Panic at the Job Market • Hacker News Board

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#781

Post by knallfrosch » Thu, Jul 18, 2024, 10:10 AM UTC

ThalesX wrote: post #723

JohnMakin wrote: post #238

Agree with a lot of this and have seen a lot of similar stuff as a former developer gone cloud infra guy for most of my career now. The core problem, as he gets to in a lot of this, is that if you work on infra, you are seen as a pure cost, and not adding anything to "revenue" or "product" (which is of course false). One of the most common patterns in hiring I see now is so exasperating it drives me to despair someti…

I just had this experience a week ago. I've worked with C# commercially but for the past 4 - 5 years I've been working with TypeScript mostly. There was a fun HR girl that sent me a message how she found my profile compelling and we should schedule an interview. I said why not. After 45 minutes of asking me all sorts of questions, she asks if I have experience with .NET 5. I went on to tell her that for the past year…

The trick is to say that you do have .NET 5 experience. That 25 yo female recruiter hired for looks won't be able to stop you.

You'll then get an invite to the technical interview where you can talk to people who actually know whether C+ exists.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#782

Post by sph » Thu, Jul 18, 2024, 10:14 AM UTC

-mlv wrote: post #371

emptysongglass wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, how would anyone have heard about this? This is the very first time I'm hearing anything about Section 174. Plus, this doesn't really explain Europe's tech sector dumping, since from a quick search this is entirely an American thing. So maybe you're just as wrong as anyone else?

Lots of European tech work is just offshoring/outsourcing for US companies. S174 affects them to an even higher degree since foreign software development has to be amortized not over 5 years, but over 15 years.

Yeah, because no one in Europe works for a European company. We're all code monkeys trained for the US market.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#783

Post by knallfrosch » Thu, Jul 18, 2024, 10:14 AM UTC

extr wrote: post #159

I found myself nodding along to some parts of this (hiring practices, company types) but I found the endless complaining about bad engineering practices frustrating to read. Running a company requires making tradeoffs. Everyone always thinks their pet interest/area is not getting enough attention. Of course the cloud architecture guy is foaming at the mouth to tell you your cloud architecture is terrible and needs to…

> Yeah it sucks to clean up the mess once it becomes unmanageable, but that's literally why you were hired!

I think that applies to every job. Yeah it sucks that people can't seem to hit the urinal, but yeah, that's why the cleaning person has a job. Staying in tech though, I wonder what the author would do of the cloud architecture was perfect upon joining. Nothing? Be useless?

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#784

Post by nikolayasdf123 » Thu, Jul 18, 2024, 10:20 AM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #501

abvdasker wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about this a bit and have decided the main barrier to realizing a software development worker co-op is getting together the sufficient startup capital. A handful of regular tech workers probably lack the liquid capital to self-fund a company. And good luck convincing a VC to invest in a worker coop. The easiest business to build like this would be a software consultancy since it doesn't actually require…

The H1B visa is one reason. Unions function by constraining the supply of labor. If companies can simply import labor, you can’t constrain supply. Bonus points if you can underpay the immigrants. H1B should be much more heavily scrutinized. And for those who are granted visas, their compensation needs to be exceptional, so that it doesn’t compete with American workers.

have you seen H1B numbers lately? H1B constraints supply as crazy. 80K slots for 800K+ applications.

and besides, over-restricting import of labour will just result in offshoring dev teams to India. just look at major USA tech names

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#785

Post by bregma » Thu, Jul 18, 2024, 10:25 AM UTC

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…

Your problem is that whoever designed that Serial class is incompetent and should be shot and their body defiled in unspeakable ways.

The C-language varargs concept and the C++ object model are not compatible. C++ provides varargs only for backwards compatibility with legacy C libraries. New APIs written in C++ should not be using it because passing a C++ object through it is undefined behaviour. No amount of rationalizing (as all the comments downthread are doing) is of any value: undefined behavior is undefined.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#786

Post by nikolayasdf123 » Thu, Jul 18, 2024, 10:26 AM UTC

theendisney wrote: post #484

You should start by treating a job search like a job. Get up at 8 and work 8 hours every day of the week. Lengthy interviews are great as you wont have to struggle figuring out what useful task to spend the hours on. You can also share your schedule in the interviews and disclose other interview processes in progress. They might find talking about interviewing more interesting than your interview. Working with them s…

not gonna work in current market. current tech job market is dying out. tech market in many countries outside of USA is beyond extreme right now. you will be beating out a dead horse and yourself too with it.

instead, take this time to re-focus, maybe change direction.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#787

Post by nikolayasdf123 » Thu, Jul 18, 2024, 10:28 AM UTC

486sx33 wrote: post #507

In a market with a population of 150k. I ran a job ad and got 292 applicants in under 24 hrs 2 years ago, I’d be lucky to get 8 applicants in a week, with probably 4-6 of those living in India or Pakistan with no way to North America So it’s an absolutely exponential job market crash. Most are sitting tight currently, no one wants to play musical chairs and be left standing.

layoffs. employers are pulling out chair under you while you sitting on it. if you have mortgage, family, and no permanent residency —- good luck waiting. crash on the floor would be sudden and painful!

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#788

Post by martchat » Thu, Jul 18, 2024, 10:32 AM UTC

I think the IT job market is getting really dead as a great source of income. There were signs earlier of market saturation, but COVID somehow "covered" them to a certain degree. Of course there are multiple reasons for it, differing in every region:

Globally: IT development is in general moving away from outsourcing building custom solutions. You either build it in-house or subscribe to a ready SAAS product from 1000s available (many will go bust now - pick the winner in category). India is producing millions of offshore IT specialists every year. All above means that it really doesn't make sense to hire as many IT jobs as before. This impacts US and EU for all jobs that can be done remotely (COVID-> process was accelerated).The jobs that are safer from cheap outsourcing are the ones where you need to interact fluently with Product Owner (UX/UI, frontend) or are requiring local knowledge, so are specific for the region (SAP consultant discussing accounting process with end-user).

Additionally other reasons by region: US: rates raising, no cash for startups. EU: manufacturing sector in Germany collapsed due to losing cheap energy source (Russia). That translates into EU-wide slump in projects from that sector. New projects were put on-hold. 20% inflation has killed real wages growth and affected other sectors. Good sectors: finance is doing well. AI is fueling some startups (and killing customer service jobs in the process).

All in all, this new world will be interesting. Will the remote offshore jobs be affected by AI way more than local "human-facing" ones? Are we offshoring everything from production (China) to IT services (India)? What will be left in EU/US to do? :)

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#789

Post by cchi_co » Thu, Jul 18, 2024, 10:32 AM UTC

evrimoztamur wrote: post #23

I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…

[dead]

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#790

Post by ahaferburg » Thu, Jul 18, 2024, 10:35 AM UTC

ericskiff wrote: post #344

Aurornis wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. I’ve done some mentoring of CS grads for the past few years. We some times get people with unreasonable interview demands, like companies asking them to make an entire app or website for the interview process. We advise them to decline the really excessive ones. However, it’s rare to see tha…

For over 10 years we've had people do a paid ~4 hr take-home which is very similar to the work they'll actually be doing (here's a dummy codebase, add a few features fix a few bugs). If they're not interested in getting paid to do that work now, it's a good signal for us that they won't be happy doing it when they're working with us. It's helped us find really wonderful people to work with.

I think that's very fair. Problem is when they expect those 4+ hours of work for free.