Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#121

Post by lotsofpulp » Sun, Aug 13, 2023, 7:11 PM UTC

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #117

lotsofpulp wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see lots of employers who are not picky. Hotels, grocery stores, hospitals, warehouses, construction crews, transportation businesses, etc. Employers in one sector being picky is not evidence of all employers being picky.

> I see lots of employers who are not picky. Hotels, grocery stores, hospitals, warehouses, construction crews, transportation businesses, etc. Jobs aren't getting filled because they're in places people can't afford to live. Right now that's most places - including places that had been affordable for generations but aren't any more. This all should be easily understood but it often isn't.

Insufficient pay can surely be a cause for some employers not being able to be picky, but that does not mean the official unemployment rate is false.

I think what people are dancing around is percent of people employed with minimum “acceptable” pay to quality of life at work ratio, which includes the location of the work. This figure may very well be trending down, but is not an official figure, and it seems like a difficult metric to calculate anyway.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#122

Post by blamazon » Sun, Aug 13, 2023, 7:12 PM UTC

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #106

UPS is paying $100-200K for drivers and I can't find a decent plumber, electrician, roofer or concrete installer without paying insane costs and/or waiting for months. Something to consider!

UPS is only paying experienced drivers (with experience at UPS) those rates, at the entry level it's more in the neighborhood of part time work 20 dollars an hour, which is a common entry level rate in warehousing and logistics these days.

Similarly, it's a long road to being a skilled laborer that can pull those large contracts, and even then the margins can be utterly ruthless to small operators.

Just seeking to be realistic - both can be great career paths for the right person.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#123

Post by farmeroy » Sun, Aug 13, 2023, 7:12 PM UTC

Reading about all you engineers with years of experience struggling to get a job is incredibly painful, but in some ways it's relieving to hear that even experience engineers are finding this market difficult. I managed to land my first job during the pandemic on a combination of self-education and a bootcamp. That job is over due to lack of funding and I have been applying non-stop for 6 months, 300-400 applications and just one interview. In the meantime, I'm pursuing a BSc part time, building personal projects, and working in the service industry. Finding that next role seems like it will an epic journey and I certainly don't count on finding a role, or giving up, any time soon...

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#124

Post by xiasongh » Sun, Aug 13, 2023, 7:13 PM UTC

I'm a new grad and I was extremely scared because of all the doom and gloom on HN and reddit. I also felt like new grads would be hit the hardest.

Come application time... it was totally normal. Had some interviews and some rejections. Ended up getting multiple offers with very competitive compensation.

While I may be the exception rather the norm, there are definitely companies that are still hiring and some that are just getting head count for the upcoming quarter. I would not give up hope.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#125

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Sun, Aug 13, 2023, 7:13 PM UTC

its_a_random_ac wrote: post #54

ctoth wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are plenty of nice places where the houses are 60K. Citation super needed. Where in the US can I buy a house for $60,000? Does it have a roof?

Spoiler alert: be prepared to spend a ton of money of gas, and hours for driving to any kind of doctor's office beyond a GP. A friend of a friend commuted for 4 hours each day to go to school as a kid because her family lived so far out. I still agree with the general sentiment though. I'm happy with living in a 1br condo and taking public transport, but I had coworkers that "needed" a detached house with a back yard…

> I'm happy with living in a 1br condo and taking public transport, but I had coworkers that "needed" a detached house with a back yard and a moderately expensive car.

Where it takes 4+ typical incomes to make basic bills(kind of everywhere), most apartments are a tough option.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#126

Post by farmeroy » Sun, Aug 13, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #32

mdekkers wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 53, and I doubt I’ll ever find a job in tech again. I only started getting responses when I removed the earliest 15 year’s experience from my CV, and as soon as I hit the screening stage and my age is known they lose interest. Ageism can get fucked.

Don't lose hope, it's just a downturn. At previous company (a year or so ago) we hired 61yo who had gotten in to tech a few years before. He turned out great.

That's the kind of positive sentiment I need to hear!

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#127

Post by dehrmann » Sun, Aug 13, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

alexpotato wrote: post #29

teirce wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been looking since about February. I've probably sent out at least a hundred apps for positions I was interested in and met qualifications for. I think I've made it to a recruiter screen around ~10 times, and I've had less than 5 actual interviews follow. I have 6+ years in industry, 4 and some change of which were FAANG (which everyone believes is a golden ticket into any company). And I can't even get an interview.…

>which were FAANG (which everyone believes is a golden ticket into any company). In a past job, I saw a LOT of former FAANG candidates as a hiring manager (SRE @ hedge fund) at a past job. In my experience, FAANG folks have a somewhat barbell distribution where it's either: A. "This person is incredibly talented, well spoken and will probably find a job anywhere" B. "This person spent 5 years at a FAANG and worked on…

My experience with FAANG candidates, especially those with only FAANG experience, while at a startup is they often have isolated skills and experience with bespoke, idiosyncratic ecosystems.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#128

Post by gidorah » Sun, Aug 13, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

akudha wrote: post #80

gidorah wrote: post #77

I'm a UK accountant, so not IT. But I never apply direct. I always use recruiters. I think the benefits are: - recruiter usually only sends 2/3 resumes to employer, so better candidate-job match - recruiter has relationship with the client, so is more trusted - recruitment is a sales job, so they want a better match. - your first interview is with the recruiter, so less formal. If that goes well, they will make more…

Every recruiter I have interacted with, in the last decade, has been nasty individuals. Changing my resume without my knowledge, stealing my wages (been fighting two years now, to get it back), paying late consistently (we are talking 4-6 months late, on top of net60) and above all - lying about everything, even silly things that don’t make sense and are easy to verify. Maybe it is just my dumb luck that I attract sh…

That sounds like a totally different arrangement. More like how working as temp or contract staff would work in the UK.

For perm staff, recruiters are usually paid a fixed percentage of your annual salary as a one-off fee.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#129

Post by dangerwill » Sun, Aug 13, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

georgeoliver wrote: post #10

I wonder what's a rough estimate of how many people find a job by first finding a company they want to work for?

What companies are out there doing something worth caring about? It feels like everything is some variation of the same setup:

Developing, deploying, and managing HTTP """REST""" microservices running behind a loadbalancer, running on k8, written in a garbage collected language (Go/Python/Java/C#), that hits either a "legacy" mysql database or a "new" nosql datastore, emitting metrics for big data reporting (aka middle manager reports that are useless other than being fodder for political fights), and writing some resulting messages to kafka at the end for other microservices to consume. The main technical issues are debugging application level coupling between microservices and having to deal with the ping pong of debating system ownership between teams.

I wish there were more positions for doing something else with my software engineering skills, but embedded development seems really hard to get into and if you manage to it pays a lot worse

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#130

Post by SamPatt » Sun, Aug 13, 2023, 7:17 PM UTC

frfl wrote: post #8

Bit of a tangent, but what has been everyone's experience so far in 2023 trying to find a new job? I got really interested in this and have been passively researching it (HN, reddit posts). My conclusion, so far, is unless you've got strong connections it's hard right now to find a job. Most job posting, as OP mentions get hundreds if not thousands of applications. Other times, I've personally also notice, candidates…

Been looking seriously for ~4 months now, no luck yet.

My degree is in political science and I worked at a DC think tank as a research fellow focused on technology policy before leaving to co-found a VC-backed tech startup. After five years it failed.

Now it seems difficult to find a place which needs my mix of skills, a combination of communication and technical. I don't know if it's my unusual career path or something I'm doing wrong, but it's been tough so far.