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Panic at the Job Market

matt.sh

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Re: Panic at the Job Market

#361

Post by lumost »

Reading through the writer's notes. I don't disagree that there is a chasm between large successful firms and small firms over the last 15 years. The 2000 to 2010 period had nearly the opposite behavior however where startups were the successful area to join, rather than established firms such as IBM/HP etc.

The notes on the job interview process are more suspect however, the examples of performance fixes that the author published are mostly focused on systems engineering. Having started my career in this space, I can say that I've seen a noticable move away from systems engineers as a distinct profession over the last ~10 years. Better cloud systems enable standard SDEs to carry the pager and not lose (as much) sleep. Better tooling and knowledge has likewise equipped standard SDEs to build out their cloud infra without an additional systems person in the middle. Bias against individuals being hired with these skills also tends to mean that systems focused engineers transitioning to SDE have a harder time.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#362

Post by titanomachy »

levlaz wrote: post #68

> manage yourself and manage your peers, but you also have an engineering manager and a project manager and the CEO is your skip-level manager and the CEO’s brother is also your skip-level manager too This is hilarious and I’m sad I’ve seen versions of this more than once. Overall I enjoyed most of this article but disagree about the objection to behavioral interviews. I think they’re an important part of the modern…

I haven't decided how I feel about behavioral interviews. I always pass them, but it feels like I'm telling the interviewer what they want to hear. I don't lie, but I certainly cherry-pick examples that make me look good and present an analysis that makes me seem more emotionally intelligent than I probably was in the moment.

My assumption is that everyone does this, and the interview is largely a test to determine if you even know what a "good" answer would sound like. The assignment is to describe how you think an emotionally intelligent and mature person would act, and if you don't even know what that looks like then there's no way they're hiring you.

If you say "I repeatedly managed to singlehandedly save the day despite being surrounded by idiots" then you've done them a huge favor of letting them know you're a pain in the ass to work with. I would assume that most people know better than to admit to an interviewer that this is how they think, but I don't conduct these interviews so I'm not sure.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#363

Post by jldugger »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #272
jldugger wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have many friends (in Europe) EU kind of in a recession though. And there's a well known link between interest rates and unemployment. So it's really not surprising to hear that employment in the EU is harder after the ECB raised rates. And good news: they're lowering them now. What really needs explaining is why, despite the unusually strong general US job market[1] for several years now, the US tech market spec…

> If you do three years worth of hiring in one single year, eventually you need to pause Yep, a lot of demand (for tech labor) was pulled forward. The other aspect to consider for the last year or so is that some higher up folks who make decisions to hire people seem to have become convinced that AI is going to (or already is) enable them to get by with fewer engineering heads.

But maximizing shareholder value isn't about "just getting by" it's about optimizing the mix of labor, management and assets to the point that paying to increase any of those variables is break-even. In that case, "AI makes engineers more productive" should lead to more hiring not layoffs.

My suspicion is that the reality is that interest rates are having the intended effect of curbing demand and rather than admit you need to layoff people to match weak demand (and expensive capital), you can tell shareholders a story about AI that doesn't cause them to panic.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#364

Post by [deleted] »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #334
quasse wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least now I no longer have to argue with ‘inflation is good for us’ people. Who has been arguing this?

I know, hard to imagine now but a few years ago it really was a popular theory that wage inflation would exceed price inflation - the continuing rise in tech salaries being the case in point. A belief often held by those with unserviceable student loans that they would rather inflate away. Plus the whole MMT thing which was disturbingly close to becoming official policy is predicated on inflation being hard to start…

[deleted]

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#365

Post by badpun »

analogwzrd wrote: post #174

My pessimistic take on the world at the moment is that at least 50% of jobs in the US fall into Graeber's BS jobs category. I saw a map a few years ago that labelled the largest employer in each state. In every state except Arkansas (Walmart), the largest employer was a university or a healthcare company. Education and healthcare policies are controversial because everyone wants those things to be as good as possible…

Largest employers don't neccessarily translate into their segment being largest in the job market. For example, fast food restaurants in the US employ 4.7 million people, while higher ed institutions hire 3 million.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#366

Post by throwworhtthrow »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #189
Peroni wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Behavioural interviews are extremely effective provided you do them properly. Running behavioural interviews properly is extremely difficult and takes legitimate skill and experience to orchestrate. It's not something you can pull off by simply following a few rote questions in an interview pack. As a result, most behavioural interviews are ineffective and absolutely riddled with bias.

That's one of the reasons that they are best done by experienced HR personnel. Good HR people are worth their weight in platinum. I used to work with one whose thumbs down became an automatic "no" from the team because we discovered that she was so good at reading people that everyone she didn't like inevitably threw off massive red flags in the rest of the interviews.

This is foolish. Anyone can have a bad day, including the clairvoyant HR. Don't build an interview panel around pleasing "that one gal"; that kind of situation happens enough by accident.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#367

Post by electromech »

bwanab wrote: post #250

I fear this analysis would fit very well in the realm of "Spurious Correlations": https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations . At time scales like two or three years, very few economic correlations mean anything.

I'm inclined to agree, but for some reason the theory that "developer jobs are scarce because interest rates" has been repeated often lately. I'm not sure why people find it so compelling. I live in a city dominated by non-tech Fortune 500s (i.e., not VC start-ups) who traditionally hire lots of devs but this year not so much.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#368

Post by glzone1 »

bpm140 wrote: post #341
ricardobayes wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, I read a post today which swore that the only way to get hired is NOT to rely on network. Because hiring managers receive so many applications if you don't get your app in the first 24 hours it's guaranteed to be rejected. I think the network thing works only for smaller companies.

Not relying on your network sounds like terrible advice. Employee: “Hello, hiring manager. I know an incredible candidate for that job we posted last week.” Hiring manager: “Thanks, employee, but we have hundreds of resumes from strangers, so we don’t need to talk to your contact.” I’m not saying that never happens? But I am saying that it happens rarely enough that you shouldn’t use it to guide your networking strat…

Networking is gold for everyone.

Hey - you're looking for a job? Come work here PLEASE!! As a company you can get folks who'd otherwise go elsewhere as well this way because process can be shorter - you've already worked with them maybe in other contexts etc.

One issue now with hiring is just the crap you have to wade through. When hiring was local and/or in office interviews it was one thing - but now it's honestly wild. The number of responses is INSANE. I used to make a point to read every resume (just a glance at least) - that's impossible now (it's slow anyways on a lot of sites to flip through resumes).

Outsourcing is definitely up as well since overall remote is up and has made that easier.

Then you've got scammers - we've definitely contracted with one person, and when talking with them later its a different person entirely. Ie, email grammar falls into trash.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#369

Post by cableshaft »

irrational wrote: post #253

I read through this, but I still don't know how the company I work for fits into it. I am a programmer for a Fortune 100 company, but none of the stable company descriptions seem to match my company. Certainly not in terms of compensation. $5,000-$10,000 per day? By my calculation, I make about $800 per work day and don't have any stock options or that kind of stuff. So, the pay (apparently) isn't great, but it is st…

There's no way that's accurate. Do they really think most engineers are being paid $1.8million to $3.6million per year at 'stable' ultra-growth companies, even taking the stocks into account?

There's no way this is true. A tiny number of engineers across a handful of companies maybe.

The rest are getting paid way less than that. Or working for a company that is 'ultra-growth' but runs out of cash and goes belly up before you can even vest your stock options.

If this is considered common in these type of companies, someone please point me in the direction of companies like that, please. I'm not making anywhere close to that much, and I have some good experience in both startup and enterprise companies. I'd even accept 1/4th of that.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#370

Post by Stratoscope »

The best part of this piece is the link to the Wired article about The Melt:

https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-trendiest-grilled-cheese...

If you hit a paywall, clear the site cookies and reload, or read it here:

https://archive.is/GmXWM

Oh, The Melt has a location in Stanford Shopping Center near where I live.

I am almost tempted to try it. Almost.

Nah, I am certain I can make a better grilled cheese at home. Here's a recipe I just invented while looking at some ingredients I need to use up.

Finely chop a fennel bulb and plenty of garlic. Gently sauté them in a flavorful extra virgin olive oil on medium-low heat.

Strain them out of the pan with a slotted spoon and leave the remaining oil in the pan.

Spread a thin layer of a mild Dijon mustard like Grey Poupon on one side of each slice of bread. This helps the cheese stick to the bread as you assemble the sandwich. A porous bread is nice so the cheese oozes through.

Put a thin layer of sharp cheddar on one slice and a thin layer of Swiss or Jarlsberg on the other. Or whatever you have handy, but you want one cheese to be super flavorful and the other to be stringy as it melts.

Put one slice of bread in the pan (obviously cheese side up!) and add a layer of the veggies on top of the cheese. Put the other slice cheese side down on top.

Don't be tempted to flip it too soon!

Instead, smash it with a spatula repeatedly as it warms up. And move the sandwich(es) around the pan to pick up the rest of that flavored oil you just made.

After some of the cheese oozes through the bread, then you can flip it and give that side the same treatment. The more you smash, the better it gets.

Now that it is nicely stuck together, you can flip it all you want. You will know when it is done.

Of course you can use any vegetable in the middle, I'm just using what I have on hand.

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