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Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

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231–240 of 625 posts

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

#231

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…

Can you link to the ATS checker please?

Beware that it may be just another data kraken.

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

#232

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.…

Taking your conclusion in good faith, would you really want to work in a shop that weighs immutable characteristics over actionable metrics like solving LC hards?

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is an oxymoron - america has been the main driver of globalization without a distant second. the “america first” is political garbage used to rile up rural america, it only exists in context “we’ll let american companies do whatever is necessary so that we keep being “global leader” …)

American leaders have been the drivers of lots of terrible things that I disagree with. I'm still anti globalization and pro-America first which in the context of this thread translates to hiring American workers over foreigners when there is clearly no shortage of American workers.

brace yourself for the next two/four years as the incoming administration is on a mission to kill american workforce chasing every last dollar. I feel you but the pro-America means 180-different to you than what is about to hit us hard

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

#234
post #161
post #86

It'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.

At this point we all would have much worse things to worry about. Poland is a part of NATO.

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

#235
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How can that be true though?

Are you and Elon saying that India’s education system and universities are just plain better than MIT, Stanford, etc? If so - why are so many studying abroad in places like Canada and Australia?

If not, then are Indians just genetically smarter than Americans, so that their pool is better?

It just seems like immigrants are willing to work more for less, so that in the future when they’re citizens, they can work less for more.

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

#236

My 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…

I've had some interviews stretch on for months and multiple interviews only to be rejected in the end. I'm just trying to concentrate on creating video games. I'll probably go get a job at a store in town soon. Pointless to keep trying in this market it seems.

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

#237

I 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…

Many companies officially endorse systematic racism under the banner of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). They isn’t just trying to exclude white males to hire more of the opposite traits. Many will have support groups for non-whites and non-males for their specific issues, special training that can lead to promotions which whites can’t have, and put out posters or videos displaying non-whites to show how much…

I'm close with a principal engineering manager at a large tech company. At his level, bonuses are in part determined by hiring minorities (discriminating against whites, East Asians, men), and resumés are sorted by the same category to ensure some minimum of minorities are given an opportunity before a less racially desirable candidate even has a chance of being looked at.

IBM Red Hat is being sued for this, having stated workforce diversity goals of 30% female and 30% people of color. Executives have openly stated that bonuses are on the line if you hire too many white men.

For the last decade or so we haven't been able to state these things without being accused of racism or sexism. Ironically, my primary concern is that these sorts of policies make the problems of racism and sexism worse. Equality requires that we judge people on their merits.

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

#238
post #184
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Putin would be asking for WW3 if he tried that and it would not end well for him. 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.

WW3 only happens if NATO isn't bluffing about article 5. Given the lackluster response to Ukraine it doesn't look good for article 5 and Poland, which is why they're buying so many weapons now.

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

#239

Hate to be political here, but anyone that is on this boat and is left-leaning got a taste of their own medicine

Care to explain? A lot of the reasons posited here involve, for example, Elon firing 70+% of Twitter staff and still having a “functional” site. Elon doesn’t seem to have a particular leftward lean. Covid related stimulus (advocated by those in the left) in fact fueled a lot of the rapid growth in engineering roles in the past four years.

We are also locked in with at least the next four years of very right leaning US government, so if you’re a business basing your hiring on the expected “lean” of the government, how exactly is that the lefts fault? Heck the next two years the republicans have the trifecta plus a majority on the Supreme Court.

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

#240

My 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…

You can't just mention an obscure optimisation problem without naming it on HN, surely that breaks some site guideline somewhere
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