Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#171

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:45 PM UTC

theandrewbailey wrote: post #2

I'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…

I wonder how much of this is due to the end of semiconductor scaling. At some point, if hardware performance-per-cost doesn't increase, things will stabilize and new applications will dry up. The computer industry could become like, say, the machine tool industry. Important, but not a source of runaway profits.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#172

Post by w4ffl35 » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:45 PM UTC

maeil wrote: post #164

w4ffl35 wrote: post #97

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The irony is palpable. For many years, FAANGs and the likes have made billions across the world without hiring any significant amount of people in nearly all of those economies. Zero profit for the non-US countries. Take a random one, Denmark. Google and Apple sure have been making great money off of the Danes. What has Denmark gotten in return for it? Nothing. It's all gone towards (generally US) investor returns, a…

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#173

Post by dddrh » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:47 PM UTC

Adding a topline response echoing the same thing.

Been on the job hunt since October 1, and have done hundreds of applications, yet only spoken to 3 companies, and made it past the hiring manager once.

I’m a technical product manager with 10+ years and most recently was head of product at a healthtech company. It seems like none of my experience or background matters for the initial screen.

The most frustrating part has been spending time to update a resume and a cover letter to get a rapid rejection obviously done via AI. The fastest rejection I’ve received was 2 minutes.

It is at the point where the information-asymmetry between company and applicant is so high that I don’t think it is worth the time or effort to craft a customized resume and cover letter to match the job description. Not even with the “help” of LLMs.

The promise of Remote hiring now is proving to be a double-edged sword. It can be easier to get hired, but it means competing in an almost global applicant pool.

As a way to keep me occupied I’m building a personal tool to journal my work history and use the journal as a source to leverage an LLM to customize my resume and cover letter to a job description that sounds like me. Just need to keep the momentum up for both the continued job hunt and personal projects.

Though its starting to wear on me.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#174

Post by Yoric » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:47 PM UTC

returnInfinity wrote: post #94

Glyptodon wrote: post #35

The "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…

All the CEOs are investing money in AI and that budget has to come from somewhere. So we have reduced hiring. The CEOs are scared that if AI ends up working, then they will be left behind by competitors who invested in AI. So every CEO must invest in AI according to game theory.

> All the CEOs are investing money in AI and that budget has to come from somewhere. So we have reduced hiring.

Indeed. That was even communicated officially by several companies during their layoffs (including Google, iirc).

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#175

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:47 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #128

Think it's a confluence of a couple separate things: * End of ZIRP * Musk's twitter firing spree being watched & emulated by others. i.e. there was rest & vest happening & execs realised some fat can be cut * Bootcamp generation has moved beyond entry level and is now competing with more established players * Entire thing just naturally goes in waves * More fractured/specialised field. Language/Framework/Job descript…

* End of Moore's Law

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#176

Post by coding123 » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:47 PM UTC

derektank wrote: post #104

w4ffl35 wrote: post #97

[flagged]

Why, exactly? These companies have foreign customers, it seems reasonable to expect that they would also want to have foreign employees that can speak the language, work in the same time zone, etc. And the demand for those employees is unlikely to be perfectly commensurate with demand for US based employees at all times. Seems like a ban would be pretty destructive, even if some of this hiring is an attempt at offsho…

If this is the case, why do I get someone in India when I call US based companies for support (during their midnight)?

Should US employees do support for Indian companies during our midnight too? I'm being honest, I can probably work for a few pennies since I was laid off months ago. Anything will help keep me going at this point.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#177

Post by verzali » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:47 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #115

jt2190 wrote: post #78

Remember 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.

Reminds me a bit of 2008, when I'd regularly encounter recently laid off bankers getting drunk and bemoaning their situation with some passion. It was hard to have much sympathy for people who'd earned enormous salaries and somehow failed to put any aside for an emergency...

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#178

Post by w4ffl35 » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:48 PM UTC

maeil wrote: post #167

w4ffl35 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company is operating in a foreign nation sure. If a company is operating in America on American soil and refusing to hire Americans because they want to save a buck, they should face penalties. I do not see hiring foreigners as being pro-American.

The comment is mostly talking about Silicon Valley big tech, of which exactly 100% operates in many countries.

Having worked for a startup and lost my job to remote workers in a foreign country because they were cheaper and being told "we can hire 3 or 4 of them for the price of you" has left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#179

Post by krapp » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:48 PM UTC

thatcat wrote: post #147

krapp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what basis? There is no right to employment in the US Constitution, and companies are simply practicing good capitalism by purchasing the most effective workforce at the lowest cost from a global labor pool. If you want to live in a society where your life has value beyond that which a market rapidly converging on slave labor and AI can extract from you, I guess maybe move to a country where "socialism" isn't a di…

There is no right to globalism in the constitution either: any and all of those behaviors can and should be regulated if it is in the best interest of the US citizens.

There is no right to globalism, and thus the US government isn't forcing companies to be globalist. Globalism is simply the inevitable result of capitalist incentives in the global marketplace, and the US has benefited greatly from it. Not all Americans, obviously, but certainly those that capitalism is intended to benefit (the capitalist class.)

And I guess the petite-bougeousie of the American tech class is getting a rude awakening that they're just labor after all, and thus not entitled to eat from the table they set.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#180

Post by TypingOutBugs » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:49 PM UTC

w4ffl35 wrote: post #97

[flagged]

What should be illegal, specifically? What concrete action should be made illegal?

These are people hired locally within their respective countries by local corporations owned by holdings in the US. How can you make it illegal for a company to hire people legally in other countries through their legal non-US incorporations?