I do believe the market is pretty bad though, especially for new grads. I don't think it'll ever recover because of AI, and that realistically you'll have to be talented, passionate, or hard-working to work as a software engineer.
Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
181–190 of 625 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Companies selling physical goods lead to a decent amount of jobs in every country they operate in by definition. Not so for software.
It is US big tech who has for a decade or 2 reaped enormous benefits from extracting large sums of money from non-US economies while contributing near-zero back to those economies (often not just near-zero but straight up deeply negative amounts due to externalities).
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#183I see this as a combination of three forces at play: AI, WFH, and Skillset--all adding downward pressure to hiring talent in the U.S.: 1) While A.I. may now be only adding 10-20% of productivity gains, the rapid pace of improvement leaves open the possibility that tha gains can be soon much more than that. So, instead of scaling your company now, if you can afford to, wait out a bit and see where this goes. 2) Even t…
a. Note that "outside of the US" covers more than India and Pakistan. Google, Microsoft, Meta, etc. all have sizeable research or R&D centers in France, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, UK, etc. Most of these countries have engineers of a level comparable (better by some metrics, worse by others) to US engineers.
b. I've known several top-notch programmers from India. One of them is an important contributor to the Linux kernel, another to the core of Firefox. I have no clue how common that is, but be wary of stereotypes.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#184It's not just you. I have an Ivy league degree, worked in deep learning since alexnet at a leading startup in the space, was a CTO of a startup that got acquired and have referrals from very senior people at the top FANG companies and still struggled to get interviews. I also have research scientist friends with Neurips papers, ones that solved long standing open math problems and even they are struggling to get hire…
I could see outsourcing to Poland end up working out just as great as outsourcing to Ukraine did. Not saying it will happen tomorrow, but would not surprise me to see Russia go in there after they get a big chunk of Ukraine and slowly gain control of it's government.
A ton of big tech companies opened large offices in Poland in the past few years. It’s starting to look like a pretty major tech hub. If you look at Google or Box job boards most of their open roles in Europe are in Warsaw.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#185Incidentally all the people I know looking for a job are white males, but it may just be because they're the majority of people in tech I know anyway.
On legality of the above (given I was pretty sure it was illegal): It's legal, because "positive discrimination" is legal in the relevant EU countries (and in the UK).
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#186I think your categories ('white male', 'Indian', ...) are a form of racism already. I mean, there are other categories you can use. Outsourcing, offshoring, and nearshoring all describe something similar (cutting costs by replacing the workforce) but do not categorize humans based on racial factors. I understand this is not the core of your question, but I did not want to leave it uncommented because I think it is in…
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#188It's not just you. I have an Ivy league degree, worked in deep learning since alexnet at a leading startup in the space, was a CTO of a startup that got acquired and have referrals from very senior people at the top FANG companies and still struggled to get interviews. I also have research scientist friends with Neurips papers, ones that solved long standing open math problems and even they are struggling to get hire…
It sucks for you guys, but its just the new reality. Engineering is dead end career unless you are top 10%, move on to management, or money doesnt play a role, but at that point you might as well go duck farming or become a carpenter.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
If the latter, yes, certainly. My last two employers had to hire US and Canadian developers anyway just to be able to sell to the US/Canada, so I guess it's already the case.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 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.