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Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

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Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#441

Post by windowshopping »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #404
windowshopping wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been able to get something like 25 interviews in 2 months despite having long gaps on my resume and nothing especially impressive to my name. So I suspect you might be going about this wrong. I haven't gotten an offer yet, that's another story, but getting the interviews hasn't been hard. Applying in NYC/SF, senior-only.

So what do you attribute your success in getting interviews to? What are you doing right, or better than other people?

I honestly have no idea. The last place I worked is pretty well-known. Not big tech, but a recognizable name to most people. I send out a lot of applications: those 25 interviews are the result of 150 applications in the last two months or so. And then I have my linkedin set to be discoverable and looking for a job. Basically just fiddle with the options under Visibility and Data Privacy in the linkedin settings and a bunch of people start reaching out to you immediately. I also think I have a nicely formatted resume, really readable.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#442

Post by Sharlin »

truncate wrote: post #399
ambicapter wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipping is only hard when you have to deal with all the loose ends "builders" leave lying around.

There is famous term for those: Tactical Tornados https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33394287

From 2022. Funny that soon after that we figured out how to automate the Tactical Tornado programmer and collectively decided that they're the best thing ever and nobody needs other kinds of devs anymore.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#443

Post by koliber »

jjmarr wrote: post #201
zabzonk wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask what you and others that posts things like this here -"What are you actually developing?" People are posting about pull requests, use of AIs, yada yada. But they never tell us what they are trying to produce. Surely this should be the first thing in the post: - I am developing an X - I use an LLM to write some of the code for it ... etc. - I have these ... testing problems - I have these problems with the V…

I'm hosting a Kubernetes cluster on Azure and trying to autoscale it to tens of thousands of vCPUs. The goal is to transparently replace dedicated developer workstations (edit: transparently replace compiling ) because our codebase is really big and we've hired enough people this is viable. edit: to clarify, I'm using recc which wraps the compiler commands like distcc or ccache. It doesn't require developers to give…

You seem exceptionally bright. Most people are not like this. This is why they are struggling.

It sounds like you have a job, right out of college, but you're griping about not getting promoted faster. People generally don't get promoted 9 months into a job.

I'm reading your post and I am genuinely impressed but what you claim to have done. At the same time I am confused about what you would like to achieve within the first year of your professional career. You seem to be doing quite well, even in this challenging environment.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#444

Post by tunesmith »

markus_zhang wrote: post #180
ryanSrich wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent of about $20/hr today for those wondering

Housing is the ultimate decider so I’d say that’s equivalent to at least 50 bucks today.

Not even close, not when all things are considered. $50/hour is 100k/year, which is still considered a decent salary. 24k/year in 2000-2002 was definitely not considered a decent salary. $12/hour for sw engineers was evil. I hung up on that recruiter and cursed for a while, cold-called my way to a transitional $20/hr job, and then finally landed somewhere at $55/hr which is when things started to feel normal again. $55/hr back then is not the same as $230/hr now.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#445

Post by rmm78 »

squidlogic wrote: post #397
schmichael wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! Could HN switch the links? bsky doesn't require a login to view replies. bsky is just a superior viewing experience.

If viewing replies is the goal, it looks like bsky has 2 replies and the twitter link has 45 replies. Do with that information what you will.

[dead]

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#446

Post by fsloth »

in_cahoots wrote: post #365
fsloth wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW this is the best kind of job ever for me as well: "when you started you didn't even know if there was a solution." Regardless what the problem is - as long as I know _nobody knows if there is a solution_ it's an instant sugar rush. You are free to bang your head against a stone wall for months trying to crack the damn thing. OFC you need to deliver in the end. And this requires then ruthless "worse is better" me…

Interesting, this is a trap that I've seen multiple senior hires fall into. In my experience "we have a problem but no solution" often means (a) there actually is a solution but it's too expensive to implement, (b) there are organizational reasons why this problem exists and a new hire doesn't have the experience or credibility to navigate it or (c ) there is no solution to the problem or the solution is very complex…

"Interesting, this is a trap that I've seen multiple senior hires fall into."

Definetly it's a trap. If you are a purist it's nigh impossible. But if you ruthlessly 80/20 it most stakeholders will be pleasantly surprised.

I have no clue why I end up in these situations but I sure do like them.

I do realize this would sound more of a perpetual "not invented here syndrome" but technical implementation of modeling aspects for 3D and computational geometry is such a scarce talent you actually get to do novel stuff for your business.

The last time this happened I designed & implemented the core modeling architecture and led the implementation effort for our new map feature[0]

[0] See section "Stunning new building facades add practical value" in https://www.mapbox.com/blog/detailed-architecture-and-new-de...

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#447

Post by dasil003 »

stemlord wrote: post #384
dasil003 wrote: post #372

The graph does a really poor job supporting the conclusion, most obviously because it only goes back to 2016, the peak of boom times, it doesn't go anywhere near 2008 so why does the caption talk about that? Just this same graph alone going back to 1990 would be super eye-opening. The other thing is it's showing first derivative, not absolute numbers, which is a very questionable way to derive "worst employment situa…

Theres a zoomed out version immediately below that tweet. https://x.com/JosephPolitano/status/2029916369056079975

Ah, I can't see that because I'm not logged into Twitter. Doesn't quite pack the same punch does it?

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#448

Post by irl_zebra »

cyberpunk wrote: post #232
stackedinserter wrote: post #64

Are there real positions these days? I get rejection for every single position that I apply to. Often I read literally a description of myself in job posting, and it's still "we decided to no move forward". At the same time, I hire people and see that 8/10 candidates are just trash. Not in the sense they "are not aligned", or "emit wrong vibes", or other bs. They literally can't write a single line of code, on their…

It’s bananas how many utterly crap candidates we get at the moment too. One low point was an interview with a guy who connected with his current work laptop and couldn’t find the $ key on it for a basic scripting question. I can’t make it make sense either.

Because the hoards of people who can't find the ` or | or $ on their keyboard outnumber competent people 100:1. I had this exact experience too, so frustrating. Moved to a strictly referral model where I pay my SWEs $10k if a candidate they refer gets hired.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#449

Post by icedchai »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #185
crystal_revenge wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally tend to interview every year to see what's out there in the world (sometimes I find something worth switching for, other times not). I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month. Personally I think it's a bit more nuanced than senior vs junior (though it is very hard for juniors right now). What I've seen a lot of hunger for is people with a track record of getting their hand…

> I'm very much a "builder" type dev that has more fun going from 0-v1 than maintaining and expanding scalable, large systems. Most prefer a greenfield project.

My best projects have all been greenfield. The worst were a few years old but required tons of maintenance unrelated to the core product. Example: one place built their own ORM. Twice.
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