Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is the job market brutal? or is it just me?

news.ycombinator.com

71–80 of 274 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is the job market brutal? or is it just me?

#71
post #38

I don't know man. I am employed but I still get 64 recruiting emails a day. Seems like business as usual. FWIW I have never had luck with applications. The last time I was unemployed I sent out 10 or 15 and heard nothing. I reached out to a recruiter and was drowning in interviews within a week. As for the other side, I do hiring on my team. We posted a Senior SRE on linkedin and got 30 applicants within a week. That…

Feels like there's just a chasm... they want CHEAP people, not GOOD people.

Most companies don’t need or care about good people. They need cheap people who can keep the machines running and not break anything too badly until they either get acquired or they absolutely have to invest in fixing their stack.

Re: Ask HN: Is the job market brutal? or is it just me?

#72
Have you considered moving abroad? I’m a mediocre engineer compared to the rockstars in my field and I regularly get interviews at startups, and medium to large companies here in Germany.

I feel as though the jobs are for me to take or the interviews are for me to fail.

Honestly think about it. I do interviews for the company I work for (though I’m a senior data engineer I really like being people facing and meeting folks) and the market here is hungry for talent.

The larger companies might be laying off like their American counterparts but smaller (less aggressively tech focused) firms (like real estate, banking, manufacturing, pharma, etc) are hiring like crazy and so are startups.

Good luck to you!

Re: Ask HN: Is the job market brutal? or is it just me?

#73

I believe that the market is correcting and that salaries will be going down.

On the contrary… I’m not seeing any evidence of this. If anything, salaries are going up.

This seems extremely counter-intuitive. I'd figure with so many experienced and talented people looking, it would be an employer's market and they'd use it to reign in pay at least a bit. Why do you think this might not be occurring?

Re: Ask HN: Is the job market brutal? or is it just me?

#75

Have you considered moving abroad? I’m a mediocre engineer compared to the rockstars in my field and I regularly get interviews at startups, and medium to large companies here in Germany. I feel as though the jobs are for me to take or the interviews are for me to fail. Honestly think about it. I do interviews for the company I work for (though I’m a senior data engineer I really like being people facing and meeting…

*forgot to add context: I’m an American living in Germany for the last 5 years.

Re: Ask HN: Is the job market brutal? or is it just me?

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a US citizen try defense companies. Edit: I should have explained my reasoning. They have a much smaller eligible applicant pool - US citizens who are eligible for security clearance. Because of this they’re continuously looking for good talent.

I’m not a citizen, but I’m holding out for a pure “tech” company for now anyway for various reasons. Thanks for the hint anyway - perhaps someone else will benefit.

May I ask why? I’ve done both pure tech companies and tech jobs at non-tech Fortune 100 companies. I much prefer the latter. In my experience there is less stress (I work about 30-35 hours per week), great benefits, competitive salary, interesting projects, don’t have to live in one of the tech hubs, good coworkers and boss, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Is the job market brutal? or is it just me?

#78
post #6

Not just you. I would guess, optimistically, I’m averaging a 5% conversion rate of applications to recruiter chats/“stage 0 interviews”. That is, ~95% of applications yield silence or a generic email rejection without any human contact. ~15 YOE, FAANG experience, usually only applying to roles I feel I’m at least a halfway good fit for (i.e. not a complete scattergun approach). I’m (financially) fine for now, which i…

> FAANG experience Probably the reason. Most companies need people with experience in more than just one layer of a stack. Hard times for those who cant own a full stack, unfortunately.

lol, no, nobody is saying "oh they worked at google? they must only have narrow experience, NEXT"

Re: Ask HN: Is the job market brutal? or is it just me?

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn this is the most depressing comment in this whole comments section

Yeah, would be great to live in a magic land, where the US has no competitors, adversaries and sworn enemies. But this isn't magic land. US defense contractors are very much for profit and deliver a product that deters or kills some very bad people, more and more discriminating between collateral damage and intended targets - far more than can be said of Russian in Ukraine, for example. There's an entire generation i…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN