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Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

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Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#161

Post by brandall10 »

sdevonoes wrote: post #29
rzazueta wrote: post #25

This will be at least the fourth such downturn I have seen in my career: - the 2000 Dotcom Bust - the 2008 recession - the 2020 pandemic recession - Now The short answer is that no one really knows what will happen. A lot of companies are reading the tea leaves - and regardless of what anyone tells you, that's really all it is - and trying to figure out how to make the best moves given rising prices, rising interest…

> - the 2020 pandemic recession Did this affect the IT sector? Seriously asking because I didn't notice it.

For me it did in a big way. I was in process with about 15 companies w/ one incoming offer (doing a ref check) and another potential one. In the course of one week mid-March, everything fell off except 3, and all those ops slow-walked to the extreme. 6 weeks later when the lockdowns ended a ton of activity came in, and within a few weeks I ended my job search with 4 offers after going through 7 sets of final rounds.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#162

Post by dougmwne »

namecheapTA wrote: post #123
tunesmith wrote: post #120

The 2000 recession sucked and lasted a while. I remember Intel was hiring web programmers for $12/hour and were getting swarmed with applicants. In those kinds of environments, contractors do a little better. Employers are all freaked out, they want to get work done but they don't want to make long-term commitments. It's not until they start making noise about contractors being expensive and wanting to convert you to…

What happens in times like this and people's issues with wage discrimination for example? Are there people left at the company still making $50 an hour for a similar role to someone new hired making $20? Do all these salaries get readjusted eventually?

Not at all. Companies generally will just pay you a below market rate unless you can force them into an adjustment. That is a major source of wage gaps actually. People who have the leverage and safety to risk counter offers and renegotiation end up getting paid more than people who cannot take the risk of damaging their reputation or even getting fired over a 30% raise. People with an ample safety net can take a gamble on an unknown new job with a big pay increase also.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#163

Post by dougmwne »

dist-primate wrote: post #156

I am about to graduate college and start the job hunt. Should I be especially concerned about a potential dearth in entry level roles over the next 6-12 months?

You don't have to outrun the bear (market), you just have to outrun your friends. If you can bring your A game, than you have nothing to worry about. Starting salary may be lower, so you will probably have to aggressively move on to the next company once the hiring market improves.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#164

Post by yung_steezy »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #97

Go get your MS/PhD. By the time you finish, the market will be stronger, and so will your resume The Georgia Tech online MS is good and about $7k total. You can pay for it working at Starbucks

I don't think the market will be stronger in a year. There is also an opportunity cost to studying over getting on the career ladder - more years of work experience entails a higher salary.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#165

Post by UncleOxidant »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #93

I'm not surprised (unfortunately, and I am truly sorry for this). Don't look to the 2008 recession for an idea of how things may go. Look to the 2000 (Tech Bubble Burst) recession. In that one, the bottom dropped out of the tech market. Web designers were especially hard hit. I have family that works for Intel, and they say that Intel tends to actually increase hiring in bear markets. I suspect that's because they ar…

> for an idea of how things may go. Look to the 2000 (Tech Bubble Burst) recession.

Agree. In aftermath of the .com implosion it took about 4 years for hiring to come back to a more normal pace. It was a good time to go back to school to do a Masters degree.

> I have family that works for Intel, and they say that Intel tends to actually increase hiring in bear markets.

Having worked for Intel and knowing folks still there, it's very much a mixed bag. I hear there are areas where headcount is frozen. But there are other areas where Gelsinger is investing heavily that are very eager to hire - in this case that doesn't have much to do with a looming recession (or not), it's that they find themselves behind in a lot of areas and they're spending to try to catch up.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#166

Post by datalopers »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #144
michaelrpeskin wrote: post #98

I bet the non-profitable, feeding-on-VC startups are getting worried and we'll see more of this. I work at a non-VC-funded, profitable, stable, small place and we're desperately trying to hire. I've never made FAANG/startup income, and I've always felt a little left-out because of that. But we've been stable for nearly 30 years, and have never had the big layoffs or hiring freezes including, dot-com bust, 2008, 2020…

I'm a dev at a VC-funded SaaS startup in California. We're still in a growth trajectory (doubled headcount last year, on track to do so again this year, just hit a headcount of 500). Our industry is such that we're not too worried about the recession -- people tend to buy our product because it's significantly cheaper than paying one more employee and it tends to make teams in a particular corporate department far mo…

The fact that you cite VC funded and then headcount as your only metric of success is hilarious.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#167

Post by yopawngungmstyl »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #92
bergenty wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired?

> Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired? Not great at all. For anyone reading your resume in the future, it's impossible to know if you were let go due to no fault of your own, or if you were let go for cause after a probationary period expired. I personally don't hold a single short job against people, but…

Honestly, the sort of hiring managers who rely on heuristics like that might not be the best ones to work for.

Even juniors can structure their resumes as a narrative. Mine has a brief "felt stagnant and decided to try #vanlife for a year" section.

People like a story. The trick is to avoid automated hiring funnels.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#168

Post by dougmwne »

the_only_law wrote: post #71
fny wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will... think of how many startups use AWS, Google Cloud, Tableau, Slack, or Microsoft products. Our industry is incestuous.

I would hope that a number of those companies are well embedded and experienced to weather a tech crash/recession. I mean I know MS has had to have seen their share.

MS seems like it should be safe. Slack seems like it could be hit hard.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#169

Post by wutbrodo »

ineptech wrote: post #121

If you want to be recession-proof, get a job at a non-software company (or in academia, state/city government, etc). In theory, "programmer" is the same job whether you work for a startup or the Minnesota Dept. of Transportation, but in practice they feel like completely different industries. In one, you can make fantastic money but the interviews are famously difficult, the culture can be borderline abusive, and lay…

It seems like bigtech gets you both of these, right? More bureaucratic and stable than startups, less abusive than startups, more stability and salary than either startups or "Minnesota DOT"-type places.

Re: Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession

#170

Post by pvarangot »

saos wrote: post #79

Can someone do a story time of the last recession and how it impacted tech? Start, middle and end Just want to understand what to look out for and just prepare.

I was working on a web hosting startup in 2001 in Latin America, I was 18. I liked the job and they gave me a lot of freedom regarding also going to college, but it's not that I was not looking for something better. Honestly until 2003 none of my friends and community switched jobs, not a single one of them.

Things only started taking off again when the "mobile" thing started with the cellphones revolution In my experience until that started, the job market was difficult. Not impossible, just difficult.

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