Ask HN: How do you find employment opportunities in 2024?
About 9 years ago, I was recruited through LinkedIn and landed a position at the company I'm still working for today. At that time, it seemed as though this method of discovering career opportunities was the norm, and so while my experience with this particular recruiter was not great, it all worked out and I settled into my new role fairly comfortably.
After about 6 years, I felt like I'd be doing myself a disservice if I waited any longer to begin scoping out the job market. But a few years have passed now without much to really show for it in the way of interviews or really any interesting job prospects at all.
In fact, it almost seems like the world has moved on without me. I feel as though I'm wasting my time on LinkedIn, but I'm also not aware of any fancy new replacement that has come along in the last decade either.
So in your experience, how does one find employment opportunities in 2024? Is it all about networking? Are things just really tough in the IT world lately?
106 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadI also wonder what advantage they get by having my CV when my work history is public on my linkedin. What do CV farmers gain from having a pdf of my CV? Couldn't they just copy-paste the information from my linkedin if they really wanted to?
What does this mean?
Of the times I have used a recruiter get get a new job (maybe four or five times over my entire career, only once in the past 23 years), not once have any of them helped in the negotiation or pushed the process forward. I got the feeling they just submitted my C.V. and then collected the cheque once I got hired.
Not much advice I know, and what works for me doesn't necessarily mean it will work for other people.
I've been quite unimpressed by IT recruiters overall, but perhaps I should entertain their messages on LinkedIn a bit more than I do, as I tend to just ignore them.
(Whether you are wasting your time, IDK, but no one migrated from LinkedIn to ____.)
But really, people I've built big things for outside of my field are interested in working with me. That's my primary solace. It can be tough staying poised for offers through the years in case not all roads lead to Rome, but not worse than the feeling of seeing a nest egg fail to hatch.
(a) it ruined the networking time for everyone else and (b) if I had an opening, I'd be less likely to interview them than before.
But perhaps I should give this a shot, just to put myself out there and see what happens.
There's no relation between updating the profile and being replaceable.
If you think you are a special unique snowflake that is irreplaceable, think again. There are a few handful of individuals in the entire world that might be exceptions to the rule and those people are not irreplacable because of their knowledge or talent but because of their charisma and vision.
If you have a special skill or knowledge or talent... someone else has it too.
Nobody in my network has much money so there is no network value there.
The only very successful people I know who like me were acquired by a big company for millions but they're not allowed by their new HQ to hire me. They still send me emails asking for advice and tell me that they appreciate my work which is great but for some reason I can't get any opportunities.
It's almost like I've been labeled as a member of the untouchable class.
That’s why rank and file at faang can pull down 300k+ TC
Personally I also have concerns about ethics which has hindered my ability to convey genuine enthusiasm when speaking with interviewers at such companies.
The companies on hackernews “whose hiring page” are too disorganized and havent figured out to use third party recruiters yet, some it’s even questionable if they’re hiring since they’re back every month despite their rejection emails suggesting they had a candidate that more closely matched yada yada
Recruitment platforms are all crap, like ones where the candidate signs up and passes some tests, theyre all broken and dead for me
Cold applying is pretty bad
Applying over linkedin is even worse
For me only thing that works are recruiter’s bots hitting me up in Linkedin DMs. if that dries up couldnt tell you
but prior co-workers have become decision makers and still liked me too, old fashioned and human connections are the only common denominator here
10x engineers: get hired by FAANG for "dev relations" projects that eventually get sunsetted
100x engineers: are unapproachable except through their OnlyFans accounts and their anonymous P.O. box where companies can send speculative gifts and offerings
A guy I've barely met (he is cofounder/ceo of a friend of mine who is CTO at their startup) wrote to me via LI message telling me about someone (VC fund with new project) he knew was looking for a CTO. Turns out I knew them from before, and my friends co-founder referred me, so I got in easy.
Point is, you write in linkedin not only for recruiters. Actually in my experience, recruiters are mostly useless and waste of time for candidates. Instead you write there so that your network and extended network see you, and your work search get mor reach.
Perhaps I'll reach out to a few of them and just see what they have going on. :) Thanks for the comment.
Also, I would suggest once a year as you near or pass your work anniversary do it again. First this makes sure you don’t end up settling due to inertia, keeps you sharp in terms of what’s out there, and keeps your network robust. In those annual revisits you don’t have to have a goal, it can just be catching up and see what others are doing. Invariably folks will offer stuff along the way and how you feel about it tells you whether you’re ready to move on.
I'll have to take stock of my connections and consider who among them I think might really have a positive view of my work and our previous interactions. I'm not the most social person and struggle to establish meaningful connections with people, but I'm confident that there are a handful of people who have appreciated working with me and would recommend me for positions that open up around them.
I've already settled due to inertia, but it's a hole I can dig myself out of with enough effort. I think it'll mostly just require a better understanding of what I am looking for, beyond just something new, challenging, and fulfilling. But I'll have to do some more thinking on that end.
Thanks for your comment. :) I really appreciate it.
I'm much newer to this industry than you so don't have any personal info to share, but the data does seem to show it's not just you, and that programming and IT are in the trough of a contraction right now. Indeed seems to have around only three quarters as many available (US) positions "floating" right now, so to speak, as it did even in Feb 2020, which was before the tech crunch and explosion most agreed was temporary and unsustainable; it's also markedly lower than the whole (US) economy, which is at least still positive (although I'd also guess without looking Indeed is more heavily used by the tech industry than the economy as a whole). It seems job hunting in the tech industry is going to be tougher for a time, and more intentional networking and hunting opportunities than before will be necessary: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1hG1R
I’ve never, ever, gotten a human response from any company that I cold applied. Either ignored, or get the automated rejection email.
Recruiters that I could cold contact usually tell me thanks for reaching out, and that they’ll be in touch if they’re interested. They never are.
I could probably get -a- job through networking, but probably not a job I’d be very interested in. I have a network, but very few people work somewhere that I’d like to work at. The few that do would at best guarantee I get fed into the leetcode pipeline and then it would all be on me to leetcode my way in.
I know some master networkers that can get offers and switch jobs via their network at the drop of a hat. Again, the catch here is that they have to be very unpicky. Overall, many of the best places to work are gatekeeped with leetcode.
I’m currently at what I consider an “endgame” company. I wouldn’t mind if this is the last company I work at (I’m 40). If I can last here until I’m late 40s or early 50s, then I’d rather semi-retire instead of putting myself through the leetcode gauntlet again.
Can you help me understand what you mean by "leetcode"?
In 2021, I extensively used LinkedIn and got several job offers, so it's fairly useful in my opinion.
I can’t help shake the feeling it’s the latter - rates might be higher for longer and tons of companies have jumped on the south-america/eastern-eu hiring bandwagon
I can see, moving into the future, employers no longer wanting to easily hire unqualified people. That will mean great disruptions for the people currently performing the work.
As a result developers in e-commerce type businesses tend to reach compensation caps faster than employees in ad revenue type businesses. What is counter-intuitive about that is that the user facing code from ad revenue type businesses tends to be extremely low quality compared to equivalent code from e-commerce type businesses, because that code more directly impacts user engagement on the e-commerce side and user engagement is more critical for sales conversion on the e-commerce side. I am not saying the code on the e-commerce side is great either.