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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?

#351

Post by nsfmc »

LouisSayers wrote: post #227

I live in New Zealand, applied for 5 jobs in March 2024, got 2 offers (Atlassian, small startup - both Aus based remote jobs), the other 3 companies didn't move me past resume. I have a CS degree and over a decade of experience as a full stack dev. Maybe I just got lucky, but there have always been people out there that seem to apply for hundreds of companies and land nothing. I've also helped some of those people la…

i suspect that a lot of people applying to a lot of jobs and not hearing back are applying via an inbound webform or even, unknowingly, through an agency or intermediary like Indeed. my experience (on both sides of the hiring process) is that inbound applications are generally considered fairly low-signal unless they are paired with a highly-specific job req or come with a referral attached. i'd be curious to know how you applied to those companies to get such good response rates.

as an anecdote, for some jobs i've applied to, i received an internal referral to a specific recruiter and it just never went anywhere (although i could often observe the recruiter looking at my linkedin profile from linkedin's own upgrade promo emails). in many cases, i would have preferred a 5 minute call to see if i was even a good fit so as to cross a job off a list.

i'm not anybody special, also degree and over a decade in, but it seems like a market where i could be connected 1-1 to an internal recruiter that is actively filling a role but where on several occasions i was ghosted is just a different sort of environment than what you're describing.

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

#352

Post by thatcat »

krapp wrote: post #290
thatcat wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>inevitable result of incentives Market incentives are influenced by policies the US gov sets, so globalist capitalists monopolizing US markets is the inevitable result of US gov policies. Ever heard of Anti-trust laws? They could be updated for the global economy any time.

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…

why would an american with a high cost of living (result of policy choices) be expected to work for a mexican wage? ill work for a mexican wage when i have a mexican cost of living, end of.

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

#353

Post by coding123 »

w4ffl35 wrote: post #313
FreakLegion wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No - I'm not bitter at all." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42533933 "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."

Thanks. Having a "bitter taste" in this metaphorical sense does not necessarily mean that a person is inherently bitter. I am not a "bitter" human. Nor would I say any of my posts are "dripping" in bitterness, as Schnitzer claimed. But again - if someone wants to pass on a hire because of that post, be my guest. I wouldn't want to work for such a petty individual.

These people are just suffering from ODD right now. They can't handle a world-view that makes them bad or evil, and so they will do anything they can to make you look evil/crazy/unhinged/depressed or bitter.

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

#354

Post by pelagic_sky »

jcalvinowens wrote: post #283

Yes, this is what everybody I know is experiencing right now. Caveat lector: This is simply a retelling of my personal experience, YMMV. This is not advice. What has consistently worked for me: I stopped applying for jobs, and redirected all that effort into creating and publishing open source projects that demonstrate competence in the areas of work I want. And, just as importantly, I contribute to big established o…

I’m in UX with 20+ years of experience, including FAANG. I’ve been looking for new opportunities for a majority of the year and I have found that publishing blogs and case studies gets me emails from recruiters. If I try to reach out, 9 times out of 10 I get no response.

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

#355

Post by wojciii »

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…

This is a bad example.

Google hired some VM specialists who worked out of their Aarhus office. I think they used their research for Android.

I don't know if Google still does this, but we have (or had) a large number of people working on CS problems which they could use working at our universities they could attract.

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

#356

Post by dachworker »

m_ke wrote: 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…

NYC is a much more attractive location than Warsaw, not just because of the salary, so I fully expect the open roles in NYC to be filled very quickly.

I always wondered why American companies have offices in such unattractive locations. Last time I saw a company whose only European office was in Belgrade. Who are you going to convince to move to Belgrade to work for your company, lol? This is not like the US were all states speak English and have broadly shared cultures.

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

#357

Post by FreakLegion »

coding123 wrote: post #353
w4ffl35 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Having a "bitter taste" in this metaphorical sense does not necessarily mean that a person is inherently bitter. I am not a "bitter" human. Nor would I say any of my posts are "dripping" in bitterness, as Schnitzer claimed. But again - if someone wants to pass on a hire because of that post, be my guest. I wouldn't want to work for such a petty individual.

These people are just suffering from ODD right now. They can't handle a world-view that makes them bad or evil, and so they will do anything they can to make you look evil/crazy/unhinged/depressed or bitter.

I exclusively hire US citizens physically located here. Try again.

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

#358

Post by bdangubic »

dachworker wrote: post #356
m_ke wrote: 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…

NYC is a much more attractive location than Warsaw, not just because of the salary, so I fully expect the open roles in NYC to be filled very quickly. I always wondered why American companies have offices in such unattractive locations. Last time I saw a company whose only European office was in Belgrade. Who are you going to convince to move to Belgrade to work for your company, lol? This is not like the US were all…

On a below-average US salary living in Belgrade your quality of life would be equal to a 7-digit salary living in the US. Not to mention that you would be in one of the safest cities in the World for women and children and generally would live better than Seinfeld on Park Ave :)

and of course everyone speaks english…

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

#359

Post by RGamma »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #84

"I am seeing many anecdotal experiences shared online on various platforms stating that it is difficult to find employment in tech." What is "tech" 100% serious question Is it short for "technology" For example, "Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way." Skolnikoff, Eugene B. (1993). "The Setting". The Elusive Transformation: Science, Technolo…

"Tech", as in use here, is the VC-tortured shorthand for "anything to do with computers or the internet" and maybe other fruits of hard science like energy or biotech. The term's similar to content, influencer or creator, in that it sucks the nuance out to commodify it better.

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

#360

Post by sunshine-o »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #256
bruce511 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that work-remotely can be done by non-US based workers for a fraction of the cost of US workers. So those lobbying for work-from-home, well, this is the natural endpoint of that.

They would’ve outsourced regardless of remote or not. It’s all about cost. Employers are hedging after they felt they lost control during the “Great Resignation” and the labor cost pressures they faced from it. Remote also makes it too easy for workers to find other opportunities, versus being restricted to opportunities within a commute distance. Unless it’s offshore remote of course. This is not without peril due t…

> They would’ve outsourced regardless of remote or not.

Absolutely

> It’s all about cost.

Yes and No...

What is happening now in "tech" has happened before in other industries. Since the internet various service industries have outsourced, outshored, nearshored over and over all together and in different order. I would put immigration or even move to the public cloud in that bag of schemes.

Unless those are very low level tasks the companies doing that don't really save money in the short and long term. This has been proven over and over in the last decades, but rarely admitted publicly.

What companies try to hide by doing that are dysfunctions in management and HR (usually the people who won't get offshored).

So yes it is about cost of mismanagement that need to be hidden with a very short term vision, usually to reassure shareholders.

There is another layer to this that is still very taboo. There is an inability for our societies today to make people work together in a reasonably healthy and stable manner. This is why you will often hear about "toxic workplaces" or "great resignation".

And casting those problems in economic terms to avoid talking about it lead us to bad and costly solutions.

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