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Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

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Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#171

Post by CoastalCoder »

bigcloud1299 wrote: post #26
abadger9 wrote: post #7

I'm not laid off but actively looking to change after spending a couple of years at my current employer. Despite being a staff engineer, managing 12 engineers, and having a solid revenue stream tied to my current team - I've mostly gotten rejections without interviews, 1-2 low ball offers, or radio silence. I cannot imagine how hard this must be for those laid-off, hopefully this storm passes soon. EDIT: you cannot m…

I am looking for a senior manager at a top 5 retailer. We are not as shiny as big tech but pay well with great work life balance. Job security etc. let me know if anyone want to connect. I have 5 positions open for senior dev to lead dev. We are .net and Java shop. But all cloud based.

You might want to advertise in the next "Who's Hiring?" submission. It will be posted on December 1, so next week.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#172

Post by culi »

fhd2 wrote: post #102
jedberg wrote: post #34

For those of you feeling down about being ignored, keep in mind this is the slowest hiring time of the year, with holidays and vacations, and end of year budgets. Even in down markets, hiring tends to pick up in January as managers get their hiring budgets for the new year and are back in the office. Hang in there!

Having hired hundreds of engineers, it's the same feeling on the other side as well: The recruiters will tell you that nobody wants to switch jobs around the holidays, so you shouldn't even try. Odd.

Weird I did the interview for my current interview in December and got the offer first week of January

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#173

Post by jedberg »

arandomJohn wrote: post #95
jedberg wrote: post #34

For those of you feeling down about being ignored, keep in mind this is the slowest hiring time of the year, with holidays and vacations, and end of year budgets. Even in down markets, hiring tends to pick up in January as managers get their hiring budgets for the new year and are back in the office. Hang in there!

For companies that do on-campus recruiting it is the busiest hiring time of year. But for experienced devs it might be a weird time to look.

This is true but sort of different. Most of them are hiring out of next year's budgets with start dates in May/June. The last time we had a pull-back in tech, a lot of those offers ended up getting rescinded, so if you're in that boat, don't start spending the money until you actually start...

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#174

Post by culi »

Alifatisk wrote: post #119
jedberg wrote: post #34

For those of you feeling down about being ignored, keep in mind this is the slowest hiring time of the year, with holidays and vacations, and end of year budgets. Even in down markets, hiring tends to pick up in January as managers get their hiring budgets for the new year and are back in the office. Hang in there!

Been looking for a junior developer role for 3 months now, it's been rough. Planning on switching to something else temporarly.

What are you hiring for? Just wondering what kinds of companies are hiring juniors right now (I've got a little under a year of industry experience so I'd fall into that category)

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#175

Post by ldjkfkdsjnv »

moosedev wrote: post #112

I took ~1.5 years off after 12+ years of FAANG. 1 month ago, I decided I was ready to work again and started talking to recruiters for real. It's been very slow. Most positions I've applied to, I've heard nothing back, even when referred by a current employee. I've had some flat rejections without even a recruiter chat. One recruiter called me to say they were on a temporary hiring freeze, and then she got laid off.…

In 2017 I had taken two years off and went back into the job market after very solid employment history. Only one major company would interview me, and I passed. I got ghosted by regular companies I was "too good for" previously. Before taking time off I was a premium candidate. So yeah it can be hard, you do need some sort of explanation, even in a good market.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#177

Post by ryandrake »

medellin wrote: post #142
KronisLV wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm fascinated by this. How does one do this? Two options I can think of are being independently wealthy and being dependent on another. Are there other ways to accomplish being so comfortable with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another 4-6 months and see what happens"? In my case that'd be: - living in a relatively affordable country (Latvia), where rent and other expenses aren't too high - having an okay income by loc…

Honestly i think most devs can do this. The difference is in the US our tolerance for seeing our savings go down is super low. I can live for 3 years with my current savings(just cash with invested but non retirement funds it would be about 8) but i still don’t feel like i can take any time off.

Also, the power of compounding interest over time. Take time off and eat away at your savings for a year when you are 25, and that probably adds 5 years to your retirement age. Better make that year really worth it!

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#178

Post by richardknop »

great_success wrote: post #111
nicoburns wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there other ways to accomplish being so comfortable with, "eh, gonna be unemployed another 4-6 months and see what happens"? Having low outgoings. While I would prefer to have income (I'm hoping to be able to buy a house at some point), I'm a single person with no dependents, and I probably spend around £1200/month in total (including rent). And that's in London - one of the most expensive cities in the world -…

This is very impressive and difficult to maintain in London. Rent for a "double" room - meaning a room in a flat/apartment or house that fits a US full or European double bed is like 900/month right now. Spending only 1200/month is very difficult to achieve. I have no idea how this is feasible. To add to rent, local stores are usually more expensive than the supermarkets. Maybe you ought to make a masterclass on this…

If you took out mortgage when interest rates were really low, it’s possible to have your own place and spend about that much per month if you live frugally (well at least until you need to remortgage in few years and rates might be much higher). If you are renting though I also finding it difficult to believe. I was spending around 1600 pounds per month and I was living very modest live, spending little and trying to save as much of my income as I could.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#179

Post by harles »

nostromo wrote: post #115
abadger9 wrote: post #7

I'm not laid off but actively looking to change after spending a couple of years at my current employer. Despite being a staff engineer, managing 12 engineers, and having a solid revenue stream tied to my current team - I've mostly gotten rejections without interviews, 1-2 low ball offers, or radio silence. I cannot imagine how hard this must be for those laid-off, hopefully this storm passes soon. EDIT: you cannot m…

People assume it's easier for more senior people to get offers, but it's actually the opposite. The more senior you get, the longer it can take to get a new job. You are much more expensive, so companies are extra cautious hiring you. And it's just common sense that there is an order of magnitude fewer managers than there are individual contributors. And many (most?) companies have a bias to promoting internally.

Yup. There’s also a heavy emphasis on relevant experience. I’ve found that only a subset of staff+ engineering roles are open to me because of this, whereas it was all open when I was in a junior role.

Re: Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

#180

Post by culi »

dan-robertson wrote: post #162
ctvo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 1 weird trick of doing free work and hoping they 1) have headcount 2) pay attention / see value in your free work. > … you are test driving each other. Unless you think the way they run their open source projects is the way their entire company works, you’re really not.

If you need to practice leetcode like things for interviews, aren’t you also doing free ‘work’? Only in that case it’s more proof-of-work than something actually useful. Perhaps one could point at the openly viewable results when talking to other companies. The strategy strikes me as a little weird but not crazy. If you like open source already, it might make a lot of sense.

> If you need to practice leetcode like things for interviews, aren’t you also doing free ‘work’? Only in that case it’s more proof-of-work than something actually useful.

This might be true, but at least the skills are easy to show off on a resume and will help you with other interviews. Open-source contributions might vary drastically in nature and might be harder to leverage as experience/proof of skill

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