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When the job search becomes impossible
331–340 of 469 posts
Re: When the job search becomes impossible
#332I'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…
I wonder if with AI it is possible for someone to be a productive entrepreneur easily than finding a job in today’s market. Specially for someone over 50.
How much would it take to make 100k per year off an app, B2B, or B2C software?
Re: When the job search becomes impossible
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 b…
I think you’re just arguing for nepotism in a roundabout way. My senior staff engineer can’t code at all. He got hired because he was friends with our engineering manager. You might say “well that’s nepotism then since he’s under qualified”, but I’m sure he would make the argument that he got the job because of his “stellar reputation and extensive network”. It’s an abhorrent situation to be in. Everyone knows he can…
I agree, some of the worst employees I've seen were hired that way.
I haven't hired anyone recently but btwn 10-20 years ago I did hire a lot. Of course we reached out via our network of connections but that gets tapped out fast, so you have to rely on job postings. It was always hundreds of applicants per opening. Back then it wasn't 1000's but it might as well have been because I didn't have enough time to sift through them all. That's ok, you can just approach it like "the dowry problem" (also known as the secretary problem [1]).
But the job market and hiring is way worse now, and it's pretty horrible for job seekers atm.
Re: When the job search becomes impossible
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
How do you reconcile that with developers over 45 finding it impossible to find jobs, are all of them asking for "unreasonable" pay? I mean, if you are senior, you probably have a family and possibly kids. Even with a part-time RTO position that means more than a three-roommate setup, you need a house or 2b/3b in SF/SEA/NY. That works for industries where you dont need to be in the most expensive cities, but how does…
> How do you reconcile that with developers over 45 finding it impossible to find jobs, are all of them asking for "unreasonable" pay?
What's "reasonable" depends on perspective. Truth is it makes relatively little sense hiring tech workers in the US today. I'm not saying I'm happy about that, but unlike a few decades ago, the majority of tech talent in the world today is overseas, and increasingly in low-labour cost countries like India which previously didn't have the internet access or education to compete.
Given this today a reasonable cost to a business for software development is lower in the same way a reasonable cost for manufacturing is lower because of low-cost manufacturing in places like China.
I'm just pointing out what's happening. For a while now people with an education thought the reason they could find good work and were doing okay relative to uneducated people was because of effort. And while this was somewhat true, it's probably better explained by much lower levels of international labour competition from low-wage countries. It takes skill to be good at manufacturing too, but that skill doesn't protect you from extremely low cost labour which doesn't quite have comparable skills, but can do the job almost just as well.
People should be thinking about this. Economists will argue (perhaps correctly) that allowing the free market to do its think will result in higher GDP growth. But if people are unemployed and struggling to find good work, what's the benefit of that GDP growth? There should be some effort to balance what's reasonable from an employers perspective with what's reasonable for employees.
Re: When the job search becomes impossible
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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." Pretty bold. Things like manufacturing haven't recovered and we're seeing similar outsourcing in tech.
There was also a trend of outsourcing in tech after the DotCom bust, but that was reversed (and arguably not as much of a problem as it first seemed to be).
I think that was a pretty small trend. The trend I'm hearing today is 300k jobs are being offshore annually and that around 75% of those are in the tech sector. Assuming a company could only hire half as many people here due to peice differences, that would be about 9k more jobs per month.
Re: When the job search becomes impossible
#336As 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…
On the hiring side too, and I really don’t understand the fake resume with AI trend. How can they possibly think they’ll pass the interview? Because when I’m hiring I find it very easy to spot someone lying when questioning to go into the details of past experiences. Maybe they are betting on a broken process? Maybe you can pass (dumb) HR filters with lies, but not real interviewers, at least from what I do and have seen.
Re: When the job search becomes impossible
#337As 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…
This was the problem recruiters were invented to fix, but somehow recruiters have moved on to fixing every problem BUT this one.
Re: When the job search becomes impossible
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, is it really ~15%? No wonder unemployment is so high.
Tech unemployment was also low with similar #s of H1Bs. Pretty sure that short term trends drive it more than long-term visa holder counts.
curious how is a 'tech worker' being defined here ?
Re: When the job search becomes impossible
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
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https://institute.bankofamerica.com/economic-insights/payche... BoA says 25% are paycheck-to-paycheck based on their internal data, which is still pretty nuts.
I also remember seeing something a few years ago that this stat has always floated around 20-30%. It was in the context of reporting that living paycheck to paycheck "has reached 30%", but that the reporting never included historical averages, to make the news much more sensational than it actually was.
Re: When the job search becomes impossible
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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?
Yep, they're just winning at homeless