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globalization mate, globalization… there will never be a law in the US of A that prevents companies from finding cheap labor… more than a quarter (and ever growing) SWEs are no longer “on shore”
Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
111–120 of 625 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#112I know you specifically said you don't have a degree, but never the less the comment section gives me mega flashbacks to what happened with MBAs around 2010/2013. Same pattern.... everyone had been pushing MBAs as the "good" career path, schools were pumping out grads, and then the music stopped. I watched friends who dropped $150k+ on top MBA programs struggle to land jobs that would let them pay off their loans. The career offices kept pushing the "average starting salary" stats but those numbers were getting propped up by a small number of graduates landing PE/consulting gigs while a much larger group was fighting for corporate roles paying half that. The MBA eventually found a new equilibrium but the "MBA golden age" was over. Starting to feel like we're watching the same movie with tech, the industry isn't dying but the days of "learn to code" being a pretty safe path to upper middle class might very well be ending. As with any concentration, the smartest MBA grads I knew were the ones who treated it as a tool to build actual skills rather than just a credential.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#113My thoughts from ~ 6 weeks ago:
>> This is the toughest market I've ever seen. I easily made it to on-sites at FAANG a few years ago and now I'm getting resume rejected by no-name startups (and FAANG). The bar has also been raised significantly. I had an interview recently where I solved the algorithm question very quickly, but didn't refactor/clean up my code perfectly and was rejected.
I've since landed one decent offer, but mostly got lucky (the sys design interview was about an obscure optimization problem that I specialized in for years - though I didn't let on that fact)
Between that time, I failed multiple interviews (always solving the question, but never quickly or cleanly enough).
Companies are incredibly slow to respond back (up to 4 weeks from time of application to first interaction with a recruiter).
Some companies are incredibly demanding (recruiter screen -> tech screen -> tech screen -> take-home test -> group discussion about take-home test -> behavioral / culture interview).
Don't think it's about race. It's just an employers' market. And if you refuse to jump through the hoops, somebody else will.
For reference, the last company on my resume is a top tier company that every recruiter has heard of.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#114Yes, we reached peak tech employment. The market was flooded with job openings from a decade-plus of endlessly increasing VC funding. So a lot of not-technically-inclined people took bootcamps and entered the job market, and for a while there was enough jobs. But with VC funding slowly drying up, and a shaky economy, all those excess jobs are gone. But there's still a ton of people trying to get the jobs.
I have two decades of experience and even I have a really hard time getting an interview. I feel like there's just too many people with my skillset and not that much demand for it [anymore]. Salaries for new jobs have gone down and there's fewer remote positions [thanks, braindead CEOs].
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#115Remember that two things have changed the employment landscape: - the end of zero interest rate policies mean that investments in projects can’t show a return “someday” but actually have to show some benefit on a reasonable timeline, say 2-3 years. Gone are the days when hiring armies of warm bloodies and having them work on “moon shots”. - the expiration of the tax write off for programmer salaries when developing a…
Also there's going to be very little sympathy if people who have been earning 6-7 figure salaries working in their pajamas for the past decade are now going through a rough patch.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#116My thoughts from ~ 6 weeks ago: >> This is the toughest market I've ever seen. I easily made it to on-sites at FAANG a few years ago and now I'm getting resume rejected by no-name startups (and FAANG). The bar has also been raised significantly. I had an interview recently where I solved the algorithm question very quickly, but didn't refactor/clean up my code perfectly and was rejected. I've since landed one decent…
Yeah the process these days is insane. I went through 4 rounds of interviews with one company, did really well and was expecting an offer but they want me to come in for a full day of onsite work mixed in with more technical rounds.
I’m interviewing with like 10 companies right now and it feels like a full time job, I have full days of interviews lined up for almost every day in the first 3 weeks on January.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think companies do this deliberately to avoid hiring Americans. The entire H1-B scheme is a disaster.
I'm probably going to be unpopular, but as a non-American, I actually find that hiring non-American is a good trend, especially if you want to sell all around the world. I don't have an opinion on H1-B specifically.
do you feel that employers in your home country should also follow this rubric?
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#118I've been out of a job for most of the past year. While sending Merry Christmas texts to my friends, I had a conversation with one (another programmer, different technologies and industry) where he revealed he was laid off last month. I keep applying for jobs, and recently accepted the possibility to relocate for an on site position (because staying where I am and hoping to get a remote position hasn't worked out). I…
And we see PG talking up H1B on twitter. I'd like to think that if he still read HN he might not do that. Really companies should be banned from importing more people[1] if they laid off a certain number in the last year. That way the job market would be more likely to self correct. [1] I think they should still be allowed to hire people who are already in the country on a visa, as it's unfair to make their risk of b…
An argument against not being allowed to import more people after layoffs (and it’s the one people like PG and Musk are making) is that the people who were laid off simply don’t have the skills required to allow companies to succeed.
They need to import labor because the domestic labor pool isn’t good enough. A quieter part is that people immigrating also expect less for their outputs.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#119Anecdotally.. but not really. I was worried about the job market but this was unfounded, for me... I started applying in October and had four offers from large tech companies by end of November. A lot of this was through networking to be fair, not “cold applying” (1 was through cold applying, the other 3 through networking). reach out to former coworkers or friends and ask for referrals. YMMV, but I do not think it i…
Echoing this experience.
I moved AUS->UK for family reasons, didn’t start applying till we landed and settled. Had a remote contract signed within two months at “big tech” for 97th percentile income locally.
20ish apps total, only 5ish got past resume screening, bombed one, turned down two, one couldn’t afford me, one accepted, no referrals, only applying for Sr IC roles, ~30yo, ~10yoe, no dei, admittedly have a degree unlike op
All up I was left doubting the jobs downturn, anecdote ofc :shrug:
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#120The "white males" bit is not useful/helpful. But US resident vs non is probably a bit. There are several layers to this. Layer one is that SW Eng work has always been both multi modal and that it's never been easy to get out of the trash distributions (e.g. $40-$60k "analyst" or "programmer" gigs, etc.) if you end up there. And it's also never been easy for someone to get a degree and find a job w/o having internship…
Agree with everything you wrote, with one small caveat: the "white male" thing is really only a notable disadvantage with large companies. Every startup I've interacted with has always prioritized hiring the person who is most capable of doing the job... the extra race/gender variable really only comes into play when there's a substantial HR layer involved. But to your other point, I think any perceived layoffs of wh…
> any perceived layoffs of white males at tech companies is just correlation with their overrepresentation in the software engineer population
Whites are 41% of software engineers [1], but 57% of the US population [2], so they are under-, not over-, represented.
[1] https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/software-engineer/dem...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...