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Ask HN: For those trying to hire how hard is it to find people currently?

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Re: Ask HN: For those trying to hire how hard is it to find people currently?

#11

Post by throwaway38475 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #5

It wouldn’t surprise me if this is a question of credentials. I don’t know any experienced people with solid skills who also have degrees who have been having difficulty. I know one good one, but without a relevant degree who is struggling. I also know lots of boot camp/recent grads in iffy masters programs who aren’t getting anywhere. I am aware of a few hiring processes that are just inundated with people who don’t…

Degrees are as useless a metric as bootcamps in my experience.

I've done so many interviews in which a 4.0 CS grad can't sort a list that a degree from even 'elite' institutions doesn't mean much.

Re: Ask HN: For those trying to hire how hard is it to find people currently?

#12

Post by entuno »

meindnoch wrote: post #4

>Tech people reporting that it's hard to find a new gig right now and hiring managers reporting that it's hard to find people right now. It's hard to find people with the desired skills at their offered price point . Simple as.

And equally, it's hard to find jobs with the low enough requirements and the desired conditions at the offered salary.

Re: Ask HN: For those trying to hire how hard is it to find people currently?

#13

Post by aurizon »

You expose some meat(job ad), soon there are 10,000 flies on it(applicants), so out comes the Raid(screen) - the harder you spray, the less flies, but you want a superior fly(applicant) - what to do? Less Raid? Then evolution selects flies immune to Raid. In online search and online work you soon hire apparent good flies and a few months shows they lack buzz, = costs/time wasted. For small companies, friends of friends etc does work, but the IBM's and Meta's need swarms. You can either do detailed online tech screening with your capable people using their time, or hire a specialist company with(or who have a retained pool of expertise) to do the deep search. Twas ever thus = probationary periods etc.

Re: Ask HN: For those trying to hire how hard is it to find people currently?

#15

Post by MattGaiser »

_8j50 wrote: post #10
MattGaiser wrote: post #5

It wouldn’t surprise me if this is a question of credentials. I don’t know any experienced people with solid skills who also have degrees who have been having difficulty. I know one good one, but without a relevant degree who is struggling. I also know lots of boot camp/recent grads in iffy masters programs who aren’t getting anywhere. I am aware of a few hiring processes that are just inundated with people who don’t…

Are people struggling even with years of experience because of lacking a degree? Or are they entry level?

This one person has 10 years of experience, but he is mostly enterprise Java, so target companies are more traditional.

Re: Ask HN: For those trying to hire how hard is it to find people currently?

#16

Post by Cthulhu_ »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #3
towhom wrote: post #2

Seems like hiring has been broken forever. Even with the plethora of job sites like LinkedIn it doesn't seem any better. Someone who can come up with a better way of matching up candidates with hiring managers could do really well, but apparently the problem is quite hard since there's been a lot of attempts but not much success.

Someone on another thread here about hiring in the ML/AI space bemoaned the fact that they mostly get applications from people who have dabbled with ML/AI on the side and very few applicants who have actual ML/AI work experience. But it seems like the ML/AI space is still nascent and growing rapidly - you're not going to find a lot of available people with ML/AI work experience. Given that ML/AI is where a lot of cur…

The problem there is that a lot of people follow hypes because they think it's cool and/or earns them a lot of money. I've also seen it in job adverts though, at some point pretty much every software development job would have "crypto" and "IoT" sprinkled in the description. It's tiring. And it's insulting. And also, to the developers that actually look for that kind of thing without already being in that space, have some pride. It's a Java job, you aren't going to turn your home climate control hobby into a job through that one.

Re: Ask HN: For those trying to hire how hard is it to find people currently?

#17

Post by dzek69 »

I'm working at crypto startup that grows fast right now. There is enough candidates, but we can't find anyone good. We aim for seniors and we pay a nice price IMO.

Current "seniors" are much worse than 2016's "middles". I'd not mind hiring a "middle", but people seem so unmotivated right now to work and learn. It's more about the attitude than skills.

Also funny stats: For 15 candidates interviewed we even got "scammed" thrice (fake CVs, one was basically copy-paste from other people, stolen code presented as their own). We hired one person so far.

Re: Ask HN: For those trying to hire how hard is it to find people currently?

#18

Post by koolba »

dzek69 wrote: post #17

I'm working at crypto startup that grows fast right now. There is enough candidates, but we can't find anyone good. We aim for seniors and we pay a nice price IMO. Current "seniors" are much worse than 2016's "middles". I'd not mind hiring a "middle", but people seem so unmotivated right now to work and learn. It's more about the attitude than skills. Also funny stats: For 15 candidates interviewed we even got "scamm…

> We aim for seniors and we pay a nice price IMO.

What’s “a nice price” in 2023?

Re: Ask HN: For those trying to hire how hard is it to find people currently?

#19

Post by Volundr »

MattGaiser wrote: post #5

It wouldn’t surprise me if this is a question of credentials. I don’t know any experienced people with solid skills who also have degrees who have been having difficulty. I know one good one, but without a relevant degree who is struggling. I also know lots of boot camp/recent grads in iffy masters programs who aren’t getting anywhere. I am aware of a few hiring processes that are just inundated with people who don’t…

I definitely know talented people with plenty of experience and the expected degrees who were struggling to find jobs after being laid off. At this point I think all of them are placed now, but I don't know that means the market is better. Just that my specific limited sample has had sufficient time to find something.

Re: Ask HN: For those trying to hire how hard is it to find people currently?

#20

Post by vlod »

For freelancers, I am occasionally seeing extremely low hourly rates (linkedin), targeted at (I assume) Latin America. i.e. $15-$20 is the lowest, but sometimes $35ph. (Pretty shocking, but if it works out for everyone, good luck to them). I know companies that are only hiring from that region, where previously they were hiring Americans.

Generally, I'm seeing hourly rates 40%-60% lower than a year ago (for senior roles). It's pretty crappy.

Even when I apply to them (with those rates), 95% of the time, I don't get a response. (This has been talked about a few times in other threads, mainly to do with cover letters).

Are all these layoff I keep hearing about, really screwing things up to this extent? I'm confused on wtf is going on.

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