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Tech job listings are down 40% on several job boards

296 points by uptown 10y ago

whamlastxmas 10y ago
I'm a newer web developer with a few years of full-time experience (and over a decade of hobby experience), but definitely not a "senior" developer. Most job openings I see are for senior developers. I don't really know if this is historically normal, because I wasn't doing much developer job hunting a few years ago. For the jobs that I have applied to, I would say I am pretty well qualified. I have put a lot of time into my resume to make it clean and legible. I usually spend over an hour writing a cover letter, and I am pretty confident they are interesting, well written, and have a friendly/personal tone without coming across as awkward or over eager. Despite all of this effort and being pretty well qualified, I never hear back. Not even a rejection letter. Just silence. I have applied to pretty entry-level positions too for which I am overqualified, and also never hear back. Sample size is only about 10 applications, but they were very focused, well matched, high effort applications. If there is any shortage of web developers out there, companies sure aren't acting like it. It's not even like I would ask very much, I only want maybe $75k since I am currently way underpaid (about ~$50k in a big city). My guess is that this is just a side effect of unemployment being pretty high (if you look at realistic measures, not the biased official ones). Senior developers are willing to work for less than before because getting a job is harder these days, and less-than-senior developers can't get a job at all because there's only enough spots for the senior level ones.
- djb_hackernews 10y ago
  stop calling yourself a junior developer, you are selling yourself short.
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    I don't, but I also don't call myself a senior developer. I'm just a "developer", middle level. I don't have a CS degree and I'm not algorithm or software patterns expert. I do web development and don't have experience with stuff outside of Laravel/PHP/Node.js/RoR and a myriad of front end technology. And no experience with very large scale applications that have millions of users. I say all this to make the point that I'm definitely not competitive with the type of people working at Google, but I have plenty enough experience making great sites from start to finish with a variety of tools.
    - noonespecial 10y ago
      >Laravel/PHP/Node.js/RoR That's senior to most of the people posting the jobs. You passed junior with PHP.
      - whamlastxmas 10y ago
        It's more my lack of depth with any of those aside from maybe Laravel that I would feel dishonest calling myself senior. I've made CRUD apps until my eyes bleed, but not a whole lot else. I don't have a lot of experience writing tests. I don't really have any open source code to show employers, only past projects that I've made as a side project or for an employer. It's rare that I have to write anything original that isn't already covered by the existing conventions of whatever framework I'm using. It just feels like a few years experience isn't "senior" when you look at the candidate market in general. I am probably well below the average numbers of years experience.
        Phlarp 10y ago
        Stop over-analyzing this, and quit feeling "dishonest" calling yourself senior. Just do it. Start referring to yourself and seeing yourself as a senior software engineer and the paycheck is likely to follow-- regardless of your technical merits or lack there of. Far less qualified individuals than yourself successfully bill themselves as senior engineers or solutions consultants, and make several whole multiples of your pay doing so.
        hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
        My two cents: you should apply for some senior developer positions. You should be honest about your skills, but also you should be confident and not sell yourself short. What's the worst that can happen? You are already not getting callbacks.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - emeraldd 10y ago
      My suggestion, branch out and learn some of the other tools, even if you have to do it in a non-professional environment. For building sites, you're competing with things like Site Slinger or various similar services. To be competitive in that kind of a market you'll need to have a different kind of value add (i.e. look like something more than a developer) to make your resume look more interesting. Some of it also depends on where you're looking for work and if you're looking for local or remote work. I had to jump cities to get a foot in the door (East Texas to Austin). YMV and good luck!
- mattkrause 10y ago
  > Despite all of this effort and being pretty well qualified, I never hear back. This is the worst part of job hunting. Replying to hundreds of applicants individually might be difficult, but a short email from noreply@company.com that says "Sorry, but the position has been filled. We will keep your application for M months in case we have another opening" wouldn't be unreasonable.
  - thenipper 10y ago
    If they're getting hundreds of applicants they should be using a software system to manage them. They all can reject people quite easily...
    - mattkrause 10y ago
      I don't disagree but it's pretty rare, even when the submission is obviously through an applicant tracking system (taleo, brassring, etc). I don't know why. They might be trying to avoid angry emails, they might be trying to hang on to some backup candidates in case the one the hired does not work out, or maybe the tracking systems really are as bad as they appear. I went on an interview where they flew me across the country, put me up in a fancy hotel, and then...completely ghosted on me. I would guesstimate that they spent a few thousand dollars on me, including the flight, lodging, food, dinner with the team, and ~15ish hours of interviewer-time. I can't imagine that the cost of three minutes of the secretary (or manager)'s time would be a significant factor after that. Regardless, it's annoying....
      - mattmcknight 10y ago
        I think there is some fear is in responding negatively due to the vagaries of employment law, where you are giving people the opportunity to challenge you for not selecting you for the "wrong" reason. This is why most responses should be just,"we have not decided to bring you on at this time". I always like to keep a pipeline of potential candidates warm, contacting them at least once per month, so giving no feedback whatsoever seems like a bad strategy for anyone you might ever want to hire. However, you have to just start to imagine all of the things that happen on the other side of the curtain. The hiring manager moves to another project or hadn't been assigned when they started interviewing, the recruiter changes or their contract ends, the project funding gets delayed, the technology choice changes, they didn't know what kind of person they wanted, etc. In larger companies, you need a lot of coordination so that you don't lose a good candidate due to their not being a fit on the project that got to them first. I would never expect a response other than "resume received" from an online submission, but, once you speak with someone, a status update of some kind, even if it is a "no decision has been made" makes sense.
- a_c_s 10y ago
  Hearing back on 0/10 isn't great but it also isn't so far outside my experience when I was applying to my first few jobs. Some companies take a long time to get back to you (IIRC for Amazon I was offered an interview 2-3 months after applying) And many companies are just rude (don't even acknowledge receiving your application, don't follow up after interviews). However something that struck me about your story: most of my cover letters have consisted of a simple 3-4 sentence email. It mentioned the job, where I found it, expressed my enthusiasm for the position and highlighted some skills I have that match the job description. I'm curious to hear other opinions, but you might be trying too hard on the cover letters.
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    My cover letters are usually three paragraphs. The first is two sentences saying that it looks like an exciting opportunity and introducing myself as a web developer in CityX whose client experience matches that of the hiring company. The second is a few sentences saying that my experience matches the desired qualifications in the job ad, and expressing my desire to always learn new technology and improve my existing skills (because it's usually not a literal perfect match). The third touches on why the position is a good match on a personal level, such as my personal/hobby interest in some topic that is central to the job. I close by saying I look forward to hearing more about I can help. In all, it's really not too much longer than this comment. Maybe only 3 sentences longer. I try to make it friendly and casual because I figure people don't like reading robotic, boring cover letters.
    - hluska 10y ago
      Ever thought of switching that up a little bit?? I've read many, many cover letters in my day and when I have a whole stack to get through, your style of cover letter gets boring fast. I know this is suboptimal and I've likely missed out on some very good people because of it, but that's just how it goes. Why not try telling a story that shows some sort of personal interest in the organization that you're applying to? Or, try to focus on showing your enthusiasm for the position. While you're working at changing your style, you should work on some basic mechanical things in your writing. I know that this is HN, so you likely didn't put much time into proofreading, but sentences like this one hurt me in my soul: "The second is a few sentences saying that my experience matches the desired qualifications in the job ad, and expressing my desire to always learn new technology and improve my existing skills (because it's usually not a literal perfect match)." Or, consider this sentence: "I close by saying I look forward to hearing more about I can help." Again, I understand that you likely didn't put much time into proofreading your comment, but you missed a pretty important word.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- fizzbatter 10y ago
  Out of curiosity, where did you find employment? I know you struggled in applying to new places, but clearly you found some. Do you feel you got lucky? I feel i'm in the same boat, but with a different set of technologies. Regardless, i'm curious on what you feel you have succeeded at. Might be informative :)
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    I'm in my second full time developer job. The first was front end only, and my current is full stack. First job was because I knew someone that moved to that company and ranted and raved advocating for them to hire me. My current job cared much less about technical aptitude and more general attitude and fit, and also pays fairly poorly (not just me, everyone). So I just sort of got lucky to some extent. Not sure what I've succeeded at. Being willing to learn is probably the biggest attribute to doing really well at my two developer jobs (according to my past and current boss). And just generally being a polite person who's easy to work with and willing to take on tasks without complaining.
- tromobne8vb 10y ago
  In a lot of companies, including mine, Senior Developer is close to entry level. People with 3+ years experience are being hired at the Senior Developer level.
  - dozzie 10y ago
    Indeed. I hope this changes when we have more and more people with ten or fifteen or twenty years of experience.
- Kluny 10y ago
  I'm a web developer who's having a similar experience. I'll tell you something that you may or may not find heartening. My 3-paragraph cover letters aren't doing jack for getting interviews. On the other hand, clicking the "easily apply" button on indeed or wherever, assuming I'm qualified for the job, has yielded at least a phone call in 3 of the last 5 times I tried it (this month). No cover letter, just maybe two sentences about who I am and why I'm interested. It hasn't gotten me a job yet, mind you, but phone calls are slightly more encouraging than silence.
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    I am really having to focus on remote jobs since my current city sucks and moving isn't an option. Indeed is frustrating because of * All of the recruiter/middle-man spam that I couldn't find an option to filter out * Most companies are doing something pretty boring (marketing/advertising) and look like pretty miserable places to spend most of your waking life * Remote positions are pretty rare, and when they exist they have super high expectations
    - mkozlows 10y ago
      So you won't deal with recruiters, are only willing to work remotely, and don't want to look at any place boring... and you think that the unemployment rate has a lick of anything to do with why you can't find a job?
      - whamlastxmas 10y ago
        I'm fine not working remotely, but the opportunities aren't really abundant in my city. And it doesn't seem all that unrealistic to not want to be shoved into a dusty cubicle making a frameworkless procedural PHP application to replace Excel spreadsheets for a company that sells shady SEO consulting services.
        drdeadringer 10y ago
        It sounds like you have to figure out which one of your variables has to give in addition to your "remote//no-remote" toggle -- not moving, no boring work, no "unethical to my standards" work, and like this.
- hiou 10y ago
  Its definitely slowing down a bit, but the other side is that the talent pool is growing significantly. This doesn't mean there is nothing out there. That said, it is getting much closer to looking for any typical professional job if you don't have contacts. Send out tons of resumes and eventually you'll get lucky type stuff. Sometimes doing some freelance contact work for a company is a good in for web work as well.
  - walki 10y ago
    The pool is definitely growing. One of the consequences of this is that you now often have to do online coding tests in order to be invited to a real interview on site. Personally I think that in Europe it has become much more difficult to find a job as a software developer compared to a decade ago and the wages are also going down. I don't see how the US can escape the same destiny in near future...
- sotojuan 10y ago
  Honestly you might just be getting lost in the application sea. Entry level web dev jobs get tons, TONS of applications.
- twunde 10y ago
  I never had much luck applying directly for positions. Try working with recruiters. They have a bad reputation as a whole, but at the very least they should be able to get some interviews scheduled for you. The other thing you should try doing is going to tech meetups in your local area and talking to people there.
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    I have much more patience for unanswered applications than I do for recruiters. I have had some extremely negative experiences with them and I'd rather be underpaid in my job than deal with being abused by recruiters.
    - knowaveragejoe 10y ago
      I'm at a similar level of experience as you at roughly the same place in my career. I've only interacted with one recruiter and it worked out very well for me, leading to my first full-time "real" position at a company with some other fairly talented developers from whom I gleaned a ton of knowledge. I guess it's a YMMV kind of thing. They didn't ask me to sign or pay anything, they just asked for technical qualifications(languages, tools) just lined up multiple interviews in one day for me that were a rough match.
    - mkozlows 10y ago
      There are different types of recruiters. Some are junk. Some are good. But for better or worse, many many jobs are going to hire through them, so you'll want to get past this distaste for them.
    - ChrisDutrow 10y ago
      What kind of negative experiences have you had with recruiters? I don't know much about them...
      - whamlastxmas 10y ago
        It boils to down lying like crazy and saying/giving private information to the potential employer I didn't consent to.
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  One general maxim I've heard is that for every 50+ cold applications (ie - non-recruiter or internal contact) you send off... you'll get one interview out of it. Not a job. Just an interview. Seems pretty accurate in my experience - which is why I almost always aim to use recruiters.
  - brobinson 10y ago
    This jives with my experience last year: I applied to over 100 jobs (kept track in a spreadsheet), about 10 of them replied, interviewed with 2 of them, passed both, got an offer from one of them, rejected/renegotiated it and ultimate accepted it.
- elliotec 10y ago
  Try networking more. Go to meetups and tech events, tell them you're in the market, build relationships and all that will surely be more effective than blasting out resumes and cover letters.
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    You're right, I need to do this more.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  The "Shortage Of Developers" myth just can't seem to die. Software development labor is a market. If there was really a shortage of developers, you'd see compensation rising to adjust, looser restrictions on remote work, role/responsibility incentives, etc, but is this happening? If anything, there is a shortage of developers who: - Have 3-5 years of experience ("Senior, but not too-Senior" engineers) - Have narrow-enough skill sets - Are willing to settle for a very narrowly-defined role - Are willing to live in specific areas - AND Are willing to work for the compensation offered Picky companies can't seem to find these mythical employees in large numbers, so they throw their hands up and declare "shortage of engineers!" Here are some software engineers that are largely getting ignored: - People with 0-2 years of experience - People with 10+ years of experience - Software generalists - Engineers who would also like to broaden their roles/responsibility (+architecture, +project management, +design?) - Remote engineers - Engineers who demand more than "competitively average" packages
  - cinquemb 10y ago
    >Here are some software engineers that are largely getting ignored: Idk, people who have problems they need solved today (not after stringing along would be devs for months for the latest fad-de-jour) opportunities are out there, but take some looking outside of the crap posting resumes and useless meetups…
  - runT1ME 10y ago
    >The "Shortage Of Developers" myth just can't seem to die. Software development labor is a market. If there was really a shortage of developers, you'd see compensation rising to adjust, looser restrictions on remote work, role/responsibility incentives, etc, but is this happening? Yes...? All of this has happened. Twitter has become remote friendly. My employer is 100% no remote but continues to make exceptions and we have 6 or so remote employees now. Salaries have skyrocket in the last five years. So I'd say...yes, there is a shortage of talented developers.
    - onion2k 10y ago
      there is a shortage of talented developers "talented" in that context usually means "has the ability of an experienced developer at the salary of a more junior developer." If you accept that talented software engineers are the people who are simply good at software development then there are plenty - but they're often older, more experienced, and consequently paid more.
- danielhooper 10y ago
  I've left technical interviews with people asking me when I can start only to go silent when I follow up after the interview. It's just part of the hustle...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- antoniuschan99 10y ago
  Feel free to email me if you need some help. I may be able to provide some guidance.
- deagle50 10y ago
  Not sure if dev is different but in ops you rarely get to a 'senior' position until you apply for one and get the job. That said, applying to jobs without meeting someone there first is not the best way to go about it.
- tcper 10y ago
  To be honest, you said you're a less-than-senior developer, maybe your resume is not that good, no matter how serious you wrote it, when I read resume, I focus on the key word to evaluate whether the candidate is fitting the job, not for the tone.
- stickperson 10y ago
  Do you ever check out the Who's Hiring thread here?
phaemon 10y ago
13 points and no comments...
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  It's quite common for a story to go comment-less on HN for a while while people come up with comments that exceed the scope of "13 points and no comments..."
  - phaemon 10y ago
    It is quite common, but we don't talk about it.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- goalo 10y ago
  nobody has answers. thats why :)
- khoury 10y ago
  lol, how dramatic - dot dot dot
  - phaemon 10y ago
    Yes, that's the joke. "nobody's talking about it". It's dramatic. Glad someone got it, though I didn't expect the need to have it explained.
jswny 10y ago
Is it possible that this trend is due to companies taking in more interns and training them as opposed to normal hiring practices?
- elliotec 10y ago
  Doubt it. I have literally never ever seen an intern developer trained up in any company I've worked at.
minimaxir 10y ago
I call data shennanigans. There are a very large number of reasons that the number of jobs on a job site could drop, included to but not limited to the fact that people have stopped using OP's very small job site. (It is also suspicious why the OP compared it to 4 other sites which are unlabeled) That's partially why blogs use large job sites to try so atleast the change is somewhat statistically significant. (but still could be caused by noneconomic issues. From the little bit displayed in the charts, seasonality is in play, which makes looking at a Jan-Jun horizon flawed)
- fencepost 10y ago
  I don't find it odd at all that someone in a niche market is both looking at metrics from competitors and not disclosing what companies they regard as "competitors worth tracking." The names that would go with those other lines are exactly where their customers and users might go instead, why publicize them?
  - minimaxir 10y ago
    Intentionaly omitting relevant information for business reasons is a marketing tactic, not a tactic for an analysis that attempt to present itself as serious.
mathattack 10y ago
2 observations: 1) There has been some batten down the hatches. 2) There is migration among boards. (Example: Indeed has become much more relevant than during my last job search. As a hiring manager I need to pay more attention to it.)
- RickS 10y ago
  > Indeed has become much more relevant than during my last job search Can you expand on this? I've long written off indeed as one of the generic monster.com types that just scrapes stuff from elsewhere and doesn't actually create a fast path to a technical person with hiring authority (vs something like angellist, which does). It's been a few years though - what's changed? Site looks the same as always.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    As part of my interview process, I sometimes open with "How did you find us?" and Indeed has come up a lot more than LinkedIn over the past year. Perhaps this is because candidates like that it scrapes from everywhere, or it's algorithms do a better job at narrowing the sea of open positions to relevant ones?
lawless123 10y ago
Most jobs sites i have used recently are inundated with recruiters all offering/advertising for the same few jobs rather than the companies that are hiring.
sanowski 10y ago
Maybe job board postings are down 40% http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2016/05/06/it-job-growth-slows-tech-sector-hiring-up/ http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2016/05/06/it-job-growth-slows-tech...
rev_bird 10y ago
I don't think I buy the premise. "Tech job listings on one website are down 40%" seems more accurate, and is much less scary. It definitely helps that the author mentions that they track their listings compared to their competitors, but I'm baffled as to why there isn't a graph that covers more than a six-month span when the thesis spans years. If this company has job listing data for multiple listing websites that goes back to at least 2014, that'd be interesting data to look at, but it's not here. Even then, I'm not sure "tech hiring is down 40%" would be a reasonable conclusion to draw -- it's like saying, "the newspaper only had 15 job listings in it, the American economy must be in the toilet."
- wldcordeiro 10y ago
  I'm in the same boat, for all we know the hiring is the same rate but it's through more informal channels like internal recommendations, networking, etc.
  - rev_bird 10y ago
    It could be even simpler than that -- maybe there's a really popular job board that's attracting all the customers? MySpace losing hundreds of thousands of users didn't mean there were less teenagers.
    - felipellrocha 10y ago
      Oooor, even simpler... Tech hiring is down 40%... C'mon, guys... Ockham's razor. Hell, a couple of friends of mine were laid off, and are having a hard time finding employment...
      - exacube 10y ago
        this is not ockham's razor. people here are refuting the 40% hiring decline, so it's not an explanation to choose from to begin with.
      - dajohnson89 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
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juandazapata 10y ago
"My startup is experiencing a 40% churn" will be a better title for the post.
percept 10y ago
While there is still room for other considerations, I was a little more skeptical about the headline until I saw the article's source. If this had been the usual analysis of one of the large job listing aggregators, then I think more of the arguments made here would come into play, but I give this one slightly more credibility since it's a for-pay and "curated" job site. So I'll put it in the somewhat-more-interesting category. Back to the author's points, of course perceptions help frame reality, too.
ILIKEPONIES 10y ago
On the one hand, we've seen some similar patterns as many seed stage companies have struggled to raise an A.* On the other, it's hard to extrapolate anything from such a small dataset. Anecdotally, I would say it's also likely that tech companies that ARE hiring are shifting their hiring budget to sources that bring in more qualified candidates. AuthenticJobs is one of the better niche tech job boards, but it's still a job board. We see lots of growing companies that are spending less money on older channels like LinkedIn and job boards and instead, spending money on an applicant tracking system, hiring in-house recruiters, and using services like Entelo, TheMuse, AngelList, Hired, etc. *We run Underdog.io.
jpeg_hero 10y ago
I am feeling the chill in the circle of companies I know. Other thing that should be mentioned: a lot of initiatives at a lot of companies over the last two years just didn't work. Feels a bit like we are at the tail end of a pretty big macro cycle of tech companies green lighting big initiatives with optimistic mindset and now a few years later the due bill is coming and the bets just didn't pay off. Maybe a big example would be Twitter: a few years ago they were straight up hoarding engineers; fast forward to now, what did all this amazing engineering talent get them? Maybe nice code but the engineering they've done hasn't been able to increase users. The reason engineers get paid well is because of their extreme leverage: just a few engineers can pull off amazing results. But you eventually need the results. And if the results are not there, broadly, then there will be a reentrenchmet.
- jknoepfler 10y ago
  I really don't mean to be rude or disrespectful, but how it "feels" isn't really interesting or relevant to the question of "is tech hiring actually down". The OP presented data to support its claims. The data was (imo) very flawed, but at least it provided something to start a substantial quantitative conversation. I think the OP's argument should be praised for "failing fast." By contrast, the internet of hunches is more or less immune to scrutiny. I don't know which way the prevailing winds are blowing in tech. I could swap anecdotes with you (a tech investor I had a beer with recently seemed very happy? my giant tech employer and its competitors are doing great!), but I don't think it wouldn't get us any closer to the ground truth.
  - pc86 10y ago
    One thing that piqued my interest is that he said they've been tracking their competitors' job ads "for a few years." I would have liked to see his competitors' numbers from '15 or '14.
  - erehweb 10y ago
    But remember, the plural of anecdote is data http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/04/the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data-after-all.html http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/04/the-plural-of-an... If your giant tech employer and competitors are hiring apace, that is a useful data point.
deleted 10y ago
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cmdrfred 10y ago
Who is that job site with the orange line in the graph, they seem to be doing pretty well.
myth_drannon 10y ago
I consider StackOveflow's Careers section a good, high quality sample of the job market (mostly US). I have been scraping them for about 3 months now and I see slight increase in job posts. Here is the data dump: https://github.com/aparij/soCareers-Data/tree/master/new https://github.com/aparij/soCareers-Data/tree/master/new
- zellyn 10y ago
  From the article, three months shouldn't be enough to see this trend…
- myth_drannon 10y ago
  If anyone interested here is the script I use to scrape https://github.com/aparij/soCareersScrape https://github.com/aparij/soCareersScrape
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  I was just about to write "because they all moved to StackOverflow", but didn't at first because it would be just as anecdotal as OP's title so, thanks
- rpwilcox 10y ago
  This is very interesting. Thanks for this data. I've been using the StackOverflow Careers RSS feeds for a small script I've been writing, which gives a good view of Now... maybe I can find something interesting in your data for the Past
- mathattack 10y ago
  The OP's claim was January, and they also have seen a June bounce-back.
- seibelj 10y ago
  That's really cool! Do you have any visualization of it?
  - myth_drannon 10y ago
swingbridge 10y ago
"Lean" is the new black. With investors focusing more on hard fundamentals like revenue and profit and a lot less on "hype" metrics like user growth, employee growth, number of baristas on staff and such a lot of tech companies have taken the hint and got down to business. That includes slamming the brakes on hiring and in some cases cutting staff. That's not the only force at play, but it's a big one.
hkarthik 10y ago
Yup, the signs of a slowdown are there. The smaller startups and companies that use these job boards have cut back on hiring as their revenue growth has slowed down. The next step for them will be layoffs. The big tech companies are still hiring but being much more selective and limiting how many they hire. By the time some of them start having layoffs, the tech economy will be in free fall for a number of months and it will be too late if you aren't prepared for it. Many larger companies are starting to put in place policies and procedures that will limit the number of promotions, raises, and bonuses that they give out. These same actions are also intended to expose lower performers more quickly so they can be identified and managed out. My advice is this: find ways to continue to learn and grow, and keep building skills and making things. Save for potentially long periods of unemployment, and be willing to work very hard to ensure that you're not perceived as a low performer. Lastly, don't sweat it. These economic corrections are good thing. They can unlock a lot of latent talent, capital, and resources that are being wasted. Just be financially prepared for it and you'll be fine.
- adrenalinelol 10y ago
  The sky is falling much?
DiNovi 10y ago
I still get an absurd amount of recruiter spam...
kami8845 10y ago
From my experience the jobs I have found on "Authentic Jobs" have never been from the tech startups that I actually want to work at, since those primarily use AngelList, StackOverflow, GitHub, weworkremotely, Hacker News etc. to advertise their jobs.
me551ah 10y ago
The post should have been 'Traffic to authenticjobs.com is down by 40%'?
abritinthebay 10y ago
I can tell the number of people who weren't around for the last non-incumbent election. Every major election year the job market does this. It's worse when it's an 8 year cycle. Add into it the uncertainty around Trump and Brexit causing economic worries... it's basically there is less risk, so less VC capital, so less startups. It's a normal cycle.
- vineetch 10y ago
  You mean more* risk (not less).
  - __derek__ 10y ago
    Less risk tolerance, I reckon.
    - abritinthebay 10y ago
      Right, that was what I was going for.
lukeHeuer 10y ago
Authentic Jobs is one of the more old school places that heavily catered to web design type work. A more accurate assessment of this data may be that web design work is drying up, but we've known that for a while. It's hard to say since they don't mention the competitors they are tracking, but they may serve the same shrinking market as well.
- ryanSrich 10y ago
  I've seen a drastic drop off of jobs on Angel List. In 2013 there were roughly 10,000+ remote jobs available in the US. Today it's down to hundreds. I'd be interested in a full scale research effort.
  - DiNovi 10y ago
    this might be more related to angellist getting its act together and cleaning up expired listings, of which they had thousands
geori 10y ago
This might be happening because Angelist is free and has great candidates.
lukasm 10y ago
Disclosure: I work on a startup that provides a tool for referrals (rolepoint.com) as well as SaaS that is used by job boards (rolepoint.io). I also gathered job boards in a quite popular repository https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job Couple of things that I noticed - more channels - There are at least a dozen of startups like TripleByte, interviewing.io - referrals becomes preferred way of hiring. From small companies where majority of hires are made through personal networks to fortune 500 companies (using an external recruiter is a last resort). - AngelList, Stackoverflow Careers have matching features and you can learn more about the company. - This is an employee market. Companies have to proactive to get employees (hence the 'poaching'). Posting something to a job board is not efficient. - More acquihires by US companies happens in Europe, since they have hard time competing with Apple, Google, Facebook etc. First two points are backed by data.
nfriedly 10y ago
I get "recruiter spam" pretty frequently. I generally respond with something like "No thanks, but I'll pass along your info if I come across anyone who might be interested." And they generally say "Yes please!" I now have a list of ~300 recruiters email's that I can give out to anyone who is looking for work :)
- ep103 10y ago
  I would greatly appreciate that list...
  - nfriedly 10y ago
    Send me an email (in my profile)
    - ep103 10y ago
      sent, thank you
bigtunacan 10y ago
Disclaimer - This is all gut feeling and anecdotal evidence so feel free to ignore. I suspect that jobs being posted to smaller niche job boards (such as Authentic Jobs, which I hadn't heard of until this post) is down overall, but this doesn't reflect the state of job availability. I believe larger job sites are having enough of a network effect that these boards are becoming less relevant. Most tech job seekers I talk to are going one of four routes. 1) LinkedIn (Facebook for job seekers) 2) Indeed (since it aggregates) 3) Direct application (when you know a specific company you want to work for) 4) Recruiters (Let them do the work for you...) On the anecdotal front (within the past year) I have been contacted twice by recruiters that took me out and bought me lunch to try and woo me to another job and once contacted directly by the CEO of a company who did the same thing. I want to make this point clear; I'm no one special just a regular software dev with 15+ years working experience. During one of these lunches the recruiter said to me, "It is so difficult to hire qualified developers that I would say there is a NEGATIVE unemployment rate currently." I have spoke with multiple company owners, CEOs, and others who are in the hiring position and the general consensus is they can't find qualified help. This is just my experience.
- steven777400 10y ago
  Right now we have about a half dozen open developer positions that we are so far unable to fill. The problem is the vicious intersection of relatively dull work and relatively low pay. We've had to increasingly go the route of hiring contractors since we can pay them basically anything, whereas actual employee pay is set by the legislature who don't win points with voters when they spend more on state employee salaries... So, if there was a legitimate tech job shortage, it would be trickling down to more applicants coming to us (which has happened in the past). Right now, I'm not seeing it.
  - spraak 10y ago
    Do you mean you work for the government somehow?
    - steven777400 10y ago
toephu2 10y ago
FTA: "June’s job report, well above forecasts, suggests the majority of job gains may be happening in areas outside of tech." Correct, they are occurring outside of tech, in fact you don't need to guess, it says it right there in the report if you read it [1]: "In June, job growth occurred in leisure and hospitality, health care and social assistance, and financial activities." The largest increase last month was in "Leisure and hospitality" which added 59,000 jobs. This is basically the hotel industry gearing up for summer which is when most Americans travel for vacation. These jobs don't produce any real economic growth. The economy is not recovering. Today what the media failed to mention is that the unemployment rate actually went up 0.2% to 4.9% (although the more accurate number to look at is the U-6 which went down from 9.7% to 9.6%). Also Average Hourly Earnings m/m went down from 0.2% to 0.1%. [1]http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
- xxpor 10y ago
  >This is basically the hotel industry gearing up for summer which is when most Americans travel for vacation. Aren't the figures seasonally adjusted?
xando 10y ago
It happens that I collect similar data as well. My data range doesn't go as far as years. Although I've just run few quires for past months. Doesn't look like it Stack Overflow would have a reason to complain. But yes AuthenticJobs doesn't look good. The chart suggests that he compares AuthenticJobs to similar job boards ~200 job post per month. Stack Overflow Careers is a different league. Numbers averages there 1800 posts per month. Also, I wrote a counting script for Hacker News' "Who is Hiring" and the results suggesting opposite as well. Plese check this chart https://blog.whoishiring.io/hacker-news-who-is-hiring-thread-part-1/#chart-grow https://blog.whoishiring.io/hacker-news-who-is-hiring-thread... Disclaimer: I run https://whoishiring.io https://whoishiring.io I scrape them all. Private opinion. Statements like his are trying to produce shitstorm in an obvious way. There is no bubble where I stand.
matchagaucho 10y ago
The on-demand gig economy is taking over... aka the "Uber for Web Professionals". Many companies, SMBs in particular, are discovering they don't need to "own the cow to drink the milk". It's simpler to post tasks to sites like Fiverr than it is to post a "job description" and hire an employee/contractor.
distracteddev90 10y ago
I believe this is symptomatic of an industry moving away from job board based recruiting. There has been a significant change in the recruiting sphere and many talent teams are starting to focus more on sourcing and pursuing passive candidates.
markbnj 10y ago
It could also reflect that job boards are becoming less and less useful for employers or job seekers. I recently went through a job hunt and enabling my resume on boards like Dice just resulted in a flood of irrelevant recruiter spam. I'm not being overly harsh here either. When I landed a job (a good one) it was through a posting on the Who's Hiring thread here on HN, and subsequent email/phone conversations and co-working time.
deleted 10y ago
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RomanPushkin 10y ago
Can I request a feature for authenticjobs? Glassdoor rating for every company. It will save a lot of time, and I wonder why nobody has it. Thanks!
exelius 10y ago
No, it's not just you. Hiring is down across the board; and it is indeed due to poor economic headwinds. Many finance heads are starting to think that all our bailouts in 2007/2008 did were create an asset bubble down the road in equities by providing access to cheap capital, encouraging borrowing for risky investments that are just now starting to sour. Add to this the slowdown in China, Brexit, Donald Trump, and a volatile oil market and there's just too much uncertainty for companies to staff up right now. Some firms are even quietly issuing preemptive layoffs under the assumption that 2017 is going to be a very bad year a la 2007. That said, there's still plenty of work for tech workers (someone has to implement those cost savings projects, amirite?). But look for middle managers, marketing folks and sales people to have a bad time as companies look to trim payrolls.
alexchamberlain 10y ago
I wonder how many companies have decided to hire more junior devs, rather than seniors. In an economic downturn, you still need to keep people in your (human) development pipeline.
leroy_masochist 10y ago
Occum's Razor might suggest that the reason for this is pretty straightforward -- the downturn in VC funding means fewer dollars of other people's money available for startup salaries.
- RickS 10y ago
  Has a very precipitous downturn in VC funding actually occurred? There's been convincing clatter for awhile now that it's expected, but my feeling was that while it was lower, it wasn't the kind of downturn that would shave 40% off the hiring market.
  - leroy_masochist 10y ago
    I think it certainly has occurred from the perspective of the early-stage founders making cash allocation decisions.
current_call 10y ago
Why the surprise? http://www.defmacro.org/2013/12/09/learn-to-code.html http://www.defmacro.org/2013/12/09/learn-to-code.html
indeedwhynot 10y ago
If you advertize for a sheep with five green legs, suddenly mother nature will start sending in resumés of people who claim to be exactly that. Therefore, job adverts don't work. What you need, is a resumé database in which you can search. In fact, I would personally never, ever react to a job advert. Thousands of people, who do not have the skill set whatsoever, will react too. That will give a completely wrong impression — of levels of competition that do not exist in reality — and drive down compensation for real candidates, who therefore bail out pretty much immediately, or even never react. Seriously, there is often a good reason why these other people are looking for jobs. It is always the same people looking for jobs. The people whom you really want to hire, are usually not looking for jobs. You should reasonably assume that people who can really do the work, are already working. The discussion then revolves around why would it be more interesting to work for your company and how much more are you willing to pay for that? Wisen up and stop wasting your time and money on job adverts.
DailyHN 10y ago
Posts on http://angularjobs.com http://angularjobs.com are higher than ever. Disclosure/Source: I'm the owner.
deleted 10y ago
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halley 10y ago
if you need a hacker for hire contact cryptlyonhackers@gmail.com

296 points by uptown 10y ago

I'm a newer web developer with a few years of full-time experience (and over a decade of hobby experience), but definitely not a "senior" developer. Most job openings I see are for senior developers. I don't really know if this is historically normal, because I wasn't doing much developer job hunting a few years ago. For the jobs that I have applied to, I would say I am pretty well qualified. I have put a lot of time into my resume to make it clean and legible. I usually spend over an hour writing a cover letter, and I am pretty confident they are interesting, well written, and have a friendly/personal tone without coming across as awkward or over eager. Despite all of this effort and being pretty well qualified, I never hear back. Not even a rejection letter. Just silence. I have applied to pretty entry-level positions too for which I am overqualified, and also never hear back. Sample size is only about 10 applications, but they were very focused, well matched, high effort applications. If there is any shortage of web developers out there, companies sure aren't acting like it. It's not even like I would ask very much, I only want maybe $75k since I am currently way underpaid (about ~$50k in a big city). My guess is that this is just a side effect of unemployment being pretty high (if you look at realistic measures, not the biased official ones). Senior developers are willing to work for less than before because getting a job is harder these days, and less-than-senior developers can't get a job at all because there's only enough spots for the senior level ones.

djb_hackernews 10y ago
stop calling yourself a junior developer, you are selling yourself short.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  I don't, but I also don't call myself a senior developer. I'm just a "developer", middle level. I don't have a CS degree and I'm not algorithm or software patterns expert. I do web development and don't have experience with stuff outside of Laravel/PHP/Node.js/RoR and a myriad of front end technology. And no experience with very large scale applications that have millions of users. I say all this to make the point that I'm definitely not competitive with the type of people working at Google, but I have plenty enough experience making great sites from start to finish with a variety of tools.
  - noonespecial 10y ago
    >Laravel/PHP/Node.js/RoR That's senior to most of the people posting the jobs. You passed junior with PHP.
    - whamlastxmas 10y ago
      It's more my lack of depth with any of those aside from maybe Laravel that I would feel dishonest calling myself senior. I've made CRUD apps until my eyes bleed, but not a whole lot else. I don't have a lot of experience writing tests. I don't really have any open source code to show employers, only past projects that I've made as a side project or for an employer. It's rare that I have to write anything original that isn't already covered by the existing conventions of whatever framework I'm using. It just feels like a few years experience isn't "senior" when you look at the candidate market in general. I am probably well below the average numbers of years experience.
      - Phlarp 10y ago
        Stop over-analyzing this, and quit feeling "dishonest" calling yourself senior. Just do it. Start referring to yourself and seeing yourself as a senior software engineer and the paycheck is likely to follow-- regardless of your technical merits or lack there of. Far less qualified individuals than yourself successfully bill themselves as senior engineers or solutions consultants, and make several whole multiples of your pay doing so.
      - hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
        My two cents: you should apply for some senior developer positions. You should be honest about your skills, but also you should be confident and not sell yourself short. What's the worst that can happen? You are already not getting callbacks.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - emeraldd 10y ago
    My suggestion, branch out and learn some of the other tools, even if you have to do it in a non-professional environment. For building sites, you're competing with things like Site Slinger or various similar services. To be competitive in that kind of a market you'll need to have a different kind of value add (i.e. look like something more than a developer) to make your resume look more interesting. Some of it also depends on where you're looking for work and if you're looking for local or remote work. I had to jump cities to get a foot in the door (East Texas to Austin). YMV and good luck!
mattkrause 10y ago
> Despite all of this effort and being pretty well qualified, I never hear back. This is the worst part of job hunting. Replying to hundreds of applicants individually might be difficult, but a short email from noreply@company.com that says "Sorry, but the position has been filled. We will keep your application for M months in case we have another opening" wouldn't be unreasonable.
- thenipper 10y ago
  If they're getting hundreds of applicants they should be using a software system to manage them. They all can reject people quite easily...
  - mattkrause 10y ago
    I don't disagree but it's pretty rare, even when the submission is obviously through an applicant tracking system (taleo, brassring, etc). I don't know why. They might be trying to avoid angry emails, they might be trying to hang on to some backup candidates in case the one the hired does not work out, or maybe the tracking systems really are as bad as they appear. I went on an interview where they flew me across the country, put me up in a fancy hotel, and then...completely ghosted on me. I would guesstimate that they spent a few thousand dollars on me, including the flight, lodging, food, dinner with the team, and ~15ish hours of interviewer-time. I can't imagine that the cost of three minutes of the secretary (or manager)'s time would be a significant factor after that. Regardless, it's annoying....
    - mattmcknight 10y ago
      I think there is some fear is in responding negatively due to the vagaries of employment law, where you are giving people the opportunity to challenge you for not selecting you for the "wrong" reason. This is why most responses should be just,"we have not decided to bring you on at this time". I always like to keep a pipeline of potential candidates warm, contacting them at least once per month, so giving no feedback whatsoever seems like a bad strategy for anyone you might ever want to hire. However, you have to just start to imagine all of the things that happen on the other side of the curtain. The hiring manager moves to another project or hadn't been assigned when they started interviewing, the recruiter changes or their contract ends, the project funding gets delayed, the technology choice changes, they didn't know what kind of person they wanted, etc. In larger companies, you need a lot of coordination so that you don't lose a good candidate due to their not being a fit on the project that got to them first. I would never expect a response other than "resume received" from an online submission, but, once you speak with someone, a status update of some kind, even if it is a "no decision has been made" makes sense.
a_c_s 10y ago
Hearing back on 0/10 isn't great but it also isn't so far outside my experience when I was applying to my first few jobs. Some companies take a long time to get back to you (IIRC for Amazon I was offered an interview 2-3 months after applying) And many companies are just rude (don't even acknowledge receiving your application, don't follow up after interviews). However something that struck me about your story: most of my cover letters have consisted of a simple 3-4 sentence email. It mentioned the job, where I found it, expressed my enthusiasm for the position and highlighted some skills I have that match the job description. I'm curious to hear other opinions, but you might be trying too hard on the cover letters.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  My cover letters are usually three paragraphs. The first is two sentences saying that it looks like an exciting opportunity and introducing myself as a web developer in CityX whose client experience matches that of the hiring company. The second is a few sentences saying that my experience matches the desired qualifications in the job ad, and expressing my desire to always learn new technology and improve my existing skills (because it's usually not a literal perfect match). The third touches on why the position is a good match on a personal level, such as my personal/hobby interest in some topic that is central to the job. I close by saying I look forward to hearing more about I can help. In all, it's really not too much longer than this comment. Maybe only 3 sentences longer. I try to make it friendly and casual because I figure people don't like reading robotic, boring cover letters.
  - hluska 10y ago
    Ever thought of switching that up a little bit?? I've read many, many cover letters in my day and when I have a whole stack to get through, your style of cover letter gets boring fast. I know this is suboptimal and I've likely missed out on some very good people because of it, but that's just how it goes. Why not try telling a story that shows some sort of personal interest in the organization that you're applying to? Or, try to focus on showing your enthusiasm for the position. While you're working at changing your style, you should work on some basic mechanical things in your writing. I know that this is HN, so you likely didn't put much time into proofreading, but sentences like this one hurt me in my soul: "The second is a few sentences saying that my experience matches the desired qualifications in the job ad, and expressing my desire to always learn new technology and improve my existing skills (because it's usually not a literal perfect match)." Or, consider this sentence: "I close by saying I look forward to hearing more about I can help." Again, I understand that you likely didn't put much time into proofreading your comment, but you missed a pretty important word.
deleted 10y ago
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fizzbatter 10y ago
Out of curiosity, where did you find employment? I know you struggled in applying to new places, but clearly you found some. Do you feel you got lucky? I feel i'm in the same boat, but with a different set of technologies. Regardless, i'm curious on what you feel you have succeeded at. Might be informative :)
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  I'm in my second full time developer job. The first was front end only, and my current is full stack. First job was because I knew someone that moved to that company and ranted and raved advocating for them to hire me. My current job cared much less about technical aptitude and more general attitude and fit, and also pays fairly poorly (not just me, everyone). So I just sort of got lucky to some extent. Not sure what I've succeeded at. Being willing to learn is probably the biggest attribute to doing really well at my two developer jobs (according to my past and current boss). And just generally being a polite person who's easy to work with and willing to take on tasks without complaining.
tromobne8vb 10y ago
In a lot of companies, including mine, Senior Developer is close to entry level. People with 3+ years experience are being hired at the Senior Developer level.
- dozzie 10y ago
  Indeed. I hope this changes when we have more and more people with ten or fifteen or twenty years of experience.
Kluny 10y ago
I'm a web developer who's having a similar experience. I'll tell you something that you may or may not find heartening. My 3-paragraph cover letters aren't doing jack for getting interviews. On the other hand, clicking the "easily apply" button on indeed or wherever, assuming I'm qualified for the job, has yielded at least a phone call in 3 of the last 5 times I tried it (this month). No cover letter, just maybe two sentences about who I am and why I'm interested. It hasn't gotten me a job yet, mind you, but phone calls are slightly more encouraging than silence.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  I am really having to focus on remote jobs since my current city sucks and moving isn't an option. Indeed is frustrating because of * All of the recruiter/middle-man spam that I couldn't find an option to filter out * Most companies are doing something pretty boring (marketing/advertising) and look like pretty miserable places to spend most of your waking life * Remote positions are pretty rare, and when they exist they have super high expectations
  - mkozlows 10y ago
    So you won't deal with recruiters, are only willing to work remotely, and don't want to look at any place boring... and you think that the unemployment rate has a lick of anything to do with why you can't find a job?
    - whamlastxmas 10y ago
      I'm fine not working remotely, but the opportunities aren't really abundant in my city. And it doesn't seem all that unrealistic to not want to be shoved into a dusty cubicle making a frameworkless procedural PHP application to replace Excel spreadsheets for a company that sells shady SEO consulting services.
      - drdeadringer 10y ago
        It sounds like you have to figure out which one of your variables has to give in addition to your "remote//no-remote" toggle -- not moving, no boring work, no "unethical to my standards" work, and like this.
hiou 10y ago
Its definitely slowing down a bit, but the other side is that the talent pool is growing significantly. This doesn't mean there is nothing out there. That said, it is getting much closer to looking for any typical professional job if you don't have contacts. Send out tons of resumes and eventually you'll get lucky type stuff. Sometimes doing some freelance contact work for a company is a good in for web work as well.
- walki 10y ago
  The pool is definitely growing. One of the consequences of this is that you now often have to do online coding tests in order to be invited to a real interview on site. Personally I think that in Europe it has become much more difficult to find a job as a software developer compared to a decade ago and the wages are also going down. I don't see how the US can escape the same destiny in near future...
sotojuan 10y ago
Honestly you might just be getting lost in the application sea. Entry level web dev jobs get tons, TONS of applications.
twunde 10y ago
I never had much luck applying directly for positions. Try working with recruiters. They have a bad reputation as a whole, but at the very least they should be able to get some interviews scheduled for you. The other thing you should try doing is going to tech meetups in your local area and talking to people there.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  I have much more patience for unanswered applications than I do for recruiters. I have had some extremely negative experiences with them and I'd rather be underpaid in my job than deal with being abused by recruiters.
  - knowaveragejoe 10y ago
    I'm at a similar level of experience as you at roughly the same place in my career. I've only interacted with one recruiter and it worked out very well for me, leading to my first full-time "real" position at a company with some other fairly talented developers from whom I gleaned a ton of knowledge. I guess it's a YMMV kind of thing. They didn't ask me to sign or pay anything, they just asked for technical qualifications(languages, tools) just lined up multiple interviews in one day for me that were a rough match.
  - mkozlows 10y ago
    There are different types of recruiters. Some are junk. Some are good. But for better or worse, many many jobs are going to hire through them, so you'll want to get past this distaste for them.
  - ChrisDutrow 10y ago
    What kind of negative experiences have you had with recruiters? I don't know much about them...
    - whamlastxmas 10y ago
      It boils to down lying like crazy and saying/giving private information to the potential employer I didn't consent to.
abritinthebay 10y ago
One general maxim I've heard is that for every 50+ cold applications (ie - non-recruiter or internal contact) you send off... you'll get one interview out of it. Not a job. Just an interview. Seems pretty accurate in my experience - which is why I almost always aim to use recruiters.
- brobinson 10y ago
  This jives with my experience last year: I applied to over 100 jobs (kept track in a spreadsheet), about 10 of them replied, interviewed with 2 of them, passed both, got an offer from one of them, rejected/renegotiated it and ultimate accepted it.
elliotec 10y ago
Try networking more. Go to meetups and tech events, tell them you're in the market, build relationships and all that will surely be more effective than blasting out resumes and cover letters.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  You're right, I need to do this more.
ryandrake 10y ago
The "Shortage Of Developers" myth just can't seem to die. Software development labor is a market. If there was really a shortage of developers, you'd see compensation rising to adjust, looser restrictions on remote work, role/responsibility incentives, etc, but is this happening? If anything, there is a shortage of developers who: - Have 3-5 years of experience ("Senior, but not too-Senior" engineers) - Have narrow-enough skill sets - Are willing to settle for a very narrowly-defined role - Are willing to live in specific areas - AND Are willing to work for the compensation offered Picky companies can't seem to find these mythical employees in large numbers, so they throw their hands up and declare "shortage of engineers!" Here are some software engineers that are largely getting ignored: - People with 0-2 years of experience - People with 10+ years of experience - Software generalists - Engineers who would also like to broaden their roles/responsibility (+architecture, +project management, +design?) - Remote engineers - Engineers who demand more than "competitively average" packages
- cinquemb 10y ago
  >Here are some software engineers that are largely getting ignored: Idk, people who have problems they need solved today (not after stringing along would be devs for months for the latest fad-de-jour) opportunities are out there, but take some looking outside of the crap posting resumes and useless meetups…
- runT1ME 10y ago
  >The "Shortage Of Developers" myth just can't seem to die. Software development labor is a market. If there was really a shortage of developers, you'd see compensation rising to adjust, looser restrictions on remote work, role/responsibility incentives, etc, but is this happening? Yes...? All of this has happened. Twitter has become remote friendly. My employer is 100% no remote but continues to make exceptions and we have 6 or so remote employees now. Salaries have skyrocket in the last five years. So I'd say...yes, there is a shortage of talented developers.
  - onion2k 10y ago
    there is a shortage of talented developers "talented" in that context usually means "has the ability of an experienced developer at the salary of a more junior developer." If you accept that talented software engineers are the people who are simply good at software development then there are plenty - but they're often older, more experienced, and consequently paid more.
danielhooper 10y ago
I've left technical interviews with people asking me when I can start only to go silent when I follow up after the interview. It's just part of the hustle...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
antoniuschan99 10y ago
Feel free to email me if you need some help. I may be able to provide some guidance.
deagle50 10y ago
Not sure if dev is different but in ops you rarely get to a 'senior' position until you apply for one and get the job. That said, applying to jobs without meeting someone there first is not the best way to go about it.
tcper 10y ago
To be honest, you said you're a less-than-senior developer, maybe your resume is not that good, no matter how serious you wrote it, when I read resume, I focus on the key word to evaluate whether the candidate is fitting the job, not for the tone.
stickperson 10y ago
Do you ever check out the Who's Hiring thread here?

phaemon 10y ago

13 points and no comments...

lorenzhs 10y ago
It's quite common for a story to go comment-less on HN for a while while people come up with comments that exceed the scope of "13 points and no comments..."
- phaemon 10y ago
  It is quite common, but we don't talk about it.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
goalo 10y ago
nobody has answers. thats why :)
khoury 10y ago
lol, how dramatic - dot dot dot
- phaemon 10y ago
  Yes, that's the joke. "nobody's talking about it". It's dramatic. Glad someone got it, though I didn't expect the need to have it explained.

jswny 10y ago

Is it possible that this trend is due to companies taking in more interns and training them as opposed to normal hiring practices?

elliotec 10y ago
Doubt it. I have literally never ever seen an intern developer trained up in any company I've worked at.

minimaxir 10y ago

I call data shennanigans. There are a very large number of reasons that the number of jobs on a job site could drop, included to but not limited to the fact that people have stopped using OP's very small job site. (It is also suspicious why the OP compared it to 4 other sites which are unlabeled) That's partially why blogs use large job sites to try so atleast the change is somewhat statistically significant. (but still could be caused by noneconomic issues. From the little bit displayed in the charts, seasonality is in play, which makes looking at a Jan-Jun horizon flawed)

fencepost 10y ago
I don't find it odd at all that someone in a niche market is both looking at metrics from competitors and not disclosing what companies they regard as "competitors worth tracking." The names that would go with those other lines are exactly where their customers and users might go instead, why publicize them?
- minimaxir 10y ago
  Intentionaly omitting relevant information for business reasons is a marketing tactic, not a tactic for an analysis that attempt to present itself as serious.

mathattack 10y ago

2 observations: 1) There has been some batten down the hatches. 2) There is migration among boards. (Example: Indeed has become much more relevant than during my last job search. As a hiring manager I need to pay more attention to it.)

RickS 10y ago
> Indeed has become much more relevant than during my last job search Can you expand on this? I've long written off indeed as one of the generic monster.com types that just scrapes stuff from elsewhere and doesn't actually create a fast path to a technical person with hiring authority (vs something like angellist, which does). It's been a few years though - what's changed? Site looks the same as always.
- mathattack 10y ago
  As part of my interview process, I sometimes open with "How did you find us?" and Indeed has come up a lot more than LinkedIn over the past year. Perhaps this is because candidates like that it scrapes from everywhere, or it's algorithms do a better job at narrowing the sea of open positions to relevant ones?

lawless123 10y ago

Most jobs sites i have used recently are inundated with recruiters all offering/advertising for the same few jobs rather than the companies that are hiring.

sanowski 10y ago

Maybe job board postings are down 40% http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2016/05/06/it-job-growth-slows-tech-sector-hiring-up/ http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2016/05/06/it-job-growth-slows-tech...

rev_bird 10y ago

I don't think I buy the premise. "Tech job listings on one website are down 40%" seems more accurate, and is much less scary. It definitely helps that the author mentions that they track their listings compared to their competitors, but I'm baffled as to why there isn't a graph that covers more than a six-month span when the thesis spans years. If this company has job listing data for multiple listing websites that goes back to at least 2014, that'd be interesting data to look at, but it's not here. Even then, I'm not sure "tech hiring is down 40%" would be a reasonable conclusion to draw -- it's like saying, "the newspaper only had 15 job listings in it, the American economy must be in the toilet."

wldcordeiro 10y ago
I'm in the same boat, for all we know the hiring is the same rate but it's through more informal channels like internal recommendations, networking, etc.
- rev_bird 10y ago
  It could be even simpler than that -- maybe there's a really popular job board that's attracting all the customers? MySpace losing hundreds of thousands of users didn't mean there were less teenagers.
  - felipellrocha 10y ago
    Oooor, even simpler... Tech hiring is down 40%... C'mon, guys... Ockham's razor. Hell, a couple of friends of mine were laid off, and are having a hard time finding employment...
    - exacube 10y ago
      this is not ockham's razor. people here are refuting the 40% hiring decline, so it's not an explanation to choose from to begin with.
    - dajohnson89 10y ago

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juandazapata 10y ago

"My startup is experiencing a 40% churn" will be a better title for the post.

percept 10y ago

While there is still room for other considerations, I was a little more skeptical about the headline until I saw the article's source. If this had been the usual analysis of one of the large job listing aggregators, then I think more of the arguments made here would come into play, but I give this one slightly more credibility since it's a for-pay and "curated" job site. So I'll put it in the somewhat-more-interesting category. Back to the author's points, of course perceptions help frame reality, too.

ILIKEPONIES 10y ago

On the one hand, we've seen some similar patterns as many seed stage companies have struggled to raise an A.* On the other, it's hard to extrapolate anything from such a small dataset. Anecdotally, I would say it's also likely that tech companies that ARE hiring are shifting their hiring budget to sources that bring in more qualified candidates. AuthenticJobs is one of the better niche tech job boards, but it's still a job board. We see lots of growing companies that are spending less money on older channels like LinkedIn and job boards and instead, spending money on an applicant tracking system, hiring in-house recruiters, and using services like Entelo, TheMuse, AngelList, Hired, etc. *We run Underdog.io.

jpeg_hero 10y ago

I am feeling the chill in the circle of companies I know. Other thing that should be mentioned: a lot of initiatives at a lot of companies over the last two years just didn't work. Feels a bit like we are at the tail end of a pretty big macro cycle of tech companies green lighting big initiatives with optimistic mindset and now a few years later the due bill is coming and the bets just didn't pay off. Maybe a big example would be Twitter: a few years ago they were straight up hoarding engineers; fast forward to now, what did all this amazing engineering talent get them? Maybe nice code but the engineering they've done hasn't been able to increase users. The reason engineers get paid well is because of their extreme leverage: just a few engineers can pull off amazing results. But you eventually need the results. And if the results are not there, broadly, then there will be a reentrenchmet.

jknoepfler 10y ago
I really don't mean to be rude or disrespectful, but how it "feels" isn't really interesting or relevant to the question of "is tech hiring actually down". The OP presented data to support its claims. The data was (imo) very flawed, but at least it provided something to start a substantial quantitative conversation. I think the OP's argument should be praised for "failing fast." By contrast, the internet of hunches is more or less immune to scrutiny. I don't know which way the prevailing winds are blowing in tech. I could swap anecdotes with you (a tech investor I had a beer with recently seemed very happy? my giant tech employer and its competitors are doing great!), but I don't think it wouldn't get us any closer to the ground truth.
- pc86 10y ago
  One thing that piqued my interest is that he said they've been tracking their competitors' job ads "for a few years." I would have liked to see his competitors' numbers from '15 or '14.
- erehweb 10y ago
  But remember, the plural of anecdote is data http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/04/the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data-after-all.html http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/04/the-plural-of-an... If your giant tech employer and competitors are hiring apace, that is a useful data point.

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cmdrfred 10y ago

Who is that job site with the orange line in the graph, they seem to be doing pretty well.

myth_drannon 10y ago

I consider StackOveflow's Careers section a good, high quality sample of the job market (mostly US). I have been scraping them for about 3 months now and I see slight increase in job posts. Here is the data dump: https://github.com/aparij/soCareers-Data/tree/master/new https://github.com/aparij/soCareers-Data/tree/master/new

zellyn 10y ago
From the article, three months shouldn't be enough to see this trend…
myth_drannon 10y ago
If anyone interested here is the script I use to scrape https://github.com/aparij/soCareersScrape https://github.com/aparij/soCareersScrape
cloudjacker 10y ago
I was just about to write "because they all moved to StackOverflow", but didn't at first because it would be just as anecdotal as OP's title so, thanks
rpwilcox 10y ago
This is very interesting. Thanks for this data. I've been using the StackOverflow Careers RSS feeds for a small script I've been writing, which gives a good view of Now... maybe I can find something interesting in your data for the Past
mathattack 10y ago
The OP's claim was January, and they also have seen a June bounce-back.
seibelj 10y ago
That's really cool! Do you have any visualization of it?
- myth_drannon 10y ago

swingbridge 10y ago

"Lean" is the new black. With investors focusing more on hard fundamentals like revenue and profit and a lot less on "hype" metrics like user growth, employee growth, number of baristas on staff and such a lot of tech companies have taken the hint and got down to business. That includes slamming the brakes on hiring and in some cases cutting staff. That's not the only force at play, but it's a big one.

hkarthik 10y ago

Yup, the signs of a slowdown are there. The smaller startups and companies that use these job boards have cut back on hiring as their revenue growth has slowed down. The next step for them will be layoffs. The big tech companies are still hiring but being much more selective and limiting how many they hire. By the time some of them start having layoffs, the tech economy will be in free fall for a number of months and it will be too late if you aren't prepared for it. Many larger companies are starting to put in place policies and procedures that will limit the number of promotions, raises, and bonuses that they give out. These same actions are also intended to expose lower performers more quickly so they can be identified and managed out. My advice is this: find ways to continue to learn and grow, and keep building skills and making things. Save for potentially long periods of unemployment, and be willing to work very hard to ensure that you're not perceived as a low performer. Lastly, don't sweat it. These economic corrections are good thing. They can unlock a lot of latent talent, capital, and resources that are being wasted. Just be financially prepared for it and you'll be fine.

adrenalinelol 10y ago
The sky is falling much?

DiNovi 10y ago

I still get an absurd amount of recruiter spam...

kami8845 10y ago

From my experience the jobs I have found on "Authentic Jobs" have never been from the tech startups that I actually want to work at, since those primarily use AngelList, StackOverflow, GitHub, weworkremotely, Hacker News etc. to advertise their jobs.

me551ah 10y ago

The post should have been 'Traffic to authenticjobs.com is down by 40%'?

abritinthebay 10y ago

I can tell the number of people who weren't around for the last non-incumbent election. Every major election year the job market does this. It's worse when it's an 8 year cycle. Add into it the uncertainty around Trump and Brexit causing economic worries... it's basically there is less risk, so less VC capital, so less startups. It's a normal cycle.

vineetch 10y ago
You mean more* risk (not less).
- __derek__ 10y ago
  Less risk tolerance, I reckon.
  - abritinthebay 10y ago
    Right, that was what I was going for.

lukeHeuer 10y ago

Authentic Jobs is one of the more old school places that heavily catered to web design type work. A more accurate assessment of this data may be that web design work is drying up, but we've known that for a while. It's hard to say since they don't mention the competitors they are tracking, but they may serve the same shrinking market as well.

ryanSrich 10y ago
I've seen a drastic drop off of jobs on Angel List. In 2013 there were roughly 10,000+ remote jobs available in the US. Today it's down to hundreds. I'd be interested in a full scale research effort.
- DiNovi 10y ago
  this might be more related to angellist getting its act together and cleaning up expired listings, of which they had thousands

geori 10y ago

This might be happening because Angelist is free and has great candidates.

lukasm 10y ago

Disclosure: I work on a startup that provides a tool for referrals (rolepoint.com) as well as SaaS that is used by job boards (rolepoint.io). I also gathered job boards in a quite popular repository https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job Couple of things that I noticed - more channels - There are at least a dozen of startups like TripleByte, interviewing.io - referrals becomes preferred way of hiring. From small companies where majority of hires are made through personal networks to fortune 500 companies (using an external recruiter is a last resort). - AngelList, Stackoverflow Careers have matching features and you can learn more about the company. - This is an employee market. Companies have to proactive to get employees (hence the 'poaching'). Posting something to a job board is not efficient. - More acquihires by US companies happens in Europe, since they have hard time competing with Apple, Google, Facebook etc. First two points are backed by data.

nfriedly 10y ago

I get "recruiter spam" pretty frequently. I generally respond with something like "No thanks, but I'll pass along your info if I come across anyone who might be interested." And they generally say "Yes please!" I now have a list of ~300 recruiters email's that I can give out to anyone who is looking for work :)

ep103 10y ago
I would greatly appreciate that list...
- nfriedly 10y ago
  Send me an email (in my profile)
  - ep103 10y ago
    sent, thank you

bigtunacan 10y ago

Disclaimer - This is all gut feeling and anecdotal evidence so feel free to ignore. I suspect that jobs being posted to smaller niche job boards (such as Authentic Jobs, which I hadn't heard of until this post) is down overall, but this doesn't reflect the state of job availability. I believe larger job sites are having enough of a network effect that these boards are becoming less relevant. Most tech job seekers I talk to are going one of four routes. 1) LinkedIn (Facebook for job seekers) 2) Indeed (since it aggregates) 3) Direct application (when you know a specific company you want to work for) 4) Recruiters (Let them do the work for you...) On the anecdotal front (within the past year) I have been contacted twice by recruiters that took me out and bought me lunch to try and woo me to another job and once contacted directly by the CEO of a company who did the same thing. I want to make this point clear; I'm no one special just a regular software dev with 15+ years working experience. During one of these lunches the recruiter said to me, "It is so difficult to hire qualified developers that I would say there is a NEGATIVE unemployment rate currently." I have spoke with multiple company owners, CEOs, and others who are in the hiring position and the general consensus is they can't find qualified help. This is just my experience.

steven777400 10y ago
Right now we have about a half dozen open developer positions that we are so far unable to fill. The problem is the vicious intersection of relatively dull work and relatively low pay. We've had to increasingly go the route of hiring contractors since we can pay them basically anything, whereas actual employee pay is set by the legislature who don't win points with voters when they spend more on state employee salaries... So, if there was a legitimate tech job shortage, it would be trickling down to more applicants coming to us (which has happened in the past). Right now, I'm not seeing it.
- spraak 10y ago
  Do you mean you work for the government somehow?
  - steven777400 10y ago

toephu2 10y ago

FTA: "June’s job report, well above forecasts, suggests the majority of job gains may be happening in areas outside of tech." Correct, they are occurring outside of tech, in fact you don't need to guess, it says it right there in the report if you read it [1]: "In June, job growth occurred in leisure and hospitality, health care and social assistance, and financial activities." The largest increase last month was in "Leisure and hospitality" which added 59,000 jobs. This is basically the hotel industry gearing up for summer which is when most Americans travel for vacation. These jobs don't produce any real economic growth. The economy is not recovering. Today what the media failed to mention is that the unemployment rate actually went up 0.2% to 4.9% (although the more accurate number to look at is the U-6 which went down from 9.7% to 9.6%). Also Average Hourly Earnings m/m went down from 0.2% to 0.1%. [1]http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

xxpor 10y ago
>This is basically the hotel industry gearing up for summer which is when most Americans travel for vacation. Aren't the figures seasonally adjusted?

xando 10y ago

It happens that I collect similar data as well. My data range doesn't go as far as years. Although I've just run few quires for past months. Doesn't look like it Stack Overflow would have a reason to complain. But yes AuthenticJobs doesn't look good. The chart suggests that he compares AuthenticJobs to similar job boards ~200 job post per month. Stack Overflow Careers is a different league. Numbers averages there 1800 posts per month. Also, I wrote a counting script for Hacker News' "Who is Hiring" and the results suggesting opposite as well. Plese check this chart https://blog.whoishiring.io/hacker-news-who-is-hiring-thread-part-1/#chart-grow https://blog.whoishiring.io/hacker-news-who-is-hiring-thread... Disclaimer: I run https://whoishiring.io https://whoishiring.io I scrape them all. Private opinion. Statements like his are trying to produce shitstorm in an obvious way. There is no bubble where I stand.

matchagaucho 10y ago

The on-demand gig economy is taking over... aka the "Uber for Web Professionals". Many companies, SMBs in particular, are discovering they don't need to "own the cow to drink the milk". It's simpler to post tasks to sites like Fiverr than it is to post a "job description" and hire an employee/contractor.

distracteddev90 10y ago

I believe this is symptomatic of an industry moving away from job board based recruiting. There has been a significant change in the recruiting sphere and many talent teams are starting to focus more on sourcing and pursuing passive candidates.

markbnj 10y ago

It could also reflect that job boards are becoming less and less useful for employers or job seekers. I recently went through a job hunt and enabling my resume on boards like Dice just resulted in a flood of irrelevant recruiter spam. I'm not being overly harsh here either. When I landed a job (a good one) it was through a posting on the Who's Hiring thread here on HN, and subsequent email/phone conversations and co-working time.

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RomanPushkin 10y ago

Can I request a feature for authenticjobs? Glassdoor rating for every company. It will save a lot of time, and I wonder why nobody has it. Thanks!

exelius 10y ago

No, it's not just you. Hiring is down across the board; and it is indeed due to poor economic headwinds. Many finance heads are starting to think that all our bailouts in 2007/2008 did were create an asset bubble down the road in equities by providing access to cheap capital, encouraging borrowing for risky investments that are just now starting to sour. Add to this the slowdown in China, Brexit, Donald Trump, and a volatile oil market and there's just too much uncertainty for companies to staff up right now. Some firms are even quietly issuing preemptive layoffs under the assumption that 2017 is going to be a very bad year a la 2007. That said, there's still plenty of work for tech workers (someone has to implement those cost savings projects, amirite?). But look for middle managers, marketing folks and sales people to have a bad time as companies look to trim payrolls.

alexchamberlain 10y ago

I wonder how many companies have decided to hire more junior devs, rather than seniors. In an economic downturn, you still need to keep people in your (human) development pipeline.

leroy_masochist 10y ago

Occum's Razor might suggest that the reason for this is pretty straightforward -- the downturn in VC funding means fewer dollars of other people's money available for startup salaries.

RickS 10y ago
Has a very precipitous downturn in VC funding actually occurred? There's been convincing clatter for awhile now that it's expected, but my feeling was that while it was lower, it wasn't the kind of downturn that would shave 40% off the hiring market.
- leroy_masochist 10y ago
  I think it certainly has occurred from the perspective of the early-stage founders making cash allocation decisions.

current_call 10y ago

Why the surprise? http://www.defmacro.org/2013/12/09/learn-to-code.html http://www.defmacro.org/2013/12/09/learn-to-code.html

indeedwhynot 10y ago

If you advertize for a sheep with five green legs, suddenly mother nature will start sending in resumés of people who claim to be exactly that. Therefore, job adverts don't work. What you need, is a resumé database in which you can search. In fact, I would personally never, ever react to a job advert. Thousands of people, who do not have the skill set whatsoever, will react too. That will give a completely wrong impression — of levels of competition that do not exist in reality — and drive down compensation for real candidates, who therefore bail out pretty much immediately, or even never react. Seriously, there is often a good reason why these other people are looking for jobs. It is always the same people looking for jobs. The people whom you really want to hire, are usually not looking for jobs. You should reasonably assume that people who can really do the work, are already working. The discussion then revolves around why would it be more interesting to work for your company and how much more are you willing to pay for that? Wisen up and stop wasting your time and money on job adverts.

DailyHN 10y ago

Posts on http://angularjobs.com http://angularjobs.com are higher than ever. Disclosure/Source: I'm the owner.

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halley 10y ago

if you need a hacker for hire contact cryptlyonhackers@gmail.com