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Ask HN: How are you dealing with the job market anxiety?

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Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the job market anxiety?

#41

Post by bad_user »

danjac wrote: post #19
mateusfreira wrote: post #11

What is your stack? There are areas with more opportunities than others that may be worth considering a stack shift. I have been in the market since 2006, and I have seen it go up and down; I've never been unemployed since, but I have close friends who run over one year without a job (In Brazil, we usually have financial crises here more often), at that time their option was to do freelancing for a while until they f…

The problem is you can't "stack shift". I mean, of course you can, we know that if you know some programming languages you can pick up another language, if you know an HTTP router you can learn another, a MySQL expert can learn PostgreSQL, if you know React you can learn Vue and so on. But you won't get through the HR filters unless you have the magic n years' experience. Once you learn that stack in your junior year…

This isn't actually true.

HR people do apply such filters, but you can usually work around it, if you're a capable individual that can actually "stack shift".

I "stack shifted" multiple times in my career, without lying about my experience. Companies look for talented software developers. Going from backend to frontend or vice versa might be harder, but otherwise the required skills pretty much universal. Having contributions on Github helps.

Of course, this is the part where I'm going to say that having a computer science and math/engineering oriented education, even if self-learned, can be valuable. People that go through their profession by just integrating off the shelf stuff will have their jobs automated.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the job market anxiety?

#42

Post by nerdponx »

jmye wrote: post #9

If you’re willing to take a pay cut* or a title cut, it’s still not a particularly tough market, even with what’s seemed like worse job postings and… stringent ATS requirements (at least in data-adjacent roles). Aside from that, I’ve worked on my network and reconnecting with folks, in case I need favors. I’m batting 1.000 on referrals-to-interviews, so I’ve been working to maximize that potential/reach. * My thinkin…

Companies won't hire senior people for junior roles because they don't want someone who will leave soon.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the job market anxiety?

#43

Post by nonameiguess »

It's largely about the specifics of your life circumstances. I'm in my mid-40s, so I've been through a lot at this point and there is no plausible near-term scenario short of all-out nuclear war where my life gets worse than it has been in the past. I've experienced levels of economic hardship well beyond anything I'm ever going to experience again and I ended up getting through it fine and here I am. Second, my wife is employed and also an engineer. Our finances are such that the family would be fine with only one of us working. We'd make less progress toward retirement goals, but we wouldn't lose the house or anything else. So that's an inherent safety margin that makes one person potentially losing a job not all that scary. There's also some level of perhaps just luck with timing, perhaps something bound to eventually happen as you get older, but we're not exactly living at the edge of our means here. I bought my house a long time ago and it's way cheaper than I could afford. Student loans are paid off by now. I don't even drive, so I'm not blowing a bunch on a car, and if I had to sell the car I have and go totally without, it wouldn't make much of a difference. I'd be fine making a lot less money than I currently make.

All in all, the net effect is nothing about my quality of life requires the economy or job market to be great. But for what it's worth, I'm not really all that worried about that, either. I'm specialized enough at this point that my company has great difficulty filling positions similar to mine. It's limiting in a way. I don't always love the specifics of this field but can't realistically hope to do anything different without starting at a much lower tier and sacrificing a lot of the autonomy and seniority I currently enjoy. But the upside is I'm probably fairly near last to go. My company doesn't need me specifically to have something to sell, but they need someone like me and there aren't a lot of them out there.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the job market anxiety?

#44

Post by benjijay »

fredgrott wrote: post #36
0xEF wrote: post #31

"How are you dealing?" Short answer; not well. Long answer; I'm currently stuck in a job with an employer that I hate, that is slowly destroying my love of the work, and I can't afford the time it would take to leave, upgrade my skills and get into a better situation. For context, I am a versatile service tech for industrial machines. I have zero certifications in anything only because I never needed them before sinc…

STOP! All that time spent in distractions to salivate the job hate is not doing you any favors....use it instead to pick up PCL! I speak from exp....my brother did exactly that...he is now a manager with good money and better employer.

Google is mainly returning biology or construction terms and my brain is on vacation; what's PCL here?

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the job market anxiety?

#46

Post by anymouse123456 »

0xEF wrote: post #31

"How are you dealing?" Short answer; not well. Long answer; I'm currently stuck in a job with an employer that I hate, that is slowly destroying my love of the work, and I can't afford the time it would take to leave, upgrade my skills and get into a better situation. For context, I am a versatile service tech for industrial machines. I have zero certifications in anything only because I never needed them before sinc…

You can do it! You just have to start. No one on Earth can stop you from learning what you want to learn.

Don't worry about certifications, dig into the information on your own time. Do it at night, or in the morning, when everyone else is sleeping. Buy some old, broken or used controls and mess around with automating something in your house.

Once you start taking action that convinces you that the day job you hate is temporary, you'll be shocked at how much more bearable every single thing becomes.

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the job market anxiety?

#47

Post by hnbad »

benjijay wrote: post #44
fredgrott wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

STOP! All that time spent in distractions to salivate the job hate is not doing you any favors....use it instead to pick up PCL! I speak from exp....my brother did exactly that...he is now a manager with good money and better employer.

Google is mainly returning biology or construction terms and my brain is on vacation; what's PCL here?

It's either the Italian or Libanese Communist Party. But I don't think that's what they meant either.

They probably meant PLC, which OP mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the job market anxiety?

#48

Post by [deleted] »

benjijay wrote: post #44
fredgrott wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

STOP! All that time spent in distractions to salivate the job hate is not doing you any favors....use it instead to pick up PCL! I speak from exp....my brother did exactly that...he is now a manager with good money and better employer.

Google is mainly returning biology or construction terms and my brain is on vacation; what's PCL here?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How are you dealing with the job market anxiety?

#49

Post by irrational »

danjac wrote: post #19
mateusfreira wrote: post #11

What is your stack? There are areas with more opportunities than others that may be worth considering a stack shift. I have been in the market since 2006, and I have seen it go up and down; I've never been unemployed since, but I have close friends who run over one year without a job (In Brazil, we usually have financial crises here more often), at that time their option was to do freelancing for a while until they f…

The problem is you can't "stack shift". I mean, of course you can, we know that if you know some programming languages you can pick up another language, if you know an HTTP router you can learn another, a MySQL expert can learn PostgreSQL, if you know React you can learn Vue and so on. But you won't get through the HR filters unless you have the magic n years' experience. Once you learn that stack in your junior year…

Not necessarily. I was a web developer for 24 years, then my company moved me into an integration role (it opened up at the same time a website project I had been working on closed down) - I haven’t touched anything web development related in a year or so now and have been doing straight Java, Python, Apache nifi, AWS, etc system integration programming. I’ve found that I enjoy and could continue doing this for years to come. But, I also could move back to web development pretty easily.
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