Ask HN: How do you look for jobs in 2023?
I’m steadily looking for new opportunities, but am increasingly annoyed by the LinkedIn / Indeed grind. I feel like half the jobs are recruiting firms or very bloated positions with >500 applicants.
I love the monthly “Who is hiring?” thread — these positions almost always yield more responses and suffer less from false advertising.
Are there other sites I’m not considering? Methods I’m not using? How do you find good (defined as not bloated and optimized for LI) job opportunities in the current market?
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 246 ms ] thread2. Recruiters (it's popular to hate them but they can help you land a job).
3. Scan the "open jobs" on LinkedIn and apply for them.
4. Post on some big board like Indeed (I set up a junk email account for this because 98% of the replies are junk/low-ball offers).
Set up an alert for new jobs that meet your requirements and be consistent. Set a goal of applying for five a day. If you apply to more then great but meet your goal. I'll add each application to a log that has the company, when I applied, the position, and something I found interesting about the posting. Helps remind me in a month when I hear something back.
Just remember, you have zero information on where the company is in on the hiring process for this position. They could still be in the 'collecting applications' phase and won't really take a look at the applicants for days or weeks.
In my experience, very few companies look at applications as they come in. They have a target date where they do a first cut and then move onto the next. This creates those situations where you hear back from an application weeks and months later. This also creates that soul crushing feeling of "I've applied to 20 positions this week and haven't heard ANYTHING."
Apply to a few each day and move on. The companies are doing everything they can to maximize their efficiency with this process, including bad behavior's like ghosting / posting jobs just to meet regulations when they already have who they are going to hire / etc., so there is nothing wrong with you maximizing your efficiency where it makes sense. Apply and move on.
Side note, don't forget item one above, personal network. It feels great to me to get a job offer from some company where my personal network wasn't involved in any way, but the reality is that most jobs are filled by someone already aligned in some way, aka personal network was involved.
Again, this is just my opinion, but I would argue that it's best to spend that time researching companies and their open positions and try to find ways to apply through some alternative channels.
"Third, and trust me on this, there’s still an incredible shortage of the really good programmers, here and in India. Yes, there are a bunch of out of work IT people making a lot of noise about how long they’ve been out of work, but you know what? At the risk of pissing them off, really good programmers do have jobs"
From: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/02/advice-for-compute...
https://danluu.com/hiring-lemons/
" At the last conference I attended, I asked most people I met two questions:
Do you know of any companies that aren't highly dysfunctional?
Do you know of any particular teams that are great and are hiring?
Not one single person told me that their company meets the criteria in (1). A few people suggested that, maybe, Dropbox is ok, or that, maybe, Jane Street is ok, but the answers were of the form 'I know a few people there and I haven't heard any terrible horror stories yet, plus I sometimes hear good stories', not 'that company is great and you should definitely work there'. Most people said that they didn't know of any companies that weren't a total mess. "
There is a good reason Open Source development exploded during those years, as there were a lot of unemployed or 'underemployed' good engineers that had time to do some open source work while looking for a job.
By 2005 (when that article was written), the market had already recovered, and what he said is true (good engineers had already found a job), but that doesn't negate the fact that 2001-2002 was bad even for good engineers.
Which doesn't at-all reflect the reality implied by abysmal hiring practices - recited on this page again and again and again.
Maybe when he says "reall good programmers" he means the super productive people he's friends with. I know everyone on HN thinks they're in the top 10% of programmers, but realistically most of us are average or worse.
It is a whole paper about how becoming a programmer is a good choice, and that good programmers can find a place in the world.
To my eyes: There are two things needed for a "great programmer" to happen.
1. A programmer with good to great skills.
2. A company that they fit into.
You may work out in company A, it works well for you. You can hit max productivity there.
For me, A may be one of the worst ideas EVER, for various reasons. I'd do better at B, where you might fail.
A and B might even just be a large company and a small company, there is a big difference.
... So while I agree with Joel in context. I disagree with YOU.
Your quote's from a general article addressing CS undergrads still in school and further, from a subsection dismissing fears about an outright collapse in CS jobs outside of India.
Meanwhile, the parent's saying use your network, and there's plenty of demand for good developers.
2. Eventually, some of those people will get new jobs, and they can refer you to their new employer (and vice versa).
3. Repeat for a few cycles and you have a network full of potential job opportunities without ever going through a job board.
Hopefully not, hopefully you're leaving for greener pastures, or because of something systemic that you can critique on exit without throwing anyone under the bus.
But sometimes not. Sometimes you have a responsibility to your peers to honestly describe the problem that prompted you to leave, even if it means burning a bridge.
The alternative is to squander the organizational growth opportunity that your resignation represents, and subsequently burn all bridges except the one with the problematic person.
If SomeCo is a huge company then LinkedIn might find a connection who actually knew you, but just "know someone in leadership at Amazon" wouldn't usually get you a hit. Whenever SomeCo is a smaller outfit, the likelihood someone knows of you increases
If whoever you hit up starts the conversation with, "Yeah, that ghusto, er, they weren't the best engineer we had" or even just "I don't think I can give you reference for that person, sorry", your chances of getting the job plummet.
If one person at SomeCo (a larger company) is not going to say you're amazing then the probability of that person being asked might be quite low. If many people at SomeCo (a smaller company) are going to remember that "honest criticism" more loudly than all your other contributions then that is trickier.
Also; I deleted my LinkedIn account and only saw benefits.
I never liked the dude much but I was trying to get his jokes though his thick British accent and trying to be polite.
Turns out he hated me for some reason and actively stopped a referral I tried to bring into the company. Years later I even offered him a referral out of courtesy which he didn't pick up on. Even more years later I found out he vetoed me from some company I applied years ago with no specific reason.
1. Go on LinkedIn and find past co-workers and friends. Make a list of those people.
2. Prioritize based on companies you want to work for and people who had a good experience with you
3. Reach out to them with a generic opening like "How are things going?"
4. After some back and forth, you can ask "Hey, are you guys hiring by any chance?"
I also wrote a recap of mistakes and lessons learned from trying to find work at a hedge fund here: https://twitter.com/alexpotato/status/1663668616233885699
It has some more general recommendations as well.
1. Make friends with _everybody_ at work.
That includes the guy who brags about himself all the time. That includes the person who you only give the easiest tasks because you don't trust them with anything complicated. That includes the person who doesn't suffer fools gladly.
You never know. I had a constant braggart coworker who everyone else avoided. I smiled and listened politely. He was the one who got me my next job.
Exceptions, obviously, for coworkers that are actively corrosive or abusive. I'm not cozying up to the guy that the female interns refuse to share an elevator with.
I haven't bothered with non-word-of-mouth jobs for over ten years. If the job's not recommended to me by someone I already know, I'm not interested. It saves sooo much time.
According to PG, this is the exact time for them to be hitting it out of the ballpark doing a startup.
Swing harder, people!
I truly believe that the real opportunities out there are those which are mostly divorced away from the typical LinkedIn posting where it's just some company trying to push more consumerism on the world.
For example, a friend of mine was complaining that he had to work hard to afford a house. However, he was dead-set on a set of ideals and a location he wanted to settle at. Maybe part of that was preference, but it was clear that part of that was some sort of preconceived notion hammered into him by society and peer examples.
Instead, he could have aimed to buy a cheaper house in a smaller town while working/renting in the current town and just moved out. In my home town, even smaller houses cost at least 400K but there are plenty of nice places where the houses are 60K. So, buy one of those instead and move away once you've saved up enough...
By taking a month and seriously going through what's important to have a happy, "basic" life, most people will find things that they can give up, but that will make them happier in the long run. Like living in a certain neighbourhood, buying this or that, taking a certain number of vacations, having an extra child, a dog, etc.
Most people end up saving TOO much for retirement...and while caution is good, our society hammers this idea of an extremely consumptive lifestyle that these endless 9-5 jobs support.
Citation super needed. Where in the US can I buy a house for $60,000? Does it have a roof?
- So far away from a major (by Canadian standards) city you're basically living in the middle of nowhere
- Run down and you're looking at 100k in renovations and upgrades
- Unless you're working remotely or are already well off, there are no well paying jobs out in the middle of nowhere
- Education is an issue: far away from schools for kids and only southern BC, southern Ontario, southern Quebec have high ranking universities/colleges
Any house in a desirable location is out of reach for many people. More and more people are now looking further out, thus driving prices higher in those locations as well. I don't think these people are looking to necessarily move out into the middle of Saskatchewan or other middle-Canada provinces where they can get those 100k homes for the reasons listed above.
Couple of examples
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/25857143/101-galway-stree...
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/25917262/323-pottery-stre...
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/25938347/3-pacholok-avenu...
I still agree with the general sentiment though. I'm happy with living in a 1br condo and taking public transport, but I had coworkers that "needed" a detached house with a back yard and a moderately expensive car.
Where it takes 4+ typical incomes to make basic bills(kind of everywhere), most apartments are a tough option.
The attitude of "keeping up with the Joneses" is almost an urban legend. People are not moving to the suburbs and having kids and dogs because they aren't strong enough to stand up to societal pressures. They move to the suburbs and have kids and dogs because that's what they've done throughout human evolution. The person who thinks they can leave and live independently is the oddball.
I have a bridge to sell to you.
Similar story applying to work at a bakery down the street, and same for working for animal control.
I agree doing work in your local community is rewarding, but it amounts to full time volunteerism. Our economy is truly horrific for the middle class and below.
Usually the form was one of those oraclecloud forms that take a while to complete. Half the companies I never heard anything but a few I got phonecalls and ended up with something I really wanted I was lucky. This was still early 2023 though.
My conclusion, so far, is unless you've got strong connections it's hard right now to find a job. Most job posting, as OP mentions get hundreds if not thousands of applications. Other times, I've personally also notice, candidates with perfect skill/experience matches get the same generic rejection ("we respect your experience but we're going to go with another candidate") or worse getting no response at all. There have been mentions of pseudo job posts (ie companies are just falsely advertising positions they are not actually look to fill). Ultimately, a really crappy situation for those looking for a job. Even experienced people, think 7,8,10+ years of experience, are seeing similar things unless they have a strong connection that get them to the final stage(s) of the internet process.
Happy to provide a links to relevant online discussions and articles about this situation if anyone is interested. Let me know.
I think I've made it to a recruiter screen around ~10 times, and I've had less than 5 actual interviews follow.
I have 6+ years in industry, 4 and some change of which were FAANG (which everyone believes is a golden ticket into any company). And I can't even get an interview.
I'm with OP. The grind is straight up depressing, demoralizing, soul crushing. I'm close to moving in with family just to preserve my money at this point.
In a past job, I saw a LOT of former FAANG candidates as a hiring manager (SRE @ hedge fund) at a past job.
In my experience, FAANG folks have a somewhat barbell distribution where it's either:
A. "This person is incredibly talented, well spoken and will probably find a job anywhere"
B. "This person spent 5 years at a FAANG and worked on basically two projects that would have taken <6 months at a hedge fund"
There doesn't really seem to be an in between.
I also distinctly remember learning that Google had 100K+ employees. To me, that is moving into "big bank" size territory and it's clearly impossible for EVERYONE who is former Google to be amazing.
Ive worked at 3 places, sizes: <10, ~10k, and ~20k.
I cant even imagine 100k. 100k for Toyota or Walmart, sure, that makes sense. But at tens of thousands of engineers you must have a lot of people not doing anything. Even at 20k, so maybe 5k engineers you only have so many people pushing on new stuff. Most are doing maintenance on crud and batch apps and keeping up with whatever "initiatives" are being pushed while attending meetings.
Most impressive to me imo are the instagram type companies that have 20 employees when they are sold/ipo or whatever.
It also wan't unusual for me to be consulting with some group and some topic would come up and we'd be--you do know that so and so at your company is working on this, right? And they usually wouldn't.
When I changed jobs there in 2007, I had just come from a hosting provider where we had engineers that managed 500-1000 servers per person, depending on their role or the amount of automation. It was like I stepped back in time to 1999 and everything was manually managed/maintained.
Believe it or not, but the places I slacked the least was (obviously) the 150 employee company and the 300k! It was really well organised, you had no time to spare.
I'm now in the 8k place, and it's crazy the amount of people doing nothing.
Although the org sizes may be large, the smaller subgroups within run like smaller semi-independent companies. They have their own business targets, roadmaps and backlogs just like any start up or mid-sized company. Some of the most productive times I have had have been at >100k companies.
Sounds like a good tagline for my Resume.
I've spoken with recruiting firms before that literally told me companies asked them to stop sending people who were hired as a newgrad to FAANG.
From the man on the street's perspective (and apparently teirc's view above), FAANG work is where you want to go, and what you want to have on your resume. Per the quote, "a golden ticket". Pretty much all the news talks about.
However, if you talk to the rest of the tech community, they're like: "We tried poaching a few of them. We didn't really like the results. You work at one of those places and you get infected with something that's 'not startup'".
This seems a lot like Stanley and Neck's recent work [1]. The people you've historically been most likely to get as hires are the people most likely to ditch FAANG's for anything shinier. The people who don't "only care about promo", don't actually leave.
Other note, also similar to other recent posts [2] and comments about the change in Google. Like people finally realized: "wait...they're just like MS. All that 'Don't be evil' stuff was just corp-speak. Two decades later, and its strategy deja-vu with Android / Search / Ads. With MS now being the caring innovator who values your freedom of choice."
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37111317
they most certainly do not, but might be a slightly lesser evil in some ways
Yet, its not whether they 'actually' care. Just the noises they're making.
Google looks inept and malicious. MS wants health care money, cause its the next big market as everybody dies. "We care, cloud health innovation. All MS innovation is powered with empathy.[1] Nano, cyber, quantum, big data ... technobabble Tourette's, How the F** do we get defense contracts?"
[1] https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/empath...
I started using booking.com first because of how bad that website was working and I had the latest MacBook.
Find some former Google colleagues who have managed to get new jobs and ask to review their resumes. Google is noteworthy on a resume: it won’t guarantee you a job but it’ll mean someone reviews your resume. If you’re struggling so much with a 4 year Google stint under your belt, there’s something wrong with your resume.
Do you have some specific feedback or bullets that stand out to you? Most of Google tech is all in-house stuff that nobody would recognize, outside of a few open-source counterparts (Blaze -> Bazel). I'm confused how my resume could better convey what I'm good at. I can say I worked with Java, Angular, Typescript, etc. But that's all exceedingly generic.
If I say something like "automated X thing in WombatLand using BlogSplort tool, saving 20% of engineering time" I don't see how that is more useful than saying "Automated the creation of full stack internal web-apps to launch in a production environment [...] saved hundreds of ENG-hours for teams launching internal applications"
If you look at the type of work being done at “normal” companies you’re applying for, you’ll likely see work that is much more at the coal face and so experience at the coal face is worth much more than work that most people can’t even conceptualise — even if it happened at Google.
In a competitive hiring environment, you need your resume to tell the person reviewing it why you’re a safe bet. Your resume tells me that if I need someone to build internal full stack web-app automation then you’ve got experience of doing that at Google… which is great except Google is pretty much the only place where that work is required.
Don’t think of your experience as a list of things you’ve done, think of it as evidence for why you’re the right candidate to fill a role. If you’re applying for a company that has an internal customer support system then absolutely shout about how you did exactly that at Google, it’ll get you an interview… if you’re applying for a company that builds AR furniture previewing for e-commerce, it’s probably not worth even mentioning.
The perfect resume is a copy-and-paste of the job spec, you need to get as close to that as is possible. If you did a random weekend project at Google that can be framed as relevant to the job you’re applying for, that will do more for you than the hundreds of engineering hours you saved by automating the deployment of full stack apps.
Google is valuable to have on your resume because it lends credibility to the work you did, but that work has to be relevant to the job you’re applying for.
> I can say I worked with Java, Angular, Typescript, etc. But that's all exceedingly generic
For example, if you’re applying for a company that uses Angular, the focus of your experience section should be having used Angular at Google. A single paragraph that says “Google created Angular, I worked every day with Angular at Google. I built web apps that help support millions of Google customers via a customer service team processing thousands of calls per day. I used angular features x y and z and contributed code to Angular itself.” would be an order of magnitude more effective than what you have now.
This is so incredibly dismissive and naive about the work being done. I can't believe you actually think this way. Its almost insulting
These kinds of projects require everything any other project needs. He learned a new tech, was able to identify a real problem then solve the issue with real measureable results. All of this within an organziation where you need to design and plan correctly
all of this is generalizable to almost any software work being done. and important skills for experienced engineers
I am sorry that my comments came across as anything other than encouraging and positive: I think he has great potential and that his time at Google will be a differentiator for him and will help him get interviews… as long as the resume is good.
I may end up starting from scratch and seeing what I can come up with and get further feedback from there.
When i look at this resume i get the impression you wouldn't be able to communicate very well.
It's possible because of a couple reasons. The market is cold right now, and most of my network is _still at google_. There are a few folks I've worked with that have left for other places - but those places are either in hiring freezes or actively laying people off for the last few months.
You're partially right, though. Maybe I don't know how to utilize this network efficiently. Friend of friend etc, is probably something I need to work on more.
> Why would you spend that much time applying for jobs with that type of success rate?
Because I need a job?
"It's not what you know, it's who you know"
You too can acquire this "privilege" by building relationships with people.
It is a privilege because the bar you're meant to reach is lower if you know someone.
What relationships would you build? You're coworkers. Friendships require outside-work time and effort, which is already in scant supply. I truly don't know how anyone manages these relationships.
If you live near even one person, you can get together with them and talk. That's how networking starts. If you don't live near anyone, there is no shortage of online forums where you can network.
Where would you begin? Just talking doesn't do anything for me. I'm not into small talk or chit-chat. I think part of it for me is suspected neurodivergence, since I have great difficulty following what other people are coasting on instinctively. I'm drained within an hour or two and get incredibly irritable.
I went to a networking event once, on frontend dev and responsive design. This was back in 2012. I attended the talks and had some brief chatting, but the vibe there seemed like it was meant for people already well-networked or in the industry. I don't feel like I belong in these places, despite sharing an interest in computing.
in a room full of aspie nerds, all of whom are kinda awkward, you may need to be the one who breaks the ice.
think of small talk like the wheels on a plane -- it's there to get you up into the sky, or to land you after a long chat, so deploy it just enough to get you in and out of more meaningful convos, onto new topics, etc.
Agreed, this is not always fun or easy, but it may help to approach it like a hacker would: given a seemingly impenetrable system (a stranger's personality), how do you find something in common to talk about?
How to begin the convo and guide it will depend largely on who you're talking to (complete stranger, acquaintance, etc.) but a good starting topic would be something simple like websites and/or something related to your area of expertise or interest. Pro tip: ask them what things they're interested in and see if you can find common ground.
meetup.com groups, linux user groups, powershell scripters forums, python guilds, SCADA code conferences, etc.
doesn't even have to be tech stuff per se, my ISP account executives (sales guys) used to pull leads from Cars and Coffee meetups, painball, beer tasting events, etc.
you may not be born with blue-blood connections, but you can certainly build lots and lots of connections, and tech, esp. startup tech, is a place that lends itself well to that. go get em, killer.
> Also, isn't it a bit scummy to keep someone in your life just in case you need a job?
if you only see this as transactional, esp. in a one-way transactional sense, you're never going to network successfully; it's quid pro quo, and you need to be willing (and able) to give as well as receive. and not always just job stuff.
I've struggled to digest the feedback in the whole subthread. Quid pro quo makes sense, but then, you need something to give. I don't have anything people would want. I don't know anyone hiring, nor could I put a good word in about it.
You mentioned it's not just job stuff; what sort of stuff is it? I'm legitimately confused about how these relationships are any different than a half-baked, not-really-a-friendship, or acquaintance. The whole "why" for me would be to find better opportunities. This seems incompatible with what you and others are saying about networking, like it needs to be more than jobs. I'm struggling to grok what that "more than jobs" would be in networking compared to a friendship.
It's weird to express in light of what others have posted here. It really highlights the difference in how we process or understand socializing.
If you don't know someone's reputation, knowing whether or not they are good is very hard. That's what networking is for. When people know who you are and know your reputation, they feel safer hiring you.
A quick tip:
When interviewing engineers I noticed that ex FANGs tend to fail the soft sides of the interview.
The type of interviews we do are relatively easy coding exercise (implement a frontend in react to do X, implement an API, fix an existing codebase). It's way easier than any fang exercise.
The core is not really getting the exercise 100% right (bugs may creep in, especially in a stressful situation), as long as you can prove you know how to work with some (=any) frontend or backend technology and reason about your code.
Something else we evaluate is how well they work with the interviewer to solve the problem.
From my experience FANGs people tend to be great problem solvers, but poor coworkers. Try to fine-tune that in your next interview!
Best of luck!
Ageism can get fucked.
But ... there is a lot of ageism out there. Which I've never understood.
According to the folks I’ve worked with in the past, I’ve done great work, and I’m still in regular contact with many of them.
I didn’t realize you could do that.
Either way, as soon as they figure out my ago, the screening call is typically over.
And yet taller people tend to make more money and have more positive qualities associated with them by others.
I think age is a weird one, because there are both positive and negative biases at play.
Maybe you don't think about age consciously, but subconsciously maybe you're more inclined to trust someone's opinion or experience if they're older.
Conversely, you (and many other hiring managers) may feel a bit weird giving basic tasks or ordering around someone who is older than you. Maybe you don't realize it, but you might have more of a sense of "this candidate is less likely to take instruction"
I'm not saying you're ageist (any more so than the baseline since I think we've all internalized ageism to some degree). But the fact that it "doesn't cross your mind as a criteria" doesn't necessarily mean that it hasn't affected your hiring decisions anyway.
A few other things I've noticed:
1. Yes, I've had the "candidates with perfect skill/experience matches get the same generic rejection" but I've also had times when I'd apply for something that I had only a little bit of a match for, and still get pretty far through the interview process.
2. Related to #1, I can't get a good feeling of how qualified I am for these listings. Sometimes I'll apply to something that is in the low 100ks with a customized resume that echos all of their reqs and get rejected, but other times I'll just blind fire out my standard resume to something with a base in the mid 200s and get selected for a full interview loop.
3. It feels like some places still have the same "standards" for each part of the interview process, leading to a lot of candidates getting to the end, which then leads to some weird "you did well but we chose someone else" responses.
4. Sometimes I'd have an interview lined up, but then right before it I get a "due to shifting requirements, we have to postpone this by a bit" email. This has happened several times now (and they never have actually un-postponed it.) Same thing with spending a day or two interviewing at a place, not hearing back, and then reading of a large layoff at that company a few days later.
I suspect that my biggest hurdle is that my resume isn't tailored enough to get through whatever criteria their applicant tracking system is using. Really annoying that I have to try and game the system just to get my foot in the door.
Right now, 70 applications over 2 months, I had a ~4% interview rate. Slightly lower than normal. July and August were absolutely dead. June I had some interviews. Fall it may pick up from what I've read.
I don't know how well tailoring works. If it's a special job, maybe it's worth it, otherwise, it may me more efficient to submit a comprehensive but otherwise non-tailored application. Maybe run an A/B test to see what gives you better results. You could also have a few pre-tailored resumes you can use for the typical positions you apply for (for eg Frontend, Backend, Fullstack, DevOps) instead of recreating one each time.
Every part is horrible:
recruiters that don't know the industry beyond buzzwords. this is frustrating, they cant think outside their box "oh you havent done exactly this for 10 years, so i guess youll never do it." I dont think people know how bad of a filter these hr people are. I wrote code that handled tens of millions of requests a second, then you get "oh but were really looking for a sr backend api engineer, this doesnt seem like a good match" like what do you think I was doing?
random interviews with no clear goals. "system design" wtf is this, i have no idea what anyone is looking in these within an hour. you want me to design facebook in 45min on a clunky ui? it takes 20 minutes just to talk about some of this stuff. you have to hope to hit their random keywords, but you have no idea what it is. leetcode has been beat to death, that to is horrible. we need you to optimize this exponential algorithm on the fly. basically if you haven't seen the exact problem before, you are not passing these interviews. or you run into the sr engineer, been with the company for years, that seems stuck in their local maximum that's interviewing you, your subjected their random questioning and expectations.
the slow pace of everything. schedule an intro call a week ahead with a useless recruiter, schedule your tech screen another week out, now 2 weeks to get 3 engineers to screen you, talk with a hiring manager another week out.
> worse getting no response at all.
yeah, some company sent me an offline question, one question was write a k8s yaml file, right now, along with 2 other algorithm questions. like wtf was that looking for. no, i havent heard anything back. cant believe i wasted 1.5 hours on that. i dont think ill do any take home assements anymore, there is no guarantee anyone will look or respond.
the low balls, "were looking for a staff/team lead, pay is 140k" you are out of your mind with these.
I can keep going, the whole thing is horrible. thanks for reading my mini rant
The public perceptions don't seem to reflect this side of reality either -- the job reports and unemployment rates at all time lows, yet the frustrations you're expressing seems more common that you'd think just looking at the headlines and reports of the job market.
For what it's worth, I think it's best to try and ride it out, until the tides turn for the better. I don't know the root cause, but the economic situation (high interest rates) would seem to be the likely root cause, but that's just a guess.
I think this is because the issues described are particularly to software right now. Unemployment is pretty low, but I see a lot more people complaining about barely scraping by or hurting financially. My guess is that it’s mostly crappy jobs. Particularly in my locality there’s a massive divide between rent/property costs and average pay.
I was trying to do some basic analysis on my local job market. Sadly, that data is not easily available, but I hand compiled the jobs posted in my area for a few days. There were plenty, but they tended to be low wage, low skill work, or work requiring expensive credentials or extensive experience.
What’s interesting, is from what I’ve seen, a lot of stuff is paying a lot better than I remember seeing a decade ago. However, the costs, notably the cost of things you need to survive (especially housing) has managed to far outpace those wage gains in a much shorter period of time. Although that might be specific to my location.
It's not. That's everywhere. The difference is in the degree in awfulness.
It is definitely tough to do research. A lot of the jobs posted are fake.
Employers in one sector being picky is not evidence of all employers being picky.
Jobs aren't getting filled because they're in places people can't afford to live. Right now that's most places - including places that had been affordable for generations but aren't any more.
This all should be easily understood but it often isn't.
I think what people are dancing around is percent of people employed with minimum “acceptable” pay to quality of life at work ratio, which includes the location of the work. This figure may very well be trending down, but is not an official figure, and it seems like a difficult metric to calculate anyway.
https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate
https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm
>U-6 is the broadest measure of labor underutilization. In addition to the total number of unemployed and all people marginally attached to the labor force, U-6 includes people at work part time for economic reasons (also called involuntary part-time workers) and is expressed as a percentage of the civilian labor force plus the marginally attached.
>U-6 is calculated as: ( (Total Unemployed + Marginally Attached to the Labor Force + People at Work Part Time for Economic Reasons) ÷ (Labor Force + Marginally Attached to the Labor Force) ) x 100
I think a lot about the 20 percentage points who aren't reflected in the official BOLS' rate. Specifically about the ones who would absolutely work but are daunted by their significant barriers to job entry.
I'm hopeful these charts will reflect at least some of them.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
Generally, unpicky employers point to a high-turnover, high-stress, low paying environment.
You couldn't pay me enough to work those shit jobs.
The only thing that keeps me going pretty much is knowing it isn't just me
I wish more people felt ok to speak out. publicly or online. it doesnt look good to be the person who says I cant find a job. It makes everyone else look at you like there is something wrong
* states have different payroll and VAT taxes, and internationally it could get very different and messy
* NDAs, non-competes, and things like single-party consent for recording will vary by state and country. California, for example, basically banned non-competes, or else has to offer a lot of considerations to make them effective, but that ain't the case if you're in NYC, London, or Samarkand.
* data storage, data-in-transit, data-at-rest and logging rules may be different
* compliance rules like GDPR, CCPA, SOX, and PCI-DSS may have restrictions or not fly for one-off remote workers
* then there are the very real security challenges, like geofencing IPs, getting 2FA to work with international numbers, making sure you're not MITM'd, or that US / Chinese / European / etc. border security won't scan your laptop as you enter or exit. My last job at a F500 had very strict protocols for travel to China, Russia, and the Middle East -- and for credible reasons.
Meanwhile "remote in N. Carolina", even if 100% remote 45 min away, sidesteps a lot of those challenges.
People talk about this, but really, U.S. companies can very easily hire from Canada, either through an employer of record (like Remote or Deel) or a PEO if they have several Canadian employees. They can also hire contractors and due to trade agreements don't have to deal with taxes at all (U.S. clients are even exempt from paying GST/HST that a Canadian contractor would typically have to charge otherwise). There are no more time zone issues than hiring remote U.S. and there's only a slightly higher chance of a language barrier (since Canada has a higher proportion of immigrants)
I wouldn't be surprised if this is affecting the U.S. market (and might be the only saving grace of the Canadian market which nonetheless is in dire straits right now).
Other than companies dealing with national security though, I don't see why US remote only would be a thing
I am not even in the Tech Industry (Plastics Manufacturing Engineering), and this is the case. There are maybe... MAYBE... a handful of recruiters that have been in the business, working with my industry long enough to actually know what the heck they are talking about. They are ones that have actually gone to plants, gone on tours, asked questions, and tried to understand the difference between a dryer, a hopper, and a barrel on an injection molding machine. Modern recruiting is as much a numbers game as modern job hunting (for the most part) and it is completely idiotic.
I don't have really any advice, just wanted people to know that it's not just Tech that is seeing what you're seeing. The rest of us career professionals (16 years here) feel your pain and empathize.
I’m done. Not even trying anymore. After a year of bullshit I’m convinced the only reason I ever made it into this field is because that stupid guilder age in the 2010s driven by cheap money, cargo culting, and naive idiocy. Even the non tech companies aren’t hiring much anymore.
Seriously I had an easier time finding a job when I was 18, had no formal education, and no real work experience.
I used to console myself with that fact that if I didn’t have anything else, I at least had a decent career and now I don’t even have that.
Recruiters disappeared over night. I occasionally get a few every once in a blue moon, but they always end up with nothing. I did my last interview a couple weeks ago, only for the recruiter to call me back as confused as I was whether the answer was yes or no. Cold applications are worse. I did managed a couple interviews out of those, but was rejected within a few days. Not sure why, those were some of the best interviews I’ve had recently. And the worst are the companies who send me an email months after I’ve applied just to say “we cancelled this position, lol”. I’ve also had family friends and others reach out and ask me if I’d like to consult for them, only for them to ghost me as well.
Now to be fair, some of this was my fault as well. I didn’t recognize how fucked the market was quick enough. I was desperately focusing on remote jobs, primarily because I really didn’t want to incur that costs and work that come with a move. I did a few interviews that were for in site positions, mostly for practice, and usually progressed further in those than for the remote roles, but ultimately didn’t seriously pursue them for the reason I just stated.
Meanwhile I’m in one of the worst real estate markets in the country, with my savings having been battered by all sorts of unexpected emergency expenses. I’m honestly half convinced that 2023 is trying to kill me. At the very least, I suppose I won’t have much left to lose sooner rather than later.
I was going to link my other comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37112093, but you already read and commented on that. Just try to hold out, it's just absolutely terrible right now, perhaps dotcom/2008 bad, but those were both before my mind so I can't necessarily give a good account for the experience during those two periods.
Both can be true. Many people can have a reality of not being able to find buyers for remote work performed on computers. And the data indicating non remote work, possibly not performed on computers is widely available (albeit at an undesirable pay to quality of life ratio for those in the former category).
The initially reported jobs numbers each month always claim that, and then those numbers are consistently revised down over time so that jobs have been lost the whole time, and our perceptions were more accurate than the initially reported data.
https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate
It also isn’t specific to tech so a slight decrease in unemployment outside of tech would mask tech unemployment.
lol, love the turn of phrase. My situation exactly, actually I left at the beginning of covid to take care of family (homeschool etc), and 'work on a side project' that of course hasn't progressed far (enough). So you can imagine my response rate - basically unemployable currently.
likewise, plenty of folks skating through this employed -- a function of perspective.
My take is there are lots of open roles, but companies are being slow to hire because they know they have the upper hand and want to wait out the market and get a great hire at a lower price. And right now with interest rates companies have lower opportunity cost (ie they're not incentivized to deploy capital as fast as possible) .
and yet the very first job I interviewed at in person hired me, matching my experience pre-pandemic. No compromise on my compensation bands, as I was really questioning my world by then
But turns out the humans didnt change, the mode of interaction did and it has less inputs with different biases
I'd say I've had ~10-15% recruiter screen response rate. I think a lot of my rejections have been companies filling the position before I get a chance to interview.
Back in May and June, things were really bad. Layoffs everywhere, basically no open engineering positions. Late July and early August were / are much better, some recruiters even reaching me, instead of me reaching them.
Still pretty hard; about a hundred companies rejected me, of them a couple dozen after several rounds of interviews, and several after apparently successful final rounds.
My degree is in political science and I worked at a DC think tank as a research fellow focused on technology policy before leaving to co-found a VC-backed tech startup. After five years it failed.
Now it seems difficult to find a place which needs my mix of skills, a combination of communication and technical. I don't know if it's my unusual career path or something I'm doing wrong, but it's been tough so far.
Most are not willing to struggle, sacrifice, survive, and grind for a decade or more. Be the exception and build sustainable value. Money follows; perhaps trite but true. Sadly, this is excellent advice that many ignore (this may not actually apply to your specific circumstances, of course).
Your career path makes you top talent in the eyes of many. Honestly, your journey sounds like a leader’s narrative in the making. No excuses, get in there and get it done. I look in the mirror every morning and say nearly that exact thing to myself: “get in there and fight, today like all the other days before and all the days to come”. This is not figurative, I do this literally every single day as part of my daily routine and I don’t let up, even in my darkest hours of which there have been many over the years. I attribute my success to this mentality, perhaps it can work for you.
Be well!
the only reason I applied was because it was uncanny how much the position matched my skillset.
this position was 1:1 what I've been doing in my career, pretty much an open req tailored to my experience.
dude on blind told me that it got fast tracked to the mgmt team from hr screening. I waited two weeks, and got a boilerplate rejection email. there were probably thousands of people who applied to that position.
I didn't do any direct applications to companies, as far as I recall - not until they had already reached out to me, either directly or through the recruiter.
Oh, and I was looking for a job where I wanted to move to - over a thousand miles away from where I had contacts. Also, I have nearly four decades of experience (you can look at that as a plus or a minus, depending on how much age discrimination you think is out there).
Result: Found a position where I wanted. It took a few months. I forget which way paid off. It was either Indeed or one of my headhunters.
Sorry that my memory is kind of vague. Between switching jobs and moving cross-country, selling a house and buying another, I had kind of a lot going on, and I've dropped some of the details.
I applied to three of them, interviewed with two, and accepted an offer. Had those initial three companies not worked out I'd have gone down my list of two more companies, before starting the process again with another small list.
(I've not the patience for juggling many applications at the same time. I've learned I can apply to two-three companies and keep all the names, details, and things I've said to them straight in my head. I guess if you're desperate for _any_ job then applying for more all at once would probably be a safer approach.)
I feel like the magic has gone from most companies.
If you are a new-grad and you're targeting a 'glorious' FAANG position, I would imagine the percentage is quite low.
Developing, deploying, and managing HTTP """REST""" microservices running behind a loadbalancer, running on k8, written in a garbage collected language (Go/Python/Java/C#), that hits either a "legacy" mysql database or a "new" nosql datastore, emitting metrics for big data reporting (aka middle manager reports that are useless other than being fodder for political fights), and writing some resulting messages to kafka at the end for other microservices to consume. The main technical issues are debugging application level coupling between microservices and having to deal with the ping pong of debating system ownership between teams.
I wish there were more positions for doing something else with my software engineering skills, but embedded development seems really hard to get into and if you manage to it pays a lot worse
We’re constantly iterating on it and the cornerstone of our board is the ability to filter opportunities by compensation. You can also set alerts for specific filters, and we’re always open to feedback!
Seems to be an issue with all the job sites that even after specifying SF and not "bay area" I still see roles in San Mateo and Mountain View.
It is incredibly frustrating to see "Work from anywhere you want!" Only to find see "Remote (US Only)" in the job text.
Become a regular contributor to specific open-source projects (esp if it's a growing and/or funded startup).
This approach might work better for those that are already comfortable w/ OSS and don't yet have connections. When applying to that company a bit later, obviously mention all the merged PRs.
For example, here's Posthog [0] showing you what you could help with thru a job post. You can find more companies like this one at Fossfox [1], shameless plug: I maintain that index rn.
[0] https://posthog.com/careers/full-stack-engineer-growth#typic...
[1] https://fossfox.com/
It is a great suggestion imho.
Sent out upwards of 500 applications, 10, 20, maybe 30 interviews even fewer that have gone to the 'final rounds' and even some very close calls. No offers yet.
I'm also spending this time learning new tech that interests me and working on a portfolio site that is true to those interests. This is slow going but I don't let it get me down (if I can help it) because I help my partner garden, raise our dog, and work on my other hobbies as well.
I'm a marketing guy, and have started to regret my career path. I've made it to several final rounds in the past year, but only wound up with rejection at the end—at the final stages, it can be real subtle things that lead them to make that final choice of one candidate vs. another.
On top of that, I'm taking care of a toddler full time, since we can't afford a nanny since I got laid off, so I have even less time to dedicate to the job hunt / skill advancement, and honestly I'm so exhausted by the end of the day that I'm too drained to work on projects that require real brainpower. It's been a slog, but I'm hanging in there and not giving up.
Otta.com has been a great, easy resource for job hunting.
I personally think its worth 10 dollars for what it is. A barebones and clean aggregate job site. The other free sites have too much engagement or don't get the amount of listings RR does.
I usually pick up the hints, read between the lines, and study up on those things, whatever they may be.
1. Slow down and ask for a few minutes to collect myself. "I'm not in this context, do you mind if I have a minute to organize my thoughts". And then do a little "whiteboard" in my notebook or something. Some people might say to verbalize your thinking process and I agree but there shouldn't be anything wrong with taking a few minutes. (I mean, this doesn't even necessarily test for how I'd do on the job because I'm at least competent at coding)
2. Practice more situations. Any time I struggle with a problem after the interview I make sure I understand that tech. Right now I'm studying up on class components and websockets. (Two technologies I either don't really see anymore: we use functional components on my latest projects or stuff you set and forget)
I think #2 is part of what people mean when they say that interviewing prepares you for the next one.
- Some places that I get far with I've literally reached out afterward and asked for pointers. One piece of feedback I've gotten is, "We didn't get a good sense of what drives you." which, that's fair. I think of software engineering as more of a technician => "I have the skills to solve your problems" and not so much, "My passion is building the front-end for X,Y,Z business" I mean, I'd obviously like to find work with meaning but I'm not driven by that meaning. I don't think we'd ask our plumber to show their passion for the work (Not that they can't have that) but instead we're more concerned with, "Are you competent?" - That's something I need to work on for sure.
- Lastly, I've learned that an interview is for both parties. The person interviewing me is also representative of the company. The last two interviews I had a bad feeling about the fit post interview and I think I should have reached out and rescinded my interest because our values didn't align.
Most of the time though, I check all the boxes and don't even make it to interview stage so its hard to really glean anything useful most of the time. Could it be a bad market? Is it because the only box I don't check is having a CS degree? (I have a bachelors but not in CS) Is it my experience is too varied? Who knows. Best I can do is to keep at it.
Cut through all the noise. This is the way.
Personal anecdote: I was laid off ~4 months ago. It wasn't that hard to get interviews. But then I bombed the coding interviews for several appealing positions.
I'm a very experienced developer, but I didn't realize just how much my programming-during-an-interview skills had atrophied. IMHO those coding tests were properly weeding me out, because it really looked like I couldn't program.
I'm now making time to work on practice problems, and I think they're really helping. I expect future coding interviews to go much better.
Should be mentioned that I live rather rural, and have experience (analysis and engineering) which makes me stand out from most other applicants.
Since 2004, I've sent out under 20 job applications. The past 5 years I've switched work twice (better jobs and higher salary) - so I don't know if I'm a good representation of the job market.
But most of my ex-colleagues that work as devs seem to get their interviews through their network. Usually goes something like this:
1) Company needs something fixed, or increase their headcount to meet goals
2) Dev: "I know this one guy/gal, I've seen his work and we worked briefly on a project"
3) Manager: "Great! Reach out to them and see if they're interested!"
The last 12 months is very different to early 2022.
Out of the stacks of resumes that get submitted to the black hole, it really does feel like a grind, but the little bit extra by reaching out to the recruiters/hiring managers seems to make the boost to at least get to the first round screen.
[0] https://resgen.app
[1] https://github.com/djadmin/awesome-bug-bounty
Even if it's not "market research" position (to assess how many relevant applicants will apply) it can be open by the HR at the request of prospective hiring manager because they would like to hire somebody at some point.
I helps businesses create an impression that they're growing (because they're hiring), gives HR some work to create impression they're busy and invaluable, and improve metrics of whatever job boards they post it to. Everybody wins.
I've seen the same positions open for more than a year and even applied for one like a year after I was rejected after an interview (just for fun). It was a different recruiting agency the second time and I think they submitted my resume again because I was pretty much perfect fit :-)
- recruiter usually only sends 2/3 resumes to employer, so better candidate-job match
- recruiter has relationship with the client, so is more trusted - recruitment is a sales job, so they want a better match.
- your first interview is with the recruiter, so less formal. If that goes well, they will make more effort to see your skills and expertise over other candidates.
- better jobs come thru recruiter. These are ones that dont get publically listed
- recruiter will pre-screen roles based on your salary expectations, so you do not apply to roles that have no salary. Saves everyone a lot of time
- you can ask recruiter more about the person the client is looking for, so know how to angle interviews and sole the clients problems
Maybe it is just my dumb luck that I attract shitty recruiters, I dunno. Maybe UK recruiters are better than American recruiters? Whatever is the reason, these days I assume the worst about every recruiter I interact with (I am very trusting of people otherwise), I am still waiting to be proven wrong :(
in 6 months if the other org likes you they can hire you on, or if they don't they can just say "get me a new one", etc. in some cases, like you know its a 2 year project, you just stay on for 2 years.
but that means the headhunters are taking 10-30% of what would otherwise be a full-time salary.
lowers the risk for the other org.
For perm staff, recruiters are usually paid a fixed percentage of your annual salary as a one-off fee.
1. They know about all the jobs. Despite searching quite hard I didn't know that some big companies had offices in my city. They are bad at advertising this.
2. They want you to get the job. That's how they get paid. So they are (mostly) on your side and will tell you things like details about what to expect in the interview. Surprisingly useful.
3. They bypass the normal nonsense application process. You just need a CV.
Would use again.
The industry I work in (silicon verification) probably helps. It's quite small in the UK and not a target for beginners like web and app development is.
Anyway: would you join such a talent pool (and submit yourself to free testing that takes an hour)?
We know it works in less in-demand fields as a way for employers to more objecitevly rate candidates. But the question is, if we can turn it into a tool for employment-seekers to get better opportunities.
We're headed by a professor of organisational psychology and stick strickly to scientifically well supported methods and stick to the ONET and APA guidelines. But we're one of the few since it's not the easiest way of doing business. But we refuse to peddle sudo science.
I hired two developers in the last few weeks via LinkedIn job ads and I can tell you out of 200 applicants there were less than 10 who fits the requirements.
I would also say make sure your resume fits the job, add your phone number and email address. Start with what's important, your experience and things that you're really good at.
Changing the resume to fit each JD would hard, but apply for jobs that your experience fit well.
When I see people with 10+ years of experience struggle to get jobs right now it's almost always because they're filtering out good opportunities with their comp expectations.
For more junior folks the market is tough right now. It's going to be a grind but I'd highly encourage you to consider working with a third-party recruiter. You may need to try a few different ones before you find one that can get you placed but a good one will be worth it. All the normal advice applies: leverage your network and debug the problem. Consider where in the process you're dropping off. Are you not hearing back at all? Are you getting interviews but not offers? Work from there.