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Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#21

Post by alexpotato »

itsoktocry wrote: post #3

Once you've moved beyond a junior-level of experience, I'm not sure if there's a better way than working your network for opportunities. In my experience there is never, and will never be, a shortage of business people looking for technical problems solvers.

Joel Spolksy has an interesting quote about this:

"Third, and trust me on this, there’s still an incredible shortage of the really good programmers, here and in India. Yes, there are a bunch of out of work IT people making a lot of noise about how long they’ve been out of work, but you know what? At the risk of pissing them off, really good programmers do have jobs"

From: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/02/advice-for-compute...

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#22

Post by mronetwo »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #5

The truth is, most jobs these days are rather bloated themselves. I do wish you luck in finding a job, but I would also give you this following piece of advice: at the same time while trying to find a job, think about strategies where you can work less and contribute more to society in your local community. I truly believe that the real opportunities out there are those which are mostly divorced away from the typical…

Ideally, this. Realistically, not sure about this. It might be a bit of a crapshoot. It might yield very rewarding "jobs" but it's difficult to put your mind into it, when you just want to make a living. It just feels like you have to cross certain wealth threshold to do this. It might not reflect reality but this feeling of "I need a 9 to 5 to just keep myself afloat" is real.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#24

Post by ghaff »

itsoktocry wrote: post #3

Once you've moved beyond a junior-level of experience, I'm not sure if there's a better way than working your network for opportunities. In my experience there is never, and will never be, a shortage of business people looking for technical problems solvers.

The jobs I've had since the one out of grad school have all been through people I knew. Not sure how typical that is but it's certainly one path.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#25

Post by 4kimov »

Besides all the already mentioned, solid responses about looking for new opportunities (personal network, consistent daily applications, etc), it's worth noting this one too:

Become a regular contributor to specific open-source projects (esp if it's a growing and/or funded startup).

This approach might work better for those that are already comfortable w/ OSS and don't yet have connections. When applying to that company a bit later, obviously mention all the merged PRs.

For example, here's Posthog [0] showing you what you could help with thru a job post. You can find more companies like this one at Fossfox [1], shameless plug: I maintain that index rn.

[0] https://posthog.com/careers/full-stack-engineer-growth#typic...

[1] https://fossfox.com/

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#26

Post by angarg12 »

wskinner wrote: post #4

1. Make friends with people at work 2. Eventually, some of those people will get new jobs, and they can refer you to their new employer (and vice versa). 3. Repeat for a few cycles and you have a network full of potential job opportunities without ever going through a job board.

Cool as a long term strategy, but hardly helpful if you want a job this year.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#27

Post by its_a_random_ac »

frfl wrote: post #8

Bit of a tangent, but what has been everyone's experience so far in 2023 trying to find a new job? I got really interested in this and have been passively researching it (HN, reddit posts). My conclusion, so far, is unless you've got strong connections it's hard right now to find a job. Most job posting, as OP mentions get hundreds if not thousands of applications. Other times, I've personally also notice, candidates…

Yes, that's mostly been my experience (6 years + masters, Bay Area/remote positions.)

A few other things I've noticed:

1. Yes, I've had the "candidates with perfect skill/experience matches get the same generic rejection" but I've also had times when I'd apply for something that I had only a little bit of a match for, and still get pretty far through the interview process.

2. Related to #1, I can't get a good feeling of how qualified I am for these listings. Sometimes I'll apply to something that is in the low 100ks with a customized resume that echos all of their reqs and get rejected, but other times I'll just blind fire out my standard resume to something with a base in the mid 200s and get selected for a full interview loop.

3. It feels like some places still have the same "standards" for each part of the interview process, leading to a lot of candidates getting to the end, which then leads to some weird "you did well but we chose someone else" responses.

4. Sometimes I'd have an interview lined up, but then right before it I get a "due to shifting requirements, we have to postpone this by a bit" email. This has happened several times now (and they never have actually un-postponed it.) Same thing with spending a day or two interviewing at a place, not hearing back, and then reading of a large layoff at that company a few days later.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#28

Post by shadowfoxx »

Its rough out here. I've got 8+ years of experience and I've worked a breadth of experience as well. I'm scouring the posts here on "Who's Hiring", I work applications on LinkedIn, Speak with some recruiters, and I utilize Remote Rocketship. My network of connections is a bit smaller than could be useful (this is my own fault.) but I have also reached out to people I personally know who could vouch for me. A number of those are still working at my last job.

Sent out upwards of 500 applications, 10, 20, maybe 30 interviews even fewer that have gone to the 'final rounds' and even some very close calls. No offers yet.

I'm also spending this time learning new tech that interests me and working on a portfolio site that is true to those interests. This is slow going but I don't let it get me down (if I can help it) because I help my partner garden, raise our dog, and work on my other hobbies as well.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#29

Post by alexpotato »

teirce wrote: post #16
frfl wrote: post #8

Bit of a tangent, but what has been everyone's experience so far in 2023 trying to find a new job? I got really interested in this and have been passively researching it (HN, reddit posts). My conclusion, so far, is unless you've got strong connections it's hard right now to find a job. Most job posting, as OP mentions get hundreds if not thousands of applications. Other times, I've personally also notice, candidates…

Been looking since about February. I've probably sent out at least a hundred apps for positions I was interested in and met qualifications for. I think I've made it to a recruiter screen around ~10 times, and I've had less than 5 actual interviews follow. I have 6+ years in industry, 4 and some change of which were FAANG (which everyone believes is a golden ticket into any company). And I can't even get an interview.…

>which were FAANG (which everyone believes is a golden ticket into any company).

In a past job, I saw a LOT of former FAANG candidates as a hiring manager (SRE @ hedge fund) at a past job.

In my experience, FAANG folks have a somewhat barbell distribution where it's either:

A. "This person is incredibly talented, well spoken and will probably find a job anywhere"

B. "This person spent 5 years at a FAANG and worked on basically two projects that would have taken There doesn't really seem to be an in between.

I also distinctly remember learning that Google had 100K+ employees. To me, that is moving into "big bank" size territory and it's clearly impossible for EVERYONE who is former Google to be amazing.

Re: Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?

#30

Post by teirce »

4kimov wrote: post #25

Besides all the already mentioned, solid responses about looking for new opportunities (personal network, consistent daily applications, etc), it's worth noting this one too: Become a regular contributor to specific open-source projects (esp if it's a growing and/or funded startup). This approach might work better for those that are already comfortable w/ OSS and don't yet have connections. When applying to that comp…

Thank you for this suggestion. I think it's infinitely more interesting than the meme-y, parroted 'grind leetcode' response to improve job prospects. And it can give you more direction than trying to think of hobby projects to put on github.
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