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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?

#461

Post by doetoe »

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…

> in Europe you want to be [...] e.g. a refugee

Have you ever spoken to a (non-white) refugee in Europe?

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

#462

Post by ravagat »

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.

Referrals directly or indirectly will always triumph the manual application. Whenever a recruiter/lead suggests "please apply directly" I know it's not worth the time. Something you have to learn through experience.

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

#463

Post by itstyebaby »

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…

Is there anywhere I can get more information or how may I contact you for a job position if you are still hiring.

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

#464

Post by whstl »

manish_gill wrote: post #413
whstl wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm also based in Berlin. Do you mind if I ask what companies are you talking to?

The processes are still ongoing (haven't decided on the offers yet), but happy to share the info in a few weeks.

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

#465

Post by RangerScience »

palmtree3000 wrote: post #240
RangerScience wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wait, can you link to that?

Finally remembered!

It's a copy of this: https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/books/CompositionandHeatTr...

Mine is a dark red hardback, printed by McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1911.

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

#466

Post by titanomachy »

gen220 wrote: post #387
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…

If you're interviewing with an early stage (read: pre-series B) startup, the founders believe you're a good fit, and they have seeded a good culture, they will be happy to let you interview every person they've hired so far. I like to ask these people "Why did you choose this company versus any of the other ones?" and "What were your expectations about [thing I'm uncertain about], and how did your experience differ f…

You're right that the cash compensation is often similar. But estimating the value of options is really hard! One of the better (seed) companies I considered working at was able to tell me what my options would be worth given various exit scenarios. In that particular case the company would have had to exit with a $5B valuation in order to match my FAANG compensation. The company was worth $100M at the time. When I pointed this out, the founders reassured me that they were very confident that their company would exceed that valuation :)

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

#467

Post by dangwhy »

renewiltord wrote: post #452
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…

We're a small prop shop. I don't need to do sustainable in the way you're thinking. And I think we might be speaking at cross purposes. I want someone with a skillset. I'm going to hire them for that skillset. That doesn't mean they only have that skillset but that's the thing that provides utility.

oh got it. Thank you for the clarification!

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

#468

Post by the_jeremy »

Yoric wrote: post #162
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…

> Being real for a minute: There is definitely a perspective among hiring companies that regular lay offs are sometimes packaged alongside bottom performers, but I think that is something they would just do diligence on during an interview process. Not sure what you mean here. I know of companies that lay off entire teams, irrespective of performance. I suspect that it's the same everywhere.

If you're laying off people, you're going to also get rid of the low performers. Maybe you don't have enough low performers (or just don't know who they are) to make up the quota and you have to remove whole teams or use arbitrary metrics, but there will be an overrepresentation of below-average workers compared to the survivors. Source: wife is a manager at a company that had single-digit percent layoffs.

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

#469

Post by the_jeremy »

I was searching starting in October, but not laid off. I applied to ~20 places, didn't hear back from any of them. I turned on #OpenToWork on LinkedIn and got ~150 recruiters reaching out per month, of which Recruiter outreach has dried up significantly on LinkedIn, so I'm not sure this is still valid, even though it was <2 months ago.

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

#470

Post by squintychino »

Been working in Data Analytics for 10 years now. Been trying to look for another job myself.

Much different than it was a few years ago. I had a response rate of about 60% and had multiple interviews each week. Now I would say my response rate is about 10% at the moment.

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