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Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

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

#201

Post by graemep »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #185

I know of many hiring manager who hire with recruiters that specialise in "diverse" candidates, where diverse means women and people of color only, so they can have better looking "diversity" stats. They certainly have a preference but this has been going since (at least) 2018 - it was true before the massive layoffs of 2023-24 and the end of ZIRP. What changed recently is that the market is really crap. Incidentally…

its not legal n the uk. Quotas in particular are illegal, as is direct discrimination. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/positive-action-i...

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

#202

Post by w4ffl35 »

atemerev wrote: post #190
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.

Under capitalism, a private company has duties to shareholders first. If you want companies has duties to their host country first, there are other social systems for that. Perhaps fascism.

[flagged]

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

#203

Post by layer8 »

w4ffl35 wrote: post #133
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be illegal for American companies to operate abroad when they have international revenue streams?

[flagged]

There is a shortage of American workers willing to work for internationally competitive salaries. This is similar in Europe, by the way. Industry associations claim that there is a shortage of skilled workers, whereas in reality there is only a shortage of skilled workers willing to work for low-ish salaries. On the other hand, paying everyone higher salaries across the board would have its own economic consequences.

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

#204

Post by skillissuz »

throwawayhn2024 wrote: post #73

I was let go from my last job. Also no CS degree. Had no LinkedIn either (deleted years ago). Had to create a resume from scratch. The only thing I had was about a decade of experience. I started by creating a resume and LinkedIn and aggressively optimized both as much as possible. Using a ATS checker I found online, I got a score of 96 for my resume after numerous changes (29 changes after a few weeks). I started ap…

+1 love to see a comment written by an actual human programmer

It's always been a numbers game. The people writing this posts you don't want to work with. Think about it, would you write this post (you the reader, not you throwaway guy I'm replying to)? Top commenter entitled guy with "Ivy League" degree who probably did everything right in school but cannot code.

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

#206

Post by e40 »

ckirch wrote: post #87

35, male, American citizen. applied to 800 jobs, few technical interviews, no offers. i believe with the advent of AI, the landscape has changed faster than the job market has corrected for it. It will never go back to the glory days of tech people getting hired, its over.

I don't believe for a second that AI is the reason. In anything, AI has contributed to added jobs, or at the minimum a shift in resources toward AI.

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

#208

Post by fredfoo »

microtonal wrote: post #129
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…

If you aren't doing AI or crypto, it feels that you're fighting over bones. Getting jobs in AI has also been hard for a lot of people as well. Many of my former colleagues who worked for a very visible company in the ML/NLP space have had issues finding good positions.

I think these are businesses development directions everyone talks about but are almost guaranteed to be a flop for any company that isn't already known in them. A few years ago everyone talked about big data hires even if they had about a GB of relevant data.

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

#209

Post by irvingprime »

The longest period of unemployment I've ever experienced ended about 6 months ago. I was unemployed for 11 months. The company that finally hired me was intentionally targeting people with lots of experience. I have that. They also pay less than I used to make but I took it because I needed a job.

Previous to that period of unemployment, my resume tended to get noticed. I got interviews from 3 applications out of 5. But this time, it was 3 out of 150.

Read that last paragraph again. My resume has not gotten worse. I still have decades of experience, a master's degree and a bunch of patents. That used to count for something.

My conclusion is that the market has gotten much worse for people with experience who don't hide being white and male.

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

#210

Post by e40 »

speakfreely wrote: post #91
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…

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…

> But to your other point, I think any perceived layoffs of white males at tech companies is just correlation with their overrepresentation in the software engineer population.

Agreed. A friend interviewed at Stripe in 2019 (ish, but before the pandemic) and he said every single person he saw at their SF office was 25-30 and white male. And it wasn't a small building and he was given a tour of a good bit of it.

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