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Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

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Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#81

Post by weard_beard »

gruez wrote: post #61
weard_beard wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current administration's poor messaging on inflation and the economic problems faced by many Americans was a significant contributing factor to their loss of the election. ( https://www.barrons.com/articles/economy-2024-election-why-h... ) The WSJ and other major publications have a vested interest in brokering access by tailoring their coverage to be friendly to those in power. They are largely responsible for s…

>The WSJ and other major publications have a vested interest in brokering access by tailoring their coverage to be friendly to those in power Are you thinking of the Washington Post? You realize that the WSJ has been described as "right-centrist"[1]? It's unclear why they'd want to support a Democratic administration. Even the "friendly to those in power" excuse doesn't work too well. For most of the election Trump w…

To my ears, this is like my 10 year old nephew explaining why his favorite pro wrestler would never be a heel. "Also", he asks, "what's a heel?"

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#82

Post by gruez »

weard_beard wrote: post #81
gruez wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The WSJ and other major publications have a vested interest in brokering access by tailoring their coverage to be friendly to those in power Are you thinking of the Washington Post? You realize that the WSJ has been described as "right-centrist"[1]? It's unclear why they'd want to support a Democratic administration. Even the "friendly to those in power" excuse doesn't work too well. For most of the election Trump w…

To my ears, this is like my 10 year old nephew explaining why his favorite pro wrestler would never be a heel. "Also", he asks, "what's a heel?"

For the benefit of people who doesn't watch wrestling, do you mind explaining why the WSJ would support an administration at the end of its term and was likely to lose? Or for that matter, why "major publications" like the new york times have no problem with making anti-incumbent endorsements[1], despite the claim that "The WSJ and other major publications have a vested interest in brokering access by tailoring their coverage to be friendly to those in power"? Whatever you said about "heels" sounds like a "heads I win, tails you loose" sort of proposition, where you can excuse any sort of counter-evidence as part of a greater ruse or whatever, making your theory basically unfalsifiable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#83

Post by klipklop »

franktankbank wrote: post #64
afpx wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The change was quite shocking. For 25 years, to get a new job I’d send out 5 resumes, get 4 interviews, and 3 offers. This time around, I sent 200+ resumes, got 2 interviews, and ghosted on both.

I think employers are bracing for another employee sided market and trying to juice their hand as long as they have it. My belief is a lot of F500 companies are running on skeleton crew H1B which might be a crumbly foundation. They will neg-neg-neg until the clock runs out.

They will just expand immigration visa programs (something Musk, who is in favor of such programs, says he will go to “war” over) or outsource.

I don’t see any evidence for an employee favored job market. This is not 2020/21 anymore. The large corporations are firmly in power in tech.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#84

Post by bsder »

whatever1 wrote: post #55

There is much more noise in the market. Positions that we typically could close in 1-3 months now take 3-6 if we do not lower our hiring bar. We literally are using the same interview playbook as we did in the past. For some reason, the candidates in the pipeline have huge variance. It seems that a lot of people pivoted their career in Covid leading to this mess.

Set up a job fair so applicants can show up face to face?

Take physical resumes at your physical office?

Sponsor your local meetups and user groups?

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#85

Post by bsder »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #76
klipklop wrote: post #4

It’s been this way for at least 2 years. I suspect that WSJ held back such topics until after the election… The people I know that lose their job spend at least 1 year looking for a job. Usually at a significantly lower salary. With the current rate of inflation it’s a 1-2 punch that requires a big step down in lifestyle. I don’t really see these conditions changing until there is a AI bubble pop or something. Facebo…

There are a bunch of usual suspects for the current situation, some that are temporary but others that are very worrisome long term (for the US at least): 1. There was massive over-hiring at many tech companies during the pandemic boom. That hangover is still taking time to wring out. 2. The era of easy money is over. Lots and lots of speculative investments that make sense when interest rates are essentially 0 don't…

> 3. Outsourcing has exploded since the pandemic, and this is a long term change that is definitely not going away. The remote work trend is a double edged sword.

I have been warning about this over and over and over since the beginning.

If your job can be done remotely, you are effectively unessential in the grand scheme of your company.

Those who went back to the office understood the political landscape well.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#86

Post by detaro »

echelon wrote: post #21
klipklop wrote: post #4

It’s been this way for at least 2 years. I suspect that WSJ held back such topics until after the election… The people I know that lose their job spend at least 1 year looking for a job. Usually at a significantly lower salary. With the current rate of inflation it’s a 1-2 punch that requires a big step down in lifestyle. I don’t really see these conditions changing until there is a AI bubble pop or something. Facebo…

It feels like FAANG needs to employ lots of people so they don't all go out and build competing services. If skilled people are without work and their savings and lifestyle supports it, they should consider building startups.

Doing that was a lot easier before though, with funding being more available, and big-tech has been happy to let others take the risk/dump VC funding into subsidizing their business models/... and then gobble up or copy the successful ones.

Also some of the big tech companies have been quite ruthless with firing people even when they could afford not to, which doesn't match that theory.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#87

Post by whatever1 »

bsder wrote: post #84
whatever1 wrote: post #55

There is much more noise in the market. Positions that we typically could close in 1-3 months now take 3-6 if we do not lower our hiring bar. We literally are using the same interview playbook as we did in the past. For some reason, the candidates in the pipeline have huge variance. It seems that a lot of people pivoted their career in Covid leading to this mess.

Set up a job fair so applicants can show up face to face? Take physical resumes at your physical office? Sponsor your local meetups and user groups?

All of these are useful, but equally time consuming. So the candidate experience will still be degraded (spending 1 year interviewing while unemployed)

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#88

Post by whamlastxmas »

klipklop wrote: post #25
OutOfHere wrote: post #9

In our industry, they key to getting a job is simple: 1. Work on two meaningful projects using the tech you want a job in. Update your resume with the work that was done, without embellishment. 2. Open your profile on LinkedIn. Close it when you get five interviews. Learn from each failing interview.

No offense but this is outdated as giving advice like “did you walk in and talk to the manager? Be sure to give him a firm handshake and look him in the eye.” These days your personal network matters most. If you don’t have one start working on one. Your resume might never see human eyes otherwise. Nobody cares about your GitHub sadly.

I think some places do in fact care about githubs

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#89

Post by bsder »

whatever1 wrote: post #87
bsder wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Set up a job fair so applicants can show up face to face? Take physical resumes at your physical office? Sponsor your local meetups and user groups?

All of these are useful, but equally time consuming. So the candidate experience will still be degraded (spending 1 year interviewing while unemployed)

I don't concur that the experience would be degraded for either side.

The pool is going to be much smaller and faster to wade through for both sides. And, once you wade through it, you actually have a match that is much more likely for both sides.

Look, this is the exact same problem as online dating and has all the same failure modes. You break the failure modes in exactly the same ways.

People have forgotten that in person was the way we used to do it. We had job fairs, companies would come to colleges in person, etc. It did work. It was just expensive from the point of view of the company.

Companies gave in person up because online was cheaper. Well, it isn't cheaper anymore now that both employers and employees have pissed in the online well. Whoops.

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