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When the job search becomes impossible

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Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#221

Post by antonvs »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #121
titanomachy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "most people in the real world" have at least a few rungs between their current situation and true homelessness. Many people have some sort of family or other community that they could lean on, even in America where family ties are weaker than any other place I know. I have a couple friends who haven't had steady work in years, and they still eke out a pretty reasonable existence living with friends and famil…

"Homeless" is not the same as "living on the street". People living in hotels, temporary trailers (in some places even tiny homes count), living with a friend temporarily, etc are all homeless . Plenty of Americans are much closer than this than you might think working in tech. 50-60% of Americans currently live 'paycheck-to-paycheck' which means the second work stops they're on a timer for missing bills to start com…

> People living in hotels … are homeless

Does that include digital nomads who don’t have a permanent residence?

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#222

Post by the_real_cher »

dolebirchwood wrote: post #189
the_real_cher wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False information targeting a group should be banned in my opinion.

Or just counter bad ideas with good ideas and let the up/down votes take care of the rest.

Thats not how it works.

If I call you an idiot I will get banned.

It's not up to you to prove you're not actually an idiot no matter if its true or not.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#223

Post by squigz »

strken wrote: post #211
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.

Blog posts are aimed at an audience, HN is an audience, and in both cases the audience in question is a technical one with an above-average number of well-paid professionals. The whole framing that the blog post "reeks of privilege" to "most people" is a bit strange. If I were to read a Yachting Monthly article about The Five Most Attention-Grabbing Mega Yachts For The Conspicuous Consumer Billionaire it would probab…

I think people would be shocked at HN demographics. I'm quite confident it's more representative of the average population in terms of things like income than some people seem to realize.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#224

Post by myahio »

ezekiel68 wrote: post #213

I've lived through the recessions of 1990-91 (in my 20s, not tech), the Dotcom bust and the Great Financial Crisis. I can tell you that it's always been this way when its' a "buyer's market" and the employers can afford to be picky. I can also tell you that this is not some game-changing phenomenon[0]. The jobs will return when it is once again a "seller's market" -- which it surely will be. This applies to non-tech…

What could potentially put an end to the current hiring "winter"?

We have an increasing amount of immigrants coming over in hopes of getting a white-collar job, in combination with the tech sector shrinking, as well as companies as a whole being much more careful when hiring.

There would need to be some explosion in the amount of tech jobs, in order for everyone to be able to get one. However, I just cannot see what could cause something like this in the near future.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#225

Post by firefax »

nerdsniper wrote: post #108
firefax wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but maybe they're narcan-ing you because you because you're nodding out in public? I am not doubting you have been fucked with -- I once got into a 2v1 brawl on the Mission and 16th BART that only ended because I sent one flying into a pillar and told the other if he kept coming, he was going onto the fucking tracks.These guys kept going over to a homeless guy who was just... sitting there... trying to ge…

Where did he say he was getting "narcan'd" ? I only saw something about his coffee getting spiked with fentanyl, which would be the opposite of getting narcan'd. I'll be honest though, I had a lot of difficulty parsing that and some chunks of it are beyond my reading comprehension abilities.

I think it got edited? Or maybe my mind ran with the "poisoned" comment because there were reports of people involuntarily narcaning people in FiDi recently.

Anyways, his writing style reminds me more of people I knew with addiction issues than something like schizophrenia (which can make folks come off paranoid).

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#226

Post by jppope »

kstrauser wrote: post #204
friendly_deer wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share a little more? Because this is outside the norm I’m hearing and I’d like to know more.

I'm not a PM, but I PMed it very aggressively. I made a Notes.app personal wiki tracking every company I spoke to, with a timeline in reverse chronological order of every contact I'd had with them, like: Foo Corp Recruiter: [Jane Smith] * 2025-09-15 On-site prep call with [Joe Brown] * 2025-09-13 Coding screen with [Pat Doe] I kept a "pipeline" note with companies in each stage, like: # Leads * [Adam Albert] at [Bar…

Awesome work! Really nicely built funnel. Great to hear people doing it the right way.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#227

Post by squigz »

forducks wrote: post #110

Oh how I would love to just stop looking for jobs for a bit and leave it on rest. Unfortunately I am selling things off right now to not go homeless and refusing to apply to jobs is an admission of defeat to me. Said as a (former?) tech worker.

> (former?)

This hurts. As someone who's been unemployed, struggling with mental health issues, for far longer than I'd care to admit in such a forum, I struggle with the question of when it's just been too long to realistically get back into it.

I wish you luck

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#228

Post by rr808 »

titanomachy wrote: post #116
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.

I think "most people in the real world" have at least a few rungs between their current situation and true homelessness. Many people have some sort of family or other community that they could lean on, even in America where family ties are weaker than any other place I know. I have a couple friends who haven't had steady work in years, and they still eke out a pretty reasonable existence living with friends and famil…

> I have a couple friends who haven't had steady work in years, and they still eke out a pretty reasonable existence living with friends and family

What about their wife and children? Do they get to stay with them too?

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#229

Post by devnullbrain »

Yoric wrote: post #64
mschild wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might work if you already have a network, but otherwise good luck getting through to people on the phone. HR will answer the generic questions, but tell you to apply online. Cold "calling" people on LinkedIn is a shot in the dark. Some people don't mind you doing it, most will ignore you.

You can start building a network by reaching out to alumni, former colleagues, open-source contributors for projects you're contributing to [1], etc. Hardly ideal, but it's a start. [1] And if you're not contributing to an open-source project, please do it, it's a great way to learn stuff, improve your CV, network and of course give back.

I find this kind of advice underspecified. The people struggling the most to find work are juniors: what projects are big enough that the applicant would a) know and care about them and b) get a benefit out of the network but also c) have fruit low enough for a solo junior to reach?

I tried this way-back-when and ended up submitting fixes to projects that were open source but had no real path to accepting patches from people outside the cathedral.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#230

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

myahio wrote: post #224
ezekiel68 wrote: post #213

I've lived through the recessions of 1990-91 (in my 20s, not tech), the Dotcom bust and the Great Financial Crisis. I can tell you that it's always been this way when its' a "buyer's market" and the employers can afford to be picky. I can also tell you that this is not some game-changing phenomenon[0]. The jobs will return when it is once again a "seller's market" -- which it surely will be. This applies to non-tech…

What could potentially put an end to the current hiring "winter"? We have an increasing amount of immigrants coming over in hopes of getting a white-collar job, in combination with the tech sector shrinking, as well as companies as a whole being much more careful when hiring. There would need to be some explosion in the amount of tech jobs, in order for everyone to be able to get one. However, I just cannot see what…

> What could potentially put an end to the current hiring "winter"?

April 18, 2017; EO 13788: Buy American and Hire American (H-1B reform)

Still waiting on that one. Just need a favorable administration back in office.

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