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When the job search becomes impossible

jeffwofford.com

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Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#171

Post by fujigawa »

ilaksh wrote: post #111

The thing that bothers me so much about this post is that it reeks of privilege by treating unemployment as if it were mainly just a bad trigger that you talk to your expensive therapist about once a week. For most people in the real world, psychological burn out is NOT the problem with unemployment. The problem is becoming homeless.

This is going to upset some, but the tech industry is full of delusional people that are completely out of touch with reality and the needs and struggles of everyday Americans.

I recently stumbled upon a YouTuber grousing about losing her six-figure tech job. She was in full freakout mode about budgeting etc. but something didn't seem quite right. Then she disclosed she's married, financially stable, husband still has a great job, etc.

It made me stop and think how there's people out there delivering groceries, putting on an apron, all so they don't have to switch to eating cat food by the end of the week.

OTOH ex-Googlers are worried they might be forced to switch to store-brand mineral water within weeks.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#172

Post by brailsafe »

brandall10 wrote: post #154
SCUSKU wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read through your comment history and it sounds gnarly. I hope you find something soon. I was unemployed for 6 months in 2022-2023 and it was horrible. I guess I learned something from it, but I hated it. That said, I became employed after applying to a role by emailing the CTO after they posted on the monthly Who's Hiring thread. I've had 2 jobs from HN since. HN has been huge for my career personally, so I made thi…

Just for clarification, you've had 3 jobs in the past 2 years? Were some of these contracts? Otherwise oof, that sounds like volatility only worth dealing with if one really needs an income, esp. considering the signal for prospective employers.

> only worth dealing with if one really needs an income, esp. considering the signal for prospective employers.

Is this not the purpose of a job? I've had 3 long-term jobs/contracts since the pandemic, for a total of 2.5/5 years, and that's a better rate of the prior 6 years before that. Idk what their story is, but I think it's pretty typical for people who've had stable careers for one reason or another to assume it's within someone's control how often or how long they're able to work for. Sure, sometimes you're just job hopping or intentionally taking risks on early startups, but if the job goes away—depending on many factors—the ability to turn around and get another one can take a laughable amount of time, and the awareness of the perception of "the signal for prospective employers" compounding that difficulty makes it harder the longer it takes.

I try not to think about it, but there's been numerous times where I've been a year or more out from losing a job due to layoffs or financials or whatever, and getting rejected by even the least desirable place in the 4th+ round of interviews, usually by that point shifting my energy from applying/interviewing to looking at trade school. Imo it's always been brutal out there if you don't know someone running a startup who'll hook it up right away.

In my personal experience, as of the start of my current job and every time prior, in 10 years I'd accumulated no savings, always draining it to nearly zero by the time I'd get the next one. Ain't pretty.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#173

Post by sitzkrieg »

kypro wrote: post #102
bigolnik wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there actually a huge shortage of tech workers in the US?

Experienced tech workers? Yeah. One of the "problems" companies have is that it's hard to find skilled workers in the US with good experience who are not demanding SF wages. And recent graduates aren't that useful so while they might technically be "tech workers" in the sense they would like to fill open roles, companies don't really want them. So for most companies if you want to hire the most experienced and qualif…

h1b is not "reasonable cost". there is not a shortage of highly experienced tech workers. every big tech is shortchanging USA workers in favor of H1Bs to make a racket. what a joke

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#174

Post by Retric »

rubidium wrote: post #157
jofer wrote: post #148

As someone who's recently been hiring (sorry folks, position was filled just a few days ago), it's wild to me how distorted things have become. We had 1200 applications for an extremely niche role. A huge amount were clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic. Another huge portion were just unqualified. The irony is that there actually _are_ a ton of exceptionally qualified…

It’s pretty much always who you know… at least to get a showing. It’s rare in history to find counter examples. And in a LLM fueled world it’s going to be more important. Companies can improve by ensuring they don’t hire _because_ of whom someone knows. It should only ever let you get in the room to interview. So practical advice of what to do: be human. Get to know people. Care. Your time to do this is not when you’…

Vetted resumes seem like a real solution here, the issue is incentives.

One possibility for a free and impartial services would be via government funding. Unemployment insurance is paying out a few hundred per week per person, cutting that time down even a little could pay for a decent background check. That doesn’t get you a job specific resume but it should be good enough for an initial screening for most jobs.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#175

Post by renewiltord »

computably wrote: post #167
renewiltord wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

https://institute.bankofamerica.com/economic-insights/payche... BoA says 25% are paycheck-to-paycheck based on their internal data, which is still pretty nuts.

Yes, it is much lower than the 60% postulated above, even counting those who have massive positive home equity they could access at any time.

Median net worth is almost $200k. People in this country are so wealthy.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#177

Post by 64d032fe »

jongjong wrote: post #156

The worst part of this demoralization caused by the struggle to find a job is that it demoralizes your colleagues whilst putting a lot of pressure on them to 'appear' extra hard-working. The tech industry has turned into some kind of beauty contest of who appears to be doing the most work. I suspect the reason why it's more about 'appearance' is because deep down, they are demoralized - They are only pretending to be…

"It feels like the current job crisis is artificial and specifically intended to lower people's salary expectations and increase their work output"... bingo.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#178

Post by ryandrake »

dymk wrote: post #162
kstrauser wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't have problems with age discrimination — I don't think — but I think because I countered it with energy and eagerness. "I'm ready to hit the ground running. Availability? Leave a laptop on my desk and I'll be there tomorrow. I'm not yet an expert in your line of business, but I've worked through 8 different industries and succeeded in each, and learning as I go is my favorite thing in the world. Let's go!" I…

That’s the thing about age discrimination, they don’t care that you’re eager, they care that you’re over 50. How are you supposed to demonstrate you’re not just another ossified old fart if your résumé goes straight in the bin?

Don't put anything on your resume that allows them to guess your age. Don't include dates on your education. Leave out everything except your last 10 years of work experience. Leave out your COBOL skills. And so on...

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#179

Post by 64d032fe »

lovich wrote: post #93
_dain_ wrote: post #92

Jobs are aggregated into gigantic boards like Indeed and LinkedIn, and the market is national or international. You can choose among thousands of companies, but you're also just one potential applicant among millions. The cost of applying tends to zero -> number of applications increases. The only way to succeed is by sending out an absurd number of CVs. Numbers that would have seemed inconceivable a generation ago b…

That’s before getting into the jobs that are functionally not real, even if the employer in question believes they are honestly looking. Seeing bog standard senior engineer positions still advertising for the places that ghosted me 5 months ago means the job posting is fake for one of the n-teen reasons companies paste fake postings or the company has gotten unreasonably picky with how much labor is on the market

To your point: You could make a fake company with a fake job posting in probably 15 minutes, and use it to easily waste hundreds of hours of time in people's lives.

Edit: Maybe it could be used to start some sort of unemployed software engineer fight club?

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#180

Post by jppope »

jofer wrote: post #148

As someone who's recently been hiring (sorry folks, position was filled just a few days ago), it's wild to me how distorted things have become. We had 1200 applications for an extremely niche role. A huge amount were clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic. Another huge portion were just unqualified. The irony is that there actually _are_ a ton of exceptionally qualified…

> The process is so broken right now that we're 100% back to nepotism

Just want to comment on this, because I think think favoring unknown candidates is a mistake we make too often, and in fact the "normal" process is a disaster on both sides for this reason. Nepotism or Cronyism is granting resources, patronage, jobs to someone you know instead of a qualified candidate. In many industries this is how they function because qualifications and skill provide little to no differentiation (Think knowing Microsoft word and having a comms degree with no work experience).

In high skill industries where experience is hard fought... people know the who the "people" are because they stick out like sore thumbs. If your hiring process at work is throw up a job on indeed and see what resumes come through, your company likely isn't worth working at anyway because the best candidates aren't randos.

Think of it this way if you were putting together the Manhattan project again would you recruit the people with a stellar reputation in physics, engineering, manufacturing, etc OR would you throw up a job on a job board or your corporate site and see what comes back? The difference is active vs passive, good reputation vs no reputation (or a bad reputation).

Not trying to make a big semantic argument... I just want to say that things like reputation and network matter... and thats not really "nepotism"

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