting severance to see if the company might be a good long-term fit)

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

#284

Post by paganel »

georgeecollins wrote: post #237
ryandrake wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, some very senior employees are in this boat: They kinda have enough savings to just retire, but were hanging on to their jobs to save maybe 10% more or whatever. Now that they're out of a job they are simply saying "Whelllp, I guess I'm now retired." and not really feeling the need to look anymore. I know someone who refused a forced return to office, and when his company tried to call his bluff, he just…

>> were hanging on to their jobs to save maybe 10% more or whatever The amount of wealth all people need is constant. It is 1.5 x whatever they have today.

The people going after "wealth" are a minority. The majority of us are salaried people who go to work in order to have a roof over our heads, to pay the bills and put food on the table and maybe to have enough money to have some kids.

The majority of us don't actually know what we "have", because it isn't that much anyway. We do know though what we need to pay in the next 10 to 15 days(and if we somehow forget there's where anxious dreams come into play to help us out with that).

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

#285

Post by sgwizdak »

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…

One note from personal experience -- it'll likely take about 12 weeks or so for a laid off dev to come back up to speed with interview prep to feel confident to start the interview grind again. One thing that can likely help is being upfront with the evaluation process.

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

#286

Post by giantg2 »

thetopher wrote: post #279
giantg2 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're fired, unemployment doesn't pay you anything. My company generally won't layoff and instead finds reasons to fire people.

This isn’t true in California, and I don’t think it’s generally true in other states either. A fired employee is still eligible for unemployment as long as they were not fired because of specific misconduct. Poor performance does not constitute misconduct. Misconduct must be “willful and wanton.” (Regularly missing work or being late, stealing, fighting with coworkers, etc.) The CA guidelines are long, but contain so…

Good point. My company generally finds "misconduct" reasons to let someone go, like long lunch breaks, being late, computer use like logging into personal accounts etc. They are very lenient about a lot of stuff in practice, but the official policies are much stricter. They basically have enough policies that they can get almost anyone for violations. It's all about having many rules and unequal enforcemnt - it's much like the regular legal system that way.

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

#287

Post by LastTrain »

jcalvinowens wrote: post #274
shmatt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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 ...did anybody actually agree to that? Maybe I'm off base, but requiring employees to pay for mandatory business trips out of pocket seems insane to me. Is that even legal? It's a camouflaged pay cut, from one point of view (probably actually worse when you consider taxes). I'm curious how others…

That isn't what the OP was saying. These are people who /were/ local office employees, moved away during the pandemic and aren't coming back into the office from time to time to make an appearance on their own dime.

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

#289

Post by pcthrowaway »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #132
Lio wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard of plenty of companies publishing gender and ethnicity breakdowns of employees. I've never heard of anyone doing that for age of employees sadly.

You just have to look at one of those "company pictures," taken at offsites, or whatever. Lots of smiling young faces. Maybe one or two gray heads, and you often find out they are Principals, in one way or another. One of the dirty little secrets of tech ageism, is the ones doing it, are often older folks, themselves. IBM has been caught doing it, and the impetus came from their (quite gray) C-Suite.

That could be accounted for by the older folks not being able to attend the meetups as easily, due to family obligations and whatnot.

Especially people in their late 30s to 40s with kids who haven't left yet. I suppose there's really no too old to have kids who are not yet independent, given that a non-negligible percentage of millenials and zoomers will still be living with parents and whatnot

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

#290

Post by nazgulsenpai »

giantg2 wrote: post #161
dixie_land wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

"they'd be willing to take anything." That would apply to me too. I have 10 years in the industry but have been underpaid and have a family. My current plan if I get fired is to work at Walmart or Lowes until I can find another job.

The company I worked for the last 7 years closed year end, and I'm a single dad with a weird schedule and self-taught (no college). I thought my prospects were bad but I got a better job for better pay at a better company, and I was totally honest with them about my skills, experience, etc during the hiring process so there were no surprises.

If you feel like you could lose your current, underpaid job I encourage you to start looking around. I wish I would have before waiting til the bitter end.

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