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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?

#541
post #206
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.

Agreed that AI hasn't replaced jobs but i think that AI driven hiring tools have shifted the landscape.

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

#542

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…

That's not racism. I encourage you to research the term, you seem to be very confused.

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

#543

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…

This is from yesterday's X discourse regarding the H1B program. The amount of mistruths and racism on the platform was staggering.

Correct, but over simplified. I'm looking for people's experiences based on gender, age and race, as I stated in the post. This doesn't make the post inappropriate or racist. It might make some people uncomfortable, but it isn't a racist post.

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

#544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also very important to realize that the majority of currently employed and potential candidates are "white males" in North America and Europe, for better or for worse. So when you say, "the people who are struggling are coincidentally mostly white men", with the implication that white men are somehow being discriminated against, you're being disingenuous at best and outright malicious at worst.

Majority of Americas workforce is white?

White males according to Bloomberg and others are disproportionately affected by the economic downturn. Thr majority of the American workforce is no longer white males (allegedly).

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

#545

I've recruited for many roles in the UK for a very large tech employer (1000s of developers but not a FAANG). With 20 years experience you'd get through our semi-automated processes and get an interview if the skill sets and employment history matched - regardless of a university level experience. Are you sure it's the degree that's holding you back? I'm not advising you lie, as it's fraud, but just adding that over…

Thanks for asking - I tried to start my own small business and it was just before the economic downturn so i now have an employment gap - this has been the main point of contention with hiring managers. I also let SEO on my site slip and my resume needs to be cleaned up. However, I think the market is oversaturated and this is the main problem. I'm also not great at leet code challenges, but landing interviews in the first place is currently the challenge.

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

#546

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 har…

I believe much of what i see online is politically motivated. I'm looking for insider info and personal experiences so this is good feedback, thanks.

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

#547

As a white male (I only mention this since you did), I didn't have any trouble finding employment this year. I wrote about my experience here: https://sjer.red/blog/2024/job-hunt/ I do believe the market is pretty bad though, especially for new grads. I don't think it'll ever recover because of AI, and that realistically you'll have to be talented, passionate, or hard-working to work as a software engineer.

Good feedback thanks.

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

#548
post #303

Great comments and insights. Thanks to everybody for being constructive. I am also going through the same situation, but in Europe. Despite having a PhD in Machine Learning, somehow I cannot even get to the interviews. I am suspecting it might stupidly have to do with my LaTeX-generated CV which gets desk-rejected by badly design CV screening systems… anyone else sharing my suspicion?

This has been my problem as well. I didn't want to say too much in the original post as I wanted to see if others would say the same. I've seen a few comments mentioning this. I noticed the inability to get interviews right around when chatgpt dropped, so I think it might be AI screening related.

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

#549

Not really a problem for me but that's because I had the foresight to realize this is the way things are going and that it's time to get into my own thing and start my own companies if I am going to survive. The thing that was the writing on the wall for me ages ago was seeing older programmers with plenty of talent finding it hard to get work in their field, like the ageism thing, if you're past 35 or so and still j…

I'm seeing stats that show very few jobs have gone to white people as of late, and many people online are stating its an issue, but I personally have not felt as though being white is the issue for me. I am trying to get a read on other people's experiences with ageism, racism and sexism. I have experienced being replaced by foreigners who were cheaper, but I doubt being white was the issue.

How did you get your company off the ground?

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

#550

> Have you been fired in favor of foreign workers? 1) I work at a large company everyone in the US has heard of. When I walk in the public areas of the company or at lunch, it looks like we are based in Mumbai. There is no "diversity", it's one country in particular, which is India. (Funnily enough, this demographic isn't reflected in management) 2) I overheard the 4th level (above me) manager complaining to another…

> how to evade high-paying tech salaries. Set the parameters to discourage Americans from hiring, create a bottleneck so that your open reqs last longer, then use their extra-legal powers (unfettered access to congresspeople) to claim they are falling behind profitability, but if they just had those wonderful H1Bs everything will be ok.

Yes that's what it seems to me based on many of the things I've read (not in this thread)

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