The main thing is the "work from home" movement. At first employers hated the idea of employees working from home. But then employers got used to it, and then they realized that they could outsource most work to a Third World country. Because once work leaves the office, there is no reason for the work to remain in the USA or Europe. It might as well as go some place cheap, like Brazil or India or Vietnam. Mentally, it took employers several years to fully adjust their mindset, but now that they've committed to being "remote first" they are realizing that they can outsource much more work than they ever did in the past.
Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
251–260 of 304 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You don't need to measure your impact. It's enough to describe it. "Helped a large client improving their web presence for achieving increased conversion rates." Of course, you were part of a team and of course, you can't show precise statistics. But if they existed, would those stats be worth anything to a recruiter? Your next job will be different in many aspects. No recruiter will read some stats and say, "oh, tha…
i was not very clear. as a lowly developer i am so far removed from the outcome that i have no clue what the impact of my work is supposed to be. i don't know if the bug i fixed affects 1% or 90% of the user base, or if the feature, like that new credit card processing service brings in a few new users, or thousands or none at all.
if there is a story to tell, it doesn't reach our team.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#253While people are right to point out the down market, I think they're ignoring the obvious corollary. My theory is that you've been getting by with the weaknesses in your resume because the tech market hasn't seen a major downturn for awhile. From skimming your blog, it doesn't seem like you're an unskilled developer, but that's how your resume presents you. Others pointed out that you don't mention impact, just respo…
Amazing reply, thanks so much! Re: GitHub, you're right, it is kind of bad. I'm proud of some contributions I've made to other people's projects but you can't pin a PR. My own repositories are largely old or experimental. I'd consider not putting the Github link in at all, but I've had recruiters say it was vital to have it. I might make some private projects public just so I can show them off. Also much appreciate t…
Re: hard figures retrospectively. I've been in this boat before. Here's what I did. I would tell the recruiter / hiring manager / etc that I made a little c conservative estimate from my notes. While it probably is less impressive than the actual number, I wanted to err on the side of correctness over unearned praise for when I couldn't get the exact number.
This also led to me updating my resume about 1x / quarter, which I am currently behind so time to take my own advice and do that this evening. But the goal here is to regularly update so you can find the hard numbers if you need to. Plus, the market being what it is, you'll never know when layoffs will come a-knocking.
(edit: typo)
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not you. Nobody is hiring. The ones that say so are in no rush. Executives are pushing hard on doing more with less and improving profitability. Things should loosen up when the Fed and EU announce rate cuts this year. Hang on. I know this isn’t the answer you were hoping to hear. Perhaps try your luck with contracting? There is more openness to that in this climate (lower threshold to commitment).
We really need to stop assuming there's going to be rate cuts in 2024, especially from a trying to get a tech job perspective.Rate cuts aren't going to happen unless there's a weak economy Inflation numbers came in hotter than expected this week. Consumer sentiment is improving. Employment is still high. Investment in manufacturing was massive in 2023. these same people predicting rate cuts were the sames ones predic…
> The economy is weird now.
Or the economy was weird before and is recovering now.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 f…
salivate - or possibly not.
signed,
xoogler having just as much trouble as the rest of y'all
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#256The main thing is the "work from home" movement. At first employers hated the idea of employees working from home. But then employers got used to it, and then they realized that they could outsource most work to a Third World country. Because once work leaves the office, there is no reason for the work to remain in the USA or Europe. It might as well as go some place cheap, like Brazil or India or Vietnam. Mentally,…
I think there should be strict laws around outsourcing. Maybe companies that pay X amount of taxes (related to their earnings) have to ensure Z amount of their employees are nationals.
It just doesn’t seem fair that they get to take advantage of their home countries infrastructure while providing employment to other countries.
I was laid off due to outsourcing.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#257As someone enrolled in a bachelors program for computer science, this terrifies me.
Makes me wonder if I’m wasting my time and should be perusing something else.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#258Well I have recently found myself unemployed after mass layoffs at my company. Perhaps January isn't the best month, but it doesn't look overly positive in the US job market right now. I think even a good CV won't help too much because the market itself feels fairly cold. I would say you should try to rely on any network you have. That's what my plan is going to be, although my network in software engineering is considerably smaller than my network in accounting, but I don't see blindly firing resumes as a viable option. So while there is likely room for you to improve your resume, I think the job market itself is likely the bigger culprit here.
It's a shame there isn't an effective way on here to connect viable engineers who are talented and clearly care about the quality of their code to land work. Even the work at a yc startup site feels like it falls to the same shortcomings. If I could get a software engineering license similar to my CPA, I think that would be an effective way to quickly establish ability and reduce the hiring friction.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like you've been out of work for a year and you've fallen into a state of anger and despair. It's understandable and you're hardly the first person that has happened to, but I'd really encourage you to rethink how you're looking at life. Just in a practical sense, even if you can 90% hide your rage in a work setting, the other 10% is still going to be enough to discourage anyone from hiring you. People are…
it sounds like you are projecting your own insecurities my friend. how about you try to dismantle ath3nd's take with counter argument instead of going for ad hominem attack.
It actually was not meant to be an attack, although perhaps you are right that I am projecting my own insecurities in some way. If you care to say more about why you saw my message that way, you might help me with your feedback.
My honest motivation for writing the message was that I understood (maybe misunderstood) ath3nd to be saying that they had lost a job one year ago, and then I saw a very long list of political grievances. It matched a pattern I have observed in my career where a person on the team seems to have very strident political opinions, but when you talk to that person it becomes clear that the person is angry about something in their own life and is using political discourse as a way of being angry all the time without acknowledging to themselves the issue in their own lives.
I put these two things together and thought perhaps I could help a fellow engineer who may have fallen into a pit of despair. Based on ath3nd's response, it doesn't sound like that's their situation. Maybe my comment helped another person who was reading the thread. Maybe it helped no one. I'll never know.
I'm not going to going to offer counterarguments because it was never my intention to engage ath3nd on any political matters. I don't necessarily even disagree with the person, but I also don't think HN is at its best when people use it for political debates.
My comment was posted with a good heart on the theory that it might or might not help someone else. That does not preclude the possibility that my comment reflects my own insecurities or failings. I think almost anything you do or say is in some way a reflection of who you are, and like anyone else I surely do have various insecurities and flaws.
Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like you've been out of work for a year and you've fallen into a state of anger and despair. It's understandable and you're hardly the first person that has happened to, but I'd really encourage you to rethink how you're looking at life. Just in a practical sense, even if you can 90% hide your rage in a work setting, the other 10% is still going to be enough to discourage anyone from hiring you. People are…
> It sounds like you've been out of work for a year and you've fallen into a state of anger and despair. I've had non-stop employment for the last 17 years. I think you get the wrong idea. I am happily employed for the moment. I am lucky to be in a very senior (VP of Eng) position in a company that I helped start. I am also able to hire and retain engineers for my teams so, luckily, I am not at the mercy of risk-aver…
ath3nd, I responded to a sibling post to this one, but it's largely the same as what I would say in response to this post. It sounds like I misinterpreted you and misunderstood your situation. I pattern matched to a situation I have seen where a person has very strident political or adjacent opinions not really because they care that much about changing public policy, but as a way of coping with a problem in their own life. Obviously, on an anonymous message board, I'm shooting in the dark trying to guess what someone's situation might be and whether my response is likely to be of any help. Sounds like it did not help you.