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Is the Job Market Dying?

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Re: Is the Job Market Dying?

#51

Post by saltminer »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #4

My sense is, there is less movement. It's like musical chairs. When more people are changing more often those that have been waiting on the side lines have a greater chance of jumping in and getting a seat. Now that the tempo has slowed down, more people are left standing longer. Some big name layoffs aside, the market feels to be roughly the same size. What's missing is the churn.

My department pays out any leftover budget as a bonus at the end of the fiscal year. I got an email recently that, due to retention, there probably won't be much of a bonus come June.

Churn is indeed down.

Re: Is the Job Market Dying?

#52

Post by noirbot »

spamizbad wrote: post #11

This person seems to be sharing anecdotes about the Data Science job market. That field, which exploded over the last decade, has experienced a rapid contraction. Data teams have shrunk and contain far fewer traditional “Data Scientists” and lean more heavily on engineers who orchestrate and plumb data around. Data Scientists have become the “HTML programmers” of the tech bubble. My advice: take a pay cut and pivot t…

Yea, I feel like "Data Science" was always a Zero Percent Interest phenomenon. It's the software company version of Dogecoin or GameStop or AMC. If you've got free money, why not throw 10mil at the moonshot of discovering a diamond in the rough of your data that revolutionizes your business.

For the last 10 years, every data team I've been adjacent to has had a near infinite budget, hired more people than the rest of the company combined, had an abundance of "scientists" for whom any sort of data process, version control, scientific method, or cost controls were never part of the equation. It really doesn't surprise me that companies have decided they're not throwing good money after bad.

There's absolutely good work to be done in Data, but it requires people who know what they're doing, and not just "here's 10 years of postgresql databases. I dunno, find us 10% profit somewhere in it". There's not many companies that really have the data or personnel to make it happen.

Re: Is the Job Market Dying?

#53

Post by bluedino »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #33
zer00eyz wrote: post #8

No, it is not. For those of you who are new here (aka didn't live through the 2000 bubble) welcome to a shitty job market. 1. Your best bet to get a job is your network. If you were a clock puncher, if you didn't go above and beyond, if you aren't the person who is gonna make the co-worker who vouches for you look good... you are not gonna get much help in your network. 2. The next best bet is to either a) start your…

I was box number three - tried to be box number two and went bankrupt, and took a job at PCWorld (UK version of BestBuy?) doing repairs. Couple of months in I had coded up a sort of automated PC fix program - turned 2 hours into 5 minutes. There is always a way to find an entrepreneurial gap - even if I never quite exploit it to my own financial benefit Worst day in that job when I was trying to crawl out of bankrupt…

>> and took a job at PCWorld (UK version of BestBuy?) doing repairs

My first non-restaurant job (starting in high school) was Best Buy. Before they had the Geek Squad, they just had a generic tech area. You could get your VCR cleaned and your PC upgraded in the same spot.

Anyway, it seemed like once or twice a year someone would come in and take all the good sales people by offering them more money and fulltime hours. First it was the Gateway Country store (that didn't last long), then it was the local dial up ISP, then the regional DSL provider...

Re: Is the Job Market Dying?

#54

Post by datavirtue »

sys_64738 wrote: post #43
throwaway74432 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't end at hiring. At one place I worked, the CEO got new hires in a room and "spontaneously" asked them to tell an embarrassing story about themselves one by one, to break the ice. People were very uncomfortable but did it. Nobody was having fun, it was pretty cringe. Then it was the CEO's turn (she went last), and she told the most flattering "embarrassing" you could imagine, which was basically just a huge…

I’ve been in such a situation but I don’t do group stupid so got up and left.

Same here. CIO and my boss look up and I'm gone. My boss blows up my phone begging me to come back. Ruined my career there. My colleagues literally gushed over me and said they wished they had the courage to leave also. It was traumatizing for most involved.

Re: Is the Job Market Dying?

#55

Post by fragmede »

zer00eyz wrote: post #35
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 definitely tracks. My last company did lots of layoffs and the people who didn’t have a problem getting a new, maybe more senior or well paid, job were the ones that did a great job and put some oomph into their work. Absolutely nothing wrong with wanting or needing a 9-5, but the people who did reasonable work and then were unavailable after 5 are the ones that are having issues getting new jobs. I don’t think the…

>> Absolutely nothing wrong with wanting or needing a 9-5, Kids, life, have these things. Just make sure you are hitting your marks, that your helpful that your gonna roll your selves up and get shit done. If you have to leave, then leave, bow out. If you cant come in, or have to go cause you need to be at the gym or your spin class or D&D night. No one is calling you back right now. They remember that you put you fi…

Easy enough to say, but when you’re going against people that put their life aside to deliver, and you’re not getting called back, and you’re emptying that 401k… I mean, I get where you’re coming from, but also, shit.

Re: Is the Job Market Dying?

#57

Post by atrettel »

ryandrake wrote: post #36
paxys wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get rejected by the first 5-10 companies you apply to then you need to take a step back and figure out what you are doing wrong, because spamming the same resume to 1000 more companies isn't going to change anything. 5 strong leads is infinitely better than 1000 weak ones.

Negative, ghost rider. I’ve had a fairly consistent 100:10:1 application:interview:offer ratio for about 25 years, including bull and bear markets. It’s a numbers game. There is likely nothing wrong with his resume. You need to have a very wide top-of-the-funnel. There are probably a few Captains Of Industry here on HN who can send 5 resumes out and get 5 offers. These are multiple-standard-deviation outliers.

I've had roughly that same application:interview:offer ratio for the last 5 years. It's made me realize that it's a numbers game too.

I've gotten comments from colleagues about how putting out a hundred applications seems kinda desperate, but with the ratios that I've experienced, the only way that you can make the odds that you get a job palatable is to increase the number of applications. It's easy to run the binomial distribution analysis to prove this.

Re: Is the Job Market Dying?

#58

Post by ghaff »

zer00eyz wrote: post #8

No, it is not. For those of you who are new here (aka didn't live through the 2000 bubble) welcome to a shitty job market. 1. Your best bet to get a job is your network. If you were a clock puncher, if you didn't go above and beyond, if you aren't the person who is gonna make the co-worker who vouches for you look good... you are not gonna get much help in your network. 2. The next best bet is to either a) start your…

I was really lucky. After getting laid off. Called a guy who I had been a client for and had a lunch with him and a business manager. Ended up with a job in the post-2K bubble. Didn't pay well and barely made it to the other side but ended up the basis for how I ended out career.

Re: Is the Job Market Dying?

#59

Post by ulfw »

Dying? It's been dead. I haven't been able to find a job in a year+. And that's with almost 20 years of product leadership experience. Bunch of interviews for company that at the end laid off another 20% of people rather than hire me etc etc. Tons of war stories, ghost job postings and recruiter bullshit. But no job.

Re: Is the Job Market Dying?

#60

Post by nytesky »

zer00eyz wrote: post #8

No, it is not. For those of you who are new here (aka didn't live through the 2000 bubble) welcome to a shitty job market. 1. Your best bet to get a job is your network. If you were a clock puncher, if you didn't go above and beyond, if you aren't the person who is gonna make the co-worker who vouches for you look good... you are not gonna get much help in your network. 2. The next best bet is to either a) start your…

Interesting you don’t mention a huge option that opened up after 2001 — govt/defense work. There was a huge ramp up in military spending in the 2000s and it was still “tech” work, albeit often of the more “move slow, change incrementally” variety.
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