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Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

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Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not cronyism - it’s people knowing your portfolio of work and abilities. And at the end of the day - do whatever you need to within reason to put food on your own table. Don’t worry about someone else judging you for cronyism for feeding your family.

There's nothing wrong with networking, but if we're all agreeing that networking is important to having a job search that doesn't involve hundreds of applications, then let's just be honest about that. In particular let's make sure people who don't have that network and who do have to job search know what they need to do to get where they need to be.

> if we're all agreeing that networking is important to having a job search that doesn't involve hundreds of applications, then let's just be honest about that

I think we already were? That's exactly what I said. Who do you think isn't being honest?

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the OP and I don't mean to argue your experience, but my post was more pushing back on the idea that non-FAANG companies are desperate for people. In other words, I'm pushing back on the idea that anyone willing to work outside of FAANG for $100k-$150k should be able to find something super quick.

There's a surplus of devs right now, lots of layoffs and all that. I'm sure compensation is going to take a hit till the market will stabilize itself. We're going to have a how low are you willing to go in the short term future and it's going to be a bit rough for everyone.

I'm not really concerned about this too much. There are millions of software developers in the U.S., the tens of thousands getting laid off from FAANG are a drop in the bucket. Many of them will be absorbed into other upmarket positions that I wouldn't get hired into anyway.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#263

> My personal goal is at least 100 applications before seriously considering pivoting to something else. I don't think I have especially cool resume or anything, nor do I have extremely many years in the industry as well, but I'd never consider applying for 100 different companies. I don't even know deeply about 100 companies I think, which is something I learn about a company before even considering applying to it.…

This. If that is 100x clicks on Apply button on jobs portal, then no wonder the result is mediocre. Tailoring CV to a role, looking for some insider friends to let then collect the referal bonus... that takes time but is much more effective to put foot in the door.

Sure let me "tailor my CV" to a role just to get ghosted or offered laughable salary. I'm just gonna make friends of random people from that company that don't know me, presumably by cold approaching them via LinkedIn? Lol

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with networking, but if we're all agreeing that networking is important to having a job search that doesn't involve hundreds of applications, then let's just be honest about that. In particular let's make sure people who don't have that network and who do have to job search know what they need to do to get where they need to be.

> if we're all agreeing that networking is important to having a job search that doesn't involve hundreds of applications, then let's just be honest about that I think we already were? That's exactly what I said. Who do you think isn't being honest?

No one's lying but one of the grandparent comments said that they would change careers if they needed to send out 100 applications for a job search. If 100 applications is necessary for even a good developer without a strong network, that's a misleading recommendation.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could speculate because the op is a Taurus. It holds just as much weight in the conversation because there’s no evidence that the op’s zodiac or DEI status are used to eliminate them in the hiring process. I used the word bait because unsubstantiated “DEI hate” is used on hackernews as lightning rods. I haven’t shamed anyone. If you actually read what I said above, you would see that I’m not denying racism in hirin…

"You can't speculate that a specific tree was felled with an axe rather than a chainsaw when you weren't in the woods to see it happen." -- on the contrary, I'm pretty sure a rational person could speculate that a specific tree was felled by an axe vs a chainsaw depending on what she knows about loggers in a given area from a given culture and during a given time period. It's a question of probability. It's normal an…

> I'm pretty sure a rational person could speculate that a specific tree was felled by an axe vs a chainsaw depending on what she knows about loggers in a given area from a given culture and during a given time period. It's a question of probability. It's normal and rational and fair to discuss probabilities when speculating.

Given that you know nothing about the hiring practices of the OP's company, it's safe to say that you know nothing about the woods in this analogy either ha.

> It's unclear that you understand the terms you are using though so I'm gonna peace out and wish you luck.

I understand very well. You made an analogy, and I made a more apt one. But when in doubt, resort to ad hominem.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t agree - I’d rather wait than take on someone that can’t meet the standard, because they’re likely to be an active drag rather than a help. I can hire contractors if I need to fill a seat that quickly.

I’ve never met a tech screen that adequately measured candidate quality (actually I take that back Okta’s SRE interview was fantastic). I tried to hire a known, trusted, high performing engineer at Google. He was rejected. After reading his packet I could not figure out why. I had to call the recruiter and ask her if he’d said something so unmentionable they couldn’t even write it down. They decided to pass on him be…

Our process is not particularly difficult, I’m not doing Leetcode or anything. I just ask questions at interview which test whether people have a surface level understanding or whether we’ll have to hand hold people through things.

For e.g. I’ve interviewed backend devs with 5+ years of Django experience who haven’t been able to tell me the general methods of how they might go about tackling a poor performing ORM query. I’m not asking them to even be able to write the code here, I’m just asking them to tell me roughly what their approach would be. If people aren’t able to talk me through that in general terms, they’re not going to help much.

I had one this week where a guy took user input on an API and then used “eval” to run it as code. Where do you even start with that? On CV terms, this person had 10 years of decent looking experience.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#268

I work at Apple and my team has been “hiring” for the last 2 years with no offers so far. Why? Because even if you are a good candidate, hiring is not as easy as people think. Among the many challengues we have I can list the following: 1. The people interested in your profile have minimal influence in the process, 2. There are people who are always chasing for the shiny new object (or person, in this case), 3. There…

Regarding over the top accomplishments in resumes: every resume writing workshop tells you to do this. I don't think you should be rejecting these first just because someone listened to the advice of "sell yourself".

Impossible Is Nothing

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#269
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If that is 100x clicks on Apply button on jobs portal, then no wonder the result is mediocre. Tailoring CV to a role, looking for some insider friends to let then collect the referal bonus... that takes time but is much more effective to put foot in the door.

Sure let me "tailor my CV" to a role just to get ghosted or offered laughable salary. I'm just gonna make friends of random people from that company that don't know me, presumably by cold approaching them via LinkedIn? Lol

Yes, it's hard to imagine being on a team where my direct coworkers are vouching for random people who contacted them because they're trying to get a referral bonus. If someone contacted me like that, I'd direct them to the careers page and then let someone in the hiring path know. Very strange.

Re: Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

#270

I think the job market will get better by mid January 2023, when budgets open up. TC will probably be quite a bit lower than 2021 offers, but there's work to be done everywhere.

Every quarter someone comments that next quarter will be better.
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