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2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

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Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#11

Post by scarface_74 »

CyanLite2 wrote: post #6
frontman1988 wrote: post #2

The market is bad but one factor is that the quantity of Product manager jobs is much less than the number of dev jobs by a factor of 10-20x so it's much more difficult to find highly compensated jobs for them.

$200k+ total comp for a product manager is pretty good. I wonder if previous experience at FAANG is becoming a negative factor in the hiring process. Run-of-the-mill Fortune 500s aren't going to pay Meta money ($475k+) for a product manager. More like $120-150k. And maybe they're looking to avoid the expectations (read: entitlement) from those who are used to those kinds of outsized salaries.

Fortune 500s don’t pay devs Meta money either….

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#12

Post by scarface_74 »

guhidalg wrote: post #10
CyanLite2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$200k+ total comp for a product manager is pretty good. I wonder if previous experience at FAANG is becoming a negative factor in the hiring process. Run-of-the-mill Fortune 500s aren't going to pay Meta money ($475k+) for a product manager. More like $120-150k. And maybe they're looking to avoid the expectations (read: entitlement) from those who are used to those kinds of outsized salaries.

They also don't need FAANG-level competence. F500 companies would rather pay consultants and contractors truckloads of money than hire a few FTEs at FAANG rates. Ostensibly the reasoning is that it's easy to cut back spending on vendors than to lay people off, but I think a stronger reason is that tech salaries are so high that you'd have software engineers being paid more than some executives at these companies.

Enterprise/CRUD devs - where the overwhelming number of developers work - are making between $80K - $170K in most major cities in the US.

That’s what I did the majority of my career so it’s not meant to be an insult.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#14

Post by Aurornis »

javajosh wrote: post #7

$475k TC for a product manager role? I am clearly doing something wrong in my career.

$475K was their old compensation, prior to being laid off.

Great product managers are very valuable. Having someone who knows the customers and the market inside and out helps a company focus their roadmap on the highest value features and products. If you're paying 50 engineers and their managers to work on products, having one highly-paid person dedicated to scrutinizing every last detail of the roadmap to make sure you're not wasting time on the wrong features will produce an efficiency gain.

I think the issue is that there are a lot of bad product managers out there, so chances are good that most people have never actually worked with a good product manager. Product management is a vague position where quality is hard to measure, so a lot of people end up in Product Management because they know how to speak charismatically and present themselves well in meetings.

Anecdotally, the recent downturn has forced a lot of companies to take a closer look at these highly-paid soft positions. Among my personal network the number of engineers who got laid off is much smaller than the number of product managers who got laid off, despite the fact that I know far more engineers than product managers.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#15

Post by mabbo »

I'm in a similar boat.

12 years experience as a dev, was previously making pretty darned good money for Canada. Laid off on early May. Starting a job on Wednesday that pays 60% of my old TC.

It's tough times out there.

That said, I had about 25 applications, and did interviews with only 7 companies.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#17

Post by ActionHank »

anon291 wrote: post #13

I'm a dev and I apply to like 8-10 roles each job cycle and usually get call backs on 4-5 and then offers from 2-4. I cannot fathom 2500 job apps or 46 job interviews.

Out of curiosity when last did you go through this? I've heard from a few friends that even dev is brutal right now with many places leaving listings open, but not filling them, hoping for a FAANG dev to come along.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#18

Post by bamfly »

anon291 wrote: post #13

I'm a dev and I apply to like 8-10 roles each job cycle and usually get call backs on 4-5 and then offers from 2-4. I cannot fathom 2500 job apps or 46 job interviews.

Similar here, 20+ year career. I think it's because I've never targeted the FAANG tier. Started in the low hump of the trimodal dev comp distribution before I'd ever heard of it, noticed there was a middle hump and moved into that before long, expect never to make it to the top one. I don't think I could handle an entire day of their interviews, as being in high-pressure meetings like that for hours on end wipes me out and turns my brain to mush in short order—and that's if I put in a ton of prep time first and were prepared-enough for the material to pass.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#19

Post by umeshunni »

Job apps, especially if done on LinkedIn or on a company portal are essentially a black hole for your resume.

The signal-to-noise ratio on applications that come in through that channel is so poor that unless you're a tiny company that gets only a handful of resumes, recruiters usually ignore them.

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