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

841–850 of 1001 posts

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#841

Post by TomK32 »

moravak1984 wrote: post #764
weatherlite wrote: post #701

Sometimes I feel really bummed out I am getting 1/2 (or less?) of Google compensation. But then I open my eyes - see the workers in my daughter's kindergarten slaving away taking care of 30 toddlers for less than half what I make, nurses and doctors working in conditions I wouldn't be able to tolerate for more than a few months without mentally collapsing, the people in the supermarkets, gas stations, police, fire de…

Sometimes I can't believe how much money I make for that little input, and whether that is ethical at all. This idea popped in my mind while on "home office" (sightseeing on the village with my wife) and saw the waitress panic because we paid her with a 500Kč for a 360Kč bill and she didn't know how much change to give... I got my answer right there.

It can be much worse if people have to use computers and of course trust them completely. Just this week I brought five crates of empty beer bottles back, the machine to feed them into didn't work so the cashier had to do it "manually" at the checkout and after a little learning experience and hitting a key 100 times (5*20 bottles) they wanted to give me 85 Euros in return which I refused as it should have been just 24 Euros...

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#842

Post by anotheryou »

seanthemon wrote: post #837
anotheryou wrote: post #835

Related advice needed: I hope to get 2 offers, which should I take?: 1.: Older, stable 0 sum company, 40 people, mixed genders. But I don't trust they know how strong they need to pivot to survive another 5 years. 2.: Small, young startup of 20 dudes with absurd funding for what they have (10mio for something cobbled together). They have ~1k paying customers and growth. Founder with some hype wave riding history. I f…

So wildly depends on your experience and what you want out of life.

I do value free time for things other than a job and interesting problems. Work life balance speaks for #1, interesting problems for #2.

Experience wise, not sure what you'd need to know: I'm a (senior) technical product person, good at innovating and undestanding new things, respected and liked by the devs, bringing teams together well. I'm not fond of big corp beurocracy, inexperienced in finance and marketing.

thanks for your advice!

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#843

Post by KaiserPro »

golergka wrote: post #309
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…

I love long takehomes. They're like pet projects, but with clearly defined goals and with people that might even give you a review if you're lucky. I always use them to try a new library or a framework, and often continue improving on them even after they're submitted and evaluated.

> I love long takehomes.

I am happy that you are full of life and joy with programming. I genuinely want you to keep that, it is precious. However, they are getting free labour from you, so just keep that in mind.

For me, I can't do that anymore. I just can't muster up the energy to work on problems for something thats not going to be taken seriously by the "client"

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#844

Post by austin-cheney »

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…

You are clearly not looking for JavaScript or fullstack jobs. The more senior you get has less relevance to product delivery and more relevance to tool chain nonsense. That means if get great at product delivery you are no longer compatible with the job market, as in you have walked off the bell curve.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#845

Post by fartfeatures »

anotheryou wrote: post #840
fartfeatures wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you already know the answer. I'd go for 2 personally, as you seem to be leaning towards.

Thanks! I'm just not ready for a 60h/week job or an unethical scam. Otherwise 2. does sound better to me indeed.

If you are working 60h/week then you need to ensure your pay is set accordingly. The issue isn't 60 hour weeks. The issue is are you being fairly compensated for giving up that much of your life.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#846

Post by swader999 »

bmitc wrote: post #249
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…

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. This is really key. I have applied for jobs before, and then get questions like: "what's your experience with C++ or advanced graph algorithms?". Only that, none of that shows up in my profile or resume. But they act surprised and completely shrug off how a decade of software and other relev…

I've found it very difficult to mentor people working remotely.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#847

Post by jokoon »

avidphantasm wrote: post #812

If you look outside of “tech” companies, you can find pockets of high demand for software engineers. I work in hydrography and private companies and government agencies in this field are starving for good software engineers. The pay is decent (though not as good as FAANG or maybe even some start-ups of yore), but more importantly the work is really interesting.

I fail to understand why there are so many companies that only do software.

Most of software being made is associated with something else that is not software.

Software engineer don't need to be skilled at writing software, they need to listen to non-software people to help them.

I would call it software-centrism.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#848

Post by mgaunard »

It's all a guess.

You need to find a job where you're happy and that pays well. You don't really know ahead of time whether you'll be happy (or even really what makes you happy) and, if the pay includes any upside, you don't know whether you'll be paid well or not either. The universe of available jobs depend on which teams were hiring at the time you were looking.

A lot of it comes down to luck.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#849

Post by swader999 »

sph wrote: post #779
bmitc wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. This is really key. I have applied for jobs before, and then get questions like: "what's your experience with C++ or advanced graph algorithms?". Only that, none of that shows up in my profile or resume. But they act surprised and completely shrug off how a decade of software and other relev…

> "what's your experience with C++ or advanced graph algorithms?" I once got an interview to help fix an Elixir project. They were having issues with the Websocket module of Phoenix called Phoenix.Socket. It's a 1000-line long piece of code of a much larger framework. The person that interviewed me brushed away the fact that I had worked 6+ years full time with Elixir, and had almost 20 years in this career, and just…

A while back this kind of experience in an interview was a gift as in you don't want to work at that place and they just told you this clearly.

But now maybe things are getting more real and you just need to eat.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#850

Post by screye »

weatherlite wrote: post #701

Sometimes I feel really bummed out I am getting 1/2 (or less?) of Google compensation. But then I open my eyes - see the workers in my daughter's kindergarten slaving away taking care of 30 toddlers for less than half what I make, nurses and doctors working in conditions I wouldn't be able to tolerate for more than a few months without mentally collapsing, the people in the supermarkets, gas stations, police, fire de…

Who is making $3 million/yr at Google ?

A Google L9/M3 makes $2 million/yr (per levels.fyi). I feel like a sucker, but I don't know a single person who's made L9/M3 at FANG before 30, and wasn't also the shining star of their Ivy-league CS class or the slimiest ladder climber I've set my eyes on. The exceptions are acqui-hire startup founders, but again, that's just amortized compensation as part of acquisition package. High risk - high reward.

I have close friends at Deepmind/ FAIR and even they don't make more than a million. I'd say Nvidia and OpenAI folks are the only exception, and both were anomalous one-time spikes. (HFT is usually not considered part of the tech world per-se)

Post reply on HN