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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?

#311

Post by beebeepka »

millerm wrote: post #214
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.

I've been doing this stuff for decades. It has become an unbearable career. It's too late for me in life to change it as there are other circumstances that have made certain paths impossible for me to do. I'm screwed. Meanwhile, the uppers keep getting paid more and more while I get tossed. I honestly believe this is my final year on this planet.

I don't think you need "therapy", as in professional mental health sessions.

Do share what's up, though. Unhappiness isn't that uncommon. I am not very happy and have been oscillating between "I should quit first thing tomorrow" and "but I have to do the grind while I still can"

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

#312

Post by bluGill »

sharemywin wrote: post #244
giantg2 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

pretty sure unemployment pays better than walmart.

Hard to say. Unemployment has some weird rules which vary from state to state. I got laid off a few months after starting a new job, and since I hadn't been working there long my total pay wasn't very high, WalMart would have been as good. Fortunately I got a new job quick that time, but when you are out of work and don't have a lot of savings compared to your bills... Even if you have 6 months savings, seeing savings fall month by month while you just pay bills is demoralizing.

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

#313

Post by paganel »

hikawaii wrote: post #301
paganel wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Given that the average mid level developer makes a salary and stock grant putting them well into the 1% (in USA) I find it questionable that the majority of people are "just" trying to keep a roof over their heads.

Looked to me like the OP was talking more generally, about all people.

And back to developers (I am one, but not living in the US), I don't think most of them own their place of living. I know I don't, so, yes, I have to work in order to have a roof over my head.

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

#314

Post by bluGill »

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…

A fired employee can sue for wrongful dismissal. If this happened to your check with a lawyer, if you can show that the company had a pattern of overlooking such things, then you can get big bucks in court.

I know of people who should have been fired who were talked into quitting instead just because quitting means they can't sue. In turn the company gives the official answer "X worked here between these dates and left in good standing". Since the company always said the same thing when asked if someone worked there it wasn't a negative to the next employer, while if they fired they would have to say left in bad standing.

Of course since getting fired is a sensitive issue I won't say who. Reading between the lines in conversations and how the company acted though I'm sure that is how it worked.

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

#315

Post by bluGill »

giantg2 wrote: post #286
thetopher wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 muc…

If how the company acts in practice is different from their written rules, then anyone fired can sue the company for wrongful dismissal. Check with a lawyer.

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

#316

Post by mywittyname »

RangerScience wrote: post #234
moffkalast wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apparently a lot of us also like really old books? (mmmm 1910 manual on steel production.)

Seriously?

I mean, I have a collection of very old engineering books, including one on Petroleum Refinery Engineering and a Reinforced Concrete Design Handbook printed when text books where $2. But I had no idea this was a "thing" among developers.

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

#317

Post by whstl »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #297
whstl wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin. 140k and 150k but I'm still shopping.

Wow, that's really above the top tier in Berlin for SW developers. Are there companies paying for ICs in that range?

Keep in mind that's for team lead (which is "50% IC" I guess). But it's not exactly hard to see around 110k-120k for senior freelancing/consulting positions when you have good experience and great contacts. Also I see some Principal/Staff that make around this, this but those positions are sort of "tailor made" for certain individuals and are often "internal" and hard to apply for.

EDIT: Also the market moved quite a bit recently. A few years ago I wouldn't see this salary range at all. Also notice I'm getting old... Due to my experience/resumé I was also headhunted for principal and CTO positions, so there's that.

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

#318

Post by whstl »

elforce002 wrote: post #221
whstl wrote: 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.

Congrats.

Thanks!

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

#319

Post by mywittyname »

racl101 wrote: post #299
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woodworking is a popular hobby with developers; at some level at least they're both about creating things. The "eventually" part is a nod towards retirement and then joking not having a choice.

> Woodworking is a popular hobby with developers huh? TIL. Most devs I know live in condos and have no chance of having a place to do woodworking. Maybe it's a regional thing.

Might be an age thing. I started doing it in my 30s, and we have a diy channel in slack that's pretty active with wood workers. And I know of at least one famous YT wood worker that used to be a developer.

It intersects well with 3d printing and CNC stuff.

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

#320

Post by josephg »

crucialfelix wrote: post #263
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 software developers, everything we build will be obsolete, discarded or dead in 5-10 years. We are craftsmen of the ephemeral.

There's plenty of code already written today that will still be in use long after we're dead. (Well, assuming gpt10 doesn't rewrite it all).

If ephemeral codebases bother you, work on projects that will last longer. Things I expect will outlive us: Chrome, PostgreSQL, SQLite, LLVM, Linux/Windows/MacOS, Unity, Nodejs, Nginx.

I have a few small contributions in chromium and nodejs. There's something really delightful about looking at a strangers' laptop and knowing some of my code is in their machine.

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