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Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

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Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#41

Post by afavour »

h02 wrote: post #14

And we're having a hard time finding experienced and skilled engineers... trying to hire for a senior nodejs role, over a thousand applicants (most people just hit apply without reading the description, over half are disqualified for not meeting the basic requirements), dozens interviewed, and we've only managed to hire 1 person that seemed close to being qualified, and he quit after 2 months of barely working. We're…

I hope that person got an exit interview. It might well be that they’re just useless but someone quitting after two months ought to be a warning sign for the company, clearly something went awry.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#42

Post by olivierduval »

Actually I think that one of the specific problem of IT is that experience is not really "usefull" because - from outside of IT (management, HR) - there's always new tools/technology/buzzwords that SEEM to replace old technologies...

So why pay more to hire an experienced IT man that will not know the latest techno-fad when all you need is a junior that knows them a little bit and is waaaayy cheaper.

Moreover - from a management & HR point of view - there's always IT problems. You know: nobody notice when everything run smoothly (and it's a signal to let go some people) but everybody notice when there's an IT problem!

So let's take the cheapest...

BTW I'm 52 in France and notice this too here. And I don't know how to explain why experience matters... :-(

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#43

Post by depereo »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #34
mathattack wrote: post #13

My observation is that companies are getting much more precise on their needs. The days of “you’re smart and have a technical background” have given way to “there’s a dozen people in the market who have the exact experience we need, so we will limit our pool to them.” This is especially painful for college grads, who don’t have specific experience to fall back on.

This is especially painful for college grads, who don’t have specific experience to fall back on. There is no training or university pipeline any longer?

Not in 3 years each of experience in 'this specific nodejs library' and 'gcp networking' and 'foundationdb'.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#44

Post by coffeebeqn »

alphazard wrote: post #35

Not all experience is equal, but people expect to be compensated for the "experience" (time since entering the workforce) they bring to the table regardless. That's the issue here. There is plenty of software that needs engineering, but we can't make a market. This specific person has 17 years of experience. Are they a staff level engineer, critical to their group? 17 years is more than enough time to become more com…

Anyone who was job hopping in the last 4-6 years is also used to top of the zero interest bubble with COVID stimulus pay levels

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#45

Post by anotherhue »

patresh wrote: post #21
cageface wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trend here is unmistakeable: https://hnhiring.com/trends Only one source of course, but I think it's indicative of the state of the overall market.

How can one explain the graph you linked given the recent bull market in stocks? Wouldn't this mean that capital is flowing in which should lead to more hiring? Is the job market response delayed or are there other factors?

The old addage is that the stock market is not the economy.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#46

Post by bossyTeacher »

Unsurprising. Experienced engineers in this market are like Oracle or IBM post-peak, overly complacent and not used to fight for a job.

The kind of people posting on Youtube or making courses about How Everyone Should Code because everyone can get a job coding and no matter how many people join the workforce jobs will always abound.

The kind of engineer talking to non-tech people about how they should always negotiate and never settle for a low salary. To jump early and often.

The kind of engineer that badmouths recruiters, has no LinkedIn or hasn't maintained one in ages because they can't be bothered with it.

Yes, it's stereotypical. But we all know someone who has one or more of these traits.

Just like companies struggling to hire were simply not optimising for it (higher salaries, regular salary reviews and raises, smooth and quick recruitment processes, employee-centric work culture, etc), the same happens now to employees. They are unwilling to consider a slight decrease in their salary, lack of remote options, slightly worse work culture, boring companies (no Big N, FAANG or even tech sector companies), legacy codebases, boring tech stacks, less than ideal development processes, etc.

You have seen those engineers in reddit. You seen them in LinkedIn. In Tech Conferences. In Youtube. And even here, in HN.

The reality is that most of these devs are trying to get a role with perks similar to their previous one and that's not gonna happen for quite a while. The struggle in getting hired is basically the devs going through multi-stage reality check.

If you have a job and haven't been served a notice, you can be picky and play the waiting game. If you are about to lose your job or you have already, all that matters is getting ANY job that covers your expenses.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#47

Post by logtempo »

YZF wrote: post #15
richrichie wrote: post #8

I see hundreds of new job adverts on Linkedin everyday. How much of it is genuine?

I was looking for a change 6 months ago (had a job, did find a new one) and applied for a few positions. One of them in a large/known company that engaged with me and then rejected me without interviewing me. That posting is still up on LinkedIn and it's hard to believe they couldn't find someone to fill it for like 7 months. So one can only conclude it's not genuine.

There's also a strategy, having an open position might attract some people you'll be happy to put in your database, and duplicate where X companies (contractor?head hunter company? consulting? Idk how to name it) post a job that is for only one client in reality.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#49

Post by mattgreenrocks »

sakex wrote: post #39

It feels like having niche skills like Rust or Transformers makes it much easier. I found a new job very quickly after being laid off.

Yep. You need to have things that make you stand out. Even with experience there's still a lot of people out there.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#50

Post by [deleted] »

swatcoder wrote: post #24
robofanatic wrote: post #11

well just last week I heard on NPR, may be Marketplace. They were saying there are these huge tech layoffs happening but unemployment claims haven't gone up that much because people are getting new jobs quickly. So basically I don't know what/who to believe.

Unemployment is capped very low compared to tech salaries, involves a bunch of paperwork, and requires you to attest that you're actively pursuing opportunties for work in your field. Lots of highly paid people don't bother with it, even when they might have qualified -- whether because they're lazy to lazy to do the paperwork for a small offset against their expenses, or because they intentionally took time away fro…

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