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Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

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431–440 of 625 posts

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

#431
post #351

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 ho…

All were web forms except for the startup job which was inbound off of a hackernews "looking for work" post I commented in.

To be fair though the only online application that went through was Atlassian.

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

#432
The remote work culture won, as well as capitalism. Who wanna pay a local worker 100k/year if a remote worker from small country can do the same job for half of that? I'm almost decade in the field and I'm that worker who is ready to take the half because this is enough in my country. Of course I would be considered poor in US, but here I am rich, and the hiring dynamic is pretty clear, if you want to compete on this market you need to lower your expectations.

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

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should be illegal, specifically? What concrete action should be made illegal? These are people hired locally within their respective countries by local corporations owned by holdings in the US. How can you make it illegal for a company to hire people legally in other countries through their legal non-US incorporations?

I just think start with the moral issue first. Then legal experts can craft logic around that. Basically, if an unemployed American that can write React code, that person should have a job before any H1B (or remotely hired person) at the same level, same remoteness status, etc... If all the Americans are hired, then H1B levels (and remote work Indians) may rise again. I might have a larger shot at getting a job right…

You don't need to move to India for that, it is enough to just bid for 3x less salary like an Indian and you will get the job from anywhere. Then you maybe will consider moving to India.

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

#434

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…

Sometimes the companies can't help it either. When you try to get business from government contracts or even large enterprises, they ask you your diversity in hiring in your org. You're excluded from applying if you're not diverse enough. So it's a chain.

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

#435
post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>why would an american with a high cost of living (result of policy choices) be expected to work for a mexican wage? Because they're competing against Mexicans who will do the job at that wage, and probably automation and AI, and there is no universe in which American companies simply decide to spend more on local labor without commensurate benefit. It isn't any American employers' problem that the market has determi…

this 100x^

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

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take this any way you like, but I'm genuinely trying to offer constructive criticism. Whether you mean to or not, you come across as bitter and angry. ...also a little socially awkward? Why use my last name in this forum? Not that it bothers me; I deliberately maintain a public profile. But the convention here is to use each other's usernames, and you had to click through at least a couple links to see my nam…

You have your full name linked in your profile. Look Jeff, you've offered up backhanded advice twice now in this thread. I'll offer up my honest feedback to you: you come across as rude and obtuse. We are having a discussion in this post about H1B, job shortages etc. Nothing I've said in any of these posts or comments is bitter or angry. You're free to read my words however you wish, but you might want to take a step…

[deleted]

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

#437
Agree the rate of top US companies hiring foreign tech workers has massively increased in the past decade. But no, its not at the expense of US citizen employees. I work at a FAANG (5+ years at one, 10_+ years in other big companies). We are actively hiring great talent. The majority is white males, because...statistics. HR recruiters try to serve us a diverse pool of resumes/candidates to screen but its actually hard to find enough to fill all the roles we're hiring for (in cloud computing). Results in teams of mainly white males. Hopefully your 'anecdotal experiences shared online' are just a subset of the few that don't make it past an initial screen vs. the majority that do.

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

#438
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I said they tried nothing and are out of ideas.

The problem is that labor laws and practical considerations make it so that most other options are infeasible and/or illegal. Business model innovation in employment is basically illegal. Professional sports take interesting and varied approaches to the subject, but even they are facing challenges (see ‘free transfers’ in the European football market).

This is just excusing a complete lack of creativity. If they won't adapt they deserve to fail.

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

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All politicians lie. >The American public are smart. They are not easily duped. They understand that when he says Social Security and Medicare are bring left alone, he intends to cut them. That's ridiculous. Your central premise seems to be that because Trump has lied before, we live in opposite land. Not only that but that the American public is 100% behind the opposite of what they were promised, which is also very…

Yes all politicians lie. But Trump doesn't lie like that, he lies about everything all the time. He lies about things that are obviously untrue, right there in front of you. He's not a "liar" in the way most people are. He's a liar in the sense that you are in on the lie, that you understand the lie is a lie. This is not "some of the act" - its his whole shtick. Yes, I think most of what he does will be very bad for…

>But Trump doesn't lie like that, he lies about everything all the time. He lies about things that are obviously untrue, right there in front of you.

Again you describe what most politicians do. Trump's lying is not quantitatively nor qualitatively more severe than any other politician at that level, certainly not more than Biden or Kamala.

>He's not a "liar" in the way most people are. He's a liar in the sense that you are in on the lie, that you understand the lie is a lie.

I don't buy this.

>But this is a guy with a 4 year term already behind him. This is a guy running to stay out of jail. This is the guy people voted for. More than in 2016, more than in 2020. More across all demographics. More in 90% of counties .

Need I remind you that Biden pardoned his son for a huge period of time and undisclosed crimes which he himself might be an accomplice?

>The voter understands the pain that is coming, and embraces it as necessary for the coming greatness. The willingness to put their own suffering aside, to willingly endure the oncoming hardships, to vote against their personal best interest is admirable.

I don't think this is what happened. Although the Trump campaign did make vague references to temporary pain, it explicitly denied that any benefits would be cut or taxes increased (except for the tariffs). People are suffering because of high inflation and a stagnant economy. They see hundreds of billions of dollars go abroad as we struggle to cover expenses at home. They are not down for more taxes, reduced benefits, or any such thing. You're bending over backward to say that voters want the exact opposite of what they were promised, and that's ridiculous.

I don't know how many people think our Western lifestyles are sustainable. One thing is for sure though. If you're a politician and you admit defeat, and say we can't possibly have the lifestyles we've had for many decades without some kind of awful intervention like a massive war, high taxes, or cuts to essential services, you're guaranteeing your own loss. People want to believe there is a way, and they're not ready to give up their way of life yet just because some politician says they aren't being reasonable or they don't deserve it.

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