It's quite common for a story to go comment-less on HN for a while while people come up with comments that exceed the scope of "13 points and no comments..."
There are a very large number of reasons that the number of jobs on a job site could drop, included to but not limited to the fact that people have stopped using OP's very small job site. (It is also suspicious why the OP compared it to 4 other sites which are unlabeled)
That's partially why blogs use large job sites to try so atleast the change is somewhat statistically significant. (but still could be caused by noneconomic issues. From the little bit displayed in the charts, seasonality is in play, which makes looking at a Jan-Jun horizon flawed)
I don't find it odd at all that someone in a niche market is both looking at metrics from competitors and not disclosing what companies they regard as "competitors worth tracking." The names that would go with those other lines are exactly where their customers and users might go instead, why publicize them?
Intentionaly omitting relevant information for business reasons is a marketing tactic, not a tactic for an analysis that attempt to present itself as serious.
2) There is migration among boards. (Example: Indeed has become much more relevant than during my last job search. As a hiring manager I need to pay more attention to it.)
> Indeed has become much more relevant than during my last job search
Can you expand on this? I've long written off indeed as one of the generic monster.com types that just scrapes stuff from elsewhere and doesn't actually create a fast path to a technical person with hiring authority (vs something like angellist, which does).
It's been a few years though - what's changed? Site looks the same as always.
As part of my interview process, I sometimes open with "How did you find us?" and Indeed has come up a lot more than LinkedIn over the past year. Perhaps this is because candidates like that it scrapes from everywhere, or it's algorithms do a better job at narrowing the sea of open positions to relevant ones?
Most jobs sites i have used recently are inundated with recruiters all offering/advertising for the same few jobs rather than the companies that are hiring.
I'm a newer web developer with a few years of full-time experience (and over a decade of hobby experience), but definitely not a "senior" developer. Most job openings I see are for senior developers. I don't really know if this is historically normal, because I wasn't doing much developer job hunting a few years ago.
For the jobs that I have applied to, I would say I am pretty well qualified. I have put a lot of time into my resume to make it clean and legible. I usually spend over an hour writing a cover letter, and I am pretty confident they are interesting, well written, and have a friendly/personal tone without coming across as awkward or over eager.
Despite all of this effort and being pretty well qualified, I never hear back. Not even a rejection letter. Just silence. I have applied to pretty entry-level positions too for which I am overqualified, and also never hear back. Sample size is only about 10 applications, but they were very focused, well matched, high effort applications.
If there is any shortage of web developers out there, companies sure aren't acting like it. It's not even like I would ask very much, I only want maybe $75k since I am currently way underpaid (about ~$50k in a big city).
My guess is that this is just a side effect of unemployment being pretty high (if you look at realistic measures, not the biased official ones). Senior developers are willing to work for less than before because getting a job is harder these days, and less-than-senior developers can't get a job at all because there's only enough spots for the senior level ones.
I don't, but I also don't call myself a senior developer. I'm just a "developer", middle level. I don't have a CS degree and I'm not algorithm or software patterns expert. I do web development and don't have experience with stuff outside of Laravel/PHP/Node.js/RoR and a myriad of front end technology. And no experience with very large scale applications that have millions of users.
I say all this to make the point that I'm definitely not competitive with the type of people working at Google, but I have plenty enough experience making great sites from start to finish with a variety of tools.
It's more my lack of depth with any of those aside from maybe Laravel that I would feel dishonest calling myself senior. I've made CRUD apps until my eyes bleed, but not a whole lot else. I don't have a lot of experience writing tests. I don't really have any open source code to show employers, only past projects that I've made as a side project or for an employer. It's rare that I have to write anything original that isn't already covered by the existing conventions of whatever framework I'm using.
It just feels like a few years experience isn't "senior" when you look at the candidate market in general. I am probably well below the average numbers of years experience.
Stop over-analyzing this, and quit feeling "dishonest" calling yourself senior.
Just do it. Start referring to yourself and seeing yourself as a senior software engineer and the paycheck is likely to follow-- regardless of your technical merits or lack there of.
Far less qualified individuals than yourself successfully bill themselves as senior engineers or solutions consultants, and make several whole multiples of your pay doing so.
My two cents: you should apply for some senior developer positions. You should be honest about your skills, but also you should be confident and not sell yourself short. What's the worst that can happen? You are already not getting callbacks.
My suggestion, branch out and learn some of the other tools, even if you have to do it in a non-professional environment. For building sites, you're competing with things like Site Slinger or various similar services. To be competitive in that kind of a market you'll need to have a different kind of value add (i.e. look like something more than a developer) to make your resume look more interesting. Some of it also depends on where you're looking for work and if you're looking for local or remote work. I had to jump cities to get a foot in the door (East Texas to Austin).
Unfortunately despite being in a big city, it's one of the worst big cities for tech jobs in the country (hence low salary). And moving isn't an option for another 4 years. I apply mostly to remote jobs because of this and I am sure those are more competitive.
Do you have any examples of other tools that would be valuable? I honestly think I'd be pretty unhappy with iOS/Android development due to the nature of most companies that focus in that area, and I assume that'd probably be an option you'd recommend. I have an interest in security and penetration testing, but it's such a horrendously complicated and difficult expertise to attain and I have no realistic expectations I would ever get a good job doing that.
Working with C/C++ or other less-web focused technology is an option obviously, but agains no CS background and it just seems like such an uphill battle to learn what I need and then convince someone to hire me for it.
Having an interest in security is a huge win for you. Hiring people into that field is impossibly hard because there are a tiny number of people employed in that area (I came from that field and it's very hard to find people to hire). That doesn't mean you're guaranteed a job, but if you want to be in that field, seek the jobs out. They exist.
Can I email you some questions about the field? Mostly surrounding what I should aim for as a base knowledge level before I'm employable and which topics are best for that while coinciding with my interests.
Being Senior mostly has nothing to do with the technologies per se. Its about being responsible enough, mindful enough, communicative enough, thoughtful enough, and patient enough to lead large features/projects/directives. Its about seeing the potential problems/opportunities with something and speaking up.
I have seen interns who can behave like senior engineers because they know how to take responsibility, talk with non-technical people, and tackle tough problems with confidence etc.
I feel confident I have the maturity/mindset for all of that, but I don't have the technical experience or breadth to confidently say "We should use this tool for this purpose". My input for "How would you select the technology this project?" would be to evaluate the available skillsets of my coworkers and pick the most appropriate framework and libraries accordingly. This might mean making an API with Rails, a front end with React, and use Google's mapping API if it was some sort of mapping application. That's about the limit of my confidence in tech decision making.
How much should we be writing tests? How much should those tests cover? What type of tests? Should we use Agile/Waterfall/etc? Do we need code reviews? Pair programming? Continuous integration? What should the deployment be like? What's the most appropriate database to use for this? How can we help ensure absolute security? What can we do to shave milliseconds from load time? How would we make ____ more distributed to handle high peak loads?
Those are all things that seem pretty relevant to being senior, and I don't have answers for them based on personal experience.
Just asking those questions makes you more thoughtful than most senior developers. The next step is knowing that you don't need the perfect answer, just something good enough.
>My input for "How would you select the technology this project?" would be to evaluate the available skillsets of my coworkers and pick the most appropriate framework and libraries accordingly. This might mean making an API with Rails, a front end with React, and use Google's mapping API if it was some sort of mapping application. That's about the limit of my confidence in tech decision making.
I realize you were possibly asking these rhetorically, but let me answer these questions for the sake of trying to let you see through the eyes of someone who does feel "somewhat confident" in guiding large projects; because I believe you'll find that you may have more intuition for it than you realize, and that at least for me there's been no Magic(tm)
How much should we be writing tests?
- How much do you need them? (Are you grinding out an MVP on very short notice, or setting down the foundation of a long running important project?) and if you need a more obvious signal, are you hurting from not having them?
How much should those tests cover?
- See the above; but additionally (and tautologically), what parts of the code do you worry about tests covering?
What type of tests?
-What type does your team feel comfortable with using and maintaining long term?
Should we use Agile/Waterfall/etc?
- See the above, additionally consider if the context you're in (because the powers that be over you incurr a LOT of constraints) really encourages one of these.
Do we need code reviews?
- See "how much should I be writing tests"
Pair programming?
- Continue to cite the above, as well as "does it work for your team"
Continuous integration?
- Is the overhead worth the benefits? (this is not a loaded question)
What should the deployment be like?
- Easy, robust, hard to fuck up, easy to clean up.
I stopped here intentionally because your latter questions touch on technical decision making, to which I'd give unified advice: Get to know the space. Get to know your tools, then ask someone smarter than you :) Less glibly, someone else has almost always done what you intend to, if not many someone else's, and their experience is so fucking valuable I cannot emphasize it enough, this is also half the benefit of having a personal network. However, you need a mental model of the space to evaluate their learnings in your context, and that just takes playing in that space until you feel comfortable with it.
I really hope this doesn't come off as a preachy rant, my goal is to address your final sentence; to echo my original statement, that I believe you can apply the experience you've gained as a dev thus far to the questions you claim to have no experience for (and you go so far as to demonstrate this e.g. your rails example); and even in absence or presence of that, leveraging your team and peers is invaluable for making "less bad choices", and you're already doing that by asking here on HN. You're already walking the path you are aiming for.
Many of the items you've listed here are more cultural than technical.
Confidently saying "we're going to use this because I'm senior and I know it's the right choice" is something that I see as rarely being successful. It has its time and place, but it ain't something that you should be doing often. You mention bringing the right coworkers into the decision-making process, which is the more appropriate move.
Now, of the items you mention not having an answer to, I can give you a definitive answer to a few: ;)
- Do you need CI? Yes if it's helping you manage your risk. Do you need it for your 4 line bash script? Probably not. For an application your team works on regularly? It's 2016; Set up a freakin' CI server.
- Tests? Yes. As far as coverage and what type, again, manage your risk. Does decent unit-level coverage and a couple of end-to-end tests give your team the confidence they need to develop quality software at a rate acceptable to your team and the business?
- Do we need code reviews? Dealer's choice, but manage your risk. If you're getting heavy on tech debt, or there are big holes in team understanding, and you notice work is slowing down as a result, you haven't been managing your risk.
- Most appropriate database? Manage your risk. Have the conversations with the business that give you a framework for doing a meaningful evaluation.
- Shaving millis off of load times? What value does this represent to the business? There's a cost/benefit analysis that needs to be done to determine whether two weeks of work improving the response time by 10ms produces noticeable business value. Perhaps there's a way to shave 8ms off the response time which will only take one day. How much are 2ms worth to the business?
--
It's nice to have personal experience answering questions like the ones you bring up, but I would only say "nice to have". As the previous poster mentioned, senior is IMO about being communicative and thoughtful more than it is about being right all the time or having a lot of battle scars to show off.
This is exactly the problem I have too. I get interview questions like "You have to design xyz system, such that junior devs can start building it. How would you do it?"
I find it very tough to answer them unless I have personally faced the problem or if I have read extensively about it.
Sometimes I think that startup experience doesn't prepare you for this kinda stuff. In the early stages, it's all about "Fuck it, just ship it." So design and all go out the window. This is what is happening in my current company too.
> Despite all of this effort and being pretty well qualified, I never hear back.
This is the worst part of job hunting.
Replying to hundreds of applicants individually might be difficult, but a short email from noreply@company.com that says "Sorry, but the position has been filled. We will keep your application for M months in case we have another opening" wouldn't be unreasonable.
I don't disagree but it's pretty rare, even when the submission is obviously through an applicant tracking system (taleo, brassring, etc).
I don't know why. They might be trying to avoid angry emails, they might be trying to hang on to some backup candidates in case the one the hired does not work out, or maybe the tracking systems really are as bad as they appear.
I went on an interview where they flew me across the country, put me up in a fancy hotel, and then...completely ghosted on me. I would guesstimate that they spent a few thousand dollars on me, including the flight, lodging, food, dinner with the team, and ~15ish hours of interviewer-time. I can't imagine that the cost of three minutes of the secretary (or manager)'s time would be a significant factor after that.
I think there is some fear is in responding negatively due to the vagaries of employment law, where you are giving people the opportunity to challenge you for not selecting you for the "wrong" reason. This is why most responses should be just,"we have not decided to bring you on at this time". I always like to keep a pipeline of potential candidates warm, contacting them at least once per month, so giving no feedback whatsoever seems like a bad strategy for anyone you might ever want to hire.
However, you have to just start to imagine all of the things that happen on the other side of the curtain. The hiring manager moves to another project or hadn't been assigned when they started interviewing, the recruiter changes or their contract ends, the project funding gets delayed, the technology choice changes, they didn't know what kind of person they wanted, etc. In larger companies, you need a lot of coordination so that you don't lose a good candidate due to their not being a fit on the project that got to them first.
I would never expect a response other than "resume received" from an online submission, but, once you speak with someone, a status update of some kind, even if it is a "no decision has been made" makes sense.
Still, I'm struggling to imagine how "Thank for you applying, but this position has been filled/cancelled" could expose a company to a lawsuit. You'll eventually assume you weren't hired after a while anyway...
Hearing back on 0/10 isn't great but it also isn't so far outside my experience when I was applying to my first few jobs.
Some companies take a long time to get back to you (IIRC for Amazon I was offered an interview 2-3 months after applying)
And many companies are just rude (don't even acknowledge receiving your application, don't follow up after interviews).
However something that struck me about your story: most of my cover letters have consisted of a simple 3-4 sentence email. It mentioned the job, where I found it, expressed my enthusiasm for the position and highlighted some skills I have that match the job description.
I'm curious to hear other opinions, but you might be trying too hard on the cover letters.
The first is two sentences saying that it looks like an exciting opportunity and introducing myself as a web developer in CityX whose client experience matches that of the hiring company.
The second is a few sentences saying that my experience matches the desired qualifications in the job ad, and expressing my desire to always learn new technology and improve my existing skills (because it's usually not a literal perfect match).
The third touches on why the position is a good match on a personal level, such as my personal/hobby interest in some topic that is central to the job. I close by saying I look forward to hearing more about I can help.
In all, it's really not too much longer than this comment. Maybe only 3 sentences longer.
I try to make it friendly and casual because I figure people don't like reading robotic, boring cover letters.
Ever thought of switching that up a little bit?? I've read many, many cover letters in my day and when I have a whole stack to get through, your style of cover letter gets boring fast. I know this is suboptimal and I've likely missed out on some very good people because of it, but that's just how it goes.
Why not try telling a story that shows some sort of personal interest in the organization that you're applying to? Or, try to focus on showing your enthusiasm for the position.
While you're working at changing your style, you should work on some basic mechanical things in your writing. I know that this is HN, so you likely didn't put much time into proofreading, but sentences like this one hurt me in my soul:
"The second is a few sentences saying that my experience matches the desired qualifications in the job ad, and expressing my desire to always learn new technology and improve my existing skills (because it's usually not a literal perfect match)."
Or, consider this sentence:
"I close by saying I look forward to hearing more about I can help."
Again, I understand that you likely didn't put much time into proofreading your comment, but you missed a pretty important word.
I agree. I have constant typos in my comments here and they are definitely not indicative of my cover letters. I do not write very well on first drafts which is why I said cover letters usually take me over an hour. I usually get them proof read by my friend who has professional writing experience.
My approach is based off advice I once heard about essays for college applications. Overwhelmingly it seems like there is a formulaic approach to them that works really well. I assume this isn't specific to college admissions, but really just people in general who read lots of applications (whether it be for a school or job). Part of the advice I read was that you should stick to the formulaic approach unless you are an excellent, confident writer.
I would say my cover letters definitely show enthusiasm and I explicitly spend probably 25% of it discussing my personal interest in the position/company. But writing in a story format that is well formed, relevant to the job, and interesting is well beyond my abilities. I spend enough time as it is on cover letters that generally result in nothing.
This sounds like a great cover letter and exactly what I'd like to receive. I've been looking for an employee for some time now, and I wish I'd receive applications like this.
I wonder what companies you are applying to? For example, I know that pretty much every tech company in my city is looking for developers. I think a problem is that developers mostly apply to the larger tech companies in the area (50+ employees). Smaller companies (like my own, and others I have talked to) are having trouble finding people even for entry level positions.
Recently the remote ones from HN's "Who is hiring" threads whose needs match my experience. Unfortunately no experience with what you need according to the job posting on your site :)
Remote positions get a lot of applications. For example, even though I explicitly state that I am looking for local people, I get more applications from devs looking for a remote job. While I personally respond to every application, I completely understand why someone who posts a more popular job ad wouldn't.
Out of curiosity, where did you find employment? I know you struggled in applying to new places, but clearly you found some. Do you feel you got lucky?
I feel i'm in the same boat, but with a different set of technologies. Regardless, i'm curious on what you feel you have succeeded at. Might be informative :)
I'm in my second full time developer job. The first was front end only, and my current is full stack. First job was because I knew someone that moved to that company and ranted and raved advocating for them to hire me. My current job cared much less about technical aptitude and more general attitude and fit, and also pays fairly poorly (not just me, everyone). So I just sort of got lucky to some extent.
Not sure what I've succeeded at. Being willing to learn is probably the biggest attribute to doing really well at my two developer jobs (according to my past and current boss). And just generally being a polite person who's easy to work with and willing to take on tasks without complaining.
In a lot of companies, including mine, Senior Developer is close to entry level. People with 3+ years experience are being hired at the Senior Developer level.
I'm a web developer who's having a similar experience. I'll tell you something that you may or may not find heartening. My 3-paragraph cover letters aren't doing jack for getting interviews. On the other hand, clicking the "easily apply" button on indeed or wherever, assuming I'm qualified for the job, has yielded at least a phone call in 3 of the last 5 times I tried it (this month). No cover letter, just maybe two sentences about who I am and why I'm interested.
It hasn't gotten me a job yet, mind you, but phone calls are slightly more encouraging than silence.
So you won't deal with recruiters, are only willing to work remotely, and don't want to look at any place boring... and you think that the unemployment rate has a lick of anything to do with why you can't find a job?
I'm fine not working remotely, but the opportunities aren't really abundant in my city. And it doesn't seem all that unrealistic to not want to be shoved into a dusty cubicle making a frameworkless procedural PHP application to replace Excel spreadsheets for a company that sells shady SEO consulting services.
It sounds like you have to figure out which one of your variables has to give in addition to your "remote//no-remote" toggle -- not moving, no boring work, no "unethical to my standards" work, and like this.
There is nothing stopping you from taking that boring job while continuing to look for a more interesting one. It's not as if you are forbidden from sending CVs and interviewing after you start. Plus, a steady pay check helps extend the burn rate.
I don't know if it's particular to my city (Boston), but when I've worked with recruiters they've almost always led to interviews and offers. They have a good handle on what the hiring companies are looking for and how to position candidates to at least get a foot in the door. They're also annoyingly persistent and can dig into companies and bug the hiring manager directly, going around HR, which yields better results most of the time.
I wouldn't be so dismissive of recruiter spam, if you're really looking for responses back from companies.
Bear in mind two things if you're looking for a software dev position: 1) most software dev is fairly boring, but often you can make of it what you do. You can make it boring or interesting. 2) it's not for life. Every job is a stepping stone.
Its definitely slowing down a bit, but the other side is that the talent pool is growing significantly. This doesn't mean there is nothing out there. That said, it is getting much closer to looking for any typical professional job if you don't have contacts. Send out tons of resumes and eventually you'll get lucky type stuff. Sometimes doing some freelance contact work for a company is a good in for web work as well.
The pool is definitely growing. One of the consequences of this is that you now often have to do online coding tests in order to be invited to a real interview on site. Personally I think that in Europe it has become much more difficult to find a job as a software developer compared to a decade ago and the wages are also going down. I don't see how the US can escape the same destiny in near future...
I never had much luck applying directly for positions. Try working with recruiters. They have a bad reputation as a whole, but at the very least they should be able to get some interviews scheduled for you. The other thing you should try doing is going to tech meetups in your local area and talking to people there.
I have much more patience for unanswered applications than I do for recruiters. I have had some extremely negative experiences with them and I'd rather be underpaid in my job than deal with being abused by recruiters.
I'm at a similar level of experience as you at roughly the same place in my career. I've only interacted with one recruiter and it worked out very well for me, leading to my first full-time "real" position at a company with some other fairly talented developers from whom I gleaned a ton of knowledge. I guess it's a YMMV kind of thing. They didn't ask me to sign or pay anything, they just asked for technical qualifications(languages, tools) just lined up multiple interviews in one day for me that were a rough match.
There are different types of recruiters. Some are junk. Some are good. But for better or worse, many many jobs are going to hire through them, so you'll want to get past this distaste for them.
A lot of recruiters are horrible people with questionable ethics, but a lot of them are great too. The problem is that the bad ones are often more visible because a lot of what makes them bad makes them stand out.
Try again, and make clear demands (for starters: That they should not present you to potential employers without asking first) about how you want to interact with them. The slightest transgression: Move on.
You'll find a good one soon enough, and it'll be worth it sooner or later.
One general maxim I've heard is that for every 50+ cold applications (ie - non-recruiter or internal contact) you send off... you'll get one interview out of it.
Not a job. Just an interview.
Seems pretty accurate in my experience - which is why I almost always aim to use recruiters.
This jives with my experience last year: I applied to over 100 jobs (kept track in a spreadsheet), about 10 of them replied, interviewed with 2 of them, passed both, got an offer from one of them, rejected/renegotiated it and ultimate accepted it.
Try networking more. Go to meetups and tech events, tell them you're in the market, build relationships and all that will surely be more effective than blasting out resumes and cover letters.
The "Shortage Of Developers" myth just can't seem to die. Software development labor is a market. If there was really a shortage of developers, you'd see compensation rising to adjust, looser restrictions on remote work, role/responsibility incentives, etc, but is this happening?
If anything, there is a shortage of developers who:
- Have 3-5 years of experience ("Senior, but not too-Senior" engineers)
- Have narrow-enough skill sets
- Are willing to settle for a very narrowly-defined role
- Are willing to live in specific areas
- AND Are willing to work for the compensation offered
Picky companies can't seem to find these mythical employees in large numbers, so they throw their hands up and declare "shortage of engineers!"
Here are some software engineers that are largely getting ignored:
- People with 0-2 years of experience
- People with 10+ years of experience
- Software generalists
- Engineers who would also like to broaden their
roles/responsibility (+architecture, +project management, +design?)
- Remote engineers
- Engineers who demand more than "competitively average" packages
>Here are some software engineers that are largely getting ignored:
Idk, people who have problems they need solved today (not after stringing along would be devs for months for the latest fad-de-jour) opportunities are out there, but take some looking outside of the crap posting resumes and useless meetups…
>The "Shortage Of Developers" myth just can't seem to die. Software development labor is a market. If there was really a shortage of developers, you'd see compensation rising to adjust, looser restrictions on remote work, role/responsibility incentives, etc, but is this happening?
Yes...? All of this has happened. Twitter has become remote friendly. My employer is 100% no remote but continues to make exceptions and we have 6 or so remote employees now.
Salaries have skyrocket in the last five years. So I'd say...yes, there is a shortage of talented developers.
"talented" in that context usually means "has the ability of an experienced developer at the salary of a more junior developer."
If you accept that talented software engineers are the people who are simply good at software development then there are plenty - but they're often older, more experienced, and consequently paid more.
> Salaries have skyrocket in the last five years. So I'd say...yes, there is a shortage of talented developers.
Actually, a shortage means that there is an external force that prevents the price from rising, such as government intervention[1]. If salaries have skyrocketed in the last five years, that is a sure sign that there isn't a shortage; although perhaps a shrinking pool of those who can afford the available supply.
As higher and higher salary offers are made, fewer and fewer companies can justify the costs. As fewer companies can afford to hire developers, fewer developers are needed. Thus, in a functioning market where prices are rising, the number of businesses in the running to hire developers can never exceed the number of developers available. As soon as there is another business wanting to hire a developer, the price will rise until someone stops wanting a developer because it has become unaffordable.
Even if they remained flat, that would beat general wages, which in real terms have been falling for decades.
Besides those rare outliers at rare outlier companies, like that dude at Google that makes $300K who everyone on HN seems to know, are software development wages actually going up to the extent that would indicate a "shortage"? Are they even 10% (inflation adjusted) over where they were a decade ago?
You nailed it. I often think either I am lowly paid or people exaggerate here about compensation. People I know in non-online world seems to be making about same as I make and I do not make that much for 10+ years of experience.
I've left technical interviews with people asking me when I can start only to go silent when I follow up after the interview. It's just part of the hustle...
To be honest, you said you're a less-than-senior developer, maybe your resume is not that good, no matter how serious you wrote it, when I read resume, I focus on the key word to evaluate whether the candidate is fitting the job, not for the tone.
I don't think I buy the premise. "Tech job listings on one website are down 40%" seems more accurate, and is much less scary. It definitely helps that the author mentions that they track their listings compared to their competitors, but I'm baffled as to why there isn't a graph that covers more than a six-month span when the thesis spans years. If this company has job listing data for multiple listing websites that goes back to at least 2014, that'd be interesting data to look at, but it's not here.
Even then, I'm not sure "tech hiring is down 40%" would be a reasonable conclusion to draw -- it's like saying, "the newspaper only had 15 job listings in it, the American economy must be in the toilet."
I'm in the same boat, for all we know the hiring is the same rate but it's through more informal channels like internal recommendations, networking, etc.
It could be even simpler than that -- maybe there's a really popular job board that's attracting all the customers? MySpace losing hundreds of thousands of users didn't mean there were less teenagers.
Oooor, even simpler... Tech hiring is down 40%... C'mon, guys... Ockham's razor. Hell, a couple of friends of mine were laid off, and are having a hard time finding employment...
That's not a good application of Ockham's razor, it's not about which explanations sound simple, and you need priors. If I gave you some data saying that telecom industry sales have been correlated to GDP for decades and suddenly telecom industry sales dropped 40%, GDP dropping 40% is really unlikely and you wouldn't guess that. 40% is huge
A 40% decline in real tech-hiring rates would be a shocking, sudden decline. The simpler, most consistent, and most likely explanation is that the author's data isn't representative of the big picture.
It's very similar to "my helloworld.c won't compile, the compiler must be broken"
40% drop in GDP is huge, you're right. 40% drop in open job listings isn't huge, because it's not the same as overall employment. I'm quite sure we've had drops like that before, although I don't have any references at the moment to back it up.
Edit: if the author has only been in the business a couple of years, he may not be aware of the historical boom/bust nature of it - yet.
Wouldn't that be a bit more scary? If 40% of tech hiring is now all happening within the same group of people (people do tend to befriend others that are similar to them), that seems quite remarkable and alarming.
However, as @felipellrocha mentioned, the conclusion that hiring is simply down seems to make the fewest assumptions.
I was offering alternatives, there are many confounding factors I don't think the article accounted for. Maybe the 40% is very regional, or like others suggested tied to only certain job boards.
The author didn't say anything about listing trends on those other sites, only that their listings usually trend closely with the others, using the past six months as evidence. He shows us the first six months of each year, with only his site. The only explanation I can come up with is that the absent data doesn't jive well enough with the thesis.
One chart could have made all this more clear: January 2014 through June 2016, with all the sites mentioned included in the chart. The author hints at having that data available, but has left out big chunks of it.
I can understand not wanting to dump so much business intelligence on some website, but they're the ones trying to write about the data without showing it.
That's fair. I should have been more clear -- it's weird to me that chart shows 18 months of data in parallel, rather than just having a line graph that spans the 30 months from the beginning of 2014, and (less so) that it doesn't include the other sites.
Volume of job listings on one site over the last 30 months would be measuring far more than the trend in number of jobs. Did the job site add new features? Did they snag a big new customer who consistently posts their jobs there? Did they run a different ad campaign, or more of them? If the company is doing well, it'll probably have a steadily increasing number of job listings over that period, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there are more jobs available overall.
First, the job board can only tracking "listings", not jobs or hiring.
- Perhaps job boards are slowly dying as a way to fill jobs
- Perhaps you're not tracking the job boards that are growing the fastest and only the same "nearest" competitors
- Perhaps job listings used to exist for jobs that weren't ever hired for, and now listings are more accurate
- Perhaps listings used to live for a long time, and now they are filled faster reducing the backlog
- Perhaps tech jobs are shifting away from smaller companies that would use a job board and back towards bigger companies that use other methods to hire
> - Perhaps job boards are slowly dying as a way to fill jobs
There certainly seems to be a new class of job site. Hired, underdog, and greenhouse are what everyone seems to use these days. With the exception of angellist, nobody I know hires using boards (though that's a small number of data points, since most of the people I know are front-line types that aren't in charge of hiring)
While there is still room for other considerations, I was a little more skeptical about the headline until I saw the article's source.
If this had been the usual analysis of one of the large job listing aggregators, then I think more of the arguments made here would come into play, but I give this one slightly more credibility since it's a for-pay and "curated" job site.
So I'll put it in the somewhat-more-interesting category.
Back to the author's points, of course perceptions help frame reality, too.
On the one hand, we've seen some similar patterns as many seed stage companies have struggled to raise an A.* On the other, it's hard to extrapolate anything from such a small dataset.
Anecdotally, I would say it's also likely that tech companies that ARE hiring are shifting their hiring budget to sources that bring in more qualified candidates. AuthenticJobs is one of the better niche tech job boards, but it's still a job board. We see lots of growing companies that are spending less money on older channels like LinkedIn and job boards and instead, spending money on an applicant tracking system, hiring in-house recruiters, and using services like Entelo, TheMuse, AngelList, Hired, etc.
I am feeling the chill in the circle of companies I know.
Other thing that should be mentioned: a lot of initiatives at a lot of companies over the last two years just didn't work.
Feels a bit like we are at the tail end of a pretty big macro cycle of tech companies green lighting big initiatives with optimistic mindset and now a few years later the due bill is coming and the bets just didn't pay off.
Maybe a big example would be Twitter: a few years ago they were straight up hoarding engineers; fast forward to now, what did all this amazing engineering talent get them? Maybe nice code but the engineering they've done hasn't been able to increase users.
The reason engineers get paid well is because of their extreme leverage: just a few engineers can pull off amazing results. But you eventually need the results. And if the results are not there, broadly, then there will be a reentrenchmet.
I really don't mean to be rude or disrespectful, but how it "feels" isn't really interesting or relevant to the question of "is tech hiring actually down". The OP presented data to support its claims. The data was (imo) very flawed, but at least it provided something to start a substantial quantitative conversation. I think the OP's argument should be praised for "failing fast." By contrast, the internet of hunches is more or less immune to scrutiny.
I don't know which way the prevailing winds are blowing in tech. I could swap anecdotes with you (a tech investor I had a beer with recently seemed very happy? my giant tech employer and its competitors are doing great!), but I don't think it wouldn't get us any closer to the ground truth.
One thing that piqued my interest is that he said they've been tracking their competitors' job ads "for a few years." I would have liked to see his competitors' numbers from '15 or '14.
Data, even if only qualitative, about the psychological experience of technology workers seeking employment is very interesting to me. It may have fewer direct applications to policy adjustments, but provides insight into the overall mood and sentiment around tech hiring and employment.
The psychological and sociological aspects of tech employment are not discussed as much as they should be and it is a disservice. Again, I love data-driven policy as much as the next Bayesian, but positive description is not the only thing that has value. Sometimes normative description also has value, even if it emerges from a sparse set of qualitative descriptions.
I personally would like to see much more anecdotal data about how people feel about tech employment, because I think at this moment in history the interface between organizations and employees represents one of the most significant moral problems on the planet, that has wide-ranging effects stretching from income inequality to PTSD or depression to stagnation of innovations that could alleviate poverty or diseases, etc. In the same way that some claim that governmental regulations stymie tech progress, I feel it's perfectly analogous and perhaps even more critical to point out that organizational bureaucracy in the form of anti-human treatment of workers, candidates, and the unemployed, is just as much of an impediment to collective progress, but is much less talked about because it's fashionable to hate on government but taboo to hate on ethical failures of companies in their treatment of workers, candidates, or the unemployed.
I don't disagree with you that "how it feels" is an important aspect of our lives. It is not, however, an important aspect of answering the question "is tech hiring down 40%".
If someone says "pneumonia diagnoses are down 40%" and someone replies "I disagree, it doesn't feel like doctors are diagnosing less pneumonia to me," nothing of substance has been added to the conversation.
That said, I also think that I interpreted the purpose for posting the article too narrowly.
Edit: to be clear, I don't intend to diminish the concerns you listed. The argument "A is irrelevant to B" is not the same as "not A" or "A is irrelevant"
I agree with you. I think I am saying that I don't mind if discussions about "is tech hiring down 40%" also include discussions about "tech hiring sure feels like it's down because here's my experience ...".
They are "relevant" in the sense that it provides a logical repository for information about how the job market feels, both factually and emotionally. I don't see much benefit in asserting such a need to keep the topics separate that even a comment thread on Hacker News cannot mix the two kinds of assessments together.
There is nothing wrong with people sharing anecdotes, experiences, feelings, impressions, idle thoughts, and speculations in HN threads. On the contrary: HN threads are conversations, and those things are the life blood of good conversation.
True, the article title made a factual claim about data, but that doesn't mean commenters aren't welcome to share their related experiences, or deserve to be chided for not presenting rigorous evidence or treated as if they don't know the difference between the two (which does seem a little disrespectful, though I appreciate that you were trying not to be).
My leading indicator is that my employer (big, slow, enterprise) is hiring like crazy after a few years of low hiring of new headcount.
We're actually hiring good people in entry positions, which is an indicator that smart people are looking for stability, good benefits and mediocre compensation. That usually happens ahead of poor macroeconomic conditions for a variety of reasons.
Simply put: Better to be getting low pay at a stable job where you can wait-out an economic down-turn, than be unemployed because all the cool employers that you'd rather be working for have had layoffs and aren't hiring.
Budget is driven by business and income tax (i.e. profits and bonus) both tend to peak before things go south. This .gov uses archaic cash accounting, so they always focus on current cash flow. So if we have cash to burn, that means things were great last year. :)
Businesses in particular always invest in growth, so lots of revenue means that growth prospects are tightening, even though things look great in the present.
I generally agree that the brightest and most enthusiastic engineers I've ever met hated big enterprise tech teams, but it doesn't mean that someone isn't good at their craft because they've spent a long time in enterprise.
In general the popular reasons for disliking enterprise tech:
- The tech is generally years behind what people are doing now and risk aversion is generally above all else. No new and shiny, which means you're generally not that attractive to other companies that are doing pretty cool stuff.
- Everything is slow. Things require approval from people who have no idea who you are and what you're trying to accomplish.
- Apathy. You are but a tiny cog in a very large machine. Your Herculean efforts may not even cause a ripple anywhere outside of your team (if that) so why? Punch the clock, do your job, go home.
- Beauracracy. See risk aversion and apathy. Your novel idea is but a flight of fancy that could cause a middle manager with no technical expertise a bonus.
I spent my first four years out of university working for very large companies and I was so very bored and stifled I was crawling out of my skin during the work day. I also found that I could get a month's worth of work done and be so far ahead of my peers in a week that I could basically check out, show up just for meetings, then go to a coffee shop/"work from home" and work on my own projects or consult for other companies.
I definitely learned things about process and organization that could be scaled to smaller teams and companies that continues to help me today, but I could never go work for a huge company again.
Just playing devils advocate here, but what I just read was "I got awesome stability and a good paycheck, and while that part of my career wasn't all that interesting I had plenty of time to do other interesting stuff with almost zero risk."
In some other HN comments over the years I've suggested that a very good path for young people is to start with the big companies. You will likely be set up with more support, free time, and lower stress so that you can get your feet under you and figure out life in tech with little risk.
For the enthusiastic and generally well prepared you will likely be bored in 6-9 months. Maybe a year. For the very green, "I got into CS because of the paycheck/whatever" crowd, they've probably found their career.
The big companies treated me as well as they could in my short stints and I was paid VERY WELL coming out of school and I learned a ton about careers in technology and how it's not just about the code and I truly feel I owe my career jump start to my experiences at those first three companies.
However, I'd never go back to working for a large company again. The variety, multidisciplinary teams and tasks, the ability to affect change in a smaller organization, the camaraderie and enthusiasm displayed in even a 100 person, 15 year old company aren't even in the same ballpark as those of a big company.
I had a similar experience starting out, and when I moved to startups I felt that way for a long time, but I took on an enterprise client I've been working with for about 2.5 years now and its kind of awesome. Not really a typical situation though—flexible hours, small group that runs really well, we get to do basically whatever we feel like the situation calls for. I could definitely see it going the other way if they were more like an HP or Dell or <insert F500 company here>.
People who are good at what they do, do not need, nor want to work for a big, slow enterprise. Many of the people hired into entry positions will soon move on. The ones who stay, are usually the ones that you actually did not want to stay. Therefore, at some point there will be no other solution than to orchestrate mass layoffs again. Watch out, because the fact that you have been working there for a long period of time will be used as a counter-indication for talent and ability. It is exactly the ones who have been there 10+ years that are high up the list of people who will be laid off.
It's a different mindset and pace, that's for sure. But I disagree with the implication that enterprise devs are not talented.
Of course not all of them are, but I've worked with very talented devs in traditional business IT shops. They worked regular hours, had families and lives outside of the office, they didn't necessarily know (or chase) the hot tech trends but they knew what they knew inside and out. They didn't have to use Google or StackOverflow to write code. They had been around for years, knew the business and the systems and could take a fairly vague requirement and deliver exactly what the user needed without a lot of discussion.
They weren't blazing trails or disrupting anything, just doing solid work predictably and well.
Very true. The number of companies that can hoard talent without high leverage projects is small. I can only think of Google. And even there, they are retrenching in some of their moonshots.
> Feels a bit like we are at the tail end of a pretty big macro cycle of tech companies green lighting big initiatives with optimistic mindset and now a few years later the due bill is coming and the bets just didn't pay off.
Exactly my perceptions as well. It seems like VCs and the tech scene in general put growth over profit in a big way for the last 3 - 5 years. That's a fine way to be for a lot of businesses, but my feeling is that companies and the hivemind got a little to comfortable with it, and rather than delaying profits for growth in the short term as an explicit strategy, began to take it for granted as an acceptable way to operate a business in the early days.
The days when "Ramen profitable" mantras abounded and everybody praised 37signals have definitely quieted down, including on HN.
And now it's been long enough that the tide's going out and we're seeing who's still got trunks on.
I don't think the whole thing is going to crash into the ground, but I think "peak easy money" occurred in the past 24 months and has passed. I expect companies to have to work harder to prove they're actually bringing in cash.
IMO, this is just as it should be and the market is correcting for valid reasons.
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Semi-related anecdote: SF's insane rent prices have mostly plateaued in the last 9 months, especially compared to past growth, and I hear the occasional whisper of them falling. Most news orgs get SF rent prices way wrong (by extrapolating bedroom prices from home purchases, not rentals, for example), but as someone who's lived in the city for a few years and changed apartments annually, I've got a decent calibration for the market. This is a trailing indicator, and to me signals that tech workers are less financially risk tolerant, and perceptions of "my financial situation is stable or poised to improve" are on the decline. Nearly all of my friends express worry over finances, despite making north of 100k.
I consider StackOveflow's Careers section a good, high quality sample of the job market (mostly US).
I have been scraping them for about 3 months now and I see slight increase in job posts.
I've been using the StackOverflow Careers RSS feeds for a small script I've been writing, which gives a good view of Now... maybe I can find something interesting in your data for the Past
With investors focusing more on hard fundamentals like revenue and profit and a lot less on "hype" metrics like user growth, employee growth, number of baristas on staff and such a lot of tech companies have taken the hint and got down to business. That includes slamming the brakes on hiring and in some cases cutting staff. That's not the only force at play, but it's a big one.
Yup, the signs of a slowdown are there. The smaller startups and companies that use these job boards have cut back on hiring as their revenue growth has slowed down. The next step for them will be layoffs.
The big tech companies are still hiring but being much more selective and limiting how many they hire. By the time some of them start having layoffs, the tech economy will be in free fall for a number of months and it will be too late if you aren't prepared for it.
Many larger companies are starting to put in place policies and procedures that will limit the number of promotions, raises, and bonuses that they give out. These same actions are also intended to expose lower performers more quickly so they can be identified and managed out.
My advice is this: find ways to continue to learn and grow, and keep building skills and making things. Save for potentially long periods of unemployment, and be willing to work very hard to ensure that you're not perceived as a low performer.
Lastly, don't sweat it. These economic corrections are good thing. They can unlock a lot of latent talent, capital, and resources that are being wasted. Just be financially prepared for it and you'll be fine.
Authentic Jobs is one of the more old school places that heavily catered to web design type work. A more accurate assessment of this data may be that web design work is drying up, but we've known that for a while. It's hard to say since they don't mention the competitors they are tracking, but they may serve the same shrinking market as well.
I've seen a drastic drop off of jobs on Angel List. In 2013 there were roughly 10,000+ remote jobs available in the US. Today it's down to hundreds. I'd be interested in a full scale research effort.
Disclosure: I work on a startup that provides a tool for referrals (rolepoint.com) as well as SaaS that is used by job boards (rolepoint.io). I also gathered job boards in a quite popular repository https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job
Couple of things that I noticed
- more channels - There are at least a dozen of startups like TripleByte, interviewing.io
- referrals becomes preferred way of hiring. From small companies where majority of hires are made through personal networks to fortune 500 companies (using an external recruiter is a last resort).
- AngelList, Stackoverflow Careers have matching features and you can learn more about the company.
- This is an employee market. Companies have to proactive to get employees (hence the 'poaching'). Posting something to a job board is not efficient.
- More acquihires by US companies happens in Europe, since they have hard time competing with Apple, Google, Facebook etc.
I get "recruiter spam" pretty frequently. I generally respond with something like "No thanks, but I'll pass along your info if I come across anyone who might be interested." And they generally say "Yes please!"
I now have a list of ~300 recruiters email's that I can give out to anyone who is looking for work :)
From my experience the jobs I have found on "Authentic Jobs" have never been from the tech startups that I actually want to work at, since those primarily use AngelList, StackOverflow, GitHub, weworkremotely, Hacker News etc. to advertise their jobs.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadThere are a very large number of reasons that the number of jobs on a job site could drop, included to but not limited to the fact that people have stopped using OP's very small job site. (It is also suspicious why the OP compared it to 4 other sites which are unlabeled)
That's partially why blogs use large job sites to try so atleast the change is somewhat statistically significant. (but still could be caused by noneconomic issues. From the little bit displayed in the charts, seasonality is in play, which makes looking at a Jan-Jun horizon flawed)
1) There has been some batten down the hatches.
2) There is migration among boards. (Example: Indeed has become much more relevant than during my last job search. As a hiring manager I need to pay more attention to it.)
Can you expand on this? I've long written off indeed as one of the generic monster.com types that just scrapes stuff from elsewhere and doesn't actually create a fast path to a technical person with hiring authority (vs something like angellist, which does).
It's been a few years though - what's changed? Site looks the same as always.
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2016/05/06/it-job-growth-slows-tech...
For the jobs that I have applied to, I would say I am pretty well qualified. I have put a lot of time into my resume to make it clean and legible. I usually spend over an hour writing a cover letter, and I am pretty confident they are interesting, well written, and have a friendly/personal tone without coming across as awkward or over eager.
Despite all of this effort and being pretty well qualified, I never hear back. Not even a rejection letter. Just silence. I have applied to pretty entry-level positions too for which I am overqualified, and also never hear back. Sample size is only about 10 applications, but they were very focused, well matched, high effort applications.
If there is any shortage of web developers out there, companies sure aren't acting like it. It's not even like I would ask very much, I only want maybe $75k since I am currently way underpaid (about ~$50k in a big city).
My guess is that this is just a side effect of unemployment being pretty high (if you look at realistic measures, not the biased official ones). Senior developers are willing to work for less than before because getting a job is harder these days, and less-than-senior developers can't get a job at all because there's only enough spots for the senior level ones.
I say all this to make the point that I'm definitely not competitive with the type of people working at Google, but I have plenty enough experience making great sites from start to finish with a variety of tools.
That's senior to most of the people posting the jobs. You passed junior with PHP.
It just feels like a few years experience isn't "senior" when you look at the candidate market in general. I am probably well below the average numbers of years experience.
Just do it. Start referring to yourself and seeing yourself as a senior software engineer and the paycheck is likely to follow-- regardless of your technical merits or lack there of.
Far less qualified individuals than yourself successfully bill themselves as senior engineers or solutions consultants, and make several whole multiples of your pay doing so.
YMV and good luck!
Do you have any examples of other tools that would be valuable? I honestly think I'd be pretty unhappy with iOS/Android development due to the nature of most companies that focus in that area, and I assume that'd probably be an option you'd recommend. I have an interest in security and penetration testing, but it's such a horrendously complicated and difficult expertise to attain and I have no realistic expectations I would ever get a good job doing that.
Working with C/C++ or other less-web focused technology is an option obviously, but agains no CS background and it just seems like such an uphill battle to learn what I need and then convince someone to hire me for it.
I have seen interns who can behave like senior engineers because they know how to take responsibility, talk with non-technical people, and tackle tough problems with confidence etc.
How much should we be writing tests? How much should those tests cover? What type of tests? Should we use Agile/Waterfall/etc? Do we need code reviews? Pair programming? Continuous integration? What should the deployment be like? What's the most appropriate database to use for this? How can we help ensure absolute security? What can we do to shave milliseconds from load time? How would we make ____ more distributed to handle high peak loads?
Those are all things that seem pretty relevant to being senior, and I don't have answers for them based on personal experience.
That's one hell of a good answer! Nice work!!
How much should we be writing tests? - How much do you need them? (Are you grinding out an MVP on very short notice, or setting down the foundation of a long running important project?) and if you need a more obvious signal, are you hurting from not having them?
How much should those tests cover? - See the above; but additionally (and tautologically), what parts of the code do you worry about tests covering?
What type of tests? -What type does your team feel comfortable with using and maintaining long term?
Should we use Agile/Waterfall/etc? - See the above, additionally consider if the context you're in (because the powers that be over you incurr a LOT of constraints) really encourages one of these.
Do we need code reviews? - See "how much should I be writing tests"
Pair programming? - Continue to cite the above, as well as "does it work for your team"
Continuous integration? - Is the overhead worth the benefits? (this is not a loaded question)
What should the deployment be like? - Easy, robust, hard to fuck up, easy to clean up.
I stopped here intentionally because your latter questions touch on technical decision making, to which I'd give unified advice: Get to know the space. Get to know your tools, then ask someone smarter than you :) Less glibly, someone else has almost always done what you intend to, if not many someone else's, and their experience is so fucking valuable I cannot emphasize it enough, this is also half the benefit of having a personal network. However, you need a mental model of the space to evaluate their learnings in your context, and that just takes playing in that space until you feel comfortable with it.
I really hope this doesn't come off as a preachy rant, my goal is to address your final sentence; to echo my original statement, that I believe you can apply the experience you've gained as a dev thus far to the questions you claim to have no experience for (and you go so far as to demonstrate this e.g. your rails example); and even in absence or presence of that, leveraging your team and peers is invaluable for making "less bad choices", and you're already doing that by asking here on HN. You're already walking the path you are aiming for.
Confidently saying "we're going to use this because I'm senior and I know it's the right choice" is something that I see as rarely being successful. It has its time and place, but it ain't something that you should be doing often. You mention bringing the right coworkers into the decision-making process, which is the more appropriate move.
Now, of the items you mention not having an answer to, I can give you a definitive answer to a few: ;)
- Do you need CI? Yes if it's helping you manage your risk. Do you need it for your 4 line bash script? Probably not. For an application your team works on regularly? It's 2016; Set up a freakin' CI server.
- Absolute security? This doesn't exist. Manage your risk, and the risk to the business. See: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/thisworldofou...
- Tests? Yes. As far as coverage and what type, again, manage your risk. Does decent unit-level coverage and a couple of end-to-end tests give your team the confidence they need to develop quality software at a rate acceptable to your team and the business?
- Do we need code reviews? Dealer's choice, but manage your risk. If you're getting heavy on tech debt, or there are big holes in team understanding, and you notice work is slowing down as a result, you haven't been managing your risk.
- Most appropriate database? Manage your risk. Have the conversations with the business that give you a framework for doing a meaningful evaluation.
- Shaving millis off of load times? What value does this represent to the business? There's a cost/benefit analysis that needs to be done to determine whether two weeks of work improving the response time by 10ms produces noticeable business value. Perhaps there's a way to shave 8ms off the response time which will only take one day. How much are 2ms worth to the business?
--
It's nice to have personal experience answering questions like the ones you bring up, but I would only say "nice to have". As the previous poster mentioned, senior is IMO about being communicative and thoughtful more than it is about being right all the time or having a lot of battle scars to show off.
I find it very tough to answer them unless I have personally faced the problem or if I have read extensively about it.
Sometimes I think that startup experience doesn't prepare you for this kinda stuff. In the early stages, it's all about "Fuck it, just ship it." So design and all go out the window. This is what is happening in my current company too.
This is the worst part of job hunting.
Replying to hundreds of applicants individually might be difficult, but a short email from noreply@company.com that says "Sorry, but the position has been filled. We will keep your application for M months in case we have another opening" wouldn't be unreasonable.
I don't know why. They might be trying to avoid angry emails, they might be trying to hang on to some backup candidates in case the one the hired does not work out, or maybe the tracking systems really are as bad as they appear.
I went on an interview where they flew me across the country, put me up in a fancy hotel, and then...completely ghosted on me. I would guesstimate that they spent a few thousand dollars on me, including the flight, lodging, food, dinner with the team, and ~15ish hours of interviewer-time. I can't imagine that the cost of three minutes of the secretary (or manager)'s time would be a significant factor after that.
Regardless, it's annoying....
However, you have to just start to imagine all of the things that happen on the other side of the curtain. The hiring manager moves to another project or hadn't been assigned when they started interviewing, the recruiter changes or their contract ends, the project funding gets delayed, the technology choice changes, they didn't know what kind of person they wanted, etc. In larger companies, you need a lot of coordination so that you don't lose a good candidate due to their not being a fit on the project that got to them first.
I would never expect a response other than "resume received" from an online submission, but, once you speak with someone, a status update of some kind, even if it is a "no decision has been made" makes sense.
Some companies take a long time to get back to you (IIRC for Amazon I was offered an interview 2-3 months after applying)
And many companies are just rude (don't even acknowledge receiving your application, don't follow up after interviews).
However something that struck me about your story: most of my cover letters have consisted of a simple 3-4 sentence email. It mentioned the job, where I found it, expressed my enthusiasm for the position and highlighted some skills I have that match the job description.
I'm curious to hear other opinions, but you might be trying too hard on the cover letters.
The first is two sentences saying that it looks like an exciting opportunity and introducing myself as a web developer in CityX whose client experience matches that of the hiring company.
The second is a few sentences saying that my experience matches the desired qualifications in the job ad, and expressing my desire to always learn new technology and improve my existing skills (because it's usually not a literal perfect match).
The third touches on why the position is a good match on a personal level, such as my personal/hobby interest in some topic that is central to the job. I close by saying I look forward to hearing more about I can help.
In all, it's really not too much longer than this comment. Maybe only 3 sentences longer.
I try to make it friendly and casual because I figure people don't like reading robotic, boring cover letters.
Why not try telling a story that shows some sort of personal interest in the organization that you're applying to? Or, try to focus on showing your enthusiasm for the position.
While you're working at changing your style, you should work on some basic mechanical things in your writing. I know that this is HN, so you likely didn't put much time into proofreading, but sentences like this one hurt me in my soul:
"The second is a few sentences saying that my experience matches the desired qualifications in the job ad, and expressing my desire to always learn new technology and improve my existing skills (because it's usually not a literal perfect match)."
Or, consider this sentence:
"I close by saying I look forward to hearing more about I can help."
Again, I understand that you likely didn't put much time into proofreading your comment, but you missed a pretty important word.
My approach is based off advice I once heard about essays for college applications. Overwhelmingly it seems like there is a formulaic approach to them that works really well. I assume this isn't specific to college admissions, but really just people in general who read lots of applications (whether it be for a school or job). Part of the advice I read was that you should stick to the formulaic approach unless you are an excellent, confident writer.
I would say my cover letters definitely show enthusiasm and I explicitly spend probably 25% of it discussing my personal interest in the position/company. But writing in a story format that is well formed, relevant to the job, and interesting is well beyond my abilities. I spend enough time as it is on cover letters that generally result in nothing.
I wonder what companies you are applying to? For example, I know that pretty much every tech company in my city is looking for developers. I think a problem is that developers mostly apply to the larger tech companies in the area (50+ employees). Smaller companies (like my own, and others I have talked to) are having trouble finding people even for entry level positions.
I feel i'm in the same boat, but with a different set of technologies. Regardless, i'm curious on what you feel you have succeeded at. Might be informative :)
Not sure what I've succeeded at. Being willing to learn is probably the biggest attribute to doing really well at my two developer jobs (according to my past and current boss). And just generally being a polite person who's easy to work with and willing to take on tasks without complaining.
It hasn't gotten me a job yet, mind you, but phone calls are slightly more encouraging than silence.
* All of the recruiter/middle-man spam that I couldn't find an option to filter out
* Most companies are doing something pretty boring (marketing/advertising) and look like pretty miserable places to spend most of your waking life
* Remote positions are pretty rare, and when they exist they have super high expectations
I wouldn't be so dismissive of recruiter spam, if you're really looking for responses back from companies.
Try again, and make clear demands (for starters: That they should not present you to potential employers without asking first) about how you want to interact with them. The slightest transgression: Move on.
You'll find a good one soon enough, and it'll be worth it sooner or later.
Not a job. Just an interview.
Seems pretty accurate in my experience - which is why I almost always aim to use recruiters.
If anything, there is a shortage of developers who:
- Have 3-5 years of experience ("Senior, but not too-Senior" engineers)
- Have narrow-enough skill sets
- Are willing to settle for a very narrowly-defined role
- Are willing to live in specific areas
- AND Are willing to work for the compensation offered
Picky companies can't seem to find these mythical employees in large numbers, so they throw their hands up and declare "shortage of engineers!"
Here are some software engineers that are largely getting ignored:
- People with 0-2 years of experience
- People with 10+ years of experience
- Software generalists
- Engineers who would also like to broaden their roles/responsibility (+architecture, +project management, +design?)
- Remote engineers
- Engineers who demand more than "competitively average" packages
Idk, people who have problems they need solved today (not after stringing along would be devs for months for the latest fad-de-jour) opportunities are out there, but take some looking outside of the crap posting resumes and useless meetups…
Yes...? All of this has happened. Twitter has become remote friendly. My employer is 100% no remote but continues to make exceptions and we have 6 or so remote employees now.
Salaries have skyrocket in the last five years. So I'd say...yes, there is a shortage of talented developers.
"talented" in that context usually means "has the ability of an experienced developer at the salary of a more junior developer."
If you accept that talented software engineers are the people who are simply good at software development then there are plenty - but they're often older, more experienced, and consequently paid more.
Actually, a shortage means that there is an external force that prevents the price from rising, such as government intervention[1]. If salaries have skyrocketed in the last five years, that is a sure sign that there isn't a shortage; although perhaps a shrinking pool of those who can afford the available supply.
As higher and higher salary offers are made, fewer and fewer companies can justify the costs. As fewer companies can afford to hire developers, fewer developers are needed. Thus, in a functioning market where prices are rising, the number of businesses in the running to hire developers can never exceed the number of developers available. As soon as there is another business wanting to hire a developer, the price will rise until someone stops wanting a developer because it has become unaffordable.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortage
Software development wages have risen faster than general wages for decades, haven't they?
Besides those rare outliers at rare outlier companies, like that dude at Google that makes $300K who everyone on HN seems to know, are software development wages actually going up to the extent that would indicate a "shortage"? Are they even 10% (inflation adjusted) over where they were a decade ago?
When people talk about developer shortage, they often have developers fit for these jobs in mind.
I don't. Who are you talking about?
> - People with 0-2 years of experience
What are these people supposed to be doing? You can't have 3-5 years of experience without having 0-2 years of experience first.
That said, applying to jobs without meeting someone there first is not the best way to go about it.
Even then, I'm not sure "tech hiring is down 40%" would be a reasonable conclusion to draw -- it's like saying, "the newspaper only had 15 job listings in it, the American economy must be in the toilet."
A 40% decline in real tech-hiring rates would be a shocking, sudden decline. The simpler, most consistent, and most likely explanation is that the author's data isn't representative of the big picture.
It's very similar to "my helloworld.c won't compile, the compiler must be broken"
Edit: if the author has only been in the business a couple of years, he may not be aware of the historical boom/bust nature of it - yet.
However, as @felipellrocha mentioned, the conclusion that hiring is simply down seems to make the fewest assumptions.
> It definitely helps that the author mentions that they track their listings compared to their competitors
Hmm.
One chart could have made all this more clear: January 2014 through June 2016, with all the sites mentioned included in the chart. The author hints at having that data available, but has left out big chunks of it.
I can understand not wanting to dump so much business intelligence on some website, but they're the ones trying to write about the data without showing it.
There is. This one covers the last three years for the first half of each year: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*ptKtTWdeh0XfGPrWsr...
- Perhaps job boards are slowly dying as a way to fill jobs
- Perhaps you're not tracking the job boards that are growing the fastest and only the same "nearest" competitors
- Perhaps job listings used to exist for jobs that weren't ever hired for, and now listings are more accurate
- Perhaps listings used to live for a long time, and now they are filled faster reducing the backlog
- Perhaps tech jobs are shifting away from smaller companies that would use a job board and back towards bigger companies that use other methods to hire
Lots of other conclusions.
There certainly seems to be a new class of job site. Hired, underdog, and greenhouse are what everyone seems to use these days. With the exception of angellist, nobody I know hires using boards (though that's a small number of data points, since most of the people I know are front-line types that aren't in charge of hiring)
Which (authenticjobs.com) certainly isn't one of the top 5, and I'm guessing not even top 10 such websites.
If this had been the usual analysis of one of the large job listing aggregators, then I think more of the arguments made here would come into play, but I give this one slightly more credibility since it's a for-pay and "curated" job site.
So I'll put it in the somewhat-more-interesting category.
Back to the author's points, of course perceptions help frame reality, too.
Anecdotally, I would say it's also likely that tech companies that ARE hiring are shifting their hiring budget to sources that bring in more qualified candidates. AuthenticJobs is one of the better niche tech job boards, but it's still a job board. We see lots of growing companies that are spending less money on older channels like LinkedIn and job boards and instead, spending money on an applicant tracking system, hiring in-house recruiters, and using services like Entelo, TheMuse, AngelList, Hired, etc.
*We run Underdog.io.
Other thing that should be mentioned: a lot of initiatives at a lot of companies over the last two years just didn't work.
Feels a bit like we are at the tail end of a pretty big macro cycle of tech companies green lighting big initiatives with optimistic mindset and now a few years later the due bill is coming and the bets just didn't pay off.
Maybe a big example would be Twitter: a few years ago they were straight up hoarding engineers; fast forward to now, what did all this amazing engineering talent get them? Maybe nice code but the engineering they've done hasn't been able to increase users.
The reason engineers get paid well is because of their extreme leverage: just a few engineers can pull off amazing results. But you eventually need the results. And if the results are not there, broadly, then there will be a reentrenchmet.
I don't know which way the prevailing winds are blowing in tech. I could swap anecdotes with you (a tech investor I had a beer with recently seemed very happy? my giant tech employer and its competitors are doing great!), but I don't think it wouldn't get us any closer to the ground truth.
The psychological and sociological aspects of tech employment are not discussed as much as they should be and it is a disservice. Again, I love data-driven policy as much as the next Bayesian, but positive description is not the only thing that has value. Sometimes normative description also has value, even if it emerges from a sparse set of qualitative descriptions.
I personally would like to see much more anecdotal data about how people feel about tech employment, because I think at this moment in history the interface between organizations and employees represents one of the most significant moral problems on the planet, that has wide-ranging effects stretching from income inequality to PTSD or depression to stagnation of innovations that could alleviate poverty or diseases, etc. In the same way that some claim that governmental regulations stymie tech progress, I feel it's perfectly analogous and perhaps even more critical to point out that organizational bureaucracy in the form of anti-human treatment of workers, candidates, and the unemployed, is just as much of an impediment to collective progress, but is much less talked about because it's fashionable to hate on government but taboo to hate on ethical failures of companies in their treatment of workers, candidates, or the unemployed.
If someone says "pneumonia diagnoses are down 40%" and someone replies "I disagree, it doesn't feel like doctors are diagnosing less pneumonia to me," nothing of substance has been added to the conversation.
That said, I also think that I interpreted the purpose for posting the article too narrowly.
Edit: to be clear, I don't intend to diminish the concerns you listed. The argument "A is irrelevant to B" is not the same as "not A" or "A is irrelevant"
They are "relevant" in the sense that it provides a logical repository for information about how the job market feels, both factually and emotionally. I don't see much benefit in asserting such a need to keep the topics separate that even a comment thread on Hacker News cannot mix the two kinds of assessments together.
There you go, 2 data points.
Best I can tell, all software related sectors still hiring
True, the article title made a factual claim about data, but that doesn't mean commenters aren't welcome to share their related experiences, or deserve to be chided for not presenting rigorous evidence or treated as if they don't know the difference between the two (which does seem a little disrespectful, though I appreciate that you were trying not to be).
We're actually hiring good people in entry positions, which is an indicator that smart people are looking for stability, good benefits and mediocre compensation. That usually happens ahead of poor macroeconomic conditions for a variety of reasons.
Budget is driven by business and income tax (i.e. profits and bonus) both tend to peak before things go south. This .gov uses archaic cash accounting, so they always focus on current cash flow. So if we have cash to burn, that means things were great last year. :)
Businesses in particular always invest in growth, so lots of revenue means that growth prospects are tightening, even though things look great in the present.
In general the popular reasons for disliking enterprise tech:
- The tech is generally years behind what people are doing now and risk aversion is generally above all else. No new and shiny, which means you're generally not that attractive to other companies that are doing pretty cool stuff.
- Everything is slow. Things require approval from people who have no idea who you are and what you're trying to accomplish.
- Apathy. You are but a tiny cog in a very large machine. Your Herculean efforts may not even cause a ripple anywhere outside of your team (if that) so why? Punch the clock, do your job, go home.
- Beauracracy. See risk aversion and apathy. Your novel idea is but a flight of fancy that could cause a middle manager with no technical expertise a bonus.
I spent my first four years out of university working for very large companies and I was so very bored and stifled I was crawling out of my skin during the work day. I also found that I could get a month's worth of work done and be so far ahead of my peers in a week that I could basically check out, show up just for meetings, then go to a coffee shop/"work from home" and work on my own projects or consult for other companies.
I definitely learned things about process and organization that could be scaled to smaller teams and companies that continues to help me today, but I could never go work for a huge company again.
In some other HN comments over the years I've suggested that a very good path for young people is to start with the big companies. You will likely be set up with more support, free time, and lower stress so that you can get your feet under you and figure out life in tech with little risk.
For the enthusiastic and generally well prepared you will likely be bored in 6-9 months. Maybe a year. For the very green, "I got into CS because of the paycheck/whatever" crowd, they've probably found their career.
The big companies treated me as well as they could in my short stints and I was paid VERY WELL coming out of school and I learned a ton about careers in technology and how it's not just about the code and I truly feel I owe my career jump start to my experiences at those first three companies.
However, I'd never go back to working for a large company again. The variety, multidisciplinary teams and tasks, the ability to affect change in a smaller organization, the camaraderie and enthusiasm displayed in even a 100 person, 15 year old company aren't even in the same ballpark as those of a big company.
Of course not all of them are, but I've worked with very talented devs in traditional business IT shops. They worked regular hours, had families and lives outside of the office, they didn't necessarily know (or chase) the hot tech trends but they knew what they knew inside and out. They didn't have to use Google or StackOverflow to write code. They had been around for years, knew the business and the systems and could take a fairly vague requirement and deliver exactly what the user needed without a lot of discussion.
They weren't blazing trails or disrupting anything, just doing solid work predictably and well.
Exactly my perceptions as well. It seems like VCs and the tech scene in general put growth over profit in a big way for the last 3 - 5 years. That's a fine way to be for a lot of businesses, but my feeling is that companies and the hivemind got a little to comfortable with it, and rather than delaying profits for growth in the short term as an explicit strategy, began to take it for granted as an acceptable way to operate a business in the early days.
The days when "Ramen profitable" mantras abounded and everybody praised 37signals have definitely quieted down, including on HN.
And now it's been long enough that the tide's going out and we're seeing who's still got trunks on.
I don't think the whole thing is going to crash into the ground, but I think "peak easy money" occurred in the past 24 months and has passed. I expect companies to have to work harder to prove they're actually bringing in cash.
IMO, this is just as it should be and the market is correcting for valid reasons.
----
Semi-related anecdote: SF's insane rent prices have mostly plateaued in the last 9 months, especially compared to past growth, and I hear the occasional whisper of them falling. Most news orgs get SF rent prices way wrong (by extrapolating bedroom prices from home purchases, not rentals, for example), but as someone who's lived in the city for a few years and changed apartments annually, I've got a decent calibration for the market. This is a trailing indicator, and to me signals that tech workers are less financially risk tolerant, and perceptions of "my financial situation is stable or poised to improve" are on the decline. Nearly all of my friends express worry over finances, despite making north of 100k.
Here is the data dump: https://github.com/aparij/soCareers-Data/tree/master/new
I've been using the StackOverflow Careers RSS feeds for a small script I've been writing, which gives a good view of Now... maybe I can find something interesting in your data for the Past
https://github.com/aparij/soCareersScrape
so, thanks
It will be probably at NullException.io (just empty domain right now)
With investors focusing more on hard fundamentals like revenue and profit and a lot less on "hype" metrics like user growth, employee growth, number of baristas on staff and such a lot of tech companies have taken the hint and got down to business. That includes slamming the brakes on hiring and in some cases cutting staff. That's not the only force at play, but it's a big one.
The big tech companies are still hiring but being much more selective and limiting how many they hire. By the time some of them start having layoffs, the tech economy will be in free fall for a number of months and it will be too late if you aren't prepared for it.
Many larger companies are starting to put in place policies and procedures that will limit the number of promotions, raises, and bonuses that they give out. These same actions are also intended to expose lower performers more quickly so they can be identified and managed out.
My advice is this: find ways to continue to learn and grow, and keep building skills and making things. Save for potentially long periods of unemployment, and be willing to work very hard to ensure that you're not perceived as a low performer.
Lastly, don't sweat it. These economic corrections are good thing. They can unlock a lot of latent talent, capital, and resources that are being wasted. Just be financially prepared for it and you'll be fine.
Couple of things that I noticed
- more channels - There are at least a dozen of startups like TripleByte, interviewing.io
- referrals becomes preferred way of hiring. From small companies where majority of hires are made through personal networks to fortune 500 companies (using an external recruiter is a last resort).
- AngelList, Stackoverflow Careers have matching features and you can learn more about the company.
- This is an employee market. Companies have to proactive to get employees (hence the 'poaching'). Posting something to a job board is not efficient.
- More acquihires by US companies happens in Europe, since they have hard time competing with Apple, Google, Facebook etc.
First two points are backed by data.
I now have a list of ~300 recruiters email's that I can give out to anyone who is looking for work :)