Nope, it's pretty bad. Out of maybe 40 applications I've had 2 interviews, made it to round two for one of them, no offer.
LinkedIn positions get 150+ applications within hours. For the first time I got nearly zero response from HN Hiring as well.
I think the issue is everything is skewing wildly towards senior roles, even non-senior roles are getting inundated with 200+ applicants that are over qualified.
If you're like me and have 3yrs of (FAANG and growth stage startups) SWE and 1yr of product eng / TPM'ing you're basically fucked. Hard to tell if I've fucked my career (by not just working at one company with my longest tenure being 2yrs w/ zero resume gaps)or if the market is just not great rn.
I've been staying afloat consulting for a friend's startup - granted SVB probably just nuked any chance of their series A actually happening.
Future is very bleak atm - but thank god I have cash to live on.
Totally agree, fortunately I have a decent network to draw from. Unfortunately, I have to refresh leetcode to take up friends who have rec's to offer + most of those friends work for orgs that have completely frozen hiring pipelines.
Network could be better though, going to spend the week at a friend's in Austin at SXSW to accelerate potentially growing the network at cringe founder events. Yes, I'm that desperate.
For me, when hiring someone, I want to have a track record with them. Having known them over a long period of time helps me be less guarded and more sure of their intentions.
This also applies if the person is a friend of a friend — building a “network” just means knowing people who can vouch for you as a valuable and trustworthy person.
The ability to build relationships and be stable over time is a merit.
I have never hired someone to pretend to be my friend, nor do I know someone who has done that. As I see it, having a true network of friends and professional connections is precisely what guards me against “fake” people.
If you’d like to reach out (email in profile), I’d be glad to lend some advice.
I think it can depend on what that networking is. Is it, "hey I went to college with a guy and we loosely keep in touch over <insert social media>, but I am hardly familiar with his work, we just are alumni." Okay, that is pretty bad imho. However, if it is something like, "hey there is the person I've done work with on a FOSS porject, both myself and them contribute to <some FOSS project> and the person does good work and is looking for work." I don't find that so bad.
For me, when hiring someone, I want to have a track record with them. Having known them over a long period of time helps me be less guarded and more sure of their intentions.
This also applies if the person is a friend of a friend — building a “network” just means knowing people who can vouch for you as a valuable and trustworthy person.
The ability to build relationships and be stable over time is a merit.
So you're looking to hire people you know and people you don't know don't have a chance to be hired? I don't know how to distinguish this from nepotism.
Not at all. But if I have to decide between two people who are equal “on paper”, and I know someone who can vouch for one of them, I will pick the “in-network” person every time.
If I were you, I'd go out and talk to people. Talk to friends in the industry. Go to tech meet ups. Even your neighbors might know someone who knows someone. If you can be adaptable, and self-promote, you might even find opportunities to help non-tech orgs improve their systems. If you're like me, and social skills aren't innate, it might take some exposure therapy, but as long as you maintain a friendly and positive attitude, that will register. It's all about building trust.
I wouldn't say that networks trump demonstrated ability (I prefer that to "credentials" because that's what credentials are a proxy for), but in any economic environment, your network is as valuable as your demonstrated ability. This is for many very rational reasons.
> I wouldn't say that networks trump demonstrated ability (I prefer that to "credentials" because that's what credentials are a proxy for)
That's not what I said. To emphasize my own comment:
> Whenever I've seen a situation with low supply/high demand
In context to the GGP I was making reference to improving resumes when the labor market is over-saturated. Many orgs will sooner hire someone who's been vouched for than to sift through 100s of Github repos and contact 100s of references. They might not be as good as the best candidate in the pool, but the expense of verifying that might be too much, especially if they don't have the bandwidth to do that (e.g., HR staff, time from tech staff). And in times like these, candidates will be just leaping out of their networks.
>If you're like me and have 3yrs of (FAANG and growth stage startups) SWE and 1yr of product eng / TPM'ing you're basically fucked.
I hope you find something soon, but let's be realistic here, claiming SWEs with FAANG experience on the resume are "fucked" is some real extreme hyperbole.
If you could pass the engineering hiring bar at FAANG, surely you can do an approximation of how many people with 4 years of career experience don't have FAANG on their resume, aren't engineers, or both. You have an advantage over nearly all of them.
Like others have said, networking/connections are key, but that's still true even when the job market is hot.
Maybe in the sense that the firehose monthly paycheck cannot be found at another company so I have to agree with you that the parent's comment seems very distorted.
Parent, try imagining a career like mine: 16+ years of working for startups that paid in the $60K ~ $80K range. Now feel better about yourself.
> Hard to tell if I've fucked my career (by not just working at one company with my longest tenure being 2yrs w/ zero resume gaps)or if the market is just not great rn
Take it from an old-timer: your career is still far too young to be fucked.
I was laid off in November - few false starts here and there but I start my new gig on the 20th. Better yet I have $20k left from severance which is really nice.
Got laid off in October, worked on open-source projects, two of those ended up in the front-page, got contacted and signed an offer this month. I felt like shit and spent too much time getting baked, but it's over now.
> Smoking a larger than normal quantity of marijuana, usually resulting in a good few hours of laziness, desire to eat fast food (or junk food) and/or fall asleep.
I think there are plenty who haven’t, probably lots for religious reasons. But to not have heard that term is very surprising. There’s even a movie, half baked.
I am not aware of any major religion that outright bans cannabis consumption. If anything, it is probably the fact that cannabis possession has enough of a chance to derail one’s life via the judicial system in many places around the world so that people do not want to risk it.
For example, the Bible bans this based on at least two premises (although interpretation/enforcement varies between churches). Ephesians 5:18 commands Christians to not be drunk, based on other passages like 1 Corinthians 6, this is commonly extended to anything that inhibits your mental faculties for pleasure. Romans 13 commands Christians to obey the authorities, and cannabis is currently federally illegal in the USA.
I've been too socially inept to know how to get some and would probably be too scared to do it even if I got some. I took DARE and I've seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
So not that it really matters, and not that you have to consume drugs you don't want to, but its legal in a huge chunk of the US now (assuming you're in the US since you took DARE). It's very likely that you're withing driving distance of a legal store - where you can just buy it like any other product. Even more likely that you'll vacation somewhere its legal otherwise.
Cannabis specifically is a very easy drug to try for two reasons- the dispensaries usually cater to first timers, and it's a pretty "low intensity" drug in normal doses. The dispensaries that sell it know that a huge chunk of the population isn't familiar, and its pretty standard to ask an employee "I've never tried this before, what do I do, what should I buy, and what should I know going into this" and they'll be super helpful and give you solid advice. It's their job, and they're prepared for it. If you asked someone at a liquor store how to prepare to drink for the first time they'd laugh or roll their eyes - and this is nothing like that.
Don't feel pressured to do drugs if you don't want, but don't feel scared. That goes for anyone on the internet reading this - don't feel scared, go into the store and try to learn if you're curious, but don't feel pressured to partake.
Counterpoint: be a little scared. Mild curiosity is not a good reason to try cannabis. (1) Some people are more sensitive than others to THC, and, worst case, you can end up hospitalized. (2) Smoking anything is bad for your lungs.
If you really want to do it, try low grade edibles; do it in the presence of a friend so they can get you medical help if you need it. Only a small number of people will have a problem, but don’t take stupid chances with your body and mind, people.
> Some people are more sensitive than others to THC, and, worst case, you can end up hospitalized.
How? For an adult human, marijuana is one of the safest substances out there. Easily safer than alcohol. Don't drive or operate heavy machinery and you'll be fine.
What percentage of people end up in the hospital from it, and how?
I'm not sure I'd recommend edibles for a first-timer. The high lasts a fairly long time, so if you don't like the feeling it's kind of annoying. Having a friend is always a good idea though.
Hmm I don’t know. I don’t like scared as an emotion here, and i think this reply is mildly fear-mongering. Be skeptical, be discerning, be cautious- especially when putting something in your body.
That said, there’s really few cases of cannabis use going poorly, especially in the context of other drugs (alcohol, tobacco) and their documented harm. I’m not a doctor, I’m not a lawyer, etc so do your own research, but it is most likely a safe activity at a “normal” dosage for the average person.
> If you really want to do it, try low grade edibles; do it in the presence of a friend so they can get you medical help if you need it. Only a small number of people will have a problem, but don’t take stupid chances with your body and mind, people.
I do agree with this. Edibles are good because you don’t have to smoke, but bad because the affects can take upwards of 2Hr to hit. it can be hard to dose and many people get impatient and take more and then they don’t enjoy the sensation. There’s almost no documented case of overdosing especially in the context of amounts someone might buy, so that’s not likely a concern, but just having a bad time is likely. Do it with friends - it’s also more fun that way. Most people don’t turn 21 and start drinking alone, so don’t do this alone either. Establishing a sober medical monitor type relationship for taking a small edible is a bit extreme but don’t be alone.
I’m speaking of the state of being high not of the word. I expect even native English speakers to not be aware of all or even most colloquialisms. I certainly don’t.
people i knew got one or two years contractor with 10% more pay increase right away, i was offered more than that for two year contractor at meta twice so far but i prefer staying at where i am.
we are all decades experience in embedded system,this field seems to be more aging proof? i am not sure.
embedded is more than IoT though, I don't know how many embedded engineers Google has, seems not a lot as its consumer hardware are probably outsourced. Amazon does make it own devices and have quite a lot embedded engineers, from my circle, not a single engineer was let go so far, and I know more than 10 of them in various locations and departments.
problem with embedded is that it was paid less than SWEs, maybe that's another reason it's "easier" to have jobs.
As a CTO the number of unsolicited inbound emails from recruiters with fawning profiles of potential candidates is not like anything I have seen before. I think it’s a signal that very highly paid engineering leaders are not able to find jobs like they had before easily.
We are profitable but in hiring freeze as we wait to see what happens. We were going to IPO last year but decided to delay because the market sucks. Interest rates need to stabilize and the IPO market needs to thaw before sentiment changes.
People don’t get it because money was so cheap for so long, but the key word here is venture - this is extremely risky stuff. Adventurous. Uncertainty and low success rate is supposed to be standard.
If you don’t mind me asking, are y’all doing anything to provide liquidity to common shareholders until an exit event? Aggregating ground truth around what “almost IPOs” are doing.
Product designer, 10 years experience. Laid off mid-December. Recruiter screens and hiring manager interviews have picked up somewhat, but it’s still proving very hard to get into late-round interviews. I have only my third portfolio review in nearly three months coming up next week – here’s hoping.
It's like night and day from a year ago. I've known some very high quality people who had to do 8 onsites to get one offer (and obviously a lot more applications, recruiter calls, and tech screens to get those opportunities). There are still jobs out there but companies know they can be very very picky right now and will reject you for the smallest reason.
I've been hiring fairly steadily. The level of talent that is applying has definitely increased. My hiring managers are able to be way more picky, and people are accepting first offers at a higher rate.
There's toug competition for those looking to be hired.
I’ve been posting where helpful, but early stage companies are still hiring!
If anyone is struggling and is on the mid/senior/director side of their career (3+ yrs), I'm helping place people at my friends' Seed and Series A companies. Email me at j{at}markovmanagement.com if I can help ya!
I work as an AI research engineer, so I’m having a totally different experience than the others I’m seeing here. Job market is very very strong for senior AI roles. Multiple offers that were >2x what I was making at a BigTech research lab (depending on how you value the equity). Interview process was much easier than I was expecting- mostly situational interviews (although I was referred in for those).
Having said that, many places refused to interview me because I didn’t have experience with LLMs. I was surprised how strict some places were with experience requirements.
LLMs have been interesting - I need to update my resume to focus on it. I have experience working on models like that since 2018 and are frankly less interesting than some alternatives (to me).
My guess is a lot of companies / hiring managers are searching for key terms. Screening is likely not from people who know what they’re talking about
Yeah, it was dumb. One company gave me an offer to lead engineering for their LLM team and another wouldn’t even interview me because I didn’t have any LLM experience.
I’m assuming that "AI research engineer" implies a PhD, but I’m curious what your progression was. How long were you in academia before moving to industry research?
4 year BSc + 1 year MSc. Experience matters much more than having a PhD. Lots of people without phds at the big ai research labs as engineers. I’d say it’s uncommon for engineers to have phds (although almost all have masters).
I’m a web dev and I’m wondering if there is really any practical way of levelling up to become an ML Engineer. Seems there are ‘schools’ out there but based on what I read on Hacker News these places won’t remotely prepare me to make that transition.
Not complaining just would appreciate some of your thoughts on what are good options to consider to make that leap.
TBH the code behind generative stuff is "fairly" simple, I made a GAN for my Masters degree back in 2019 that produced 16x16 tile assets for x-bit styled videogames. The rough part is CREATING the math that supports the learning models, its very easy to implement it after the fact. If you have a strong data structure foundation, and are decent with math then it shouldn't be a hard transition to pick up ML. It's the flavor of the year and everywhere you look schools are hustling for your money, can't say I've tried any of them/have an opinion of them so GL with that.
Or at most value it like a lottery ticket - something that lets you amuse yourself dreaming about what you’ll do when you “win”.
But make all your ongoing plans assuming they equity will be worth zero. Either because the startup fails, or because you get screwed out of any payout by the founders or board, or by future investors insisting on deals where early employee equity gets diluted and preferenced down to zero. Or even occasionally because they intentionally never have a liquidity event and stay private with no available way to monetise your shares. Those, or exits where employees make at most “new car” money not “fuck you” money, are by far the most common.
Do a startup if you want, they can be amazing ways to gain an incredible amount of experience to add to your resume in a short time, they can be a great fun work style at least for a while, they can be great at finding out who amongst your co workers are genuinely super talented and productive people and building networks with them.
But don’t fall for the “yeah, we’re paying well below market, but look at how generous our option grants are!” snake oil recruitment pitches…
I don't think the same can be said of FAANG equity, which is the context this was in: while it is still a good lesson to treat it as worth zero, you can regularly exchange it for cash at market prices.
Salary was still 2x FAANG comp (and roughly equal to my FAANG TC). So I’m fine taking the equity bet under those circumstances. I agree with you though. One company valued their equity at 3x (!!) what it was worth in October.
Just saw on your profile that you were a senior research engineer at DeepMind. That might be why you’re getting showered with offers and not necessarily the state of the job market for ML.
> I’m having a totally different experience than the others I’m seeing here
I also feel like you have a different perspective. It's not just about the actual experience.
Some complain about how hard it was to get a job, when they just needed a few weeks or months to get one.
They were also surprised to have been turn down by some companies, which is healthy. You can't match everywhere. You're not qualified on everything. Job ads are minimalist to ambiguous, so tech teams have to do a lot of filtering to make up with what HR published. You may also want to apply outside of your comfort zone, because you don't risk anything,...
Also, some seem surprised to have to interview. While 8 is definitely too many, it makes sense to do some, when you apply for positions with experience. You're no longer graduate, they want to know about you.
I was also surprised by users who reported to have a lower wage now, which is probably still much higher than the median income in the USA
Such views don't picture a weak market, but a more realistic market.
We're mostly among well paid tech industry workers here, so we can complain about the processes. But out of respect for most workers who earn up to the median wage, it's not decent to call these times a difficult job market.
I hadn't fully realise what kind of bubble the tech jobs used to be over there, before reading this thread.
I'm attempting to enter this field at possibly the worst time, with the worst qualifications. No YOE, no degree. I do have friends in the field that may be able to help but it's far from guaranteed.
Only thing I have going for me is that I have many years of non-professional programming experience and multiple great open source projects but at this point, I think my only hope is accepting anything. Any pay, any location, remote or in person. I'm already working near minimum wage jobs, so it's probably better to work something relevant on a resume.
I'm also in Canada so, it was sparse to begin with.
I got my first job at 19 after the dot com collapse, I was hired _because_ I had no work experience, no degree, and no expectations of salary (I was hired on minimum wage, though). They wanted a few people with no understanding of what it was like before the crash.
I do find that hopeful. I assume the hardest jobs at the moment would be the senior positions. These companies still need projects moving but also don't have much cash to pay, so the senior are first to get axed. At least, in my thought.
I have a brother whos a licensed electrician. When he was doing his on-job training, he always had steady work but once he got his full license and pay raise, he found himself getting laid off every year. The company would get less work for the winter and they axed the seniors right away.
Also look at companies that aren't obviously software companies. Manufacturing, Transportation, Energy, etc., all need programmers, too. And many of those jobs are more interesting than you'd think.
This is why I told my friends to get a community college degree at the least.
In times of prosperity, you can and do get hired without a degree. But when the industry takes a nose dive, you will get skipped over for candidates who do have a degree.
That's how I'm treating it. It seems once you get certain YOE you can be more picky. I'm already working minimum wage jobs, so this isn't a complete change of direction or life style anyways.
company went under in December, i got one interview out of like 30 applications and to be quite fair i messed up a really simple Python question cus of nerves so i obv didn't get it. idc I'm chilling and I get time to shitpost so there's no rush.
Got laid off mid-January from a smaller unicorn. 4+ YoE. I applied to ~80 places (mixture of cold applications and referrals), got to first rounds with maybe ~20, ended up with 5 offers (and pulled the plug on a few interviews due to fit or lack of interest.) 4 were startups of varying sizes, 1 was non-FAANG big tech, which I ended up taking for stability and WLB. Total time from getting laid off to signing the new offer was about 5 weeks.
Overall, I think things went ok for me because I have a fairly solid resume and a great network to lean on, and was able to do well in interviews. I also mostly applied to senior SRE and infra roles, which sounds like it’s harder to hire for than general SWE.
Makes sense that more specialized roles took less of a hit. I have to imagine the layoffs involved lots of generalists but they probably were not slashing their SREs.
I was laid off about a month ago (senior software engineer). I remember the whole job search for my last position, back in June 2021, lasted all of about two weeks. This time, it feels like there's significantly fewer interesting positions open, and the ones I apply to aren't even leading to HR screening calls. I've probably applied to about 30 positions.
The one place that did call me back gave me their take-home coding test, but their automated grading system said I failed, so they sent me a rejection email with no details about what their automated system didn't like about my code and then never responded to my request for more info.
I've really enjoyed the first month or so of unemployment, getting to hang out more with my spouse, do hobbies, work on the house, etc., but the anxiety about running out of emergency fund runway is slowly creeping in. We've got about another 4 months before things get really dire, not accounting for unemployment checks. With UI, we can probably double that before we'd need to dip into investment accounts.
For sure a more fortunate position to be in financially than most get, but it's still really unnerving not knowing when/if I'll get another interview. I've been consistently employed full time since the moment I graduated high school (about 10 years ago), so this is literally the first time I've ever not had a job in my adult life.
Yeah I think it’s important to remember that we aren’t terrible failures, but the market has shifted completely. I’m entering my second month of looking really hard (30+ applications a month) and have only had a few interviews so far.
For my last job I sent out a few lazy applications in early Jan 2021 and was debating which of 3 offers I wanted to take a few weeks later.
I’m a better engineer than I have ever been, it’s just a rough market. Hopefully everyone has the savings and emotional fortitude for a long job search.
Hiring not you with that attitude. Plenty of others have emailed and I've answered all kinds of questions. I'm not going to pollute some guys thread about layoffs with info about the company I work for, it's not a hiring thread.
I noticed that recruiter reach outs dropped to ~0 in Jan/Feb, but are starting to tick back up again. I'm fortunately still employed so when a recruiter does reach out I refer my friends.
I was laid off a month ago, senior frontend engineer. I've reached out to my network and have been talking to various startups, but it seems like most of the bigger companies do not want to bite.
Compounding that is my desire to keep working remotely, or somewhere local to the DC metro area, so many of the same opportunities that would be available to me in the Bay area, had I remained there, are closed to me, because they're using a hybrid model.
I'm not in much of a rush, and I'm hopeful that I'll find interesting work with some startup.
...You're in DC, NSA is in MD, CIA is in VA. The amount of contracting work in your area is ridiculous. As for non-major contracting companies, Amazon and Microsoft fork over silly bonuses for cleared workers, but that in itself is your barrier to entry... Can you pass an investigation? If so... go roll around in contractor money, there's no hiring freezes or layoffs right now.
I had to quit in September due to burn out. Given how many better engineers now on market I feel there are no space for me anymore. Now burning my saving money on rent and food and going to commit suicide few months later.
In the case that this was not a poor joke, please do consider calling 988 if in the US or any equivalent service in your locality: https://988lifeline.org
There is more to life than work - and it may be hard to see that in the face of cost and running out of money.
Have you considered any adjacent or post-software gigs? I know some folks who have left to go study a particular science or end up in teaching. A good friend of mine left engineering to become a substitute and then full-time teacher.
Maybe try a complete change? Work in retail or landscaping or go back to school or something. Software can suck because we tie our self worth to being productive on a little screen.
Sometimes I feel envious of people who don’t use computers at work. It would be nice to not have them be so tied to my reality.
I was in the same spot and similar timeline. I just found something that will be compatible with my burnout and terrible employment record.
For the most part during that time, pushing forward didn’t seem worth the energy at all. I’m glad I did though — I’m at least rather curious now, about how the next year will go for me.
Why was the comment suggesting to adjust expectations flagged down?
It said that OP should take a lower caliber software job where Silicon Valley-tier engineers normally wouldn't apply because such a job would not reject them.
>Given how many better engineers now on market I feel there are no space for me anymore.
If we entertain the premise that there's an influx of superior talent hogging all the "good SV jobs" (which it's probably the hiring freeze due to market correction from massive overhiring and the looming recession, but let's go with the premise), that's precisely where there would be "space" for OP.
Those jobs absolutely exist, and re: burn out they can be pretty slow-pace to boot. (For example, defense/government work.)
"better engineers" is subjective, some people have more technical skills and some more leadership skills, some more interpersonal skills etc. there is always space for you and everything you bring to the table, and you are so much more than your "labor" capacity. please don't commit suicide.
Took a year off and have been trying to get a job for the last 3 months. It’s been crazy. I’ve applied to over 50 jobs and have only got a few interviews.
Laid off in Jan (Senior Frontend Developer 7years exp) and took a few weeks off after getting laid off . I just cannot find an interview right now. I apply daily to around 5-10 jobs. It is making me question my skills as a developer. I never maintained an active github profie and seems like that was a mistake. Anyone has a remote job for frontend developer please help.
Laid off in October. Was making $130k as a mid-career embedded/C++/Python guy in LCOL USA. Supposed to start new job this Monday for $80k as an IT backend Java software developer at a University.
Been a very, very rough few months. The new pay will be difficult to service my debt properly.
Will stick with this for at least a year. I can take classes for free at a top tier university, which I love. Planning to use it to try to get into a well ranked masters program and then maybe FAANG? Pipe dream maybe, I went to a third tier university for a different engineering degree and got about a 2.9 GPA there.
But I absolutely love learning and am excited to take courses. Just hard to decide which 1 course per semester to take.
Maybe also see if I can help with some research in EE or CS or computational biology.
As a fresh grad, with two internships at government boards and not even a single FAANG-esque company in my portfolio, this thread is deeply depressing and the outlook couldn't be more bleak.
On the contrary, as a fresh grad with (presumably) lower COL requirements, you can be more flexible on the salary front than a lot of recently-laid-off senior SWE who may have homes + kids that need to be paid for.
Take it from a millennial who graduated into the recession in 2011, even when everyone is saying the job market sucks, there are always opportunities for younger/fresher people out there, you just might have to be willing to take a "worse" position to get started - but in this industry you can always level up later once things calm down.
Don't get distracted by all the people you see on here or Blind talking about their $500k TC in their mid-20s, those people are far, far outliers. I've never worked in FAANG, self-taught my way into webdev in my early 30s after two other half-careers in my 20s, and I managed to find a job with 0 experience during COVID because I adjusted my expectations down to "normal" salary ranges (sub-$100k), as long as it paid my bills and gave room to grow professionally.
As a young person you have both lower salary requirements (requirements in the sense of "I need at least $XYZ per month to keep the lights on) and a lot of time, both of which are massive advantages when taking the long view of your career.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 72.6 ms ] threadLinkedIn positions get 150+ applications within hours. For the first time I got nearly zero response from HN Hiring as well.
I think the issue is everything is skewing wildly towards senior roles, even non-senior roles are getting inundated with 200+ applicants that are over qualified.
If you're like me and have 3yrs of (FAANG and growth stage startups) SWE and 1yr of product eng / TPM'ing you're basically fucked. Hard to tell if I've fucked my career (by not just working at one company with my longest tenure being 2yrs w/ zero resume gaps)or if the market is just not great rn.
I've been staying afloat consulting for a friend's startup - granted SVB probably just nuked any chance of their series A actually happening.
Future is very bleak atm - but thank god I have cash to live on.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/video/unemployment-rate...
Network could be better though, going to spend the week at a friend's in Austin at SXSW to accelerate potentially growing the network at cringe founder events. Yes, I'm that desperate.
This also applies if the person is a friend of a friend — building a “network” just means knowing people who can vouch for you as a valuable and trustworthy person.
The ability to build relationships and be stable over time is a merit.
I hate everything you stand for.
I have never hired someone to pretend to be my friend, nor do I know someone who has done that. As I see it, having a true network of friends and professional connections is precisely what guards me against “fake” people.
If you’d like to reach out (email in profile), I’d be glad to lend some advice.
This also applies if the person is a friend of a friend — building a “network” just means knowing people who can vouch for you as a valuable and trustworthy person.
The ability to build relationships and be stable over time is a merit.
That's not what I said. To emphasize my own comment:
> Whenever I've seen a situation with low supply/high demand
In context to the GGP I was making reference to improving resumes when the labor market is over-saturated. Many orgs will sooner hire someone who's been vouched for than to sift through 100s of Github repos and contact 100s of references. They might not be as good as the best candidate in the pool, but the expense of verifying that might be too much, especially if they don't have the bandwidth to do that (e.g., HR staff, time from tech staff). And in times like these, candidates will be just leaping out of their networks.
Going through the resume pile is work. The recruiter would rather not have to do the work and get a hire in the job.
I hope you find something soon, but let's be realistic here, claiming SWEs with FAANG experience on the resume are "fucked" is some real extreme hyperbole.
If you could pass the engineering hiring bar at FAANG, surely you can do an approximation of how many people with 4 years of career experience don't have FAANG on their resume, aren't engineers, or both. You have an advantage over nearly all of them.
Like others have said, networking/connections are key, but that's still true even when the job market is hot.
Parent, try imagining a career like mine: 16+ years of working for startups that paid in the $60K ~ $80K range. Now feel better about yourself.
Take it from an old-timer: your career is still far too young to be fucked.
> get baked
> Smoking a larger than normal quantity of marijuana, usually resulting in a good few hours of laziness, desire to eat fast food (or junk food) and/or fall asleep.
So, thank you for that data point. There's such a big world out there!
Cannabis specifically is a very easy drug to try for two reasons- the dispensaries usually cater to first timers, and it's a pretty "low intensity" drug in normal doses. The dispensaries that sell it know that a huge chunk of the population isn't familiar, and its pretty standard to ask an employee "I've never tried this before, what do I do, what should I buy, and what should I know going into this" and they'll be super helpful and give you solid advice. It's their job, and they're prepared for it. If you asked someone at a liquor store how to prepare to drink for the first time they'd laugh or roll their eyes - and this is nothing like that.
Don't feel pressured to do drugs if you don't want, but don't feel scared. That goes for anyone on the internet reading this - don't feel scared, go into the store and try to learn if you're curious, but don't feel pressured to partake.
If you really want to do it, try low grade edibles; do it in the presence of a friend so they can get you medical help if you need it. Only a small number of people will have a problem, but don’t take stupid chances with your body and mind, people.
How? For an adult human, marijuana is one of the safest substances out there. Easily safer than alcohol. Don't drive or operate heavy machinery and you'll be fine.
What percentage of people end up in the hospital from it, and how?
I'm not sure I'd recommend edibles for a first-timer. The high lasts a fairly long time, so if you don't like the feeling it's kind of annoying. Having a friend is always a good idea though.
That said, there’s really few cases of cannabis use going poorly, especially in the context of other drugs (alcohol, tobacco) and their documented harm. I’m not a doctor, I’m not a lawyer, etc so do your own research, but it is most likely a safe activity at a “normal” dosage for the average person.
> If you really want to do it, try low grade edibles; do it in the presence of a friend so they can get you medical help if you need it. Only a small number of people will have a problem, but don’t take stupid chances with your body and mind, people.
I do agree with this. Edibles are good because you don’t have to smoke, but bad because the affects can take upwards of 2Hr to hit. it can be hard to dose and many people get impatient and take more and then they don’t enjoy the sensation. There’s almost no documented case of overdosing especially in the context of amounts someone might buy, so that’s not likely a concern, but just having a bad time is likely. Do it with friends - it’s also more fun that way. Most people don’t turn 21 and start drinking alone, so don’t do this alone either. Establishing a sober medical monitor type relationship for taking a small edible is a bit extreme but don’t be alone.
problem with embedded is that it was paid less than SWEs, maybe that's another reason it's "easier" to have jobs.
People don’t get it because money was so cheap for so long, but the key word here is venture - this is extremely risky stuff. Adventurous. Uncertainty and low success rate is supposed to be standard.
But on the other hand rent in SF (which is where I do my remote work from) is high, so I can't get ahead.
There's toug competition for those looking to be hired.
If anyone is struggling and is on the mid/senior/director side of their career (3+ yrs), I'm helping place people at my friends' Seed and Series A companies. Email me at j{at}markovmanagement.com if I can help ya!
Having said that, many places refused to interview me because I didn’t have experience with LLMs. I was surprised how strict some places were with experience requirements.
I'm should really go across the pond. I'm fed up of doing 40k in here.
My guess is a lot of companies / hiring managers are searching for key terms. Screening is likely not from people who know what they’re talking about
Clearly one of them was wrong.
Train yourself an LLM on resumes that land interviews and offers, and sell access to it…
:-)
Not complaining just would appreciate some of your thoughts on what are good options to consider to make that leap.
Zero.
Value the equity at zero.
Or at most value it like a lottery ticket - something that lets you amuse yourself dreaming about what you’ll do when you “win”.
But make all your ongoing plans assuming they equity will be worth zero. Either because the startup fails, or because you get screwed out of any payout by the founders or board, or by future investors insisting on deals where early employee equity gets diluted and preferenced down to zero. Or even occasionally because they intentionally never have a liquidity event and stay private with no available way to monetise your shares. Those, or exits where employees make at most “new car” money not “fuck you” money, are by far the most common.
Do a startup if you want, they can be amazing ways to gain an incredible amount of experience to add to your resume in a short time, they can be a great fun work style at least for a while, they can be great at finding out who amongst your co workers are genuinely super talented and productive people and building networks with them.
But don’t fall for the “yeah, we’re paying well below market, but look at how generous our option grants are!” snake oil recruitment pitches…
I don't think the same can be said of FAANG equity, which is the context this was in: while it is still a good lesson to treat it as worth zero, you can regularly exchange it for cash at market prices.
I want to move away from ML but this might be a bad time for it.
I focused on smaller companies as that’s what I wanted. Bunch of larger companies were hiring though.
I also feel like you have a different perspective. It's not just about the actual experience.
Some complain about how hard it was to get a job, when they just needed a few weeks or months to get one.
They were also surprised to have been turn down by some companies, which is healthy. You can't match everywhere. You're not qualified on everything. Job ads are minimalist to ambiguous, so tech teams have to do a lot of filtering to make up with what HR published. You may also want to apply outside of your comfort zone, because you don't risk anything,...
Also, some seem surprised to have to interview. While 8 is definitely too many, it makes sense to do some, when you apply for positions with experience. You're no longer graduate, they want to know about you.
I was also surprised by users who reported to have a lower wage now, which is probably still much higher than the median income in the USA
Such views don't picture a weak market, but a more realistic market. We're mostly among well paid tech industry workers here, so we can complain about the processes. But out of respect for most workers who earn up to the median wage, it's not decent to call these times a difficult job market.
I hadn't fully realise what kind of bubble the tech jobs used to be over there, before reading this thread.
Anyway, gg for getting a nice job.
Only thing I have going for me is that I have many years of non-professional programming experience and multiple great open source projects but at this point, I think my only hope is accepting anything. Any pay, any location, remote or in person. I'm already working near minimum wage jobs, so it's probably better to work something relevant on a resume.
I'm also in Canada so, it was sparse to begin with.
I hope you find something!
I have a brother whos a licensed electrician. When he was doing his on-job training, he always had steady work but once he got his full license and pay raise, he found himself getting laid off every year. The company would get less work for the winter and they axed the seniors right away.
In times of prosperity, you can and do get hired without a degree. But when the industry takes a nose dive, you will get skipped over for candidates who do have a degree.
This is the answer. Consider it a paid internship, do it for 15 month and then go make double somewhere else.
Overall, I think things went ok for me because I have a fairly solid resume and a great network to lean on, and was able to do well in interviews. I also mostly applied to senior SRE and infra roles, which sounds like it’s harder to hire for than general SWE.
The one place that did call me back gave me their take-home coding test, but their automated grading system said I failed, so they sent me a rejection email with no details about what their automated system didn't like about my code and then never responded to my request for more info.
I've really enjoyed the first month or so of unemployment, getting to hang out more with my spouse, do hobbies, work on the house, etc., but the anxiety about running out of emergency fund runway is slowly creeping in. We've got about another 4 months before things get really dire, not accounting for unemployment checks. With UI, we can probably double that before we'd need to dip into investment accounts.
For sure a more fortunate position to be in financially than most get, but it's still really unnerving not knowing when/if I'll get another interview. I've been consistently employed full time since the moment I graduated high school (about 10 years ago), so this is literally the first time I've ever not had a job in my adult life.
For my last job I sent out a few lazy applications in early Jan 2021 and was debating which of 3 offers I wanted to take a few weeks later.
I’m a better engineer than I have ever been, it’s just a rough market. Hopefully everyone has the savings and emotional fortitude for a long job search.
Compounding that is my desire to keep working remotely, or somewhere local to the DC metro area, so many of the same opportunities that would be available to me in the Bay area, had I remained there, are closed to me, because they're using a hybrid model.
I'm not in much of a rush, and I'm hopeful that I'll find interesting work with some startup.
Come on now, why do you feel like that is the plan?
Post your email in profile or something, plenty of us care for you. There's much more to life beyond a software job.
There is more to life than work - and it may be hard to see that in the face of cost and running out of money.
Have you considered any adjacent or post-software gigs? I know some folks who have left to go study a particular science or end up in teaching. A good friend of mine left engineering to become a substitute and then full-time teacher.
Sometimes I feel envious of people who don’t use computers at work. It would be nice to not have them be so tied to my reality.
For the most part during that time, pushing forward didn’t seem worth the energy at all. I’m glad I did though — I’m at least rather curious now, about how the next year will go for me.
It said that OP should take a lower caliber software job where Silicon Valley-tier engineers normally wouldn't apply because such a job would not reject them.
>Given how many better engineers now on market I feel there are no space for me anymore.
If we entertain the premise that there's an influx of superior talent hogging all the "good SV jobs" (which it's probably the hiring freeze due to market correction from massive overhiring and the looming recession, but let's go with the premise), that's precisely where there would be "space" for OP.
Those jobs absolutely exist, and re: burn out they can be pretty slow-pace to boot. (For example, defense/government work.)
Been a very, very rough few months. The new pay will be difficult to service my debt properly.
But I absolutely love learning and am excited to take courses. Just hard to decide which 1 course per semester to take.
Maybe also see if I can help with some research in EE or CS or computational biology.
Take it from a millennial who graduated into the recession in 2011, even when everyone is saying the job market sucks, there are always opportunities for younger/fresher people out there, you just might have to be willing to take a "worse" position to get started - but in this industry you can always level up later once things calm down.
Don't get distracted by all the people you see on here or Blind talking about their $500k TC in their mid-20s, those people are far, far outliers. I've never worked in FAANG, self-taught my way into webdev in my early 30s after two other half-careers in my 20s, and I managed to find a job with 0 experience during COVID because I adjusted my expectations down to "normal" salary ranges (sub-$100k), as long as it paid my bills and gave room to grow professionally.
As a young person you have both lower salary requirements (requirements in the sense of "I need at least $XYZ per month to keep the lights on) and a lot of time, both of which are massive advantages when taking the long view of your career.