I was laid off 2 months ago as a fallout from pandemic and war (fullstack dev with 17y experience). i sent my resume to about 30 job posts on linkedin (nearly none with cover letter, as i just cannot possibly write 30 unique cover letters even with chatGPT) and wrote a “looking for job” post in 3 tech discord servers i was an active member on. The 30 linkedin applications totaled in one job offer and the three discord posts lead to one interesting job offer each. it took 1,5 months from start to first offer and 2 months to competing offers, decision and signing a contract. Pre pandemic it would take about 2 weeks for a first offer and i would mostly get them by recruiters contacting me on linkedin which is completely absent now. Bottom line is be active in tech communities you are excited about and reach out in the dedicated job channels on discord.
Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
141–150 of 326 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
#142Earlier 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.…
At this point I’m more hesitant to hire FAANG employees who are used to really strict guardrails both culturally and technically to keep them “on track”. Most startups don’t have the guardrails and need people who make good choices without the bumpers. Hiring a bunch of FB and Google people did not improve Airbnb’s average engineering skill, rather it sank because a substantial part of our population only cared about…
Interesting from a couple perspectives (taking the above as honest about AirBNB). Confirms a bit about what's been weird with the economy and hiring.
From the man on the street's perspective (and apparently teirc's view above), FAANG work is where you want to go, and what you want to have on your resume. Per the quote, "a golden ticket". Pretty much all the news talks about.
However, if you talk to the rest of the tech community, they're like: "We tried poaching a few of them. We didn't really like the results. You work at one of those places and you get infected with something that's 'not startup'".
This seems a lot like Stanley and Neck's recent work [1]. The people you've historically been most likely to get as hires are the people most likely to ditch FAANG's for anything shinier. The people who don't "only care about promo", don't actually leave.
Other note, also similar to other recent posts [2] and comments about the change in Google. Like people finally realized: "wait...they're just like MS. All that 'Don't be evil' stuff was just corp-speak. Two decades later, and its strategy deja-vu with Android / Search / Ads. With MS now being the caring innovator who values your freedom of choice."
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...
Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
#143Check out our job board at https://levels.fyi/jobs We’re constantly iterating on it and the cornerstone of our board is the ability to filter opportunities by compensation. You can also set alerts for specific filters, and we’re always open to feedback!
I really like the levels.fyi search, but I wish it would actually restrict San Francisco results to SF.
Seems to be an issue with all the job sites that even after specifying SF and not "bay area" I still see roles in San Mateo and Mountain View.
Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to be a culmination of all the worst the hiring process throws at you right now. Your frustrations aren't unique right now unfortunately, as far as I can tell. But at the same time, either to keep up appearances or for whatever other reason, others don't seem to be freely describing the same frustrations. The public perceptions don't seem to reflect this side of reality either -- the job reports and unemploy…
> the job reports and unemployment rates at all time lows I think this is because the issues described are particularly to software right now. Unemployment is pretty low, but I see a lot more people complaining about barely scraping by or hurting financially. My guess is that it’s mostly crappy jobs. Particularly in my locality there’s a massive divide between rent/property costs and average pay. I was trying to do s…
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Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the job reports and unemployment rates at all time lows I think this is because the issues described are particularly to software right now. Unemployment is pretty low, but I see a lot more people complaining about barely scraping by or hurting financially. My guess is that it’s mostly crappy jobs. Particularly in my locality there’s a massive divide between rent/property costs and average pay. I was trying to do s…
I don't believe the unemployment rate is as low as they claim. A low unemployment rate would mean employees would be less picky but they aren't. It is almost impossible to find a job right now. It is definitely tough to do research. A lot of the jobs posted are fake.
Something to consider is that unemployment rates only account for people who are actively in the job market/applying for jobs, and the workforce participation rate dropped significantly with Covid. If you get so discouraged that you stop looking for work, you are no longer counted as "unemployed"
Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
4. Never burn any bridges. That boss or coworker you refuse to work with can and will actively block you in future employment possibilities. Also know that if that person is making your entire life hell, you might just need other things happening in your life to make your life more varied. Smile to the end (if you can).
Disagree; stay true to yourself. Try to be nice to everyone regardless, but also don't hold back on honest criticism for fear of reprisals. Doesn't matter how high the other person gets in the chain, you can't hide what you are (neither them, nor you).
It's a difficult balance, isn't it? When you're applying to a future opportunity, leaders there will *often* reach out to people in their network who worked with you previously, whether you declared them on a resume or to a recruiter as an official reference or not. That either happens through looking at common connections on LinkedIn, or you came from SomeCo and they know someone in engineering leadership over at SomeCo.
If SomeCo is a huge company then LinkedIn might find a connection who actually knew you, but just "know someone in leadership at Amazon" wouldn't usually get you a hit. Whenever SomeCo is a smaller outfit, the likelihood someone knows of you increases
If whoever you hit up starts the conversation with, "Yeah, that ghusto, er, they weren't the best engineer we had" or even just "I don't think I can give you reference for that person, sorry", your chances of getting the job plummet.
If one person at SomeCo (a larger company) is not going to say you're amazing then the probability of that person being asked might be quite low. If many people at SomeCo (a smaller company) are going to remember that "honest criticism" more loudly than all your other contributions then that is trickier.
Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
#147I must be incredibly lucky, because every job I've gotten the past years have been through the "normal" channels, meaning that I found the job listing on some rather huge classifieds website. I then just typed up a honest job application, updated my resume, and applied for the jobs. Always got a reply, and eventually a job interview. Should be mentioned that I live rather rural, and have experience (analysis and engi…
> The past 5 years I've switched work twice
The last 12 months is very different to early 2022.
Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
#148Once you've moved beyond a junior-level of experience, I'm not sure if there's a better way than working your network for opportunities. In my experience there is never, and will never be, a shortage of business people looking for technical problems solvers.
Joel Spolksy has an interesting quote about this: "Third, and trust me on this, there’s still an incredible shortage of the really good programmers, here and in India. Yes, there are a bunch of out of work IT people making a lot of noise about how long they’ve been out of work, but you know what? At the risk of pissing them off, really good programmers do have jobs" From: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/02/adv…
> really good programmers do have jobs
Maybe when he says "reall good programmers" he means the super productive people he's friends with. I know everyone on HN thinks they're in the top 10% of programmers, but realistically most of us are average or worse.
Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
#149Dev wages have to come down. The last 10 years have been crazy. Lots of devs are paid like doctors, without the limited supply or years of expensive training. It wasn't going to last.
Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity - if this is actually true (I doubt it - that is you will never have another tech job; not ageism.) What is your plan?
My plan? I’ll go out on my own terms. I fought my entire life to escape a bad childhood of poverty and homelessness. Not going back.
I don't know how you meant this to read but it sounds to me like you're saying you plan to commit suicide.