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Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

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Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, some very senior employees are in this boat: They kinda have enough savings to just retire, but were hanging on to their jobs to save maybe 10% more or whatever. Now that they're out of a job they are simply saying "Whelllp, I guess I'm now retired." and not really feeling the need to look anymore. I know someone who refused a forced return to office, and when his company tried to call his bluff, he just…

>> were hanging on to their jobs to save maybe 10% more or whatever The amount of wealth all people need is constant. It is 1.5 x whatever they have today.

Double.

But sometimes that number goes to == on layoff. I’ve seen this in real life.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are really good at bullshitting their way into jobs.

I'm just bad at everything and don't have any skills.

I mean.. that sounds like a legitimate reason to not extend you an offer.

But it's good that you know this about yourself and can hopefully formulate an actionable path to improvement!

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#293
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> were hanging on to their jobs to save maybe 10% more or whatever The amount of wealth all people need is constant. It is 1.5 x whatever they have today.

Quite a broad generalization. Sounds like people who don't have an actual plan for their money other than to have more of it. The kind of person who retires and realizes they don't even know what to do now that they aren't striving for that $$$.

I don't know. It's a big and somewhat irreversible decision from a pay and career perspective. I can certainly see people hesitate to make the plunge and maybe stretch things out a bit further even though they're pretty sure they're fine finacially.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#294
post #222
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a word of advice for readers who are working at a startup: you will never be wrong by getting as close to the money as possible. If you are at a startup and working on support tools or platform infrastructure or whatever, maybe you're indispensable. But you'd still be better off if you were doing support tools or platform infrastructure that involves revenue . (The obvious corollary is that if you work at a star…

I can testify to that. Of course, your team can be considered strategic one day, then disbanded the next.

I've definitely seen some "strategic" people being shown the door over the past few rounds of layoffs, and at least two boomerangs (laid off, then rehired).

These are very confusing times.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#296

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…

Be careful because a lot of smart people from FAANG may not be a good fit for startups.they are more corporate types nowadays and are probably used to easy money with not much pressure. Startups on the other hand are nothing like that

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#297
post #232
post #30

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What’s the salary on the offers you have, and in which region of Germany is that? Just curious.

Berlin. 140k and 150k but I'm still shopping.

Wow, that's really above the top tier in Berlin for SW developers.

Are there companies paying for ICs in that range?

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t true in California, and I don’t think it’s generally true in other states either. A fired employee is still eligible for unemployment as long as they were not fired because of specific misconduct. Poor performance does not constitute misconduct. Misconduct must be “willful and wanton.” (Regularly missing work or being late, stealing, fighting with coworkers, etc.) The CA guidelines are long, but contain so…

Good point. My company generally finds "misconduct" reasons to let someone go, like long lunch breaks, being late, computer use like logging into personal accounts etc. They are very lenient about a lot of stuff in practice, but the official policies are much stricter. They basically have enough policies that they can get almost anyone for violations. It's all about having many rules and unequal enforcemnt - it's muc…

You can still fight misconduct claims to UI by asserting problems with the work environment. Specific advice would vary by state. There is no reason an employee shouldn’t try.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is a joke, it's gone over my head. What are you saying?

Woodworking is a popular hobby with developers; at some level at least they're both about creating things. The "eventually" part is a nod towards retirement and then joking not having a choice.

> Woodworking is a popular hobby with developers

huh? TIL.

Most devs I know live in condos and have no chance of having a place to do woodworking.

Maybe it's a regional thing.

Re: Ask HN: Laid off folks, are you getting hired?

#300

I 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.

Every programmer eventually becomes a woodworker, whether they like it or not.

"Sorry I missed your comment of many months ago. I no longer build software; I now make furniture out of wood. The hours are long, the pay sucks, and there's always the opportunity to remove my finger with a table saw, but nobody asks me if I can add an RSS feed to a DBMS, so there's that :-)"
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