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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?

#371

Post by giantg2 »

bluGill wrote: post #315
giantg2 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The tough part is solid evidence supporting it.

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

#372

Post by dnissley »

whstl wrote: post #352
metadaemon wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm definitely seeing a pattern in the posts here. Referrals and recruiters = success. Apply to a position = failure. I've had in the past a few recruiters on the lazier side ask me to "please apply directly at the company portal" and that had a perfectly round 0% success rate.

I have had 4 jobs in my software engineering career so far -- I have gotten none of them from applying (despite applying to many, many listings and even having gotten interviews through those applications).

1 personal connection, 2 recruiters employed by the hiring company, 1 third party recruiter on contract through the hiring company.

It just seems to me like a company having put out an application just doesn't mean they are all that motivated to hire. Having hired recruiters on the other hand...

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

#373

Post by shpx »

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.

As a counter example, I need about 100x what I have today.

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

#374

Post by mordechai9000 »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #290
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.

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…

This is very similar to where I'm at. I feel like I do have skills that could be used somewhere, but i don't look great on paper, and I'm not very good at selling myself.

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

#375

Post by layoff_payoff »

cowthulhu wrote: post #339
layoff_payoff wrote: post #337

I was laid of in November, started interviewing a week later. I got about 50% response on my applications; I bombed most of them at various stages (I should have increased prep time by another week or 2). I got an offer in early January and started last week. My compensation dropped by 30-40%, but I figured if I'll probably spend more than 30% of the year waiting for an offer close to what had before. Considering my…

Why did you register the LLC? Sounds interesting!

2 reasons: the first is to show myself how I'm now "serious" about this; I've always have half-assed projects I mentally considered to be hobbies, but these experiments will be different. The second reason is related - I want to have a clear separation between my personal finances and the new venture in order to track my losses.

It is aspirational, but I needed to take the step for self-accountability and self-motivation

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

#376

Post by rcarmo »

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).…

That feels like a very US thing to assume. EU layoffs have different contexts.

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

#377

Post by rcarmo »

JSavageOne wrote: post #254
titanomachy wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Also, I have a hard time getting objective information about the work culture at startups. Yes this is a big problem as you have no idea what you're signing up with startups. Maybe the founder expects you to work 12 hours/day and constantly be available, maybe they will fire you a month before your equity vesting, or just randomly fire you one day despite having never given any negative feedback. I've seen all of t…

Not just startups - even established non-tech companies reaching out can be _very_ opaque, since their tech staff essentially exists in a parallel dimension…

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

#378

Post by dangwhy »

Yoric wrote: post #338
dangwhy wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather get someone who can juice the machine by showing up with existing knowledge This doesn't feel like a sustainable way to build engineering org. You only get N chances for such 'juicing', what do you do when you need to juice but don't have open headcount. You have to come up with a strategy for that anyways, so why not implement ' want juice but no headcount' strategy and expand your hiring pool. I've also fo…

There is a niche of Rust SAP Java engineers? Wow :)

yes its the next big thing.

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

#379

Post by yCombLinks »

gruffin wrote: post #99
the_only_law wrote: post #4

Not a single interview so far since a November (albeit I paused looking around the holidays figuring it was out less but didn’t get started again till a bit into January. Going to attempt to pay for a resume rewrite and see if it helps any.

I've done a lot of hiring. Happy to give thoughts on your resume if you want (for free).

I would love to hear your thoughts on mine, if you're open

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

#380

Post by rcarmo »

coldpie wrote: post #63
Jommi wrote: post #38

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 t…

In general, I'm curious if people replying to this thread have had success with applying to HN "Who's Hiring?" listings. At my previous job, at a small company (~50 total employees), posting in those threads was by far our best recruiting tool. While we filtered out a lot of uninspiring resumes, we also responded quickly to people who seemed like a reasonable match. If I were looking, after exhausting personal contac…

Most of it has become US-only over the past few months.
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