Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#261

Post by KptMarchewa » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

donkeyd wrote: post #152

mkl95 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Landing lead/lower management roles seems to be difficult if you have limited experience leading people. Those seem to be mostly staffed internally. Because at most places lead/lower management is another word for yes men that have proven their blind loyalty to the CTO, usually for 2 or 3 years. They don't wanna hire a manager who may question the status quo, especially when it comes to architecture and best practi…

> That sounds low to me and attainable in Europe if you have 5+ YoE at the right places. It sounds to me like you are being lowballed. I'm getting similar offers with way less experience. Where you at? In the Netherlands getting anything over €70k is incredibly hard. There are very few companies offering close to that and those are often for architecture roles. Lead dev is usually €60-70k, with some €70-80k exception…

>In the Netherlands getting anything over €70k is incredibly hard.

Well, it's definitely possible in Poland.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#262

Post by simne » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

I'm in Ukraine. What I seen from begin of war, there are extremely few positions for juniors - different sources say, 60-2000 cv's per position.

For experienced people, things slightly better - at 1 years exp, 5-20 cv/pos; 2 years exp ~1:1; 5+ years exp, there are much more positions, than candidates.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#263

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

I'm curious what % of offers coming from applicant's applying directly versus recruiter outreach/networking.

In my experience applying for jobs feels like a waste of time. Maybe 1/20 will acknowledge you. And you have no idea if the job really exists. But if you're contacted first by the recruiter the hit rate seems to be much higher.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#264

Post by cgb223 » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

I got laid off a few weeks ago

I’m mid senior level in Product Management but come from a big well known tech company, and I work remote from a non-tech “city”. 5 years PM experience, 6 years as a Software dev. Launched 3 products from concept. One has over 20 million MAU, one created 9 figures of revenue for my previous company, and one I have no idea because I got laid off lol

According to my LinkedIn I’ve applied to over 200 roles in the last few weeks and heard back from about 5. Of those interviews, I’ve been rejected from all of them, even smaller shops.

Hearing from recruiters has been much more fruitful, making it to middle and final rounds at surprisingly good companies, but in both final round instances, the role either got defunded due to a hiring freeze or other issues.

In one instance, the recruiter I was working with at a Big N tech company got laid off in the middle of interviews, at which point the company ghosted me, presumably with my application falling through the cracks.

My severance package is much smaller than most, since my company is framing the thousands of layoffs as “performance based” which allowed them to skip the mandatory notice period, and avoid paying out our very generous severance packages. It turns out benefits don’t matter if a company is afraid of a recession.

If anything this whole experience has wiped out my idealistic views of working in tech. I’m a cog in a machine that can be gaslit and disposed of when convenient for people levels above me who have no empathy for my existence

Can any other PMs speak to how their job hunt is going? Hoping it’s not just me

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#265

Post by westmeal » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

_dhruva wrote: post #231

speeder wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is just Amazon being Amazon. When they interviewed me the first time, the interviewer didn't show to work, so they asked another guy to interview me, he ended interviewing me in a language he didn't knew, to a position using another language entirely, the whole thing was a farce. Some years later Amazon recruiters contacted me, asked me to go interview in person. Then during the interview in their offices, they…

Over a video call, the interviewer asked a coding question and immediately put on headphones and I am sure was listening to music. There was no dialogue and I had to use visual cues to get his attention. I coded using C++ and pass by reference. He had never seen it in his life. He refused to believe modification on a reference would modify the value in the calling function! I hoping he would be willing to discuss or…

You've got to be kidding... that's literally what references are for. Insane.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#266

Post by wickedsickeune » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

tarokun-io wrote: post #257

Interviewed with about 28 companies for almost 3 months, without a single offer! I was starting to get really worried about money and burned out from interviewing. In the past I've never interviewed with more than 2 or 3 before getting an offer I now this is incredibly privileged. I'm not humble-bragging, just observing the change in the market. As things usually turn out, during the last week of the 3-month search I…

Thanks for sharing. If I may ask, when was the last time you looked for a job? I'm saying this because maybe you're having trouble due to ageism that you didn't encounter before.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#267

Post by gardenhedge » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

throw_aws_inter wrote: post #90

gardenhedge wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the salary or benefits that made you decide to endure that?

Don't know and I am desperate enough to not care about salary at this point: I apply for jobs everywhere and the only times I have had a reply the last 6 months (except for AWS), I was offered positions with relocating to other countries.

If you don't care about salary then I recommend going to some small bank or finance place.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#268

Post by ericbarrett » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

binarydreams wrote: post #165

Software engineer with 10+yrs experience and was on a break for 3+ yrs. I haven't done outbound yet ("applied" to companies). Mostly got referred to companies/startups through folks in my network. Remote work is an important requirement for the time being. So I spoke to 15 (remote-friendly/first) companies through my network (could've been more if I were up for onsite work), 4 started the interview process (rest had…

> One thing I noticed...was that the interview processes are very slow

We're thick into the holiday season. I wouldn't expect anything to speed up until January, regardless of market conditions.

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#269

Post by samhuk » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

jenscow wrote: post #243

samhuk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, sorry, I have edited my original comment. TL;DR it's a very little server sitting right behind me, and gets easily stressed.

For remedial points, claim it's on a raspberry pi. Slowness due to React but you're re-writing it in Rust.

Then everyone would think I'm just a ChatGPT bot trained on HN ;) /s

Re: Ask HN: How is the job search coming along for people who got laid off?

#270

Post by anonymouse008 » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

CWuestefeld wrote: post #212

ARandomerDude wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite as experienced as you (I’m in the 10-15 year bracket). I never ask LeetCode questions because it’s far easier on both sides to ask experience-based questions like “what do you like/dislike about ?” If I get superficial answers that tells me something. If i get well thought-out answers from people who have clearly spent time in the trenches that tells me something too.

I've been doing this for 30+ years, and I've found the same. It's not just whether the candidate can answer correctly, but how they answer. Back when I was doing C/C++ interviews, I'd ask questions like: What's the difference between single and double quotes? A meh candidate answers something about you need single quotes for just a single character. A good candidate answers about how the data type for a double-quoted…

Completely off topic, but I wanted to see if your bio could be parsed for an email with chatGPT - since I thought yours was the most interesting I've seen in some time. Turns out cgpt is quite clever:

What's the email address: To email, send to the domain [redacted], using the mailbox "[redacted]".

In general, email addresses consist of a username followed by the at symbol (@) and the domain name, such as [redacted]@[redacted]. However, without being able to verify the existence of the domain [redacted], I cannot say for certain what the email address would be.