Here's the flip side: I was hiring (at a stealth vc-funded startup). I reached out to every designer and coder laid off from Twitter and Amazon (one of my investors sent me a spreadsheet that those laid off folks added their contact info to). I didn't receive a single interested response to my reach outs. Now granted, I'm sure they were bombarded with lots of startup offers and being picky what company/stage they wer…
Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?
241–250 of 479 posts
Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
My observation is that recent layoffs affect engineers with different seniority very differently. Senior devs I know who got laid off are just enjoying their time off (with pay! if you consider the severance) after the rocketing market in 2021 (and maybe even H1 22) made them whole and financially secure. And they won't be entertaining a startup unless significant equity or big leveling up (eg Principal or Director).…
"they'd be willing to take anything." That would apply to me too. I have 10 years in the industry but have been underpaid and have a family. My current plan if I get fired is to work at Walmart or Lowes until I can find another job.
Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?
#243I was a senior dev at a big tech and got laid off in November. I have applied to hundreds of places. Not a lot of responses. I have been doing interview preps the whole time. It has been very demoralizing and I am thinking of switching careers to something else. I have been considering skilled trades. I like carpentry in particular.
Did you give leetcode tests during interviews while you were working at big tech?
If so, please keep in mind that interviewers at big tech generally have to follow the HR script for interviewing. I have very little leeway as an interviewer in how to conduct the interview. I can select from a narrow group of problems, and I ask each candidate a couple of “soft skills” questions to gauge their level of experience, but the bulk of the interview still relies on their performance on the technical assessment.
Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
My observation is that recent layoffs affect engineers with different seniority very differently. Senior devs I know who got laid off are just enjoying their time off (with pay! if you consider the severance) after the rocketing market in 2021 (and maybe even H1 22) made them whole and financially secure. And they won't be entertaining a startup unless significant equity or big leveling up (eg Principal or Director).…
"they'd be willing to take anything." That would apply to me too. I have 10 years in the industry but have been underpaid and have a family. My current plan if I get fired is to work at Walmart or Lowes until I can find another job.
Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?
#245Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?
#246I was laid off in June. This coincided with my mom being diagnosed with cancer, and because I had a fair amount of saving, I took some time to support family and work on some personal projects. I started looking again at the start of this year, and it's been rough, at least compared to my last job search where I had multiple offers in under two weeks. I've submitted ~50 applications so far, most with a non-generic co…
The funny one was one that came back 2 years after I had another job and rejected me. I had to go dig up my notes and see what I had applied for!
My internal network was the same as yours with lots of 'nothing here'.
Most of my luck has been like you, with 3rd party recruiters. Unless I reach out to them directly. Then they suddenly have nothing. One of them just for fun I called them every week but 'we currently do not have anything' which I knew was rubbish and I would pull items off their own site and show them. But if they have something that tweaked their buzzword bingo they blow up your phone. Getting a recruiter who likes to hustle is the key.
Only thing I regret for the 'time off' was not starting to look sooner. I figured it was a 1-2 month tops thing. Turned into 8 months of looking. What is really annoying is if you do not have a job they do not want you. But have a job and suddenly 2-3 calls a day.
Hiring is broken in a very weird way. But nothing really clear how to fix it. Adding more fizz-buzz testing is not going to fix it.
Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?
#247My deepest sympathies to anyone else facing this process right now. Even in a reasonably healthy (if not wildly overheated) hiring market, facing a layoff sucks. Best wishes to everyone out there.
Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Flipping can work but it can be much harder to be reasonably profitable without insane appreciation. Your best bet is fixers - houses with obvious major issues that everyone is scared of but you know you can fix reasonably cheaply. This can mean buying a $500k house with major foundation damage for $100k because everyone is scared - but you know a whole foundation replacement will only run you $200k. https://johntree…
Well your own link states how fixers are not really a good idea, but you want "disasters" and trasform them in "fixers". And it is not like you can find such disasters easily, nor that you can easily be able to make them into fixers, without years of previous experience. The whole approach, "everyone is scared but you know ..." is based on the assumption that you know more than anyone else (possibly including many pe…
Anything that "anyone can do" is going to explode at some point.