404
Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
211–220 of 304 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Explaining how you’ve impacted the bottom line isn’t BS, it’s how business works. Failing to understand this is a common mistake made by technical people, unfortunately.
Because the relationship between individual things in what a developer do and financial results is not so easily measured. There are for example a couple of projects where I worked, that should I failed to do my part, the company could be fined, and even maybe arrested. Thing is, I don't fucking have idea of what those fines could be, and of course it was a multiple team effort and it would be hilarious for me to cla…
If you don't know, hiring managers won't know the number either.
Just make some plausible sounding number up and add it to your resume.
To be clear, I hate this sort of shit, but the game is the game.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#213I’d suggest using a standard linear format. On first glance, it looked like there was a gap of 5 years in your experience from 2010-2015 (there isn’t, but it took me a minute). As others have noted, you need to emphasize what you’ve done. I’d eliminate every “worked on” statement with something like “solved X bugs, launched Y product, lead z engineers, improved K metric, owned B area, used d,I,g technologies of inter…
Seconded. I initially thought there were a lot of gaps in work history. In today's tech hiring climate, if I were reviewing this resume along with a pile of others, I'd see the gaps (regardless of if they are really gaps), disqualify, and quickly move to the next resume.
Thing is, there have been gaps. I've sometimes taken weeks or months between jobs to travel, work on personal projects, play music, etc. Does this mean I'm bad at programming?
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#214Your CV doesn't tell me anything you accomplished, it just lists things you did. Hiring managers want to know the impact of your work, not a page of bullets that all say: "I did a thing." Picking one at random: "Worked on frontend and backend systems for this health tech company." OK... and what impact did your work have? Can you cite a qualitative improvement on the business due to your work? If not, can you at leas…
how am i supposed to measure my impact when i am one of several team members in a 50 people company all working on issues for a huge website the company is maintaining for a customer.
when we are all working together to push the work forward, no individual contribution has a chance to stand out.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
The OP was saying "don't just say what you did - say what the impact was!" (in so many words). Well... the impact was that this thing I delivered went way over budget, and the division shut down because we ran out of money. Or... what if the impact is "user subscriptions decreased, cancellations increased, revenue declined"? I was pointing out that "impact" isn't always positive - adding it to a resume might not be a…
It's also often outside of your knowledge. You just too often don't have anything close to useful statistics which you can refer to. Say, replacing one message queue solution with another, because the first was considered - you may not know or agree with all the details - too slow or too unreliable. How does it help if you don't have enough knowledge about how often the previous one failed? The new one has better per…
this. in one job as developers we never got to see any data from production side. we were just told what features to implement or what bugs to fix, without any feedback on their impact.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had absolutely NO problem finding employment during that time period. First jobs are usually the "first" to go FYI. I'm a senior dev, and even back then I had a ton of experience. I agree with OP. This is easily the biggest down cycle since the dot com bubble. Just remember, things will recover. Eventually.
That's all well and good, but "eventually" doesn't pay the bills right now.
Which is a lesson to not blow your money (I know this doesn't help those that are CURRENTLY in this situation). Tech people tend to think money grows on trees, they're paid far more than the median wage and that means they feel things like inflation and cost of living pressures less, but it does tend to result in an attitude that there will always be more money so why save.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#217You are apparently in the UK, but the job market in the U.S. has similarly been very spooky lately. I was laid off and have received almost no interviews outside of a single previous employer. My resume was flat out rejected, even from places that I had previously worked or was made an offer from as little as a year or two ago. It was really weird. As in, previous contacts would not even reply to emails or LinkedIn m…
> I am finding that more and more people are looking for extremely specific and narrow experience. Like, if you haven't used technology and worked in domain, they don't want to even speak to you. They'd almost rather higher a new grad who happened to work in than someone with experience in many languages and domains. It's really weird. I've been thinking a lot about how to make my own path, because it's exhausting tr…
What did you move to?
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#218During an economic downturn, businesses often struggle to find areas of growth. As a result, they tend to focus on hiring candidates with very specific skills and at a lower paycheck, with the sole aim of maintaining their current market share.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am finding that more and more people are looking for extremely specific and narrow experience. Like, if you haven't used technology and worked in domain, they don't want to even speak to you. They'd almost rather higher a new grad who happened to work in than someone with experience in many languages and domains. It's really weird. I've been thinking a lot about how to make my own path, because it's exhausting tr…
What did you move to?
Nothing yet. Just studying things that interest me.
But I have to figure out something in the near future. It just can't be software development.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#220Why are you not freelancing in the interim?
how would that be any easier?