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Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

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Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#241

Post by courgette »

jstx1 wrote: post #3

It's the usual - be as employable as you can, search for a job, apply, interview, get hired. I don't think that you need to do anything special just because the market is worse. When you start applying you'll find out how difficult the market is for you specifically (given your education, location, field etc), and you can adjust your expectations from there if you need to. Maybe startups specifically look worse than…

I spend 5 years in startup around 2008, last big recession if I'm correct. What I appreciated of that time is that the mood was considerably less gloom and doom that my peers in large company.

Also... I was under 30 and I was just ecstatic to have a position of most of my time was greenfield projects. ( as opposed to maintain legacy code for crappy clients because of the aforementioned gloom and doom )

I can see small structures with a purpose being a ok time to spend a recession.

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#242

Post by ghaff »

jventura wrote: post #240
ghaff wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure of your point. So a job I got 13 years ago largely through a contact isn’t how things work today? As in my most recent example.

I think he's saying things are more volatile now. When the industry was much smaller, it was easier to make and stay in personal contact with others. Also, it's natural that if you started your career 25 years ago, many people you've met back then (and may have also started back then) are now senior (devs, managers, etc.). A person that started in the industry in the last 5 years may not have many friends in senior p…

Certainly "have connections" is generally less actionable advice for a junior person than a senior one. But I think it's more a function of tenure in the industry than how the industry has grown.

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#243

Post by beams_of_light »

shagie wrote: post #203
whstl wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One particular thing I've noticed in my neck of the woods is younger Junior devs only staying at junior level jobs for a set period. They stay only one year, almost to the day, despite good performance and good fit. That happened to a report of mine once, obviously with a previous mutual agreement, but some recruiters mentioned that trend to me as well. I think having a set date to leave is healthy, especially at thi…

A tangent to this is "management is now hesitant to hire people who have shown an established history of employment." When you hire a new grad, and then spend a year getting them all up to speed with the process and CI system and code reviews and familiarization with the code base and they're just now starting to take on the responsibility for some of the code... and they leave a year and a day after you hired them.…

This is an HR problem. If they’re happy with their job, it’s not possible for them to get a raise with the current company that likely comes anywhere close to what they can get jumping ship. If HR would be willing to say “Hey, we recognize that this person is doing good work and want to keep them, but also recognize they can realize a 50%+ increase elsewhere. Let’s open the checkbook.” Instead, they’ll say that the most they can give them is somewhere around 10%, maybe the manager can fight for 15%. In the end, they’re going to take the 50% increase, even if your corporate culture and everything else is great.

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#244

Post by nickd2001 »

Hopefully the job market won't get that bad, but in the worst case you might have to take a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McJob. for a while. This has happened to highly qualified people in previous recessions. If you do , the thing is to make sure its a cool McJob, like working on a ski resort, bookshop, arts cinema etc rather than actually a fast food joint. Or if it has to be fast food joint, then at least in a cool place with rock climbing nearby or something. Could be a blessing in disguise...

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#245

Post by l-portet »

notch656c wrote: post #32
ryandrake wrote: post #22

I've been through the dotcom slaughter of 2000-2002 as a new grad (undergrad) and the comparatively small slowdown of 2008 (grad school new grad). Get ready to hit the Submit button... a lot. The stories of "getting three job offers after four interviews at five companies" are no longer reality. My application:interview:offer ratio has always varied from 50:5:1 to 100:10:1, and I would expect something like that or w…

Great recession grad. 1000:100:10:1 app:phone_screen:interview:offer In general divide the first number by 10 if you have at least 12 months post grad professional experience. If you have a shiny high GPA diploma from a top school but no intern or any experience whatsoever change last two numbers to zero.

Wait, why are you getting that much filtered from the phone screen to the interview?

From my experience, it's just a bullshit step with a recruiter just to check you're not totally dumb.

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#246

Post by antisthenes »

ghaff wrote: post #172
thinking4real wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Reach out to every friend, old coworker, etc. especially those that are in management now.” This advice always cracks me up. Most people don’t have deep networks of people who can hook them up with a senior level engineering position. Like, even the people I know who are quite well connected don’t really have this option. Sure, everyone has a buddy who’d love to pay them half for twice the work. But we’re talking re…

>This advice always cracks me up. And, yet, all three jobs I've had in the last 25 years (including one in 2001), I landed because I knew someone senior at the company pretty well. Not strictly engineering but tech and tech ecosystem companies. Was that lucky and atypical? Perhaps. But those were my experiences. The last job I got through "normal" channels was from a campus interview at grad school.

All 3 jobs I got were with 0 connections. I still don't really have any connections that would be able to get me a job better than I can get for myself with just applying and interviewing.

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#247

Post by rumblefrog »

micro_cam wrote: post #15

I've been in the ML/data space for 20 years and went through the 2008 cycle early in my career. I'm not hiring at the moment but am always happy to review resumes and give career advice as part of networking so feel free to ping me. Reaching out to managers at big cos won't get you much. They are getting a ton of twitter/etc candidates and have stricter hiring policies and rubrics to prevent nepotism and favoritism.…

Thanks for the early start ups insight, also reached out on Linkedin :)

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#248

Post by l-portet »

I like to think of it like a channel that you need to optimize at every step:

1. Applying

- Reach out to a recruiter — or CTO if it's a startup — but do it only for the companies you're the most interested into as it's time consuming

- Write a good application message mentioning the technologies required in the job description

- Personal Branding is key: polish your Github, have a nice website — esp for front-end/full-stack devs — and update your Linkedin

2. Resume screening

- Make sure to have a clean, easy to read and updated resume

- Complete your skillset with high-demand skills (ex: AWS if you're back-end, React Native if you're front-end)

- Ask other for reviews

3. Phone screen

- Learn a bit about the company, their recent achievements

- Learn how to sell yourself, have your storytelling ready

- Ask questions (culture, role, product, etc)

- Prepare answers for common itwer questions

- Smile :) show you'd be the ideal coworker and not just a nerd who can code

4. Tech interview

- Most tech itws are bullshit and not even related to the skills needed but that's how the game is made so just accept it and practice LC

5. Final itw / Offer

- Learn how to negociate your salary

- Remember: Equity is cool but cash is king

- Congrats!

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#249

Post by CyanLite2 »

1. Lower your asking price. The days of 6 figure boot camp grads are over, at least temporarily.

2. Get as much professional experience as possible. There's an entire world outside of the startup/HN crowd where you can thrive in a great career at an enterprise company doing .NET/Java. These are your name brand mega insurance companies or health care organizations that are just trying to get line-of-business apps created for internal use. It's not the brand name cachet as a popular SaaS. These mega corps often don't go out of their way to advertise for new positions, so just checkout linkedin or look at their job boards on their corporate website. These companies often have the large internal development team to pair you with a senior developer and train you up.

3. Bide your time until the market "re-opens". The market will come back, but in the meantime now is the time to build up your CV. If you still are having problems getting a foot in the door, then take on open source projects. Create a side-project. There's nothing worse as a hiring manager seeing a new grad with zero experience asking for $150,000.

Re: Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?

#250

Post by Our_Benefactors »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #236
Our_Benefactors wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It lets you bypass the step of “I sent my resume and never heard back” which is the reality for many junior candidates. There’s a huge difference between getting to go through the motions as often as you please versus not being given the time of day.

It may sound like a big difference, but turns out not to be when bills start coming due. Going through the motions is worth... nada.

Bad attitude. Would you rather be unemployed and receiving no callbacks, or unemployed and still having your pick of which recruiters to engage with?
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