Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

urlahmed.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 502 posts

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#471

Post by marcus_holmes »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #441
physicsguy wrote: post #395

I'm based in the UK and have been a hiring manager pretty recently. I have seen a lot of CVs like this. This was the junior positions I was advertising two years ago, this wouldn't have made it through the filter. Because largely, we (as even a small company) would get ~250+ applicants for a single position. My filters were roughly (in order) (a) remove anyone who didn't study their degree in the UK and didn't explic…

250 applications per junior position shows how rough the market is for new grads

I was recruiting for junior devs in the UK back in the early 2000's and it was the same story then. One job we advertised had over a 1,000 applicants. 750+ were immediately ruled out because they had no right to work in the UK, another 200-ish were people from other professions trying to get into tech, but that still left us with 50+ people we should have interviewed but couldn't. We had to get down to arbitrary decisions on ridiculous grounds to cull the pile of CVs to the dozen or so we actually had time to interview.

And this was a small business in rural England. I can't imagine the stack a large company in a city would have to go through.

It has always been hard to get into the tech industry. There has always been a shortage of junior positions, and getting the first gig has always been the hardest step of this career.

However, I can totally understand how LLMs are making this worse. An LLM fills the exact spot in the team that would normally be taken by a junior dev. Anyone trying to get into the industry these days has my sympathy.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#472

Post by rcruzeiro »

t0rt01se wrote: post #381
rcruzeiro wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, I live in Europe where it is quite common to work remotely across countries within the EU or the UK. I have always wondered why so many US companies limit remote roles to people based in the US, and then mention a shortage of qualified talent. It feels like there is a large pool of people being overlooked.

Do you have any data to back up the claim that it's "quite common" to work remotely across countries within the EU/UK. Almost nothing in the "common/single market" works uniformly across the "common/single market". For instance this guy (OP) doesn't have a hope in hell of landing a job anywhere in the EU even though he's in the UK.

I know it’s anecdotal data, but every company that I’ve work for in the past 11 years? I’ve worked for companies in the UK, France, Portugal. If you check the job listings for remote jobs in Europe, you will find that there is rarely a constraint to where in Europe the candidate is located in.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#473

Post by throwaway-0001 »

saulpw wrote: post #437
throwaway-0001 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree with you. Companies don’t waste time on interviews if they don’t really want to hire. And if they didn’t hire him, maybe is because was not a good fit, and probably hired someone else. So the job was probably filled — by someone more competent?

Companies do waste time on interviews when they don't really want to hire, for numerous reasons. 1) To test the labor wage pricing of the market, 2) for legal or tax or optics reasons (in order to get cheaper H1B labor you have to have been trying to hire domestically for the role), 3) to placate someone internal (cheaper to perpetually pretend to be hiring than to actually hire). I'd bet there are others. It's easy…

Yes, but from the hiring effort what you said maybe is 10-25%. Any reason for this to increase in the last years to justify so many rejections? TBH I know many people that changes jobs in last 24 months just fine.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#474

Post by GianFabien »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #122
asdfman123 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not enough trades persons, building supplies, capital to solve that problem No, "not enough people" is corporate speak for "the public should train our workers for us"

One of the most frustrating things in my lifetime: Company CEO paid-orders-of-magnitude-more-than-median-employee: "Not enough local people with XYZ skills!" Skilled local person: "I'm right here, just pay me properly." Unskilled local person: "I'm right here, train me and I'll do it even at your low wage." Local educational institution: "We could run training courses if you want to work with us on that!" ... CEO: "G…

Yes, it is often the case.

BUT why not get a startup going and address the opportunity?

Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Uber, AirBnB, etc likewise saw problems as being opportunities in disguise.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#475

Post by nradov »

brazukadev wrote: post #346
nradov wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you have it the other way around! The US has a rich ecosystem of rapidly growing startup tech companies. Many of us on HN are working for them. There has never been a better time to build something new.

> There has never been a better time to build something new. Were you not around 10-20 years ago?

Yes, I was! Building new stuff back then was much harder due to lack of enabling infrastructure and tools. Just to take one example, AWS only started offering real cloud services in 2006 and for the first few years it wasn't a platform you could really use to build a whole company.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#476

Post by physicsguy »

chr15m wrote: post #454
physicsguy wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that’s bad, about 15 years ago I asked a recruiter from Rolls Royce how competitive their grad scheme was and it had over 20000 applications per year at the time.

With 250+ applications per job, does your company carry the prestige of Rolls Royce? Everything you are saying affirms the point OP is making.

No, though that company was a small company owned by a big corporate and working in renewables so somewhat interesting.

I’m not sure it does - I was last hiring two years ago. What I am saying is that this is nothing new.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#477

Post by physicsguy »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #456
physicsguy wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that’s bad, about 15 years ago I asked a recruiter from Rolls Royce how competitive their grad scheme was and it had over 20000 applications per year at the time.

how many new positions did they open annually? 20000 / 250 would be only 80 positions a year; doesn't seem like a lot for a company like RR If they opened 200 new positions a year, that's only 100 applications per position

Sure, but not all applications are equal right? If you get so many applications, you can basically cream off the top % for your grad scheme, even after accounting for the fact that you won't have every student accept a new grad offer.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#478

Post by tdb7893 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #435
tdb7893 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is I'll end up in government or an NGO but I'm probably going to do a PhD before that so getting a real job is at least 5 years away. The previous grad students for my advisor are all employed with decent jobs so I'm not worried, especially since I have a pretty unique skill set for the field and strong stats fundamentals. Edit: engineers are always skeptical of my career change but my friends actually in th…

The previous grad students came out in a different economic context. Things have changed remarkably for the sciences in just this year alone. Grad schools have actually rescinded offers because they no longer have funding for first years and faculty don’t have funding for taking on students. No one has seen anything like this before.

I'm flexible and I'll have a wide variety of marketable skills so I'm sure I'll figure something out eventually.

I think I come across as a lot less anxious than people expect because I've just accepted these challenges as a cost I'm going to have to pay. Trying to change careers so far has already really sucked in many ways (though in more ways it's been a real joy) but I actually handle this sort of stress okay. Turns out what I handle much worse is not really believing in my job.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#479

Post by _carbyau_ »

GianFabien wrote: post #474
_carbyau_ wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most frustrating things in my lifetime: Company CEO paid-orders-of-magnitude-more-than-median-employee: "Not enough local people with XYZ skills!" Skilled local person: "I'm right here, just pay me properly." Unskilled local person: "I'm right here, train me and I'll do it even at your low wage." Local educational institution: "We could run training courses if you want to work with us on that!" ... CEO: "G…

Yes, it is often the case. BUT why not get a startup going and address the opportunity? Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Uber, AirBnB, etc likewise saw problems as being opportunities in disguise.

I don't see an opportunity. I see it as a "community vs $" tradeoff, and companies are about $ every time.

A company could pay/train locals. But why, when you can go fishing for talent from overseas, pay them less, have them be dependent on your company to stay in country.

I am mainly frustrated with the "we have no locals with these skills" catchcry, when clearly it is "we have no locals with these skills we are willing to pay for".

And when that comes from companies with profits in the billions, it is just a "shareholder vs worker" balance of greed issue.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#480

Post by mcdeltat »

chii wrote: post #274
alyxya wrote: post #42

To the people at the top, the job market is a statistic. They can't feel empathy on an issue they're so disconnected from, so they just think it's not their problem, or there isn't much they can do about it. Technological innovation is supposed to mean society can produce more with less work, so in theory everyone's lives could end up better off over time where we could all work less and get more, but in practice, I…

> so in theory everyone's lives could end up better off over time they did. The innovation that happened in the past 100 years meant that almost everyone (in the west at least, and in a lot of developing nations too) has the access to transport, clean water, electricity, information/communications etc. And because everyone has it, people such as yourself see it as a baseline, and forget that it is benefits being rece…

I don't think it's so cut and dry.

For some (even many) measures, over a long period of centuries, on average, yes the world is probably going up. For other measures perhaps not. And at a small time frame very plausibly not.

Example: housing. Yes compared to 100 years ago the houses are almost certainly safer and better equipped. On the other hand, now I will likely never get to own one because cost of living is insane, and will be subject to financial stress for N years.

I don't think it's a valid argument to dismiss all criticism of modern life just because statistically I would've died at age 2 in 10000 BC.

Post reply on HN