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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?

#111

Post by NotYourLawyer »

jodrellblank wrote: post #106
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Revenue isn’t profit. 2. “Fair” is whatever you can negotiate. You’re not entitled to any more than you can make them pay you.

"Fair" and "what you can make someone do" and "what you are entitled to" are very different concepts. Turn this around to an employer "“Fair” is whatever work you can negotiate from the employee. You’re not entitled to any more work than you can make them do for you." - 1) if you can't make the employee do much work, you aren't entitled to much work, and that's fair. 2) if you can exploit the hell out of the employee…

Correct.

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

#112

Post by HDThoreaun »

dox_shepherd wrote: post #100

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

Spamming applications doesn't work. You usually need some sort of connection to the company even if its tenuous.

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

#113

Post by antisthenes »

smelly101 wrote: post #73
edw519 wrote: post #61

I have been a professional programmer for 44 years and have NEVER had "job market anxiety". Why? Because I sincerely believe that there is zero correlation between the job market and my ability to find work. I don't pay attention to what anyone says about the economy, the market, or anything else macro, especially on the internet. And I have gone through times that were much much worse than now. I never worried about…

This is all good and optimistic but is a little bit in denial of the currently reality. I don't think it's super surprising news to anyone and most people have done everything you've mentioned and are still struggling to get a job so it seems a little cruel to place the blame on them when the market is gone.

> This is all good and optimistic but is a little bit in denial of the currently reality.

The current reality is still better than 2009-10, when millions of fresh grads even in technical roles went into economy with 11% unemployment and had to take close to min wage jobs if they could find them at all.

I have many peers still recovering from that recession, and some never found meaningful employment and are still in dire straits financially.

The current situation is far better in comparison, especially for techies who had a decade of cushy jobs to pad their safety net.

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

#114

Post by qup »

kaashif wrote: post #69
yurishimo wrote: post #10

I don’t think it’s actually too hard to find a job right now unless your only acceptable offer comes from FAANG or adjacent. Yea, making 250k might not be an option while the market is down, but once things pick back up, you’re free to look around again. Where I live (Netherlands), we still have an insane shortage of qualified developers. Some of the vendors we work with are overloaded with work because all of their…

> The jobs are out there if you want to do honest work for a fair wage. If a company is making hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue from your work, I think it's totally fair to want a bigger slice of that. I do realise "fair" can also mean "considerable though not outstanding in size or amount" - in that case I agree, but I'm not sure about the word "honest" here.

Maybe it's fair (I don't particularly agree), but that doesn't mean you're going to get it. Someone else will take what's on offer.

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

#115

Post by altdataseller »

jmye wrote: post #76
nerdponx wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I consistently found the opposite - I did alter some past titles, but moving from a management role to a lead/senior IC role opened up opportunities (I ended up not taking them). It also potentially eases transitions between industries. It will definitely raise a question, so if you go that route, it’s useful to figure out what your explanation is. But if you’re staring at depleted savings, it’s a potential path.

Moving from management to senior IC isn’t really a downgrade though. It’s a lateral move

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

#116

Post by threatofrain »

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…

> There are very very few people that are good enough that someone will just hire them on their skills alone.

IMO this is wrong, but it's hard to know precisely how wrong, just that people shouldn't be setting their expectations this low. There are tons of college kids entering in from the front of the pipeline who don't have connections or experience. Also I've just known a good number of non-traditional candidates who both have and haven't broken into the industry.

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

#117

Post by bsnnkv »

cinericius wrote: post #52
bsnnkv wrote: post #28

I was laid off a month ago, been looking since then and the market is pretty brutal. Very difficult to get even screening interviews, portfolios of public work seem to be ignored, and even if you manage to get a screening interview, which is rarely with the hiring manager, you'll probably just get a templated rejection email from a person you haven't even interacted with the next day. How am I dealing with it? I'm st…

Your GitHub profile is stellar, I can't imagine interviewers see one like yours very often.

Thanks for the kind words! Unfortunately my recent experience has been that both recruiters and interviewers are more interested in LeetCode than in any public portfolio demonstrating the ability to ship correct, reliable code to tens of thousands of users across the world.

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

#120

Post by frenchman_in_ny »

I'm in a different industry sector (banking) vs probably most here. Spent ~20 years in investment banking doing acquisition financing. Left in late 2022 to do private loans to owners of pre-IPO companies (read: founders of tech companies). Was laid off as part of a corporate downsizing in May of this year.

I'll tell you it's extraordinarily challenging out there. I've probably sent upwards of 400 resumes for what looked like promising jobs on LinkedIn. I've gone through my entire network probably two times over, looking for leads to new jobs. I've gone to networking events as often as I can. I've even offered, during interviews, to take a step back career-wise just to get a job. And I'm still empty handed.

So, that adage of "6 months to get a new job?"... I'd suggest that if you're at risk for a layoff or in an industry with a lot of upheaval, I'd consider a buffer of 9-12 months.

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