371–380 of 720 posts
A look at the number of replies to "Who's Hiring?" each month over the past year or so compared to prior years made it loud and clear. Traditional tech has been in a recession for a couple of years, at least!
The other thing is it's showing first derivative, not absolute numbers, which is a very questionable way to derive "worst employment situation" in a field that has been on world-changing boom over the last 50 years.
Tech was and still is the easiest way to make 200k base salary, before even thinking about the stock.
We need a reset and anyone who can’t make it can go fill the jobs we need in construction, education, etc.
It's bad, yeah, especially for folks on the job market (it me). Some statistics first, from my own job search logs: * Since I hit the pavement in late January, I've tracked 100 job applications * Of those 100, only 7 have turned into interviews * Of those seven interviews, 3 turned into second-round * ~50% of all applications never receive a response * ~20% of rejections for any reason have the role re-posted within…
I'm also looking right now and a lot of that resonates with me. The posted salary ranges are often a complete joke as you noted. "The pay band for this role is $80,000-250,000 commensurate with experience and interview performance". Yeah OK buddy are you seriously trying to tell me you have multiple people with the exact same job title making salaries over $100k apart? Feels like they're just giving the finger to law…
My example of that was when I applied for an Architect role (as I'm at that point in my upward career trajectory), and they asked me instead to apply for a Senior Admin role as they "didn't know what the Architect role would look like yet". I did, I included my comp target, and got the hard sell on why I was being unreasonable and should take {2016_PAY}/{$100k below SV_FIRM} instead. I mentioned my absolute floor was {$75k lower than SV_FIRM}/{$25k lower than my target}, ran him through my math (median rent for the area, on-site expectations, commute costs, food costs, insurance costs, 50/30/20 budgeting, etc), and pointed out that floor would only cover needs (50) and savings (20) with no fun money (30) whatsoever. Ultimately I withdrew my name entirely because the guy just wouldn't listen to me, and all but demanded I be grateful for his number in the current economy.
I suspect something similar is going on with another company that's seemingly ghosted me, after I stated I was targeting their upper boundary of their listed comp range - still $85k below {SV_FIRM}, but with growth potential towards Architect and Director-type IT roles. Even when I'm fine eating huge pay cuts for work (and falling off the homebuying ladder, as not even {SV_FIRM} paid house-purchasing money), the employers out there really do want perfect diamonds for the cost of Halloween Trinkets.
> Also if you're going to dumpster candidates without banking experience why on earth did you waste several hours of your staff's time giving me tech screens?
This is also something that's grinding my gears. Had an investment firm put me through six technical interviews with glowing recommendations every step of the way only for the seventh round (CIO) to put the kibosh on it without a reason and after showing up unprepared and disinterested. Also had companies say I lack financial discipline experience when I've literally built models, showback systems, budget forecasts, and cemented six-figures of monthly savings in prior roles; same with companies saying I "lack compliance experience" despite calling out running infra in highly regulated environments, performing compliance audits for clients, and uplifting infra to satisfy compliance regimes.
If I didn't know better, I'd say the entire HR process is just feeding shit into chatbots and letting them make hiring decisions. Nobody seems to actually care about the humans involved or the wider systems at play.
It's immensely frustrating, but I can only keep on keeping on until something changes. I don't need to win every application, I just need to win one.
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Thank you! Could HN switch the links? bsky doesn't require a login to view replies. bsky is just a superior viewing experience.
I don't know if switching from a extreme partisan site to another extreme partisan site is the right solution just because of the need of login credentials. In any case, Twitter/X has been online almost 20 years. Bluesky still has to prove its staying power long term.
1. You start off by labelling both platforms as "extreme partisan" - care to explain? 2. This charge is used to minimize the original complaint (login requirement), which is a hard blocker to view replies, i.e. additional context. 3. This all then somehow morphs into a point about platform longevity?
How exactly does any of this address parent commenter's statement that "bsky is just a superior viewing experience."?
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> I'm very much a "builder" type dev that has more fun going from 0-v1 than maintaining and expanding scalable, large systems. Maintaining and expanding is more challenging, which is why I’ve grown to prefer that. Greenfield and then leaving is too easy, you don’t learn the actually valuable lessons. As experience shows that projects won’t stay in the nice greenfield world, building them can feel like doing illusory…
This is unironically my favorite kind of HN comment: to say something incredibly rude and/or condescending but wrap it in the right kind of thoughtful language to qualify as HN nice The original punchline ("you don’t learn the actually valuable lessons.") was just a bit too sharp, so you even edited in a psuedo-clarification which actually just repeats that punchline but in a softer way, masterful!
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This is unironically my favorite kind of HN comment: to say something incredibly rude and/or condescending but wrap it in the right kind of thoughtful language to qualify as HN nice The original punchline ("you don’t learn the actually valuable lessons.") was just a bit too sharp, so you even edited in a psuedo-clarification which actually just repeats that punchline but in a softer way, masterful!
My intention was actually to inspire others to maybe also start preferring long-term/maintenance work, because I feel there’s a lack of enthusiasm for that. Almost invariably after submitting, I see how I could clarify and/or expand on my thoughts, so I often do end up editing.
AI makes it look like these developers can do the same job the Americans did building the product to begin with. Even if things fall apart in the end, it won’t stop the attempt to order of magnitude reduce the cost for maintenance.
In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an "average" developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position. Contrary to what many say, I don't think it's simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren't. Juniors are still getting hired because they're still way cheaper and they're just as capable as using AI a…
HN user: not in my experience!
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Some make less than new grads at AMZN with 0 YOE.
> Some You're really playing loose with the Venn diagram here. Only "some" Amazon SWEs would "code JavaScript (poorly)."