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Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

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Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#211

Post by owenwil »

nradov wrote: post #193
brailsafe wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they addressed this implicitly as a familiar explanation without actually needing to say it. Despite it being extremely rare to be able to pinpoint via external feedback mechanisms which areas conceivably provide tangible roi, it's just always relevant work on your weak spots. The reality of the situation (which varies a bit depending on region and discipline) is that many people and economies are indeed co…

Canada under its current leadership is probably a dead end. I'm not trying to be cruel but that's just the reality of your situation. Time to think about emigrating if you want a better future.

My experience (I’m a hiring manager) is that a LARGE number of big US-based tech companies are only hiring in Canada right now for pretty obvious reasons, and are competing aggressively for top talent here. Many companies are backfilling American roles with remote Canadians when someone in the US exits right now. It’s the best I’ve seen in the ten years I’ve been here.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#212

Post by kjkjadksj »

lisbbb wrote: post #179
chis wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't really agree. I mean you scroll 1 paragraph down and it says he worked a Google Deepmind, that's really all I'd need to see. I think the market is just super hard for new grads. I've heard from people that had to apply to hundreds of companies and do 20+ interviews to get something. Totally agree that this guy could write books though. On some level I always wonder if it'll be better for society if the next g…

I don't see the point of applying for "hundreds of jobs." I think use the time to network with real people and forget about Indeed or whatever because those jobs are mostly fake anyways.

The people you know aren’t always in a position to hire you.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#213

Post by terminalshort »

gruez wrote: post #152
alyxya wrote: post #42

To the people at the top, the job market is a statistic. They can't feel empathy on an issue they're so disconnected from, so they just think it's not their problem, or there isn't much they can do about it. Technological innovation is supposed to mean society can produce more with less work, so in theory everyone's lives could end up better off over time where we could all work less and get more, but in practice, I…

>To the people at the top, the job market is a statistic. They can't feel empathy on an issue they're so disconnected from, so they just think it's not their problem, or there isn't much they can do about it. Who are the "people at the top" you speak of? Are they just an amorphous blob of executives and politicians? >Technological innovation is supposed to mean society can produce more with less work, so in theory ev…

> Who are the "people at the top" you speak of?

"The people richer than me" is typically the meaning here. You here this complaint often even from people in the top 1% of the richest country on earth.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#214

Post by coolThingsFirst »

ipnon wrote: post #65
kenjackson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting a business is easy. Making enough money to live a similar lifestyle from said business is usually not so easy.

The level of effort is becoming comparable: It's not unfathomable to send 1,000 applications to get a new job. Think of all the emails, coding evaluations, high-pressure interviews, LeetCode grinding, multi-round interviews, HR back-and-forths, and inevitable let downs or ghostings you have to endure just to get one measly job. Compare this to making a product that 1,000 people will subscribe to for $10/month, except…

This is my conclusion as well, I'm building a few MVPs and the time spent building the MVP was orders of magnitude more productive than sending in 100s of job applications and preparing the STAR method and witnessing my mental health tank rejection after rejection.

Tech careers are no longer careers they are gigs. You get in you are lucky but Elon can tweet something and you can be out in a whim. Now it's for geniuses, turbo slaves willing to work 70 hours a week and that's unsustainable for more than 6 months.

Keep in mind this is in Europe as well, we don't make the crazy salaries Americans make with stocks. Basically 40-50K salary if you're lucky and that kind of money doesn't warrant the effort required for it.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#215

Post by gruez »

saithound wrote: post #183
gruez wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To the people at the top, the job market is a statistic. They can't feel empathy on an issue they're so disconnected from, so they just think it's not their problem, or there isn't much they can do about it. Who are the "people at the top" you speak of? Are they just an amorphous blob of executives and politicians? >Technological innovation is supposed to mean society can produce more with less work, so in theory ev…

> Who are the "people at the top" you speak of? Are they just an amorphous blob of executives and politicians? I don't think you're asking a serious question. What kind of answer would you accept? It's not like you're going to change your mind if they say that e.g. the Cyvorefrx family from Palm Beach is one of the people on the top, right? Nor is this question an effecive rhetorical device to convince onlookers: the…

>I don't think you're asking a serious question.

It's not a serious question because the preceding statement wasn't serious either. It's just a vague anti-elite statement.

At the very least, it's not the CEO's job to keep unemployment rate low. That's the job of politicians and central bankers. To blame unemployment on "people at the top" shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how society is structured. To take your Guantanamo Bay example, it's like blaming it on terror on "the military industrial complex". Is it vaguely directionally correct? Yeah. Is it a cogent statement? No.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#216

Post by terminalshort »

lisbbb wrote: post #184
cube00 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company had an onshore hiring freeze, while still hiring offshore. C-suite had the nerve in an all hands to say they were expanding offshore because there was a "local talent shortage", all while an onshore hiring freeze was still in effect. This wasn't even a secret; in our stand ups our immediate manager said that they were blocked from hiring onshore and only had offshore quota available if they wanted any more…

The MBA pyschopaths have always had it in for the far more intelligent and ethics driven CS types. It's always been an envy situation where people lacking talent are envious of those with real talents and real brain power. CS people should not allow themselves to be managed by non-CS people, much like how physicians used to operate. Everyone thinks socialism or communism is going to fix things, but those were already…

Eng is no more intelligent or ethics driven. It's really easy to say you would be different when you aren't the one who has to manage the budget. Things are no different at companies where the founders are engineers.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#217

Post by nradov »

lisbbb wrote: post #181
nradov wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That happened because online job sites made it so easy for candidates to apply that hiring managers could no longer personally keep up with the flood. It's a bad situation for both employers and candidates but there doesn't seem to be any practical alternative.

There has to be a way to limit the flood--someone has to pay a fee someplace.

Anything that charges a fee for candidates to apply to a job is a scam.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#218

Post by deaux »

vee-kay wrote: post #208
lisbbb wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has to be a way to limit the flood--someone has to pay a fee someplace.

The only fee will be a subscription to AI LLM. AI will do a cheap job of automatically filtering the potential candidates for a hire. A suitable AI LLM can even be leveraged as automation that calls up the filtered candidates and evaluates them for the basics. So that would filter the wheat from the chaff. And then the humans can take the process further to interview and select the candidates for the hire. So yeah, A…

Resumes will be increasingly fake, at the same rate. We're already seeing this. Recently interviewed a guy clearly using AI interview cheating tools, which is much higher barrier and risk than just making up shit on your resume.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#219

Post by nradov »

rolandog wrote: post #194
nradov wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hasn't the UK been able to create any local tech giants? Would more regulations imposed by a Labour government help to turn that around?

Actually, you have it the other way around! Why hasn't the US done more to create a rich ecosystem of tech companies, instead of a couple of bloated giants that syphon our wealth and avoid taxes?

Actually, you have it the other way around! The US has a rich ecosystem of rapidly growing startup tech companies. Many of us on HN are working for them. There has never been a better time to build something new.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#220

Post by YZF »

PlanksVariable wrote: post #38
margorczynski wrote: post #8

The most baffling thing is that even now the H1Bs, etc. are still pouring in. How can you say there is a shortage of IT talent and you need to import them where most grads can't find any work?

At the big tech company I work for, it’s been at least 5 years since I was asked to interview a US citizen. And I have younger relatives and family friends who are recent CS grads that are smart and desperate for jobs. I don’t know what’s going on anymore.

I work for big tech and we've been hiring US graduates fairly continuously. We're also taking students for internships.

We've also had people poached by other companies.

I would say what's going on is similar to what I've seen in the dot com era. We used to joke during the boom that anyone with a pulse who can type can get a job. Then the economy tanked and it was tough. Throughout this people with reputation and industry connections could always find a job.

Now we're in a period of over-supply of new grads. Companies that over hired for years are making adjustments.

Big companies are generally hiring but try to do so in lower cost geographies where they can. There are still a lot of well funded companies in the US that are hiring locally (mostly around AI). There are still jobs posted here on HN every month. Just possibly less. I haven't been tracking the stats...

Just because the stock market is up doesn't mean there is demand for software developers. I predict demand will come up but these cycles take time to play out. During the dot com bust many ended up leaving the industry because they could not find work.

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