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

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

#341

Post by iamdbtoo » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 10:26 PM UTC

irvingprime wrote: post #209

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.…

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

Really? Mine is that companies value experience less.

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

#342

Post by throwaway284534 » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 10:26 PM UTC

irvingprime wrote: post #209

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.…

If it’s any consolation, I haven’t gotten any favors as a trans woman, even with “passing privilege.” Both myself and the cis women in tech I know all hear the same thing: companies are tipping the scales to favor diversity hires. But in truth it seems to be a marketing tactic rather than a hiring strategy.

It’s quite bizarre at all levels — I often receive invitations from recruiters to apply to “women led startups”, but when I ask why I’m qualified there’s no real explanation other than I’m a woman who owns a computer. The same seems to be true of female founded startups. Doesn’t matter what the role is or what’s being built — Does she use a computer while in an office building? That’s women in tech! The purpose of most of these interviews is really about manufacturing consent: “It’s just too hard to hire women! Just look how hard we’ve tried!” I’m all for incentivizing under represented groups, but it wouldn’t be so bad if the phrase “women in tech” was short hand for “women who have written a lot code” and less about “brave women who uses their yonic powers to guide the brutish male code monkeys.” Attend a FAANG sponsored women centric event and you’ll see that I’m only exaggerating a little bit.

Ironically, my transition has been something like a rendition of Gift of the Magi: The more passable I became, the less experienced I was perceived by my peers. And worse, what was once thought of as confident display of technical ability is now seen as a lack of demure. Insecurity runs deep in this industry.

IMO the hiring problem isn’t about gender or race. It’s the fact that tech doesn’t have the luxury of an economic environment where all the money is imaginary. There’s really no era quite like the last two decades. Tech companies could burn through billions of dollars on intangible assets with no immediate need for deliverables. As the perception of innovation diminishes, companies feigned cutting edge leadership by leaning into the virtues, and as a byproduct, having the employees fight over who’s more oppressed.

I think everyone here has questioned if their skill set is actually worth their salary. “Sure, sometimes it’s a free ride, but those hard sprints are really why I’m paid six figures!” — It’s explanations like that which let software engineers hit the snooze bar on whether their employer’s solvency is transitive of their technical expertise, or rather just two decades of zero interest rate policies. It’s likely a little bit of the former and a lot more of the latter.

IMO most engineers are looking through the wrong end of the telescope, trying to find a job like the dating you do when you’re looking for a comfortable but uncommitted relationship. That time is over and our jobs are now akin to the blue collar trades who’s customers have a clear idea of what they’re paying you for, rather than a vague set of technical skills that might be worth exploring on their dime.

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

#343

Post by feznyng » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 10:28 PM UTC

ironman1478 wrote: post #248

I haven't had a hard time finding employment. I am going to start at a FAANG next week, coming from another FAANG. I work in embedded / hardware. I think what is being asked for is changing and people are being caught flat footed. We don't need more web or backend devs, we have so many of those. The world of embedded can't hire enough because the scope of embedded has increased. It's no longer just writing bare metal…

How would a junior engineer get into embedded software? Personal hardware projects with esp32s, etc?

Seems far more interesting than cobbling together CRUD apps but it seems tough to get into given the experience roles require.

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

#344

Post by didgetmaster » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 10:32 PM UTC

maeil wrote: post #164

w4ffl35 wrote: post #97

[flagged]

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…

Is there some law that prevents the people of Denmark from buying Apple or Google stock? If not, then anyone there can make as much from stock appreciation in those companies as any American.

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

#345

Post by krapp » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 10:32 PM UTC

brickfaced wrote: post #298

krapp wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning all American companies from outsourcing or hiring foreigners would result in complete financial isolation, collapse and likely balkanization of the US, and ironically far worse employment prospects for Americans than currently exist. All modern Western capitalist power depends upon the exploitation of a foreign underclass. Yes, theoretically, the US could pursue its own Sakoku as a suicidal policy of "nativis…

Just not true. The H1B visa program didn't exist until the 1990s. In fact, until passage of the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the US was under strict immigration restrictions established by the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. During that time we assimilated the Ellis Islanders, beat the Great Depression, out-produced the Axis to win World War 2, split the atom, rebuilt Europe and Japan, electrified t…

>During that time we assimilated the Ellis Islanders, beat the Great Depression, out-produced the Axis to win World War 2, split the atom, rebuilt Europe and Japan, electrified the country, fed the world with our Green Revolution, invented the transistor, cured polio, invented the integrated circuit, and built the Empire State Building, Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam and interstate highway system. Cheap tech labor benefits a small club of men at the top, such as Elon and paulg. It is not essential to the success or prosperity of America or the American people.

To be clear, you're implying that all of these things, specifically, were the result of American anti-immigration policies and high wages for American workers?

Because I'm pretty sure America needed plenty of foreign help to split the atom, and that socialist programs like the WPA built much of the infrastructure you're talking about, and the interstate highways were built by government contractors and prison labor. And Americans may have invented the transistor, but the patents originated with Canadian, Austrian and German research. Of course, the cheap labor of manufacturing in China and elsewhere in Asia is responsible for the ubiquity and low cost of just about all electronics sold in the US. Almost everyone has something made by Sony or Panasonic, but no one has a Zenith TV anymore.

The "Green Revolution"... depended entirely on the cooperation of foreign governments, investment and labor. The US absolutely did not "feed the world with our Green Revolution," just as the US did not "win World War 2."

>Cheap tech labor benefits a small club of men at the top, such as Elon and paulg. It is not essential to the success or prosperity of America or the American people.

What's funny is that we're here on a board built for and primarily used by Silicon Valley tech people who make six figure salaries on the back of that labor, from H1-B visaholders to the South Americans cleaning their toilets down to the child slaves mining rare earth elements in the Congo, and were fine with it up until someone talked about them the way they talk about the foreign help.

And let's not pretend tech was ever about the success or prosperity of America or the American people. Ya'll got in it because you wanted to exit a billionaire like Zuckerberg or Musk with a little effort and a bullshit gimmick, while someone whose name you can't bother even trying to pronounce serves you a catered lunch at the commissary.

Yeah, sorry, you're just another one of the tomatoes.

>An America where children must study 24/7 and work 80 hours a week as slavish, soulless drones to compete with indentured servants from every corner of the world is not a country I want to live in.

Stop voting for the people who keep making it worse, then. Did you really think the globalist billionaire who never worked a real job and rarely paid his (often foreign) employees was a hero of the working man?

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

#346

Post by geor9e » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 10:34 PM UTC

I remember in the early 2000s, computer science was not a very attractive field. The headlines were saying the jobs would go to India. People weren't predicting that in the 2010s, demand would get so high that people would switch careers to do a 3 month boot camp (or equivalent self-study) and then making six figures remotely. To the people who got non-software stem degrees, and went into a stem career, the world of software looked like an alternative reality. Imagine a 3 month bootcamp to become a structural engineer or chemical engineer. To stem folks outside of the software world, the bar being raised feels like a return to normalcy. A lot of the mundane work you used to need an army of coders for is now doable with an LLM in cursor/vs code. Most stem majors take at least one coding class in college, but didn't have the patience to really get into it, but AI has opened that door. I don't want to sound callous or unempathetic, but a chunk of software workers no longer being unemployable makes total sense to those outside the software world. But, give it a few years, surprises often occur, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's another massive software hiring wave.

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

#347

Post by bdangubic » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 10:35 PM UTC

Epa095 wrote: post #279

irvingprime wrote: post #209

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.…

Why do you think the white male part is relevant? This is meant as an honest question. I know DEI is a thing, but it kind of already seems a bit out of fashion, and do we have any reason to believe that the labour market is easier for a Muslim woman? Idk, for me occams razor tells me that the labour market is just a bit shit for all genders and races at the moment..

but white males are not used to this type of job market :)

hence now being white male is what must be a problem (though you offer them $10 million to change color of the skin and gender and there will not be a single taker … too funny …)

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

#348

Post by didgetmaster » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 10:36 PM UTC

Perhaps a better question is: For those who have recently found new employment; how much trouble did you have to go through in order to land the job?

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

#349

Post by vbi8iBEX » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 10:36 PM UTC

akmarinov wrote: post #235

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Working more for less is the issue, that's exactly what this boils down to.

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

#350

Post by scottiescottie » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 10:36 PM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #152

arendtio wrote: post #130

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 have seen this as well. We have "DEI" officers, whatever that means, whose job seems to be solely to email us about things like whatever native land our company's buildings exists on.