When the job search becomes impossible • Hacker News Board

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#411

Post by m_fayer » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 5:48 PM UTC

rcruzeiro wrote: post #253

giantg2 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"this is not some game-changing phenomenon[0]. The jobs will return when it is once again a "seller's market" -- which it surely will be." Pretty bold. Things like manufacturing haven't recovered and we're seeing similar outsourcing in tech.

There was also a trend of outsourcing in tech after the DotCom bust, but that was reversed (and arguably not as much of a problem as it first seemed to be).

It was just ahead of its time. No longer the case with our present tools and techniques.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#412

Post by lovich » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #266

jofer wrote: post #148

As someone who's recently been hiring (sorry folks, position was filled just a few days ago), it's wild to me how distorted things have become. We had 1200 applications for an extremely niche role. A huge amount were clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic. Another huge portion were just unqualified. The irony is that there actually _are_ a ton of exceptionally qualified…

Been a couple of years since I last was an interviewer, but I’m always amazed at people who blatantly exaggerate in-depth experience while seeking a highly technical position. Job Requirements: Senior Staff, Deep technical work in X, Y, Z Resume: 10 years as tech lead in X, Y, Z Reality: Once walked near someone with experience in X, Y, Z and heard them sneeze loudly. Can spell X correctly. Why do they even bother?

> Why do they even bother?

Because the job requirements on the position are likely to be real as the applicants accomplishments on their resume.

At every company I’ve done hiring at my job descriptions for positions on my team were edited by my boss or hr and read like what was 1-2 levels above the nominal title of the position or had shit like the well worn joke of asking for X years of experience in technology that hadn’t existed for that long.

The entire hiring market for tech at least has devolved into almost 100% noise over the last few years

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#413

Post by ludicrousdispla » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 6:20 PM UTC

jofer wrote: post #148

As someone who's recently been hiring (sorry folks, position was filled just a few days ago), it's wild to me how distorted things have become. We had 1200 applications for an extremely niche role. A huge amount were clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic. Another huge portion were just unqualified. The irony is that there actually _are_ a ton of exceptionally qualified…

>> clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic

Can you elaborate on why you consider a close match to the job description to be unrealistic?

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#414

Post by Yoric » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 6:30 PM UTC

devnullbrain wrote: post #229

Yoric wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can start building a network by reaching out to alumni, former colleagues, open-source contributors for projects you're contributing to [1], etc. Hardly ideal, but it's a start. [1] And if you're not contributing to an open-source project, please do it, it's a great way to learn stuff, improve your CV, network and of course give back.

I find this kind of advice underspecified. The people struggling the most to find work are juniors: what projects are big enough that the applicant would a) know and care about them and b) get a benefit out of the network but also c) have fruit low enough for a solo junior to reach? I tried this way-back-when and ended up submitting fixes to projects that were open source but had no real path to accepting patches fro…

From the top of my head: Firefox (https://codetribute.mozilla.org), LibreOffice, Gnome, ...

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#415

Post by lawlessone » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 6:31 PM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #311

titanomachy wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A serviceable refurbished Android can be obtained for $50. A new iPhone costs at least $800, which is 100 hours of work at the federal minimum wage.

And a serviceable refurbished iPhone isn't that much more, e.g. https://swappa.com/listings/apple-iphone-se-2nd-gen?carrier=...

ok, but could that mean many people that are assumed to have new devices could actually be using older devices?

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#416

Post by squigz » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 6:45 PM UTC

monkeyelite wrote: post #401

squigz wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think one has to live in a country to be able to look up and read statistics, or talk to people who work there, or read job postings from there, or have worked for companies in that country, or... Anyway I'm not really sure why you're so insistent on this focus of America. HN (and the Internet in general) is a pretty diverse crowd... which was sort of my point

My claim is about US salaries for software engineering roles. Please share your stats.

Your claim is that all non-student Americans on HN are paid 6 figure salaries.

Please share your stats.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#417

Post by pavel_lishin » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 6:51 PM UTC

alimahmoudhu wrote: post #341

eclipticplane wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of fake resumes is insane. During reviews I ended up passing a number of fake profiles through because their CVs looked real. None of them showed up to the initial screening call. There are now AI CVs mimicking real people, so the CVs point to real Linkedin profiles, Github profiles. Not sure what their end game is unless it's to continually test CV creation or find woefully inept companies that will hire…

> I ended up passing a number of fake profiles through because their CVs looked real. None of them showed up to the initial screening call. That's just crazy. Probably those were for collecting data to analyze what makes a CV pass. Mass apply everywhere, combine the results, and analyze the results manually or using LLMs. Selling these data can be profitable

It's also possible that they got a job elsewhere, and didn't follow up.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#418

Post by pavel_lishin » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 6:54 PM UTC

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #392

abathur wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably crazy talk, but I have been wondering how requiring people to slap a stamp on an envelope and mail in a résumé would go.

I don’t think it is crazy and I have suggested beforehand there needs to be some sort of proof of work on the candidate side to prevent resume spam. I think your idea is very elegant as everyone has access to the mail system, an actual stamp is pretty cheap, but it is just enough hassle to mail an application that it will filter out some of the spam. The other suggestion I have had is that candidates need to hand in…

> The other suggestion I have had is that candidates need to hand in the resume in person

This might be a bigger lift than asking for a take-home project; if I'm expected to drop off a resume in Manhattan that's a minimum of a two hour trip for me. I'd rather spend two hours banging together a CRUD app to show that I can actually write code.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#419

Post by BetaDeltaAlpha » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 7:05 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #418

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it is crazy and I have suggested beforehand there needs to be some sort of proof of work on the candidate side to prevent resume spam. I think your idea is very elegant as everyone has access to the mail system, an actual stamp is pretty cheap, but it is just enough hassle to mail an application that it will filter out some of the spam. The other suggestion I have had is that candidates need to hand in…

> The other suggestion I have had is that candidates need to hand in the resume in person This might be a bigger lift than asking for a take-home project; if I'm expected to drop off a resume in Manhattan that's a minimum of a two hour trip for me. I'd rather spend two hours banging together a CRUD app to show that I can actually write code.

I read this as applying to in-office roles, If I were willing to commute, then it's a good chance to exercise the lift required.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#420

Post by sfink » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 7:12 PM UTC

crock_smacker wrote: post #371

sfink wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strict honesty here has always been a losing proposition. The "requirements" section of a job posting has almost never been accurate. It's more of an image they're painting. An honest applicant is one who reads the whole description to understand as best they can what the company is looking for, and sort of holistically matches their own expertise against that picture. If the job posting lists requirements A-F and yo…

> If the job posting lists requirements A-F and you have A, B, D, E, and F, then you'd do both yourself and the company a disservice by disqualifying yourself. Put it in your cover letter if you can't handle the discrepancy. I’m my experience the problem is that the missing “C” is deep level domain expertise outside of the technical end and that’s just so much more important than the other ones, and importantly, some…

Sure, that happens, but that's also pretty clear to the job seeker. Don't try to BS your way past that one.

More commonly, that list of requirements comes from the recruiter quizzing the developers on what they need, and they throw out a bunch of stuff that could describe a person they'd be interested in hiring. But there are many other people who would work too, and the developers are likely to come up with stuff that they're familiar with and end up describing someone much like them with maybe 1 additional skill -- which is actually backwards, because they already have that expertise in the aggregate and what they really need is what they don't already have, but that stuff is harder to think of and value and therefore suggest to the recruiter because, well, it's stuff they're unfamiliar with.

A good recruiter will push back and make them figure out which are actual requirements. But getting it right requires a good recruiter + good developers who will make the time to think it through + good company culture. Most job posts are not coming from such a fortunate place.

On the flip side, the recruiter is hearing from management that they want someone who is perfectly carved out to accomplish a single task X, preferably someone who has already accomplished task X at another company so they can get hired and immediately do X here as well. Sure, they'll also be another body to shut up the whiny developers talking about how they have too much to do, but the position is open because they've been asking for X for months and the developers keep saying they don't have enough bandwidth. So they describe what they want to the recruiter in painful specificity. If their conception of X requires technologies and tools A, B, and C, then their requirements list is something like "Minimum 10 years experience doing X. Expert in A. Expert in B. Expert in C. Must have a PhD from my school or a school I'm envious of."

Maybe I've just had some bad experiences, but this is why I don't take requirements lists too seriously. Sure, if it wants "experience in medical imaging" and you have nothing related, don't apply. But if it gives a laundry list of specific technologies, it's either developers looking for clones or managers looking for someone to do a specific project.