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I was laid off at the beginning of October and still can’t find anything. It’s definitely a buyer’s market for senior level engineering talent.
by jcadam 4y ago
I was laid off at the beginning of October and still can’t find anything. It’s definitely a buyer’s market for senior level engineering talent.
- WFHRenaissance 4y agoWhat sort of engineer are you and how many years of experience?
- jcadam 4y ago16 years. Working at the Senior/Staff level. Most recently Clojure work. I’ve done a lot of Java of course, although I’ve been rejected from some of those jobs because I spent the last year doing Clojure full time instead of Java.
- throw8383833jj 4y agoyeah, it gets to be tough once you get over the 10 to 15 year mark. Alot of companies probably prefer younger folks.
- cappuccinooo 4y agowtf is happening in software? it seems tough to break in, and apparently it gets tough after ten years? so there's a ten year gap where the 'going is good'?
- karmasimida 4y agoI think it is mainly because in some startup or smaller shops they don't need senior staff to work on their problems Plus, senior folks are expensive
- jcadam 4y agoYou use inexperienced and/or cheap programmers to build the foundation of your company. Then you bring in experienced folks to keep the barely-functional ball of mud shambling along for the next 10 years. It's the SV way.
- jokethrowaway 4y agoThat's the opposite. Startups really need senior people only to hit the ground running; only established companies with seniors can afford to hire juniors. The thing is after a certain level of seniority, there is really not that much difference so you may just as well focus with someone with 10 years experience who charges a bit less, compared to a 15y dragon.
- hattmall 4y agoYes, but it started roughly 10 years ago. It wasn't hard to break in and being older didn't matter. Now we have a massive glut of CS/IT graduates and a maturing industry exiting the rapid growth phase. On top of that we have a market and economy being propped up by 2 trillion in reverse repos. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRPONTSYD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRPONTSYD
- okaram 4y agoDifferent people have different experiences. From what I have seen, it's slightly hard to get the first position, easy after that. It's not hard to get a position after 10 or 20 years, but, if you lose your position, you may need to adjust your expectations.
- AYBABTME 4y agoWhen I started my career 10y ago, even then it was understood that after getting in, you've got 10-15y to go before you start running out of desirability. Search "why aren't there any 20y+ devs", it's not a new phenomenon. Something happens, idk what, after 10-15y. Either people made so much money that they retired, or they all become managers, or idk? Personally I'm still doing fine but I can see the 15y horizon coming, and I'm glad I saved money like a madman. I've got options, hope you plan as such.
- vidarh 4y agoIt's a pyramid, so it gets harder because there are fewer roles to pick from that feels worthwhile, and you also need to overcome a fear from employers that you're too experienced and will get bored and leave. I'm at 27 years experience, and my problem is not finding positions that I could get (with some finessing about how I want to stay hands on and/or love their specific company), but finding places that have sufficiently senior roles at the kind of salaries I expect. Most smaller companies don't need someone as experienced as me and/or can't afford me, and I don't really want to work at a FAANG or similar (had one big corporate experience and don't particularly need another) unless something truly exceptional is on offer. Here's a tip to those looking: If you struggle, look for roles that look undervalued and/or are slightly below your level, and apply anyway. Be honest about what you expect as long as you're not overvaluing yourself relative to your experience. Recruiters are often fine with putting forward a few expensive candidates if they look good enough. Especially external recruiters whose pay is usually at least partially linked to the salary you're hired at, but also because a spread helps give hiring managers an idea of the tradeoffs they're facing. Undervalued roles (roles advertised with too low salary for what they're looking for) tend to attract fewer applications, so you're both more likely to get a shot and negotiating salary up beyond the stated level is usually possible. Applying to roles slightly below your level makes it easier to get past the first level recruiter filter because they like to give a range and for lower level roles they're less likely to have applicants to push on the upper end. Shift your target down until you get the interviews. Then work on getting offers. Then work on lifting the offers to the level you need. It's usually far more important to get past the recruiter than it is to get a perfect match with the role because a lot of companies have a lot of flexibility in what they're actually looking for. Especially for more senior roles the hiring manager will also often have reasonable influence and ability to get the budget lifted for a candidate that stands out. E.g. in my current job search, my currently most promising prospect is a role where I told the recruiter I would not consider offers lower than 20% above the high end of their advertised range because I thought the advertised range was too low for the years of experience they wanted. And they wanted someone with less experience than me. She put me forward anyway, and on the back of seeing my CV they came back and wanted to interview me for a more senior role that has not been advertised, and where I'm currently the only candidate. I may or may not end up there, but to me that's a pretty normal experience when approaching companies about roles which fit those criteria.
- jokethrowaway 4y agoAlmost no company does hard enough work, they don't need very experienced people - and they tend to charge more. 10 years of CRUD APIs is as productive as 20 or 30 years of CRUD APIs. If anything, the older you get the higher the chance you won't know the latest BS kids are using these days. I'm at 15 years, I keep specialising in different things (leadership, people management, mentoring, backend, frontend, infra, performance, crypto) but I'm just running out of things and the best paying companies (remote only) still want the same 3 skills. My dad is doing pretty much what I'm doing with a 30 years advantage and getting jobs is harder and harder. It does get boring, but my passive income from products is still not matching my ever growing daily rate. I guess at some point I'll stop being able to raise my daily rate, my passive income will catch up and I'll drop consulting entirely.
- Rezwoodly 4y agoLmao not at all.
- yieldcrv 4y agoI erase years off my resume People expect the 10 year engineer to be a 10x engineer lol
- jcadam 4y agoI guess I need to figure out how to do this without it being obvious.
- soperj 4y agoJust don't put years worked at a job on the resume. I never have and I've never been asked. Most relevant jobs go first.
- jcadam 4y agoI was always told obfuscating the dates and/or going with a "functional" resume just screamed "old" :)
- soperj 4y ago> obfuscating the dates I don't put dates on at all. I never have, even when I was 20.
- zxexz 4y agoI was taught to leave the month off your start and end dates of previous positions when applying for a job. Still don’t know if this is a good idea or not, but at the very least it opens up another dialog tree with potential employers. Seems to have worked fine for me, but who knows. The rationale was “it’s less information to parse”. Might be just a superstition. Interviewers always ask for more specifics anyways, which is good because you can use that as an opportunity to jump into things you accomplished near the end of a job, or at the beginning of another.
- computerfriend 4y agoI wasn't taught to do this, but also do it. I doubt it helps or hurts either way.
- kamkazemoose 4y agoMy company is actually hiring senior/staff Clojure devs. https://grnh.se/08cec3bb4us https://grnh.se/08cec3bb4us - Senior Engineer https://grnh.se/5c028b554us https://grnh.se/5c028b554us - Staff Engineer You should take a look and let me know if you have any questions.
- jcadam 4y agoHeh, I actually interviewed with Reify during my last job search (where I ended up taking the job I was eventually laid off from). They weren't interested back then :/
- roguas 4y agoThey weren't interested as they might have had a better candidate. That is typically the reason. It is not about you not passing a metaphorical "bar" at least that is the case for senior positions. I have been recruiting quite a lot and at the end of the cycle you go through making difficult choices. Often times you get 2 good candidates and only one spot. So you compare them and pick a better one. The dismissed candidate can be picked next year due to lack of better candidates. Unless it has been clearly stated in the reply that you seemed to be below their expectation of a senior candidate. And even then... a lot can change over the year and if you feel like you are better you have every right to reapply. Most companies will inform you of reapply policy terms if your are outside of it.
- kyawzazaw 4y agoAmperity in Seattle uses Clojure
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- unexpected 4y agoThis is monumentally stupid, but I wonder if you should just leave the last year of Clojure off of your resume.
- lumost 4y agoSpecific language expertise rarely matters. I intentionally avoid discussing specific technologies used to achieve results/goals/services unless it's highly relevant (e.g. creating a RESTful web service etc.) It's good to have your technologies listed, and be honest if your doing something out of your comfort zone... but there really isn't a technology out there that can't be picked up in 1-3 months.
- Edd314159 4y ago> Specific language expertise rarely matters. +1 to this. Especially at the 16-years-experience level. Maybe earlier in someone's career where their primary focus is how to fit in and ship stuff without getting stuck all the time. But at ~staff level, your thinking and your contributions become a lot more language-agnostic (not entirely, but mostly)
- roguas 4y agoI would not say that clojure/haskell/elixir can be picked up in 1-3 months in most environments. I do agree that you should highlight broader engineering experience and keep langs/techs as merely a proof of some competence in those. If the job mentions the technology and most clojure/haskell/elixir dev jobs do then well unless they state "looking for experienced person willing to learn" in description I would not bother them. (at least with my complete lack of experience in tech). Similarly as I would not apply to "weird-tech-i-merely-heard consultant". Also think there should be consistency on the job titles/descriptions on the side of job posters.
- bogomipz 4y agoAny company that rejects your 15 years of Java and other language experience because you spent the last year working in a Clojure shop is probably not a good company to work for. And not worthy of you. Think of it as your filter.
- dfrey1 4y agoMy company (AppsFlyer) does a ton of Clojure work, and I think they'd love to talk (though most of our R&D is in Israel). Doesn't look like they have an open position in the US listed, but I'll send this message to some of our senior Clojure people and see whether they want to talk more with you.
- Grazester 4y agoAmazon and Google are always calling, even now I gets emails from both. Amazon recruiters just spam me. Shoot your shot there if interested
- ketzo 4y agoAmazon announced a corporate-level hiring freeze just today, FYI.
- X-Istence 4y agoSomeone should tell the two recruiters in my inbox...
- karmasimida 4y agoRecruiters are actually slow in this development, because it happens last night after 8 PM PST. Effectively no offer would be able to generate through the system. I would say the Amazon spam will go away for next 6 months if not longer.
- DeathArrow 4y agoFunny, I did my first interview with them a week ago.
- inkeddeveloper 4y agoYou and I have different definitions of funny.
- DeathArrow 4y agoI am not a native English speaker. Here I used funny as a synonim for strange, which is probably a mistake due to me extracting most of my English knowledge from Hollywood films.
- larusso 4y ago
- kemiller 4y agoTook me ~3-4 months of steady work, but good things are still out there.
- megablast 4y ago> Took me ~3-4 months of steady work Were you unemployed or working.
- ollien 4y agoI read this as "steady work of applying to jobs"
- kemiller 4y agoI knew the end was coming so I started early but yeah, unemployed. It’s tougher to find senior IC positions but they are definitely out there. I love where I landed and we are hiring aggressively across all experience levels so DM me if you’re looking and don’t mind a node backend.
- truthwhisperer 4y ago
- DeathArrow 4y agoMe too. I was laid off at the beginning of October. I got three good offers, picked the best and signed the contract. I went through about 15 interviews and applied to maybe 50 positions.
- jcadam 4y agoIf I were at 5-10 years experience, I'd probably have much better luck. That seems to be the sweet spot.
- ctvo 4y agoYou think there’s a difference between 10 years and 15 years? Get better at interviewing. The years of experience you put on your resume isn’t what’s losing you the job. “Too senior but willing to work for just senior rates” certainly isn’t it.
- Silhouette 4y agoSomething else that tends to change around the 10 year mark is that if you prefer to continue your career with IC roles then the people interviewing and making hiring decisions will often be younger and less experienced than you. Obviously at good employers that makes no difference but ageism is certainly a factor in this industry. It's not the years of experience that are losing those jobs, it's just the years.
- dilyevsky 4y agoAre you trying to interview for principal eng positions? Imo it’s hard to do except for some super early stage enterprises no matter the market conditions
- emodendroket 4y agoimo the meaning of "principal engineer" is wildly different between companies anyway. That means something if you're in a FAANG shop but if it's some place nobody's ever heard of it's just needed because all the midlevels already have senior titles.
- ddyevf635372 4y agoIt is time to apply jobs in New Zealand. Economy is strong, easy pathway to be permanent resident. Oh, and it is a beautiful country with super friendly people. https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-a-visa/tools-and-information/work-and-employment/green-list-occupations https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/apply-for-...
- lalwanivikas 4y ago*5 years to citizenship, which is not bad but not the best either.
- refurb 4y agoLow salaries, super expensive and poorly built housing, are just some of the complaints I’ve heard. I mean there is a reason why so many Kiwi’s go work in Australia.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ZephyrBlu 4y agoYeah I wouldn’t advise a SWE to come to NZ unless you are fine with a big pay cut and expensive housing + food.
- tjpnz 4y agoI'm working at a company with a large cohort of Kiwi devs in Tokyo. We're literally everywhere but New Zealand.
- philliphaydon 4y agoI left NZ to go to Australia. Hated those 5 years living in Sydney. Sydney is one of the worst places I’ve been. If the choice is anywhere in NZ and Sydney I would pick NZ hands down. Singapore on the other hand. Best 10 years ever. Edit: the rest of Australia is nice. Especially people in Brisbane. My comments and negativity is to Sydney which is a horrrible place to live and work.
- 4y ago
- 29athrowaway 4y agoThere are many factors contributing to this... - Higher interest rates = Less access to capital for tech companies - Remote work = More out-of-state and international competition for jobs based on tech hubs - Easier to use technologies = Lower entry barrier to engineering jobs = More people switching careers and becoming software engineers - More people opting to become software engineers - Stacked ranking and mass layoffs