Ask HN: Where Are All the Jobs At?
For the longest time, I was trying to get another remote developer job. Nothing crazy wasn't really targeting tech companies or anything, just remote work that would pay me well enough to keep going. It took me too long to realize that this was going to be impossible and why. I managed to get interviews throughout this time, but it always ended with them selecting another candidate. Of course now, I’m more open to in-site roles, but I’m in no position to move, especially not to some high CoL area.
Now I'm fucked. I'm currently living off a friend, and this isn't going to last forever. I've been applying to anything that looks like I could remotely be considered qualified for. Retail and restaurant companies won't ever respond to my applications, despite constantly spamming the same jobs month after month.
If the job market is ostensibly so great, why can't I manage to find anything? I swear it was easier to find a job when I didn't have any work experience at all than it is now. It’s not just me. I had another friend, not a tech worker, who was out of work for a long time. Most of the interviews they got turned out to be MLMs and other sales related Ponzi schemes. They finally found a job, but it’s not paying nearly enough for them to get back on their feet.
My network has also utterly failed me. I’ve had people left and right offer their help in getting me a job, everything has fallen flat.
83 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 90.4 ms ] threadThe tech market isn't doing very well. You can check it my the recurring posts like yours here, many with hundreds of comments. It is a tough time out there. I would recommend start something for yourself, an app, a saas project. It can help you keep up with the tech asked in the job posts and also have an excuse for the gap in your CV.
I get that, but why can’t I find anything else.
Years ago, when I was working retail jobs, they would hire fucking anyone. I got stuck working with stoners, alcoholics, and just general clowns, but suddenly these sort of places won’t hire me?
Your resume now signals "white collar upper-middle class" and retail will assume:
- You'll still be looking for work when you join
- You can't/won't work hard
All my friends with PhDs in non-marketable specialties have faced this problem for a decade.
In my experience the best way to get in somewhere is to build a personal connection. Try to reach out by phone or in person to the other side. Make sure you understand the person and the company on the other side. That really helps to get to the top of the list, especially at smaller companies. Then still it can take a thousand no's to get one yes.
Good luck! Hope you land a job soon!
Unless there's something you're not disclosing like a drug conviction or being a dependent of your parents, you should be eligible for Pell grants and other offers. If you're a California resident, vocational school should be near-free for you. There are no criteria for student loans besides a pulse.
Stay on your friend's good side and throw a few bucks his way. Getting an apartment with student loans as your only source of income can be tricky (in this market, I'd expect it impossible). You may be aged-out of dorms and they kick you out every summer anyway.
Thats true, but iirc, when filling out the forms, they ask for tax information, from two years prior to the year you're applying.
> Stay on your friend's good side and throw a few bucks his way.
Unfortunately, they're probably moving out of state early next year, which is why I'm particularly. worried.
Its crunch time for lots of people in the west - and if you have a bog standard web development job with little specialization, you will be competing with huge numbers of people to get work, including all of those recent juniors entering the market because of the boot camps they did a couple of years ago when things were frothy. These jobs still exist - but competition will be more fierce.
There are many things you can do proactively - and its important to stay proactive, even if you feel defeated. Maybe getting another FTE job isn't for you right now, then sidestep, find a side-hussle, or train up another skill and diversify in yourself so you can build back better and not be left vulnerable next time this happens.
I think developers generally speaking overly invest in just development and computer-science, but there are metric shit-tonnes of ways to make money in this world. If you don't know any other way, learn some other way. Find some other domain of knowledge you always wanted to learn, and learn it, then figure out ways to create small businesses to monetize on it.
I can “learn” anything. What I cannot do is synthesize years of experience in some other domain. Most jobs are not like web development. They are not interested in outsiders or people who lack traditional credentials and experience in their exact field.
This is the third thread about this same topic that you've posted. I get that you're desperate, but what else are you doing with your time?
You say employers are ghosting you and you express belief that it's because you're not ticking the right boxes. What are you doing to make yourself more marketable so you can tick those boxes?
"Years of experience" is arbitrary and negotiable. Employers routinely make dumbass demands like 5+ years of experience in tech that only launched last night. If you really can "learn" anything, you're going to have to step up your showmanship and convince them of that during the interview. On paper you're competing with people falsifying and exaggerating such backgrounds altogether.
(If you're serious about becoming an airplane mechanic, consider the military. They're hurting for recruits, and your lack of a degree would ironically put you on the vocational track. They also provide housing.)
This is a multi-year commitment. Look at how long it is to go to school for a degree
1) stay hopeful and positive, and preserve existing relationships. 2) expand your social network by attending free in-person clubs, events, etc. this is where you'll find your job. anything where people gather repeatedly over time, so you can make real connections. 3) lower financial expectations and take any job. cash flow is important in times like this.
Keep looking online also, but I suspect you'll find your next opportunity through old fashioned in-person networking.
It may not seem like it, but skilled developers really are hard to find. You want to be that lucky break for someone.
Middle class continued to be crushed, everyone noticed that tech was the only way to have a shot at upper middle class, and rushed for the same doors.
The “extras” that weren’t making the cut got let go last year and even harder this year.
The only way to win is to stop playing the game. Make your own company. Get a loan from the SBA. Fuck the disgusting wanna live forever VC extractions class. Get out of the rat race. Stop rewarding the cancerous leeches that are dismantling everything else so they can go do cocaine in Mykonos. Stop playing their game.
I don’t have the time nor the resources to do that now. If I could get a job that would allow me to stabilize a bit, then I could start thinking about that.
- open an LLC to protect your -$10,000 in assets
- open lines of credit using the LLC (don't worry about what a Paydex is)
- ???
https://www.tiktok.com/@moneytips.tt/video/72389957727446663...
- Open LLC
- Take out huge, collateralized SBA loan
- ???
- Profit?
- Open LLC - Take out huge, collateralized SBA loan - ??? - Profit? - ???
The first ??? represents all the steps and actions. The second ??? represents all the consequences.
But I get what you're saying --you're saying, get funds together by any means necessary (SBA is a straightforward path) and bootstrap/found a company.
It's still certainly possible to start up a software business. Basically the business needs to provide enough value to customers that they'll pay for it, and what they pay needs to cover the costs of the business.
That is profitability (which is something even many large VC-backed tech companies have totally forgotten how to do).
Software businesses can be started with low costs...
I'll probably get the same pessimistic replies, but this is definitely a valid path for the brave and competent.
...may not be the best environment to go and start taking out loans to open your own business. Especially not for a micro-SaaS where profit margins should be something like 80 something percent on a terrible day.
SBA loans are better matched for opening a business where your margins are in the single digits and you need to pay vendors X weeks out before you can make a single sale. Not selling software you can write for $0 and host on a $10 VPS.
Better advice would be to consider changing or shifting skills towards something that's in greater demand right now and find ways of meeting people who can connect the OP with a job. Given that they are living with a friend, I don't think they have the leeway to start a business (and likely fail).
https://www.usds.gov/apply
https://18f.gsa.gov/join/
https://www.usajobs.gov/help/faq/job-announcement/remote/
So, still not really open to on-site then, unless it happens to be in your area?
I wonder if that's the problem. You might have been selling yourself short.
Relocating to SF/NY/LA etc. Might cost $5k+, and that’s estimating on the low side for a single person.
You might be perfectly willing to take a job in a high COL area, but completely unable to do so logistically.
This sounds like a horrible deal. Where are they finding the jobs? Why can't people put in a little work and bypass them?
All of the recruiters I work with have put in copious amounts of time to understand how to put the right candidates in front of me and have learned from every proposed slam dunk I or one of my staff flunked out.
This attitude is some combination of contempt for the low end of the market and the dentist's fallacy. Certainly, the low end of the market runs on shotgun work, but the high end of the market is not replicable with ~any of the last decade of your software development skills.
If I was close to financial ruin, I would do that and probably in my area could earn enough to afford a rented room and minimum quality of life, while I'd continue searching for something better.
I do not recommend anyone does this (unless it's very clearly profitable).
In my area tons of people deliver food via bicycle. Very little overhead there. I would do that in a heartbeat if I were strapped for cash. Pretty sure I could clear at least $50 net a day, which would be plenty to not live off a friend.
I don't know of any place in the U.S. that doesn't have wanted signs in the windows for restaurant work. Between fast food, back of house, or front of house, there really are a ton of options both in downtown areas and suburbs from my experience.
Have you actually gone to one of these locations, physically, and applied? Did you follow up instead of just dropping an application by and hoping for the best?
Are there any places these days that are sitting around with stacks of paper job applications waiting for someone to walk in and ask for one? I figured by now just about everyone would ask you to apply online and showing up in person would just get you strange looks like "how has this person never heard of the internet?"
The old adage of "why don't you go down and ask for a job" still works in service/retail.
"Ask HN: Who is hiring?" threads. Such as: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36956865
"Ask HN: Who wants to be hired?" threads. Such as: Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36956867
They generally happen each month, and when I have posted a well thought out resume on the "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" I have gotten responses, even not necessarily leading to anything.
"Ask HN: Who wants to be hired?" also provides advice on what people view as an "interesting" short resume summary, and what types of skills are showing up (for the observant).
"Where the jobs at?" Check "Ask HN: Who is hiring?"
Everyone has a boss including the person who reads your application and it cant be rejected if you seem to be a perfect match socially speaking.
Emotional intelligence is the crack in the wall. All they want. They could not care more about how good you trully are providing they even know what a good dev is.
Play the social game. Buy new clothes that convey what they want you to convey. Study profile pictures and craft a great one. Study their mindset.
Aim for quality, not quantity.
Finally, you can do QA? Congratulation, now you've been a QA for the last 5 years. Do what you need to do. Fuck em. After all, you've contributed and now youre dumped. Employee is not viable. A new director arrives and decides your career is over when you, as a nerd, created his own fucking job. So do it with a fuck em mindset. Beat them as their own game. And let it be known that employee is not viable (without unions?).
Good luck.
You could contribute to open source. This can take a few forms. A few small PRs on well known projects can go a long way. Many projects are looking for docs and better test coverage, these can be easy ways in.
You can make something on your own and open source it. I'd suggest something small but complete with some sort of interesting novelty to it. Make sure any projects have interesting READMEs. Don't just follow a TODO list tutorial in language X and stick it up GitHub.
You could volunteer your tech skills somewhere. Even contacting charities and seeing if they need help with anything.
You could try write a blog, but with a specific focus on an area that interests you. I was out of work for a while and planned to do this for horizontal database scaling for example.
Any of these things look infinitely better to a potential employer than a blank space.
Finally, it's really important to own the narrative. Put on your CV you've been out of work but looking for a new opportunity. List the things you've been doing. Maybe there's a framing you can put on it, like a career break. Don't be ashamed by it, stay positive. Good luck.
Now that we are back to normal; many companies are going to hire in-site. The one that aren't have an immense pool to choose from. And you having no degrees and being out of work for a long time means you are at the bottom of that pile. Unfortunately, this is the consequence of your decision to favour your short term comfort over your long term employment (I know I am going to get downvoted to oblivion for this).
At this point, you need to act as if you were new to the market and target junior positions. Since you cannot afford high COL, maybe aim for mid/low COL cities, and get ready to relocate there - possibly getting a loan to afford the move. If you can; try getting some form degree, online certification, etc. Everything a new dev would be doing; but use your experience to speedup the process and get good grades.
Good luck !
When I was out of career-work I managed to get some minimum-wage programming jobs by targetting crypto groups and I ended up starting an ebay side-business that still brings in about 300 USD/m for not much work. My CoL is very low so that pays for everything except food for me, that's one of the advantages of moving to a low CoL area.
Any tips? The freelance sites just don't work currently, even the crappiest and shadiest 'jobs' are mobbed by 50+ proposals, and anyone new to the platform won't even have their proposals read.
What are you best at, job wise (within tech)? Not what do you _want_ to do, but what can you most _consistently_ do? I'd suggest concentrating your efforts there.
It does feel like the market is tighter than normal, but I still get recruiters and cold calls, so companies must be still hiring. ("Ouster", for instance, has open positions. I do not work there. There's some entity https://www.a.team/ which could be something, tho I decided not to follow up, got an odd vibe.)
You might have to fall back to ...shudder... retail, I did, much earlier in my career, and was the worst 18 months of my life. Got through it though! So can you. :)
Sometimes it just takes forever, and yeah, getting all the rejections isn't exactly good for self esteem...