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Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

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Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#101

This is going to put fuel on the fire. I run a startup, we hired two devs out of Eastern Europe at 60k each that are absolutely phenomenal. We’d love to hire American but can’t afford it. I know many other companies doing the same (nyc based seed/preseed startups). With ai, high interest rates, and covid accelerating remote hiring, I don’t see this recovering.

My company regularly outsources large projects to Eastern Europe. Almost perfect English, great developers, projects get done on time, and the pay is a fraction of US developers.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#102

I have not from the perspective of seeking emplyment, but from the smaller mid-size employer side (200 employees, robotics) we have had to reject a number of candidates. Normally this is based on a resume review (so as not to waste people's time), but sometimes it does come out in interviews. My main challenge, and I'm not saying this is the case for you - I'm just offering the perspective on the other side, has been…

Wanting someone who will stay for the long haul makes sense, but it leaves me as an unemployed engineer with two options:

- Stay unemployed until I find a job that seems interesting enough to work there for years. Apply, get rejected because companies don't like hiring unemployed people.

- Get a job that I don't like, then be constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to leave. Get rejected because I haven't been on my job for long enough.

What should I do?

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#103

Hang in there, everyone. This is what happens when interest rates are high, LPs prefer to plow money into fixed income or public markets and VCs with what little funds they have prefer to be in AI. 2011-2022 was an unusual golden age for software engineers with 2021 being the absolute peak. The current state is an usual low while the overdose is wearing off. This is not you - this is just the nature of the cycle. You…

Ultra-low interest rates like in the past 15 years are historically an anomaly: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Federal_... Nobody knows how it will develop in the future.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#104
I’ve heard from a lot of people that this is happening and as a hiring manager myself when I do have an open role I see a lot more good applications than I saw say, five years ago, which means I’m rejecting a lot of people that have great experience. I’m working at a startup, so it seems to span most company sizes.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#105

You have to wonder if remote work is starting to bite developers. 10 year ago I started a business that had hundreds of engineers in London and New York. I am now starting a new one and this time I am hiring talent from all over the world now that it is more acceptable for us and our clients. Surely this must be a factor in people in expensive western markets?

It's not just the price I think. Also dwindling acceptance of less than 100% skill match due to how remote makes the candidate pool much larger. Expect even more "openings" that aren't really open unless that one imaginary prince in shining armor shows up.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#106

Ha! Just got rejected from a process in the EU (not desperately looking) cause of a super nit picky coding challenge project. The project worked exactly to spec, I just overlooked the use of a third party package on a (Django) DB model to replace the "created_at" field. Oh well! My 4 hours of coding was not totally a waste.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#107

I have not from the perspective of seeking emplyment, but from the smaller mid-size employer side (200 employees, robotics) we have had to reject a number of candidates. Normally this is based on a resume review (so as not to waste people's time), but sometimes it does come out in interviews. My main challenge, and I'm not saying this is the case for you - I'm just offering the perspective on the other side, has been…

Wanting someone who will stay for the long haul makes sense, but it leaves me as an unemployed engineer with two options: - Stay unemployed until I find a job that seems interesting enough to work there for years. Apply, get rejected because companies don't like hiring unemployed people. - Get a job that I don't like, then be constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to leave. Get rejected because I haven't been o…

Leave. If you have an opportunity to, then by definition it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at your current job.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#108
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I've been warning people about since I was at a company acquired by private equity. They straight up told us that if a job can be done from home, then it can be done from India. I got my layoff not too long after that.

Not your problem anymore but wonder if that turned out to be true. I have my doubts.

It's still a going business at least, and obviously India is chosen for cost above any other concern. That ethos showed up in a lot of decisions made by the private equity guys, so it's hard to say exactly which change caused the decline. Certainly in some sense the company is a shell of its former self, but maybe it's more profitable than ever, or maybe the PE guys are extracting lots of money from it? I assume they're making money somehow.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#109
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying this is the case for you, but often when companies have recurring problems with retention it's because of some underlying issue: culture, perceived lack of professional development opportunities, low pay, etc. These issues might affect even new hires joining with the best of intentions.

(Writing this to address the several similar astute responses)... You're not wrong that there is an underlying, systemic, contributing issue on our companies side affecting retention. Our compensation/benefits are well above industry standard and our culture is very friendly and transparent (and I came from a place that was not thos things). In exist interviews, most employees are just saying that they want to expand…

> Our compensation/benefits are well above industry standard

I've definitely heard companies saying this when it wasn't the case, "industry standard" means different things to different people I guess, and also depends what country you're hiring from.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#110
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely this must be a factor in people in expensive western markets? Yea, this was/is my main fear with remote work. It will "even out" the pay ranges across the globe...not perfectly (due to language, timezone, regulatory, and general cultural barriers), but the imbalance will be less severe as western salaries come down and int'l salaries rise from the new demand. I expect this to happen over the course of 5-10 y…

On the other hand, I read stories online where people claim that it's hard/impossible to get promoted as remote employees. I wonder if these constraints will loosen as well.

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