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Panic at the Job Market

matt.sh

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Re: Panic at the Job Market

#141

Post by makestuff »

ndriscoll wrote: post #103
caesil wrote: post #53

>According to all the interviews I’ve failed over the years (I don’t think I’ve ever passed an actual “coding interview” anywhere?), the entire goal of tech hiring is just finding people in the 100 to 115 midwit block then outright rejecting everybody else as too much of an unknown risk. As a (now) senior/staff-level engineer back out on the job market for the first time in a while, I'm begrudgingly coming to accept…

The last time I interviewed and did a few LC problems, it was my experience that most of them were trivially solvable by some combination of implementing an iterator, doing a fold, and maybe adding memoization. Not every problem obviously, but those 3 steps seem to pretty generically cover most easy/mediums that will come up in a coding skills interview. When I got my first job, I didn't know what any of those things…

Yeah I realized you are at a significant disadvantage by not interviewing in python especially when you get some problem that requires parsing some input. IMO it is worth it to spend a couple of weeks practicing python before doing any technical interview.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#142

Post by rKarpinski »

Did they consistently confuse per day and per week?

> Sure, it would be great to have big tech $30,000 per day comp packages

> consistently growing, consistently profitable, and paying employees $5k to $10k per day at current full comp market rates.

The "low rate" of $5k a day is $625 per hour and the big tech package is ~8mm a year!

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#143

Post by Quothling »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #125
evrimoztamur wrote: post #23

I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…

All of his analysis about financial markets, can apply to all jobs, all hiring. Don't think he explicitly states that, but all hiring is down. Or at least all entry positions it seems like. From a SWE perspective. Doesn't it seem like systems are falling apart? You can only cut back programmer/tech jobs for so long, someone has to know how it all works. This is what I don't get, all around me, people don't know how t…

> Doesn't it seem like systems are falling apart?

They always were.

> This is what I don't get, all around me, people don't know how things work, are literally walking a knifes edge toward collapse, systems are failing all over, and yet companies wont staff up on tech people.

You'd think that you would take digitalisation seriously in a company where 100% of your employees spend 100% of their working hours on a computer. You'd be wrong to think so though. It is what it is, but it's not exactly new. At least not in the world of enterprise where all employees have wanted for the past 40 years is an Excel that scaled. I once worked in an organisation where IT spent a lot of money (by company size) on a real world scenario roleplay of cyber security. They had this whole thing lined up in a fancy hotel to simulate a ransomware attack, and at the last minute the CEO canceled to go golfing and sent some personal assistant instead.

A lot of decision makers just don't care about IT until it really, really, doesn't work. Since IT is always sort of wonky though, I think that people are just so used to it being mediocre that they won't notice if it drops a little further in quality.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#144

Post by lifestyleguru »

tqi wrote: post #116

"if you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. if you meet assholes all day, you're the asshole."

Absolutely not true, it means you might e.g. be living in Berlin, or in Germany or Netherlands in general. Not everywhere people are nice and in some places they place a particular pride in being assholes.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#145

Post by digging »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #125
evrimoztamur wrote: post #23

I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…

All of his analysis about financial markets, can apply to all jobs, all hiring. Don't think he explicitly states that, but all hiring is down. Or at least all entry positions it seems like. From a SWE perspective. Doesn't it seem like systems are falling apart? You can only cut back programmer/tech jobs for so long, someone has to know how it all works. This is what I don't get, all around me, people don't know how t…

> Doesn't it seem like systems are falling apart?

Far beyond the scope of tech staffing, yes.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#146

Post by jrochkind1 »

deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #31

There’s a company in between initial growth and stable company, which has become increasingly relevant. I don’t have any fancy name for it, but it’s the one where your company gets bought by private equity and “creates efficiency” by laying half of your company and limps across the 3 year tax mark as a tired old dog, changing hands again.

I assume this is where you don't want to be, honestly no matter what the compensation is, it will destroy you.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#147

Post by creer »

dixie_land wrote: post #101
caesil wrote: post #53

>According to all the interviews I’ve failed over the years (I don’t think I’ve ever passed an actual “coding interview” anywhere?), the entire goal of tech hiring is just finding people in the 100 to 115 midwit block then outright rejecting everybody else as too much of an unknown risk. As a (now) senior/staff-level engineer back out on the job market for the first time in a while, I'm begrudgingly coming to accept…

From personal experience the coding round gets easier for senior/staff roles, even for the exact same question, because of the experience the interviewers have and the signal they are looking for (eg problem solving, communication, testing, etc.) At junior and "SDE II" level coding rounds are just toxic newly minted SDEs trying to make it a competition between the candidate and themselves ( I've got interviewers offe…

It's true that the interview result can only be as good as the interviewer's skill and awareness of what to look for. Which will often be terrible. BUT that does point out a mis-perception of the interview process. You will do better by getting along, "figuring out", going along with the interviewers' plan - rather than trying to demonstrate your own cleverness. Not saying this is what @dixie_land personally went for in that case - but perhaps that if you notice the interviewer getting offended, you better figure out fast what you did and work to make them happy again.

If you can figure out what the interviewer is trying to get out of you, then give them that. That may or may not reflect a useful job skill, but that is an interview skill.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#149

Post by addicted »

cogman10 wrote: post #28
Matticus_Rex wrote: post #15

Wild that explanations of the tech job market like this are still being written without referencing the tax consequences of Section 174 changes.

Well, the old tax code was a little bonkers. My entire department was labeled R&D pre 2022 even though there was very little research going on.

You’re ignoring the D in R&D.

But all of that is irrelevant since these tax changes don’t actually increase tax collections. All they do is make it harder for a company whose product development and/or research is dependent more on human capital as opposed to physical assets, to start doing business.

It has no impact on established businesses (since their taxes will offset over a few years) and the only impact will be that more businesses are likely to fail before they become established than otherwise. Alternatively, more businesses are likely to outsource and offshore their human capital.

Even if the work that was benifitting was not “research” when deciding tax policy taxonomy is far less relevant than actual impact.

And unfortunately it looks like we’re on track to re-elect the people who brought us this atrocity in 2017.

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