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

Panic at the Job Market

matt.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 1001 posts

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#541

Post by namtab00 »

bmitc wrote: post #281
UncleOxidant wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While tough, it's often a good thing for the applicant as a natural filter. If someone can't hire well, it's not a good place to work. But for people like the guy who wrote that article, eviction eventually becomes a problem. And so many companies can't hire well right now that in a market with declining openings he might not be able to wait for a company that can hire well.

That is definitely true. And a lot of the jobs are jobs that the person would do well in, but the employers don't bother to see it. I know there are jobs that I would have done extremely well in, but the companies were just black boxes. They just sit around being unproductive while they wait for someone to check some arbitrary checkboxes. It'd be like trying to hire a farm hand but instantly reject them because they…

I was recently turned down on the first interview with an HR head. Motive: I said I can sometimes be perceived as frank in an argument, as an answer to the classic "tell me one of your shortcomings".

I'm not saying it can't be a valid reason. I guess I just don't get their values.

I'm convinced I would have been a pretty good match technically, but never got the chance to show it.

Italy, opening had max €50k budget.

I have 17 yoe and obviously it was not my first rodeo. Maybe I finally learned that sincerity and transparency is a dumbass move.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#543

Post by Retric »

greybox wrote: post #485
gosub100 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that company hire or recruiter hire h1b? In order to get h1b approval, you have to make the case that "we interviewed x,000 people and we just can't find any qualified applicants! ". I'm starting to suspect that the industry has learned to set salaries low and churn enough applicants in order to reduce costs. One way to churn them is to do a phone screen and find a quick way to legally get rid of them. Then once…

[reference needed] - I read a study from a few years ago suggesting that H1B Visa hires on average get paid more than hires from inside the US.

Is that including lower job titles for the same jobs, education, and years of experience?

H1B’s sometimes get skipped over for promotions specifically because it would mess with the paperwork. Which across an industry would definitely mess with these statistics.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#544

Post by giobox »

greybox wrote: post #485
gosub100 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that company hire or recruiter hire h1b? In order to get h1b approval, you have to make the case that "we interviewed x,000 people and we just can't find any qualified applicants! ". I'm starting to suspect that the industry has learned to set salaries low and churn enough applicants in order to reduce costs. One way to churn them is to do a phone screen and find a quick way to legally get rid of them. Then once…

[reference needed] - I read a study from a few years ago suggesting that H1B Visa hires on average get paid more than hires from inside the US.

As it's an actual requirement to publish the salary for an H1B employee as part of LCA disclosures, the data is collated every year, it's no secret what anyone on an H1B earns (if you are on an H1B you can often find your own individual record in here):

https://h1bdata.info/

My own take; its complicated. From my own direct experiences, there is a world of difference between how large companies typically use the H1B (The Microsoft/Apple/Metas) etc and how say a medium sized fortune 500 company IT department might typically use it. There are absolutely ways to abuse the process and they types of jobs being worked on an H1B very enormously in type, quality and salary - just explore the data above. The larger companies pretty much always do hire on same terms as any other American. At smaller companies, can be a lottery.

Salary isn't the only means of exploiting an H1B hire either, to be clear. Lots of other tricks like slow walking immigration processes, exploiting the fact it is harder for an H1B employee to change job than a citizen. The being skipped over for a promotion to avoid paperwork issues with the LCA etc is something I've seen first hand.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#545

Post by Hugsun »

bostik wrote: post #372
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…

> 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. I am fully aware that this may sound emphatically void, but what the devs in the rest of EU are going through right now looks a lot like what the hiring scene was in Finland back in the 1990's and 2000's. And ye…

How was the hiring scene in Finland back then, and how are they similar?

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#546

Post by Tao3300 »

woooooo wrote: post #534
givemeethekeys wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you were smart enough to see all the problems in all your past jobs but those companies still went bankrupt, maybe you weren't actually the ideal employee you think you are. If you're smart enough to see all the problems but the company goes bankrupt, maybe are were actually just the ideal employee. For the vast majority of roles, tech and otherwise, hiring managers prefer to hire someone who'll ask questions li…

The dirty secret is that everyone can see the problems. But the first person to point them out becomes "the problem".

I ran into that one hard once.

"Hey, money isn't coming out of this function correctly. No, really, here's the math..."

"PACK UP YOUR DESK NOW."

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#547

Post by Tao3300 »

lmm wrote: post #512

Just like "if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid", if you were smart enough to see all the problems in all your past jobs but those companies still went bankrupt, maybe you weren't actually the ideal employee you think you are. And if programming interviews are beneath you and only passed by your inferiors but you can't pay rent, maybe they're not actually so far beneath you. Using your l33t knowledge of AWS t…

Lmao. That sort of simping for incompetence belongs on LinkedIn, not here.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#548

Post by lmm »

troebr wrote: post #529
lmm wrote: post #512

Just like "if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid", if you were smart enough to see all the problems in all your past jobs but those companies still went bankrupt, maybe you weren't actually the ideal employee you think you are. And if programming interviews are beneath you and only passed by your inferiors but you can't pay rent, maybe they're not actually so far beneath you. Using your l33t knowledge of AWS t…

What do you mean? That as a sysadmin he should also have solved the product/sales/marketing woes of the company? You can only do so much at certain positions. Even if you go out of your way to make people aware that they are making a costly mistake, it's can be really hard to sway them. If the marketing team does a shit job, maybe I can tell the marketing is shit, but I can't do more than trying to make people aware…

> What do you mean? That as a sysadmin he should also have solved the product/sales/marketing woes of the company? You can only do so much at certain positions.

Well, it seems that he's pointedly not willing to be just a code monkey, that he thinks he should care about product/sales/marketing to the detriment of working within his position. Which is a good quality in some ways, but only to the extent that it translates into actual added value. A coder who increases marketing's productivity is an asset, but one who just points out problems without achieving anything by that is a liability compared to one who stays siloed off and gets on with their coding.

And, y'know, lots of people think that the problem with the company is everyone else and they know how to do everyone else's jobs better than they do. How do you distinguish the few people who think this and are right from the many people who think this and are wrong? Well, that's the wrong question; unless someone can actually do something about it, it doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong. If you worked with an incompetent marketing person who you knew was going to sink the company and you just rode that all the way down while complaining and blogging about it, that's actually worse than being the person who has no idea why the company sank.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#549

Post by lr4444lr »

caesil wrote: post #53

>According to all the interviews I’ve failed over the years (I don’t think I’ve ever passed an actual “coding interview” anywhere?), the entire goal of tech hiring is just finding people in the 100 to 115 midwit block then outright rejecting everybody else as too much of an unknown risk. As a (now) senior/staff-level engineer back out on the job market for the first time in a while, I'm begrudgingly coming to accept…

I wish on everyone complaining about tech interviews the misfortune of working with an incompetent fraud who makes their work life miserable.

Jobs are on offer for 6 figure salaries that require nothing more metabolically taxing than typing on a keyboard, in a temperature controlled environment, where you get to use your brain to solve problems, and these complainers think it won't be rife with frauds? The whole bootcamp phenomenon was openly churning them out.

Yes, I realize there are a few self learner diamonds in the rough. Yes, some tech interview questions or styles are ridiculous. But it's the best of a lot of bad options.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#550

Post by [deleted] »

Terr_ wrote: post #476
rafaelmn wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As in, a person who has used and learned a dozen plus languages but only tacitly used C++ suddenly will be a complete invalid when trying to write in C++? I've switched at least 5 languages professionally and used probably 5 more for extended periods of time and wrote a decent chunk of C++ "back in the day". I'd say C++ is the least suitable for "learn on the job" approach out of any language I can think of (I'm lu…

> I'd say C++ is the least suitable for "learn on the job" approach out of any language I can think of Anecdote: I've got a couple languages and decades under my belt, and a very simple C/C++ Arduino project is making me doubt my sanity. Ex: Serial.printf("%s", String("Hello world...")); // Emits 4 nonsense bytes... But shorter literals work fine. ________________________ EDIT: To save readers some time--I didn't int…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN