Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession
From all the rejections I’ve got so far this is the first time the reason is markets turmoil / recession threat. To be honest is my first time job hunting since I graduated in 2019.
Screen shots: https://t.co/wSx5IR44nK
Will be this the situation for most tech companies or just start ups? I know the unprofitable over valuated ones will most likely get rekt first but I wanna know if during recessions recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies.
What companies or roles will be more resilient?
And how as a SWE / tech industry professional, specially the ones starting their careers like me, can prepare?
I hope some experienced people in the industry can give some hope and advice. Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market. First pandemic, then recession? F...
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 389 ms ] threadUsually it’s recent hires and people who’ve been there a long stretch who get cut first, of course with lots of exceptions.
This was a bit confusing to me.
Are you saying in your experience that it is both the most senior and most junior employees (in terms of company tenure) that get laid off?
* This is one reason why you should be sure to convey your wins to your boss; when you have 1-on-1 conversations, be sure to highlight obstacles that you've overcome. You don't have to brag, but it's okay to be realistic - humble, but proud.
That's a very optimistic take. What usually happens is that there's an obvious bottom line improvement to laying off a few very senior people, but the impact isn't so obvious, so from the business's perspective it looks like a win.
I remember the cognitive dissonance of being an employer's rep at a job fair in 2010 and telling everyone who came up to our booth that I could take resumes, but we weren't hiring! At least I got a free lunch out of it.
Businesses don't always do what makes sense from the outside.
That is the case for traditional companies, but not for tech. I worked for one company (most of the time as a manager) for almost 27 years, and never made as much as new hires at most tech companies. My company got an insane bargain with me, and my whole team, and they knew it.
I don't think that cost is the reason that companies like firing older folks.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16569567/
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
I think most people would see this as a loss for the small firm (note that the firms size matters). The cost of an employee is pretty high for small shops and salary is just one of the line items that come with OP's employment. Additionally, severance is rarely offered in positions less than 1 yr, even then it's optional.
Not great at all.
For anyone reading your resume in the future, it's impossible to know if you were let go due to no fault of your own, or if you were let go for cause after a probationary period expired.
I personally don't hold a single short job against people, but the reality is that having a 6-month job followed by a couple months off on your resume will have a negative impact when some hiring managers read your resume.
It's also 6 months (+ time off) that you can't accomplish much of anything because you were ramping up and then had the rug pulled out from under you. Having a 6-12 month setback in your career isn't a huge deal when you've been working for 20 years, but it can be a huge setback for juniors.
Just write why on your resume? The dates will check out or not.
Even juniors can structure their resumes as a narrative. Mine has a brief "felt stagnant and decided to try #vanlife for a year" section.
People like a story. The trick is to avoid automated hiring funnels.
What do you think about new grads having to switch not long after because of bad work environment, bait-and-switch, etc? I hope such a negative outlook is not that prevalent.
Depends entirely on the job and company.
If someone is hiring average developers for average or below-average pay at a no-name company that gets 1 organic resume submission per week, they're going to overlook it and bring the person in.
If someone is hiring top developers at a hot tech company with high pay that attracts 1000s of impeccable resume submissions per week, they can't interview everyone. They might only screen 10% of resumes because that's all they can handle. At this level, competition is so fierce and the applicants are so strong that you have to look for any reason to drop someone from that 10% who get through. Having a short job followed by a resume gap could be enough of a signal to get you bumped in favor of any number of perfect resumes.
Adjust expectations accordingly for companies between the two extremes.
> What do you think about new grads having to switch not long after because of bad work environment, bait-and-switch, etc? I hope such a negative outlook is not that prevalent.
I think everybody gets a mulligan and I personally wouldn't hold it against a junior. A single data point isn't a trend.
However, I would still question the candidate thoroughly about it. Unfortunately, there are many people who leave otherwise decent jobs because their expectations are too far detached from reality. When someone's definition of a "bad work environment" is being expected to participate in code review (true story), the problem wasn't with their employer. Some basic questioning can usually get to the bottom of this, but it's more common than you might expect.
Then don't list it.
With how racist and sexist many companies are now, it's getting harder to find a safe one to hire into where I can just do my job and not get involved in political stuff.
Nah that'll torch your resume for years. Unless you're a total rockstar otherwise, I'd be terrified to explain a 6 month stint.
But one six month stint is fine, especially if you can explain it away with something pithy about how the economy tanked and the company shed a significant percentage of its workforce.
That would be fine for single people or couples without children and enough savings to relocate or live on whilst job hunting, but absolutely devastating for everyone else.
As if there weren’t enough uncertainty already…
I can speak from experience that in our pyramid scheme economy propped up by big government and big bank money printing it's extremely difficult to support a child if you're not part of the 'inside crowd' who has access to the easy money (cheap loans, investments and subsidies). It doesn't have to be that way though. But to expect total safety is immoral because it relies on some kind of financial scheme operating behind the scenes. You can't create any real value in this world without taking a risk. If you're not taking any risks, you're not creating any value. Nobody owes it to you to support your children; especially if it means that they themselves can't afford to support their own children by participating in the free market.
What you can do to prepare is just to keep getting better at the skills people are looking for.
There are many things happening at once.
One that I think people are underestimating is baby boomer money. They are retired/retiring. It doesn't feel comfortable with the same risk that was acceptable in the last decade. That will suck at an unprecedented amount of liquidity from the system.
Having said that, I think in 2022, there are lot of companies tech and non tech that are still hiring as the demand for tech jobs is a lot more than what we had during 2001 or 2008 crash. You just have to do a bit more homework and effort to get the jobs.
Ultimately all companies are linked to a market of some sort which in the end can see growth or shrinkage if a crisis comes, you can't do anything about it.
Ultimately I think this might be an around-the-block way to cut fat, get rid of remote workers, and a desperate attempt to try and take control of the job market again.
If the big companies claim the sky is falling and start laying people off and cutting costs everywhere, then everyone else is going to follow.
The evidence will be in earnings reports later on. If a company's executive management is crying wolf and then reporting record profits, well.........
I didn't wind up job hunting in 2008 so can't speak to that.
Though I’m kinda curious if the affect is outsized mostly in the SV, VC pumped side of the tech industry. I work for what technically could be considered a tech startup but is backed by companies with heavy domain experience and traditional investment firms. As far as I’ve heard we’re still in a hiring storm.
You're right that it will start with the obvious candidates, but we'll see if it goes on long/bad enough to have a broader impact.
Didn't regret that decision. Although tuition has gotten totally ridiculous. Do it the cheapest way you can, like a public in-state school or something (I did that and it was still pretty expensive).
Depends on the size of the tool maker, I guess.
Update: As of now, about half of the companies I've interviewed with at one level or another, have abruptly halted their process due to economic concerns.
Do the teams organise any other company wide functions in that way? Hardware procurement, maybe?
I have gotten verbal numbers. Nothing in writing though so it could always turn out a dud. Which will suck, but one step at a time.
Satya also announced last week that everyone below ~L67 is getting an adjustment to their salary.
Wow...
This happened to me last year and after asking around happens every year.
- the 2000 Dotcom Bust
- the 2008 recession
- the 2020 pandemic recession
- Now
The short answer is that no one really knows what will happen. A lot of companies are reading the tea leaves - and regardless of what anyone tells you, that's really all it is - and trying to figure out how to make the best moves given rising prices, rising interest rates, a pandemic that, though mostly tamed, still presents challenges and potential dangers, war in Europe, etc. Back in March of 2020 when I was still actively looking, I went through the same thing you are now - companies who were super eager to hire me all of a sudden stopped the interview process and circled the wagons. And these were the FAANGs.
My advice here is to keep looking, but start working on something on the side that will generate revenue. Working for a company feels like a safe move until the economy contracts and they ultimately decide what they think you're really worth. In every one of those previous downturns, I felt like my sense of self worth diminished along with every rejection or ghosted call - and I suffered a LOT of those. This last time around in 2020, I finally gave up entirely and became an independent technical strategy consultant - basically doing what I've always done, but under my own banner instead of someone else's.
It took six very hard months until I had a solid client base and consistent enough income to survive - I had to borrow money from some folks during the time to pay the mortgage and healthcare, which was humbling, but it worked. I also have a mortgage, a wife, and a teenager to support, so I really had to get a solid income flowing fast - there wasn't a lot of room for error.
If you get a job before you figure out your side gig, great! But maybe keeping working on the side gig because it's nice to have something to fall back on. If you get the side gig running, but it's not making you enough money and you get an offer - take the offer, but make sure you keep building out the side gig.
I was probably about your age when the first Dotcom bust happened - I had been out of college only two or three years at that point - and I gotta tell you, that was frightening. When I got my first job out of college, I was hot shit. I put my resume on Monster.com on a Wednesday and by the following Friday I had received about 100 calls, 10 job interviews, and five solid offers. When the bubble burst, not a single person or company returned any of my calls. For nine months. A smarter man would have spent that time trying to build something to make money, to be independent from the vagaries of corporate America and economic cycles over which he has zero control. I was not that smarter man then - it took 20 years and at least three more cycles for me to finally figure it out.
Be the smarter (person). Keep applying and interviewing, but spend the rest of the time you would otherwise be working building something for yourself to generate revenue. Could be code, could be an online class, could be selling stuff on Etsy - doesn't matter, so long as it's something you can sustain and that can eventually sustain you if worse comes to worse.
> My advice here is to keep looking, but start working on something on the side that will generate revenue
If you figure out these answers and get to know your targeted audience very well, you will then understand how they learn about new products and evaluate them. You can then start marketing to them in their language with the value proposition of how your product solves their problems. Put ads up where they will find them, hang out in forums and chat rooms and such where they ask questions, write blog posts about things they are interested in and make sure they get picked up by search engines and - hopefully - news aggregators like this one where your target audience is reading. It's a slow, iterative process that keeps building on itself as you keep going and building momentum. It will be very discouraging at times, but you need to really understand your customers and, when you do, you should be able to figure out why things aren't working when they aren't and how to fix them.
Don't worry about going big and scaling - make enough money to support your needs (and trim your needs as low as you can while remaining comfortable). I found consulting clients by posting on my LinkedIn feed. I have one major privilege here - I've been in the industry for more than 20 years and have built a sizable network as a result, all of whom were eager to help me find clients. The bulk of this network is only a few years old, though, so there's no reason you can't build a similar network yourself, if you haven't already.
As technologists, we tend to focus on the tech. Spend some time focusing on people, their problems, and how you can uniquely solve them - better, faster, more focused, whatever. You may even find tech isn't the answer to solve for - it may be education or writing or running workshops or something else.
And, mostly, build trust in yourself. All of this stuff seems so complicated at first, but that's because we complicate it needlessly. You want o be successful in business? Find an audience that has a need, really understand the consequences of that need and what it means to that audience, create a solution and solicit feedback from the audience, then sell to those who respond favorably. Then, keep listening to them and intelligently improving it to grow the business. If you sit down and think about how YOU would go about doing it, you may find most of the answers you're looking for.
Did this affect the IT sector? Seriously asking because I didn't notice it.
Had a friend have a pretty similar experience with a different company at the time, but ended up landing a job there by the end of the summer of that year.
I actually think we're going to look back and see the massive hiring and good news that came in 2021 is the blip. A lot of these companies that soared during the pandemic - like Zoom and Netflix - are seeing revenues drop. Many companies figured the worst was over and went nuts hiring, getting funding, etc. Now that the fed is raising rates again, a lot less of that money will be flowing around, and companies that hired thinking they would get their next round will find themselves laying a bunch of folks off. It's already started. Every single day there's another version of an article in my tech feed saying something to the tune of, "Batten down the hatches for the next 18-24 months". Executives reading those stories are already making moves to cut costs and try to ride out the storm. Whether the storm comes or not is largely irrelevant as the effects will be the same - and all of that preparation for the storm in many ways ensures its arrival.
I once had a company ask me to do a math test after I had already done their phone screen, coding interview, and day-long on-site interview. Like, they wanted to test my knowledge of trigonometry. That was 2018 but also the moment I decided I was done with that BS.
a company once wanted me to do HackerRank after they invited me to work on essentially a copy of my open source project
i was like: "you know i've done the same thing before, right?"
they never responded
i have (mostly) quit consulting this year to bootstrap some of my long-planned projects (e-mail me if you want to see some)
i'm now more happy than ever, eventhough i have not yet made any money (!)
the source of happiness comes from me owning all the IP for the project, no NDAs to sign and me being in full control of the technical decisions
the most positive so far is, i've stopped seeing work as hours/leisture, but as an investment
the more effort i put into a project the more value it can generate to the clients
as an employee, however, more hours on a project, guarantees only two things a) to get mentally exhausted or b) to make some super-rich VC more richer
own your work!
2000 - I was three years into my career and I had been looking at the market to see what were the in demand skills. I was working for a boring profitable company that was printing bills and just getting into integrating with CheckFree - the backend for most banks electronic bill payments at the time.
2008 - while I was just coming out of my “expert beginner stage”, once again I had a skillset that was in demand and a network that allowed me to find a job quickly. (4 days after being laid off)
2020 - my company had an across the board paycut. Again I spent the prior two years learning an in demand skillset and found a job paying about 33% more than I was making before the cut.
Until 2020, admittedly the jobs were unremarkable by big tech standards. But I had a comfortable life.
The first two years after my new job, I used the two year prorated signing bonus to pay off all of our debt and build a “go to hell fund”. If I get laid off tomorrow, I’m 99% sure that I could get another job or contract quickly. Fortunately, I work for $BigTech remotely and I could take a 40% pay cut without it affecting us too much.
In the startup space, many companies were raising money on valuations equal to 30-50 times ARR. Investors can be very picky and many startups are about 1 yr of cash on hand. If they are forced to raise money now, and their performance isn't the best of what's out there, they are going to be SOL or facing such onerous terms, it's going to be demoralizing.
Startups should be preparing to ride out the storm and that's going to mean they're going to find a way to push off a fundraise / going broke at any cost, if possible.
Well, for startups, if they've just raised (in the last 6 months) and you know or can estimate their burn rate and they have 18-24 months in the bank (or are cash flow positive), that's a good choice. Also good if they have a clear business model, rather than still trying to figure it out.
I think that any of the pandemic focused companies were darlings of the markets for the past 2 years and they'll be a snap back for them (Zoom, Pelaton, etc).
But it's hard to counsel you on areas of growth/stability at this time. If you are currently employed and decently happy, this next 6 months would probably be a good time to stay still, since you're a known (and hopefully respected) quality at $CURJOB.
See this great tweet on the topic: https://twitter.com/techgirl1908/status/1524740200206848000 (there are also some companies in the replies who say they are still hiring).
My understanding is those companies could be high risk for being overvalued and will have difficulty raising funds in 18-24 months. The RSUs maybe taxed at the current value, but actually be worthless after a down round.
My interpretation is companies that raised 18-24 months ago and are still hiring now would show stronger signals, because their last valuation missed the tech book of 2020 and they seem to think they can continue hiring despite the current economic situation.
I didn't consider RSUs or the possibility of a down round (but frankly, everyone who raised in the last 2 years has that, to your point). I'm cynical enough that I typically value options or RSUs of private companies close to $0 ("whee, a lottery ticket!"). Now, stock grants of public companies are a different situation.
> My interpretation is companies that raised 18-24 months ago and are still hiring now would show stronger signals
That's a good point. Sure, and stronger yet would be startups that are profitable or cash flow positive (or could be by flipping a few switches). The problem is that knowing from the outside if a company is profitable is as difficult as knowing if someone is going to hit the brakes on hiring in the next few months.
Well, demand is high and supply is constrained. This has caused a spike in inflation. It’s a good question whether interest rates should be used to counter this. In order to counter this interest rates are going up, this reduces the attractiveness of the stock market causing a crash- as you’ve seen in the main indices. But on top of that inflation is high in energy and Putins war is going to spike food prices. High interest rates also encourage people to save instead of spend which will put a headwind on spending.
So we’re moving into a situation where consumers are going to be spending a lot of their income on mortgages, rent, fuel and food. Whilst the supply chain may ease supply, discretionary spending looks likely to tank.
Unfortunately, the data shows that most Americans are not SWE's pulling $180k from the comfort of their newly renovated living room for the last two years.
The best advice I can give you is to keep developing skills that are in demand. Keep building things. Keep networking. You will find something better even in tough times.
and even better:
- focus on developing skills that are transferable, not unique to a particular project or companies
- work on your own projects, always, because when you're an employee you trade your time, mental space and your work for inflationary cash
you deserve better than this
OTOH, if they're still around and hiring again a few months later then I'd take that a sign that they are running themselves well, and have a good grasp on their stability, and would consider applying again then.
Yes, and they might lay people off. Hiring slows generally (and unemployment rises) during recessions.
For example, I was at Amazon in 2008-9 and their attitude was: "We think we'll be alright, but we're not taking any chances, so departments should expect to make due with their current staff for a while." Once the freeze was lifted we started hiring like crazy.
I don't say this to brag, so I apologize if it comes off that way. I just wanted to give you what could be a cancelling-out anecdata point to your own experience. I wouldn't let it get you down too much. Keep hunting and keep applying, I doubt the recession will get to a point where NOBODY is hiring :)
If you need another job board resource, try out "Hired.com". Here's a referral link from me for it (full disclosure I benefit from you using this!):
[link redacted]
I found it to be an extremely effective tool for finding interviews, or I wouldn't recommend it.
I wish you all the luck possible on your hunt; Sometimes it's just that -- luck. Just keep perservering and don't be too proud to ask for help from anyone and everyone!
It can get a lot worse. We'll see what happens, but there's good reason for people to be concerned about this happening. I think it's fine for people to be asking for advice on how to approach here.
It's gonna be rough for a bit, but it's like with the market. If you think it's bad right now, just zoom out a bit. Even with things slumping a bit, we're still in a pretty good job market in our industry.
Main benefit of Hired is I could set my target salary ahead of time and the people contacting me knew and agreed to what I was looking for, instead of having to dig it out of the interview process elsewhere, and I still had about 10 companies reach out to me through there.
In comparison, pretty much every recruiter that contacted me on LinkedIn were giving me ranges at least 20% lower.
TO ANYONE ELSE: Please don't click that link anymore!
> You agree to receive subsequent email and third-party communications, which you may opt out of, or unsubscribe from, at any time.
(On trying to proceed without ticking:)
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I work in a product oriented company (won't get into details), and because of inflation and other areas of the downturn, raw materials (plastics, circuit boards, wood) got more expensive. We then needed to adjust the final sticker price higher which (understandably) means that some customers at say, Walmart, are less likely to buy the product. It's a very real tight squeeze on both ends for us and also for the customer. This has been going on for a few months now and was a major early indicator (imo) to me that things were going to get grim for a bit.
Counterpoint: Say "get rekt" around me. It's fine. Nobody cares if you're making stuff or can help them make stuff.
This comment is a joke, nobody who matters thinks like this.
Just want to understand what to look out for and just prepare.
New grads were probably hit the hardest, as they usually are during recessions.
2000 was much worse from everything I hear, but I wasn't there at the time.
But there was a lot of "Would you like fries with that?" in the tech sector generally.
That's actually the reality for most people.
Things only started taking off again when the "mobile" thing started with the cellphones revolution In my experience until that started, the job market was difficult. Not impossible, just difficult.