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Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

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81–90 of 191 posts

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#81
post #38

Really, really, really bad. I'm a full stack engineer. I took part of the last 4 years "off" due to having savings and finally settling down to pursue my own SaaS attempt. I've been back in the job market since the beginning of the year. I've probably sent out well over a hundred resumes (definitely over this number since I was keeping track until recently). I had a brief respite when I picked up a temp contract but…

I hope you take this in the spirit it's intended.

There's 5 links on your HN profile:

* One to your personal website that is just "work in progress" and nothing more

* One to your defunct twitter where you didn't appear to have many followers or did much of note

* One that just returns an opaque blob of json which I'm not sure how I'm meant to interpret

* One that seems like an intriguing project that seems pretty trivial on the surface but I'm willing to be convinced is more substantial but with a plus feature "coming soon" for I don't know how long and a twitter account with 12 followers

* One to a github project that you haven't touched in 9 years, also with a bunch of things you've been meaning to work on for a while but clearly haven't.

I'm willing to be disabused of this notion but my instinct via this gestalt is that you're someone who likes to overpromise and underdeliver. My question would be, what have you been doing in the last 9 months if you haven't had time to polish these bits of your public surface area?

That's probably an unfair judgement from me and in a hotter hiring environment, I'd be willing to bring you in so you could disabuse me of my prejudice and I could be pleasantly surprised but it's much easier now to filter based on trivial gut feel like this and you should be more conscious of the digital image you're putting out into the world because HMs won't bother telling you this stuff because it's an awkward conversation with no gain on their end.

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#82
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of a resume canary. Can you share the gist of it?

I use one that's to the effect of: migrated legacy Go project to Python2, increasing E2E service latency by 3409ms.

sounds like a good way to get rejected rather than for someone to want to pry deeper, when faced with a stack of resumes

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#83

Bad. DevOps/Software Engineer with 20+ years experience. ~100 applications this year, a good number of interviews, but no offers yet. (2.5 calls this week scheduled) It seems I either get: - proto-startups with ~5 people and no concrete revenue stream, or - 5k-person enterprises who want someone with a very specific skillset Both are fine, but they're picky... as am I, so I'm doing my own consulting for a bit. What h…

> who want someone with a very specific skillset

I’m also probably going to look for a job soon. Do you think that being very skilled in a niche could help if there is work in that niche or would you think that even those jobs are gone?

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> however is it all github copilot eating these jobs? Short answer: No. Long answer: No, and it's wild you think this might be the case.

You're delusional if you think that the rise of Generative AI hasn't been a factor in the relative difficulty of finding a job today.

Copilot makes me work faster, but it’s not replacing me by any means.

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#85
post #38

Really, really, really bad. I'm a full stack engineer. I took part of the last 4 years "off" due to having savings and finally settling down to pursue my own SaaS attempt. I've been back in the job market since the beginning of the year. I've probably sent out well over a hundred resumes (definitely over this number since I was keeping track until recently). I had a brief respite when I picked up a temp contract but…

I hope you take this in the spirit it's intended. There's 5 links on your HN profile: * One to your personal website that is just "work in progress" and nothing more * One to your defunct twitter where you didn't appear to have many followers or did much of note * One that just returns an opaque blob of json which I'm not sure how I'm meant to interpret * One that seems like an intriguing project that seems pretty tr…

true, at the same time your bumblebeelabs site is down ...

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im glad I answered such messages from such a type of recruiter. I work at amazing place because I did and yet I put them through the ringer to prove to me they were legit. Sorta feel bad some for doing that but protecting myself according then and still now (they did say they wouldn't pay me until 30 days which is how i am pay six years later). As if any recruiter came to me asking for my social ... asking for money…

Did you get any insight into how and why these recruiters operate? The parent comment makes it sound liked it's all about contacting, but you got a full-time position. What's up with that?

This was an Indian owned recruiter firm with offices in California and in India. I work for an Indian IT firm based in the states (remote since Covid but worked in the office for two years).

The Indian recruiting firm were a 2ndary / sub contracted firm by the recruiting firm who had the contract with my employer to find a UX Engineer. It was fishy indeed especially saying I wasn't going to get paid for 30 days yet I forced them to pay me in two weeks for the first check to soothe my worries.

Overall if they are contacting you and only asking normal questions and not ones that ring of scam they could be like the Indian firm and they are fishing for the best candidates to send to their client..the primary contractor.

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#87
I stopped 3 months ago. It's not worth the effort. Unless you know someone or find a very specific job that you perfectly fit, it's an up-hill battle. For now with the high rates, the economy is doing badly. But it could get worse. I'll wait for a few weeks and see how the situation in the Middle-East will resolve. An enlargement of the conflict is going to send energy prices to the moon. The economy will be an order of magnitude by then.

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#88
Terrible. I am apparently the only front end developer on the planet without at least 3 years of react experience. I’ve got a third interview next week for a company I’m not particularly excited about, but at least it would be a job.

I don’t mind interviewing, I just hate the pressure and uncertainty of job hunting in general. Just give me some work to do, already.

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#89
post #8

I’m not sure what it’s like in your industry compared to the one I work in, but I have recruiters cold call me all the time asking me if I would be willing to switch jobs. Some of the recruiters get my details off of a job seeker website I am on (that’s not LinkedIn), and they contact me. I literally had a recruiter cold call me today.

what is that job seeker website?

Re: Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?

#90
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you take this in the spirit it's intended. There's 5 links on your HN profile: * One to your personal website that is just "work in progress" and nothing more * One to your defunct twitter where you didn't appear to have many followers or did much of note * One that just returns an opaque blob of json which I'm not sure how I'm meant to interpret * One that seems like an intriguing project that seems pretty tr…

true, at the same time your bumblebeelabs site is down ...

He is also not urgently looking for a job I guess, it's all about context.
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