When the job search becomes impossible • Hacker News Board

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#361

Post by Der_Einzige » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 2:04 PM UTC

BobbyJo wrote: post #41

kfk wrote: post #17

I met many programmers during the boom years of software that straight out refused to develop any type of soft or managerial skills. Forget that, they even refused to maintain good relationships with decision makers (and I did this too, but only once in my carrier), left jobs in bad ways, focused on chasing salary increases every 6 months. And here is the problem. If you have been chasing "easy" salary increases, wor…

The pool of young kids that can challenge the technical ability of someone with 20 years more experience is small enough that I don't mind competing with them for employment.

That’s why AI is dominated by a bunch of 40 year old gen Xers.

Oh wait, it’s not!

Zuckerberg just gave a 25 year old promising AI researcher a 300 million offer that the researcher said “No” to.

He didn’t give that to yann lecun, or yoshua bengio, or Hinton. He did it to a kid.

When I go to NeurIPS, it’s mostly grad students in their 20s who are the first authors. The professors are almost always the last authors.

20 something kids are running circles around boomers today.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#362

Post by csoham » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

[self promotion alert] the "you are not alone" point really resonated with me. When I lost my job, I was alone, helpless and not sure what the next steps were. This is why I tried to create a community of people willing to support and be a listening ear for people going through job loss and this tough job market. It's at layoff.supprt. honestly I have not been supporting it for a while but of you find this helpful and would like more features then do let me know!

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#363

Post by cheema33 » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 2:08 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

Same here. I have been hiring and it is a shit show. We advertise one position and get inundated with resumes. Many of these resume are complete fabrications, so we cannot rely on them at all. So we implemented a filter by asking candidates to do a small project. Candidates do not have to hand-code it. We encourage candidates to just use AI for the simple project. Only about 10% actually do the required work that typically takes 15-20 minutes to complete with AI assistance. Some get offended that we even dared ask them to take the assessment test and start using profanity to let their displeasure be known. Quite strange.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#364

Post by Der_Einzige » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 2:09 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #109

the__alchemist wrote: post #53

This feels like the dating market right now too.

And the analogue of the exceptionally good-looking STD super-spreaders would be... the resume-driven-development self-proclaimed "10x devs" who job-hop every 6 months, leaving a wake of disasters?

Statistically the majority of STDs spread by sexual activity are spread by gay men.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#365

Post by apwell23 » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 2:11 PM UTC

cheema33 wrote: post #363

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…

> 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. Same here. I have been hiring and it is a shit show. We advertise one position and get inundated with resumes. Many of these resume are complete fabrications, so we cannot rely on them at all. So we implemented a filter by asking candidates to do a small project. Candidates…

like captcha for resume

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#366

Post by apwell23 » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 2:12 PM UTC

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #314

jppope wrote: post #180

Earlier 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…

> My senior staff engineer can’t code at all. He got hired because he was friends with our engineering manager.

Well thats how it works everywhere. You have to suck up and pretent to be 'friends' with person with the power to get promoted too.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#367

Post by carlosjobim » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 2:14 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #347

carlosjobim wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about 50 per hour? That's just 24 hours of work and a reasonable first look at one minute for each application. Very little time to spend for an important company decision which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That's a half week of work without breaks at one resume per minute-ish. I agree that it is a very important decision, but that's also unreasonable for a manager to set time aside to look through. You've just set the other projects that you're already behind on (that's why you need to hire in the first place) back another half week or so. It's like a reverse rocket equation here. You need time to make more time, so yo…

How can that be unreasonable? To work at least half a week for a decision which will cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions of dollars in the long run. What else is the manager doing which is more important monetary wise? And if managers are really too busy with raking in the millions to the company, then it's a fine time to hire somebody who's only job will be to hire more people (not a HR person of course).

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#368

Post by apwell23 » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 2:14 PM UTC

eleveriven wrote: post #357

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 fact that even well-meaning hiring managers can't see great candidates because of filtering overload says a lot about how dysfunctional the current system is

My previous job ( somewhat well known brand) got > 500 resumes within hours for a mid level position. My manager decided to close that job posting and found someone internally

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#369

Post by mionhe » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 2:20 PM UTC

ivape wrote: post #291

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…

[flagged]

Hiring doesn't work like that. It's not like you glance at resumes then hire someone because what the paper says matches your job description. You spend a lot of time, if you're doing it right. Some resumes have everything you want, but aren't honest. Some resumes don't have everything, but they're pretty close, and worth the conversation. Some people seem perfect on paper but once you talk with them you realize (for whatever reason) that they don't fit. Even just a few applicants can take many hours of work before you can pick the one that fits best what you're looking for.

If you're a team of 5, handling 1,200 resumes, how much money are you expected to invest in this process? Does everyone take a week off billable work so you can find someone? Can you afford that? With only a team of 5, probably not.

We all want to feel like we're being treated well, but scolding someone because they were overwhelmed by the massive amount of adversarial spam they received for their job posting is a failure to put yourself in their shoes. Let's all be better people, here.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#370

Post by azemetre » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 2:20 PM UTC

yepitwas wrote: post #60

TrackerFF wrote: post #12

I've been thinking about job searching lately, maybe a bit too much. I'm employed, so it is not any immediate concern for me, but one has to think ahead. Between age discrimination that starts after 50, and how difficult the job search seemingly is...some people will have to work at least until they're 70. That's a solid 15-20 years more, after the job hunting is an uphill battle. If the work search is hard while you…

It's been such an obvious self-own for tech workers not to capitalize on any of the multiple booms they've seen, and unionize.

We need to forgo unions and straight up legislate forms of workplace democracy. People do not have meaningful control over a massive part of their lives and if democracy is good enough for state governments, it's good enough for private enterprise.