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

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

#291

Post by rubicon33 » Mon, Aug 14, 2023, 11:14 PM UTC

chalcolithic wrote: post #276

rubicon33 wrote: post #155

A lot to unpack in the comments here and I'm ready for the downvotes! First of all the credit market is in a crunch now and has been for some time. This makes investment rounds for small to medium sized startups both more difficult yield less. That means that hiring is slowing down if not straight up stopping for these startups. Second, there's a lot of pessimism here but I think the future is still bright. We defini…

I've just got rejected by a company despite having experience in their rather obscure niche and doing well in the interviews and got hired by another company as a generic web dev. > stand out I don't know, may be it's more random than we usually imagine?

Couple thoughts -

> rather obscure niche

Maybe not as obscure as you think? Also possible if it really is that obscure then they have to pay a lot for the position, which means extra scrutiny in the hiring process. I know if I'm having to pay 2x or 3x just because someone has domain expertise, they damn well better knock my socks off and demonstrate that they're not a one trick pony.

> got hired by another company as a generic web dev

Happy for you that you got hired!

Probably this was a numbers game, there's still way more web dev jobs out there than niche programming jobs, even if the market has tightened up a bit. You're still way more likely to find web dev postings than you are firmware positions, for example. That has been true for a long time and will almost certainly remain true for a long time.

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

#292

Post by SergeAx » Mon, Aug 14, 2023, 11:27 PM UTC

Last time I looked for a job I figured out the segment I am interested in (IoT in my case), then promising companies, and then scanned those companies' websites for "careers" section.

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

#293

Post by mixmastamyk » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 1:24 AM UTC

mdekkers wrote: post #230

mixmastamyk wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t have to say anything. Sadly no one is interested in experience with Netware in the nineties.

Rocking that IPX/SPX!

Cried a little inside when I deleted that. sniff

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

#294

Post by sterasody » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 2:35 AM UTC

LinkedIn is still the main source I use. But sometimes I search on ATS boards to explore opportunity. For example, use operators like "site:greenhouse.io" and "site:lever.co" to search if there is any interesting opening.

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

#295

Post by araes » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 2:43 AM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #264

araes wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 te…

> With MS now being the caring innovator who values your freedom of choice they most certainly do not, but might be a slightly lesser evil in some ways

Most certainly agree.

Yet, its not whether they 'actually' care. Just the noises they're making.

Google looks inept and malicious. MS wants health care money, cause its the next big market as everybody dies. "We care, cloud health innovation. All MS innovation is powered with empathy.[1] Nano, cyber, quantum, big data ... technobabble Tourette's, How the F** do we get defense contracts?"

[1] https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/empath...

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

#296

Post by PartiallyTyped » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 5:51 AM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #275

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who have joined AWS because their OSS contributions opened doors for them. It is a great suggestion imho.

...and then left < 2 years later because AWS is Amazon and will grind you out

Maybe, but at least you are free to find out yourself.

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

#297

Post by ghusto » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 2:37 PM UTC

nixgeek wrote: post #146

ghusto wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 So…

For sure, but it's a great sieving mechanism. If the recruiter / company went with either C-level only, or didn't check beyond with a few people who actually worked with you day to day, then meh, no loss on my end.

Also; I deleted my LinkedIn account and only saw benefits.

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

#298

Post by willio58 » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

hnfong wrote: post #258

willio58 wrote: post #156

Indeed. Last year I more than doubled my income by applying with the “click to apply” feature on indeed with a 4 sentence long cover letter. Later I had a couple short zoom culture interviews and a take-home project which I sunk 10 hours into and outshined 30 other applicants. Offer in my inbox in less than 7 days. Mind you, this was after a grand total of like 20+ hours of interviews at other companies, with on the…

Survivor bias. It worked for you. People apply for dozens of jobs, if they had to spend 10 hours on a take home project each, it would add up to hundreds of total hours working on pointless toy projects just for the chance to get a job. That's like working full time for a month or two. Not counting the time spent to get up to that point (finding open job listings, editing resume, submitting application, doing screeni…

Absolutely. This just ended up being a company with a mission I actually cared about, using a tech stack that had my mouth watering, and a project prompt that allowed for creativity and showing my full-stack chops in a way I hadn't experienced in take-home projects before. I should clarify, I was done with the prompt in 1 hour. But the frontend aspect of the prompt was very much like "show us what you can do", and that's the type of thing that gets me going.

But I totally agree with your point. I think that if a take-home project goes over a couple hours it should be paid. Some companies do this, but not enough.

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

#299

Post by scarface_74 » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #91

alexpotato wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

At conferences and the like I've always been super-impressed by the Google folks I've spoke with and listened to. But it's also my understanding that Google doesn't let just anyone "out in the wild" so I assume I'm pretty much seeing one end of the barbell (or probably a smallish slice of it).

I can’t speak for Google. But Amazon has an internal speaker certification and you have to be approved before they let you go out in the wild.

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

#300

Post by hnfong » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 6:52 PM UTC

willio58 wrote: post #298

hnfong wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Survivor bias. It worked for you. People apply for dozens of jobs, if they had to spend 10 hours on a take home project each, it would add up to hundreds of total hours working on pointless toy projects just for the chance to get a job. That's like working full time for a month or two. Not counting the time spent to get up to that point (finding open job listings, editing resume, submitting application, doing screeni…

Absolutely. This just ended up being a company with a mission I actually cared about, using a tech stack that had my mouth watering, and a project prompt that allowed for creativity and showing my full-stack chops in a way I hadn't experienced in take-home projects before. I should clarify, I was done with the prompt in 1 hour. But the frontend aspect of the prompt was very much like "show us what you can do", and th…

In a sense the take home assignment without enforced time limit selects for candidates that are most committed (or, alternatively, desperate, if you will).

That may or may not be a good thing, depending on the situation. But the downside is that the company would lose out on the potential applicants who can demonstrate skill in interviews, are in high demand, and can't be bothered to spend time on take homes.