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Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

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Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#181

Post by datatrashfire »

WXLCKNO wrote: post #128
eek2121 wrote: post #125

You aren't. The economy is absolute garbage right now. I'm in the US and the situation is similar here. I've never had an issue finding a job before either, but I've been unemployed since the middle of 2023. Assuming you aren't under financial hardship, my advice is to spend more time on your hobbies and check back in around July/August. That is when the layoffs are projected to drop and hiring is expected to keep up…

Every time I bring up this uneasy feeling of everything feeling like it's going to crumble soon, I get employment data hurtled at me and the stock market thrown in my face. Maybe Canada is worse due to how insane housing is but for the average person life does not feel anywhere like it used to pre pandemic at least.

job market for tech workers != broader economy. blue collar wages in percentage terms have been increasing faster than white collar.

i think many orgs overinvested in tech during the pandemic. we've swung too far, so it's time to work out the excesses.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#182

Post by EchoChamberMan »

the_only_law wrote: post #178
StreetChief wrote: post #140

We live in a world of techno-fuedalism, you are not alone. Every company wants an MIT graduate. They want someone "sexy" like a "rock star." One company's I looked at asked me "what is the most impressive thing you've worked on?" Like that really indicates the quality of my work.

> One company's I looked at asked me "what is the most impressive thing you've worked on?" I get this one a good bit and I despise it because the answer is always something I did outside of work.

The vast majority of people work to earn a living and put food on the table, and did not have a chance to work on something large at work - with this question, they are basically ranking prospective employees by the opportunities they had!

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#183

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

Jonathan Blow predicted the collapse of web jobs about a year back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTkRPwnzE4w

Basically get out of web dev if you can. Do real programming and try and tackle harder problems.

Or even step into entrepreneurship. A talented programmer should be able to create a fast growing company within 2 years if they really applied themselves.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#184

Post by __loam »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #183

Jonathan Blow predicted the collapse of web jobs about a year back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTkRPwnzE4w Basically get out of web dev if you can. Do real programming and try and tackle harder problems. Or even step into entrepreneurship. A talented programmer should be able to create a fast growing company within 2 years if they really applied themselves.

Blow has a ton of bad takes even if he's a very knowledgeable game programmer. I don't think you should use this to try and explain the broader macroeconomic conditions we're currently facing. The much more reasonable explanation is we're moving from an economic regime where borrowing money was cheap to one where it's expensive and there are a lot of experienced developers in the labor market after a year that had hundreds of thousands of layoffs rather than a general collapse of the web development space.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#185

Post by Klonoar »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #183

Jonathan Blow predicted the collapse of web jobs about a year back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTkRPwnzE4w Basically get out of web dev if you can. Do real programming and try and tackle harder problems. Or even step into entrepreneurship. A talented programmer should be able to create a fast growing company within 2 years if they really applied themselves.

…what?

Your last sentence flies right in the face of every statistic around new business failure rates. You might get a nice side project going, but no sentence like that should imply it’s that simplified.

And to be clear I support the idea that programmers should be open to walking the path of entrepreneurship but we owe it to our fellow people to not paint a false picture.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#186

Post by Volundr »

avmich wrote: post #162
Volundr wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I have one 6 month job where all I can reasonably list is "implemented audit logging across all our projects to ensure HIPAA compliance." It was the most demoralizing job I've ever had, and I'm grateful that I WAS laid off (easy to say now that I have a new job). Making every line on your resume a banger may be impossible. But if you've got job after job of "implemented SAAS app in Django", it starts to say som…

> The outcome of the Salesforce failure above was millions of wasted dollars. The outcome of my refactoring our data model was a cost savings of $350k/year. How did you learn about that number? Where did you pull it from?

By taking the space I saved and multiplying it by the price per gig.

If your asking how I knew the cost, I asked.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#189

Post by jakderrida »

Firstly, I know nothing of the industry and am just speculating so don't take my question the wrong way...

Wouldn't the the sudden cascade of layoff announcements at big tech employers be interpreted as a leading indicator by employers industry-wide? Like especially considering the way the news cycle has basically amplified each successive announcement?

Again, just a question because my input is admittedly of no value.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#190

Post by CableNinja »

da39a3ee wrote: post #146
freedomben wrote: post #99

I do hiring in the US not the UK, but I'm only (I'm guessing) a few years older than you so you probably had the "keep it to one page" rule pounded into your head. I get a lot of resumes, and that is definitely not the case anymore. Two to three pages is perfectly fine. I would suggest: 1. Add a list of skills and/or technologies you're particularly good in. You can include stuff you've used but aren't current in, bu…

Yes but this is misleading and missing the point: there is nothing really wrong with this person's resume/CV. There is nothing about it which is off-putting and it does the job of communicating that this person is a very experienced software engineer who can communicate clearly, and has enough attention to detail and care to produce a nicely formatted CV and that they're obviously a reasonable candidate for pretty mu…

I was laid off in june. Ive been applying since August (except through december to now). Ive had bites and good talks but in the end, donuts. I obviously have no real evidence, but there have been a few times now where the recruiter has said:

- "We got literally thousands of resumes for this position"

- "We have had so many bad resumes, its been hard to find the good ones"

Truth is, right now the tech job market is fucked. Theres been too many layoffs without enough places for others to go. Add to that, that the large companies are laying people off too, and the smaller companies would salivate at having an exgoogler or some other in their ranks

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