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Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

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Re: Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

#81

The National Labs are most definitely hiring for all STEM roles. https://nationallabs.org/work-here/careers/ I just looked at Berkeley and they have 60 openings with the word “software” in the title. https://jobs.lbl.gov/jobs/search/4993486

> I'm in the EU FWIW.

Just putting it out there for people, who don’t seem to know this is happening from the frequent postings like this. Also, all large companies are tech companies and finance companies now. Walmart has 1695 openings with the word “software” in the title. https://careers.walmart.com/results?q=software&page=1&sort=r...

Re: Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

#82

> negative side of the remote job market right now Have you considered non-remote jobs and relocating? maybe that'll be good enough and give you time to find to build up your resume and find a remote position.

Yeah, I'm slowly starting to accept that as an option. Of course, it's more than just relocating, it's giving up all the friends and community I have where I am right now. Feels existential to me.

Re: Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because of spending 4+ years of school training for it, tens of thousands or even more on said schooling, and a decade or more of your life after honing those skills on the job? It’s not an easy thing for all of us to just throw away.

Boo hoo. Sorry you got scammed. But the sooner you wake up and join the rest of reality the better.

Quite a scam if it results in a decade plus long career lol. But ok, what job do you think an out of work developer should switch to?

Re: Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

#86
It's hard man. I don't know if anyone here can realistically give you useful advice or much comfort because if you've been employable for years and are only now struggling it suggests it's not you, but that the job market has changed.

The job market for developers is really bad right now, and honestly it's hard for me to see it improving much any time soon. The industry is so saturated with talent these days that I can't imagine there ever being the same kind of demand that we've seen in the past.

Really all you can do is keep applying and try your best to understand where your limitations are. I think web development is particularly bad right now because the web development ecosystem is very accessible so there's a lot of talent concentrating there. When I got into web development you had to first learn how to configure a webserver and set up DNS, etc. Today you can just spin up a website with a single command. You can create a basic React website in an afternoon.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think you should try to compete in web development skills. Instead you should try to compete by highlighting other skills that complement your experience. For example, do you have experience with accessibility? Do you have experience with any devops tools? Do you have experience leading teams? These things can set you apart from all of the other profiles which say "webdeveloper with 10 years experience".

Re: Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

#88

If anyone needs help with their resume - I built rezi and will be happy to give lifetime upgraded accounts at no cost

Rezi looks awesome and I love pages with personality ("Total Users (this is annoying to update)"). Giving this a try now.

Update: I've been moving my resume over and I love how well made the website is, even little things like selecting a state and having the cities localized. This is really cool!

Re: Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

#89
I live in the US:

In 2020-2021 I spent 20 weeks looking, and applied for 57 jobs.

> I've probably spent more than a month on take-home assignments

I (usually) won't do a take home that I suspect will take me more than 3 hours. Basically, if I have to "learn" to use some kind of framework / pattern in order to do the takehome, I punt. (Unless I want to learn to use the framework / pattern.)

The imbalance of time with long take homes assignments is perverse, because the people evaluating your take home only invest a few minutes into evaluating it: Long take homes are only worth doing once you've had a lot of contact with the company, and there's some kind of payment in return for work. (IE, Duck Duck Go does a good interview and then pays a reasonable rate for the take home.)

Re: Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

#90
post #15

The market did get tougher. It's not you. That means that you have to put considerably more effort, or a different kind of effort, to land a job. Think about landing the job as a numbers game. There are a bunch of steps, connected into a pipeline. Roughly, it's 1. find offers 2. apply 3. prescreen 4. interviews 5. offer At each step of the pipeline, you will have fewer and fewer offers that will remain. Your goal is…

I agree entirely, it's important to remember you're not alone in the struggle and it is 100% not personal. I started logging the jobs I've applied for and how they're going with a slightly modified version of the Notion template[0] to track what titles and companies I get best the responses from to help track the numbers.

[0] https://www.notion.so/templates/job-applications

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