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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?

#91

Post by ravenstine »

I'm currently dealing with it by simply holding on to my job. In prior markets, I might have began seriously looking for another job after ~1.5 years, but not now. My job pays well and is flexible enough, mostly outweighing the negatives. If I lose that job, I have access to about a year's worth of expenses, and a little more than that if I sell tangible assets like my motorcycle, but I really hope I don't have to do that.

For the long term, I'm trying to figure out whether I need to retool my skills. I'm very tired of web development and the lack of craftsmanship in the field, and I think such jobs are going to be chronically in decline due to things like no-code and AI. Also, once there is enough of a collapse that only the most talented survive being laid off, those experts will clear the detritus and further reduce the need for "engineers" to play janitor with codebases. So if I still want to be a programmer, I think it's got to be in something else. Rust? Clojure? COBOL? Hardware development? Game dev? I don't know.

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

#92

Post by runlaszlorun »

entropinflictor wrote: post #62

I've tinkered up automation of hh. ru (out job market central platform) for job seeking. all I need to do to find a job is just launch a script and wait for interview invitations to manually schedule. finding new job takes 2 weeks max now.

I’d be curious to hear more if you’d share. I’m not in your geography so am not competition…

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

#93

Post by usrnm »

entropinflictor wrote: post #62

I've tinkered up automation of hh. ru (out job market central platform) for job seeking. all I need to do to find a job is just launch a script and wait for interview invitations to manually schedule. finding new job takes 2 weeks max now.

Russia is an outlier right now because of a huge shortage of skilled developers, a lot of tech people left the country in the past two years

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

#94

Post by mpeg »

joshspankit wrote: post #89
mpeg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great advice for ICs but I've never really understood how to leverage networking in management – most of time the person I know in a company is already doing my job!

Network one or two levels above where you want to be

Guess I better improve my golf swing then

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

#95

Post by [deleted] »

hnbad wrote: post #47
benjijay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

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

#96

Post by rasulkireev »

I agree with another commenter about reaching out to people directly. This is why I built TJ Alerts[0]. You can create an alert for a specific technology and will get notified every time a new job pops up.

Better yet, there is a search panel that would allow you to filter out all the jobs that have contact info, so that you can reach out directly.

Give it a try, would love to know what you think.

[0]: https://gettjalerts.com/

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

#97

Post by irrational »

danjac wrote: post #85
irrational wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is your company moving you to another role internally. I am talking about job applications.

Right, but I do integrations for a few more years and I can now look for either web development or integration jobs. I now have at least 2 career paths. Though, I've spent so many years doing database work (both DDL and DML work) that I could do that as a career path too. Frankly, none of these things are where I started out as a junior developer.

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

#98

Post by lylejantzi3rd »

bschabs wrote: post #33
kemiller2002 wrote: post #13

I'll let you in on the secret to finding a job. It's not about your skills really (maybe some), it's about who you know. If you're relying on only your skill to carry you through to finding a job, you're going to have a rough time. It's about who you know. You're looking for a job? Go to meetups, code and coffees, free tech seminars by companies etc. That's your job now. Connect with people on LinkedIn. There are ver…

This one hits the nail on the head. For instance immediately when I started the job search I got a couple referrals from friends. Unfortunately they still didn't work out but I made it the furthest with those, since then I have applied to 150 jobs anywhere from mid level to lead, and a few phone calls here and there but ultimately without those referrals most turn into nothing sandwiches. I'm not a coding god but I d…

> I entered software in 2019, and the pay is much lower than even 2019 pay.

I've been in the industry for 20 years now and the 2019-2021 market (ie: the pandemic market) is the craziest I've ever seen. You definitely came onto the market at the highest possible point. The only time the hiring market was better was during the 90s dot com boom (or so I'm told. That's before my time.)

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

#99

Post by danielvaughn »

jcpst wrote: post #65
danielvaughn wrote: post #12

I thankfully still have a job, but even I'm a bit nervous. I've got a baby on the way and if something were to happen to my job, I'd be in a tight spot financially. I'm doing a few things to help prepare: 1. I'm actively working on this side project of mine, and I'm considering giving a talk about it at an upcoming conference. 2. I'm trying to practice leetcode and system design. I say "trying" because I find it's an…

> I find it's an incredible waste of time, and I hate it. Then maybe it is a waste of time? I’ve been a dev for 10 years, mentored juniors, led massive projects, interviewed hundreds of candidates and don’t even remember ever going to leetcode.com until reading this comment. I think hacker news is the only place I’ve ever seen the word “leetcode”. But maybe I just live under a rock or something. Just making the point…

Same, I've conducted lots of interviews over the years and I've never used them. But there are plenty of companies, especially larger ones, that still rely on that style of interview question. And if your day-to-day job doesn't involve intensive work with algorithms, then it's easy to let those skills slip.

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

#100

Post by dox_shepherd »

I wrote an easy apply bot that speeds up my applications ten fold by removing a bunch of the tedium.

I applied to like 500 jobs yesterday.

Haven't heard back from a single one but I'm going to spend the next 20 days and apply for 10,000 jobs to give the job market a fair shake before trying something else.

Feel free to use/submit P.R.s/help out.

https://github.com/0foo/easy_apply_bot

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