Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 205 posts

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#111

Post by starbugs »

silverquiet wrote: post #60
benjaminwootton wrote: post #21

You have to wonder if remote work is starting to bite developers. 10 year ago I started a business that had hundreds of engineers in London and New York. I am now starting a new one and this time I am hiring talent from all over the world now that it is more acceptable for us and our clients. Surely this must be a factor in people in expensive western markets?

This is what I've been warning people about since I was at a company acquired by private equity. They straight up told us that if a job can be done from home, then it can be done from India. I got my layoff not too long after that.

> They straight up told us that if a job can be done from home, then it can be done from India.

Company leadership could be done from home during covid, right?

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#112

Post by [deleted] »

greatpostman wrote: post #7

This is going to put fuel on the fire. I run a startup, we hired two devs out of Eastern Europe at 60k each that are absolutely phenomenal. We’d love to hire American but can’t afford it. I know many other companies doing the same (nyc based seed/preseed startups). With ai, high interest rates, and covid accelerating remote hiring, I don’t see this recovering.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#113

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

ghaff wrote: post #42
mojomark wrote: post #16

I have not from the perspective of seeking emplyment, but from the smaller mid-size employer side (200 employees, robotics) we have had to reject a number of candidates. Normally this is based on a resume review (so as not to waste people's time), but sometimes it does come out in interviews. My main challenge, and I'm not saying this is the case for you - I'm just offering the perspective on the other side, has been…

How many people looking for jobs though have a 10 year stint with a company on their resume? It's probably pretty uncommon outside of some traditional tech employers like IBM where I know people who have been there for 25+ years. On the other hand, if the resume is all 1-3 year segments, yeah, there's no reason to think you're going to be different.

I'm not the OP but I think you're looking at it backwards. It's not that you're looking for a 10 year commitment, it's that you're looking for someone who isn't planning to leave in 1-2 years. At my place we actively discard resumes of people who never stick around for longer than 2 years even when they're a good candidate. The investment we put into the hire and the amount of pain caused when someone leaves means it is difficult to hire those people. We've never hired to increase or maintain headcount, we have always aimed to fill specific positions.

As a side effect, a good 10% of our employee base is at 10+ years (including me at 12) and around half the company is at 5+. Which is incredible considering the company is only 17 years old.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#114

Post by btbuildem »

paxys wrote: post #61
mojomark wrote: post #16

I have not from the perspective of seeking emplyment, but from the smaller mid-size employer side (200 employees, robotics) we have had to reject a number of candidates. Normally this is based on a resume review (so as not to waste people's time), but sometimes it does come out in interviews. My main challenge, and I'm not saying this is the case for you - I'm just offering the perspective on the other side, has been…

No candidate is interviewing for a job already having made up their mind about whether they are going to stay for 6 months or 10 years. If you are trying to somehow filter on that you are just wasting your own time. People stay or quit based on factors during the job. Is the salary good? Is the company growing? Are their career goals being met? Is the management competent? Are they feeling burnt out? Focus on all of…

Maybe a junior straight out of boot camp doesn't know what they'll be doing in six months -- but generally people have some kind of intent, eg, "I'd like to have a stable job for the next three years" or something along those lines.

I don't think GP is asking a candidate to know whether they'll stay for years at GP's org -- they're asking that the candidate have the intention of staying ~somewhere~ for a longer stint.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#115

Post by throw1234651234 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #96
charliebwrites wrote: post #18

Everyone. I am a very senior PM with two big name tech companies on my resume, and the track record of bringing multiple products from zero to one and creating revenue (and even profit!) from them. In the old days, I had recruiters in my LinkedIn, I would breeze through the first 30 minute screener calls, and get lots of call backs. My hit rate for job applications for non-FAANG cold applies was fairly high. Two mont…

Any idea / feeling, on if this is temporary? I just have hard time understanding how 1 year ago, everyone was hiring SE and now nobody is. Shouldn't this be indicative of some huge economic meltdown? But economy isn't melting down. Can skills mismatch suddenly be so dramatically different? AI is great but it can't have this much impact already. Could over-hiring during Covid really have this much impact? It just feel…

We were in a complete bubble the last couple of years. If you didn't work before the bubble, your perception of reality is entirely skewed. The mania was due to two things - tech companies outperforming everything else on the SP500 and easy credit for start ups. The response was over-hiring, a huge number of bootcamp grads, and everyone who could pivoting to an IT degree. Worries about the economy (record debt, etc) are just the icing on top of the tech over-saturation cake. Other, way overstated bubble is "AI destroying jobs". It's not reality, but the perception is there.

In short, it probably won't recover to bubble territory in the next 20 simply due to the huge supply of devs. On the other hand, the field does require some education, some IQ threshold, some persistence, etc, so there will be ok-paying jobs for a while. But again, if you started working circa 2021-2023, you will need to adjust your expectations.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#116

Post by thrwaway1985882 »

From the perspective of a hiring manager at a mid-size company, I'm not at all surprised. I'm having a tough time getting backfills approved when we have voluntary departures, all my opens were cut, and the goal is "do way more with way less".

HR has already frozen salaries - no increases for existing employees, and they're already starting to cut salaries for newly posted positions.

When you do get a position posted you get a ton of applicants: one of my managers hired for a senior SWE and had to filter through over 700 resumes. And you can't meaningfully filter that, at best you take a sample and pick from there, so plenty of good candidates are going to end up on the wrong end of a "select all, delete". This also lets HR be way more aggressive, so offers before that were a negotiation have turned into "take it or leave it" up front.

I mean, it kinda makes sense... ZIRP is over, free money is gone. And plenty of companies are going to be like mine and servicing debt payments from growth and acquisitions with an interest rate that has tripled over time.

The real sentiment right now is "batten down the hatches".

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#117

Post by vinyl7 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #96
charliebwrites wrote: post #18

Everyone. I am a very senior PM with two big name tech companies on my resume, and the track record of bringing multiple products from zero to one and creating revenue (and even profit!) from them. In the old days, I had recruiters in my LinkedIn, I would breeze through the first 30 minute screener calls, and get lots of call backs. My hit rate for job applications for non-FAANG cold applies was fairly high. Two mont…

Any idea / feeling, on if this is temporary? I just have hard time understanding how 1 year ago, everyone was hiring SE and now nobody is. Shouldn't this be indicative of some huge economic meltdown? But economy isn't melting down. Can skills mismatch suddenly be so dramatically different? AI is great but it can't have this much impact already. Could over-hiring during Covid really have this much impact? It just feel…

The economy is melting down, but nobody is saying it out loud.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#118

Post by edgyquant »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #96
charliebwrites wrote: post #18

Everyone. I am a very senior PM with two big name tech companies on my resume, and the track record of bringing multiple products from zero to one and creating revenue (and even profit!) from them. In the old days, I had recruiters in my LinkedIn, I would breeze through the first 30 minute screener calls, and get lots of call backs. My hit rate for job applications for non-FAANG cold applies was fairly high. Two mont…

Any idea / feeling, on if this is temporary? I just have hard time understanding how 1 year ago, everyone was hiring SE and now nobody is. Shouldn't this be indicative of some huge economic meltdown? But economy isn't melting down. Can skills mismatch suddenly be so dramatically different? AI is great but it can't have this much impact already. Could over-hiring during Covid really have this much impact? It just feel…

This isn’t due to AI, it’s due to layoffs and policy. Money isn’t free right now so companies have to turn a profit instead of over hiring and there are simply a ton of super qualified people competing for a smaller number of jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#119

Post by ghaff »

rco8786 wrote: post #39
benjaminwootton wrote: post #21

You have to wonder if remote work is starting to bite developers. 10 year ago I started a business that had hundreds of engineers in London and New York. I am now starting a new one and this time I am hiring talent from all over the world now that it is more acceptable for us and our clients. Surely this must be a factor in people in expensive western markets?

> Surely this must be a factor in people in expensive western markets? Yea, this was/is my main fear with remote work. It will "even out" the pay ranges across the globe...not perfectly (due to language, timezone, regulatory, and general cultural barriers), but the imbalance will be less severe as western salaries come down and int'l salaries rise from the new demand. I expect this to happen over the course of 5-10 y…

Even within the US and maybe western Europe (though that works better from the east coast). If you want to live in San Francisco (or Aspen), good for you. But there's very little reason for me to pay you a premium to do so if I'm a remote company. (There's some. I might not be able to hire people in California otherwise. But my observation is that's actually the unstated process at a lot of companies these days.)

Re: Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?

#120

Post by rootusrootus »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #96
charliebwrites wrote: post #18

Everyone. I am a very senior PM with two big name tech companies on my resume, and the track record of bringing multiple products from zero to one and creating revenue (and even profit!) from them. In the old days, I had recruiters in my LinkedIn, I would breeze through the first 30 minute screener calls, and get lots of call backs. My hit rate for job applications for non-FAANG cold applies was fairly high. Two mont…

Any idea / feeling, on if this is temporary? I just have hard time understanding how 1 year ago, everyone was hiring SE and now nobody is. Shouldn't this be indicative of some huge economic meltdown? But economy isn't melting down. Can skills mismatch suddenly be so dramatically different? AI is great but it can't have this much impact already. Could over-hiring during Covid really have this much impact? It just feel…

It's unlikely to be permanent, it's just a cycle. The economy seems fine right now, but leading indicators (e.g. yield curve) suggest a recession is inbound. So everyone is playing it conservative. We'll get past the recession and things will pick back up again like they always do.
Post reply on HN