Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired • Hacker News Board

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#161

Post by bossyTeacher » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:25 PM UTC

ptero wrote: post #158

bossyTeacher wrote: post #46

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 negotiat…

While there is a basis for many of your points, the overall take is a quite a bit too doomsday-ish. Many senior software engineers have financial cushion. This market will probably get worse before it gets better, but like after dotcom boom and 2008 crisis it will recover. And having assets that you can live on for a few years means one doesn't need to dash around panicked to every job posting. My 2c.

Yes, indeed many senior folks are cushioned hence all the moaning.

Less financially stable folks are actually applying and prepping not stop because moaning online won't give you a job nor put food on the table.

For the financially secure, the options are mostly the same. They just have the additional option of waiting. Their chances of getting a job similar to their previous one is still very low.

While they have the option of remaining unemployed but financially secure, and they have the option to literally wait for a few years, this will not look good on their CV.

You have two candidates, similar experience, one has a job, the other one hasn't had a job in 2 years. Interviewers from a job market that has been employer driven for the last x years will likely choose the employed one. No employer cares about how financially secure you are. If they have the choice of someone like you but with no recent job gaps or no gaps at all, they will choose the other candidate every single time. Just like an employee will always choose the slightly better company even if both companies are similar.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#162

Post by phillipcarter » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:29 PM UTC

jaredklewis wrote: post #130

phillipcarter wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400k salaries would also be on quite the high end for your average FAANG! While they may take home that (or more) in total compensation per year due to stock, they'd have to be on the very high end of seniority at a big tech company to have that much in cash.

Right, but FAANG stock is very liquid. I’d you squint, it’s cash.

It is, but X over 4 years instead of X over one year is a pretty big difference. I suspect a lot of the ex-FAANG folks know this and are trying to push for it thinking they'll get that deal.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#163

Post by dave333 » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

I got laid off around age 50 in the 2000/2001 dot com bust and wrote up my experience on medium:

https://medium.com/@davenixon_44904/how-to-find-a-job-when-y...

TLDR: Work on personal/OS project to learn in demand skills and maybe to create some value or residual income. Startups are often the least picky in hiring and provide a stepping stone to a large more stable company that may be a better fit for an older engineer.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#164

Post by rossdavidh » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 2:28 PM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #156

rossdavidh wrote: post #52

So, as a 56yo who's been programming professionally since 2004, currently having trouble finding enough contract work, a bit of perspective: When there are more openings than qualified people, even when you reduce qualifications to what is actually necessary, it seems like there's "nobody" available. Now, when the shoe is on the other foot, it seems like "nobody" is hiring. It's harsh, but it also doesn't take that m…

"There is no kind way to put this: a lot of stupid stuff got done with a lot of smart programmers in the last ten years." Any reasonable person would agree, but would the people in Silicon Valley agree.

Probably not, because if you're looking for a Facebook sized opportunity, well, there just aren't many in real life. So, perhaps a good time to look outside of that community for jobs? It's not easy, and it will take time, but it will happen.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#165

Post by rossdavidh » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 2:32 PM UTC

memset wrote: post #66

I am actively looking to hire - either freelance or full-time - an engineer to write open source golang code for my YC startup. However, I literally cannot afford FAANG salaries at my stage. It would literally bring my runway from n to n/5 years. And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I’d love to hire someone who knows what they’re doing but I’m just not able to find people who are both qualified and inte…

There are many good programmers available, who could quickly learn Go, who would work for a fraction of that. Look for someone who knows how to program (in any language), who knows the problem space you're in, and they will be able to learn how to adapt to Go fairly quickly. 400k is not at all the market rate.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#166

Post by rossdavidh » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 2:34 PM UTC

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.

Unfortunately in a lot of cases, this means they already know who they want to hire, but they're legally required to post the position publicly. Making the requirements for the position match the person they want to hire, allows them to screen out everyone else.

The first time this happened to me from the other side, when I was the one who was being selected for, it felt very awkward.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#167

Post by ptero » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 2:36 PM UTC

bossyTeacher wrote: post #161

ptero wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there is a basis for many of your points, the overall take is a quite a bit too doomsday-ish. Many senior software engineers have financial cushion. This market will probably get worse before it gets better, but like after dotcom boom and 2008 crisis it will recover. And having assets that you can live on for a few years means one doesn't need to dash around panicked to every job posting. My 2c.

Yes, indeed many senior folks are cushioned hence all the moaning. Less financially stable folks are actually applying and prepping not stop because moaning online won't give you a job nor put food on the table. For the financially secure, the options are mostly the same. They just have the additional option of waiting. Their chances of getting a job similar to their previous one is still very low. While they have th…

Agree on "being unemployed does not look great", but senior, financially secure folks that chose to take a year off will likely have "developing tools to deploy X at Y at a stealth startup" or some such on their resume instead. Plus, IME "being umeployed is not great" applies just to chances of getting to the first technical interview. After that, it is just interview-based.

Bottom line: I am not shedding any tears for most senior engineering folks who worked through one of the most favorable decades for software engineers. Yes, changing is uncomfortable, but they should have options that are way better than a free soup kitchen. My 2c.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#168

Post by rhelz » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 2:45 PM UTC

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #154

rhelz wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With experience comes pattern recognition. How do you put a dollar value on that though? If I can hire either 2 junior programmers for $100k, or 1 senior programmer for $200k.....how the heck am I supposed to know that this guy can pattern-recognize an extra $100k of value??

It's on the hiring manager to decide what if they need a senior or a junior. High functioning teams need a mixture of both skill sets. Your job in the interview is to show that you are a senior. Not to make business decisions for them.

Understood, but I'm asking how the hiring manager should be able to tell that.

Here's where I'm coming from: at every company I've worked at (besides start-ups) managers spend 2-3 months on rank-and-yank evaluations. That is an incredible amount of effort, from incredibly expensive people. But its worth it because getting the yearly evaluations right matters.

It takes so long, because its hard to do. So how, pray tell, is somebody supposed to be able to tell, just from the kind of interviews which happen today, whether they are worth more than two junior programmers or not?

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#169

Post by rhelz » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 2:48 PM UTC

aryehof wrote: post #149

rhelz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 months is actually really good, relatively speaking. Just wait until you have 20 years experience, and you are trying to explain to your interviewer (who has 5 years experience) something which took you 15 years of hard experience to learn.... 35 years experience here, been looking for 2.5 years.

The problem is that “experience” has no value in our industry, unless it is recent experience with some technology, framework, language, and the memorization of those algorithms and data-structures.

You hit the nail right on the thumb.

About 10 years ago, I was looking for jobs, and wasn't getting any bites. My wife said "Cut your resume in half. Only show the last 7 years of your employment history."

It worked--when it wasn't so obvious that I was a graybeard, I got a lot more interviews. But it was epochally, cosmically sad for me to cut out 15 years of my experience--describing achievement I was really proud of. And just throw them in the trash.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#170

Post by twojobsoneboss » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 2:57 PM UTC

luzojeda wrote: post #36

waskip wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come?

I think just because we are cheaper.

So many more companies prefer hiring you all remote now, at the cost of local US remote workers

Happy for you all but again it’s come at the cost of local US remote workers… the chickens have come home to roost of the WFH movement