I was laid off in May from my consulting firm of 3.5 years and I still don't have a job. Probably applied to over 200+ jobs and haven't even got an interview. I have 10 years of experience in front-end development with a hint of full stack. Before this year, the longest time it took me to snag a job was 2-3 months. Curious, what is everyone doing for income if they cant get a CS job? I need something :(
Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
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Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#592To answer your question: No, I did not struggle to find employment. I'm at a FAANG right now, but was shopping around last year for offers, and got decent offers from the likes of Snowflake and Uber. Ended up not taking them because I'm happy where I'm at. I took a look at your LinkedIn. If I were a hiring manager, I'd be concerned that in the last 8 years you mostly stayed at each company for a year or less and that…
So far it seems that hiring managers are the problem.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#593Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#594a new normal is upon us, unfortunatelly
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#595You are not alone. I'm also just shy of 2 decades of experience, and have had extreme difficulty.
My last salary was as a contractor for a 10 month project, which ended Dec 2019. Then came a divorce, the covid lockdown, and a horrendously difficult bout with depression.
I've moved back home, and have been looking for work in earnest for the last two years. I've finally had some nibbles with freelance, but interviews for salary positions are still few and far between, and even then solid, successful interviews have not gone in my favor.
For comparison, in 2013 I was poached after a recruiter saw my linkedin profile, and given an offer I couldn't pass up.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#596Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#597Earlier quoted context omitted.
Focusing on small-medium businesses and individuals who normally don't have alot of knowledge or access to people who do information technology as our leads has been our bread and butter - you want to be looking at local companies like art galleries, schools, non-profits, places that are running legacy systems that need to be upgraded, stuff like that are just everywhere and the thing is they know they need work done…
Now this is some good advice.
All you need is talented friends, a professional looking website, an email solution of some kind, and maybe a small investment in some collaborative software too. It was like a week of effort tops to do all that and I haven't had to mess with it much since that effort, it's basically just there to keep up professional appearances and host blogs and code whenever we decided to do some writeups on our work.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#598Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every euro/yen/.. spent by German/Japanese/.. residents on US tech is one that goes to big tech. Every minute spent consuming US tech (Meta et al) is one spent not consuming something that benefits local society. Enormous net negative, and I'm lucky enough to be part of the poster child society that shows just how much better the alternative is: South Korea. And even here people still use lots of US tech (Instagram i…
I am not aware of the South Korean software ecosystem, can you share a bit more info or point us to some? It sounds cool, I’m very interested in localized economies and software.
Korea is one of the 4 countries that I know of where a non-Google firm holds significant market share in search. One of only 2 democracies, the other being Japan. And Japan is ambiguous as their local player (Yahoo Japan) has been using Google for indexing for years (but is now switching).
Instant messaging, online payments, online shopping, second hand market place, domestic hotel bookings, email are all local tech companies. Food delivery was local for very long, now technically acquired by foreign company but run independently as local tech. Taxi apps have been local for very long, though Uber's presence is growing - but even there they got into the market by acquiring a local player and running them relatively independently afaik (less sure about this one). Even then, majority of market share is still non-Uber locals. Anything finance-related is local. Maps are local. Gaming streams was Twitch+Local but is now local only.
Despite Android enjoying >90% market share for 10+ years (now rapidly losing to iOS, I'd say among age 20-30 iOS is >40%), the only Google products that have been popular were Youtube and Chrome. Gmail somewhat.
Even the dating app market here is dominated by local players. This is the only case I can think of where the result is actually worse than if it wasn't, which is quite a feat considering just how awful Tinder and friends are.
The only US apps that dominates its field here is Instagram. Chrome and Youtube do as well but gained that purely through default and PC usage. Netflix and Disney+ are popular by virtue of original content, but sports are local players. Spotify to an extent, but again, nowhere near 90% market share like US or Europe.
For obvious reasons, most tourists and short-term foreigners here hate all of this. But frankly their opinions should be ignored. Despite being a foreigner as well it's clear as day that it's much better for everyone else.
The local replacement of Google maps is the easiest example, I've written a little about it here [1].
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#599Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can tell you that US tech companies making enormous amounts of money from your country's populace while contributing back near-zero jobs in return is just as bitter.
This line of reasoning is deeply flawed. If US tech companies are “making enormous amounts of money from your country’s populace”, then your country is getting something in return, e.g. access to Apples hardware products, amazons cloud, or googles search engine. Why should it matter if they also open an office in your country?
It isn't at all, and having lived in countries on both sides of the coin, I can tell you that people are getting a worse product in return, without the local job creation. I've written more about it here [1]. A trivial example is Google Maps. I've gone a bit more in-depth on that example here [2]. In a nutshell, you get much less enshittification, far better customer support (humans instead of ML models), and all the other things that used to be completely normal but were slowly boiled away while getting people used to it in the name of shareholder returns.
For clarity, I took the discussion as being about software, as physical goods (including hardware) are an entirely different beast which my points don't necessarily apply to.
Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?
#600Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Voluntary trade benefits both parties by definition. If Google is making money off of people in e.g. Denmark, it's probably also giving them something that is really valuable to them, like access to the Google search engine. So I don't actually think Denmark would be better off by banning doing business with Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc.
> Voluntary trade benefits both parties by definition.
It absolutely does not [1]. This kind of blanket statement is on the level of "market intervention is *always bad, the free market solves everything". Wishful Raegan-era thinking.