23 ms·

Tell HN: Employers are not desperate to hire developers

• commandlinefan 4y ago
  Is it possible that you're not passing a DEI filter? A lot of companies are running into trouble for not meeting their diversity goals, especially bumping into the end of the year.
  • jimbob45 4y ago
    Is there any reason not to tick 'African American' and 'Female' on those forms? Surely they can't prove anything, right?
    • houstonn 4y ago
      34% of white Americans who applied to colleges or universities admit to lying about being a racial minority on their application 48% of people who lied claimed to be Native American 3/4 of people who faked being a racial minority on their applications were accepted by the colleges to which they lied https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/577722-more-than-a-third-of-white-students-lie-about-their/ https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/57...
      • notpushkin 4y ago
        How does this work? Surely you can't be white, say you're black and not get caught. Is that data perhaps anonymized?
        • jimbob45 4y ago
          How would they catch you? It's very possible to be of African descent and have white skin. Are they going to DNA test you?
          • frontman1988 4y ago
            Does it also work if you say you identify as a female even though you are a male biologically?
            • kube-system 4y ago
              Gender identity is frequently visible. I don't think many people are going to fraudulently represent their gender identity for a misguided chance at a job.
              • notpushkin 4y ago
                Well, I can imagine that people who aren't “proper” trans but are comfortable with, say, crossdressing start doing it in order to get benefits. Can't say I'm against that (more femboys IRL :^) and also this is on the queer-ish side so they probably still should get some preference if hiring process does take gender identity into account already.
              • missedthecue 4y ago
                True but I can't imagine a company calling someone on it. Too explosive of a topic.
            • HideousKojima 4y ago
              If it doesn't yet then give it 5 years tops.
    • fdschoeneman 4y ago
      I do not believe you could be charged with a crime, no.
    • dvngnt_ 4y ago
      there's more evidence to support that actually being african american will hurt you during job interviews
  • mannymanman 4y ago
    Companies have diversity goals? I thought that the diversity related info wasn't used in hiring, as is stated in all the job application forms
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • Der_Einzige 4y ago
      LOL Intel pays managers bonuses for hiring people that are "underrepresented minorities". It's apparently totally legal.
    • winrid 4y ago
      Yes, they do. Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives they are called.... :)
  • John23832 4y ago
    There’s no proof of this. Don't throw that bait out there with nothing to back it up.
    • fdschoeneman 4y ago
      Why not? Do you seriously believe racism is never a thing that happens in hiring? Because it is, just as it is in academia. At least some of the time. Instead of shaming people for pointing out the real possibility that racism may be at play, consider acknowledging that it may be at play but that there's nothing the op can do about it and he or she should just keep plugging away. It's a numbers game, with or without racism, and you are not helping anyone by dismissing what is entirely fair speculation.
      • commandlinefan 4y ago
        > the real possibility that racism may be at play I mean... isn't that the actual justification for DEI policies in the first place?
        • dementis 4y ago
          DEI policies are not necessarily also anti-racism policies. The devil is in the details as they say. This is taken from CNBC interview with Lybra Clemons(Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Officer at Twilio Inc.) "This success, as well as Clemons’ acclaim for the company, is owed to Twilio’s commitment to becoming “anti-racist.” According to Clemons, part of the difference between DE&I and anti-racism is self-awareness. “Right before I joined, Twilio said, we’re on this journey to become anti-racist. And I think we were all like, what does that even mean,” she tells CNBC Make It. “I think a lot of people thought it was just a more elevated term for diversity, equity inclusion. But as we’ve started to go through the process, we’re learning that anti-racism is different. DE&I are still very foundational and fundamental to work, but anti-racism is an active term where you are personally responsible. This is about self-awareness and taking full accountability of who you are. We are actively promoting equity and racial justice through consistent, deliberate decisions that we make.”" https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/11/the-difference-between-dei-and-anti-racism-at-work-according-to-twilios-chief-of-diversity.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/11/the-difference-between-dei-a... Same page archived https://archive.ph/u92e4#selection-737.0-745.506 https://archive.ph/u92e4#selection-737.0-745.506
  • hotdamnson 4y ago
    I don't think that 'normal' tech / consulting / software house companies have those. It's more of a big corp thing.
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    OP here. I'm very pro-diversity but leaving that aside, my experience on the hiring side is that there is a huge pipeline problem of even getting resumes from "diverse" candidates. Any company applying some kind of theoretical "filter" must not be in a rush to hire at all given how relatively rare these candidates are, in which case they wouldn't be likely to hire qualified "non-diverse" candidates without this "filter," either. So it doesn't really matter either way.
  • Nifty3929 4y ago
    "A lot of companies are running into trouble for not meeting their diversity goals, especially bumping into the end of the year." Any examples you'd like to share?
• rr888 4y ago
  Anyone know about ML? It used to be a different job market, I was thinking of moving into that area but now not sure if its bubble has been popped or always will be a premium.
  • throwawaysleep 4y ago
    Flooded at the entry level by Coursera certs and MS in Data Science from University You Have Never Heard Of. Used to work for an ML company that hires the entry level cert people for $19 an hour as consultants. They have an endless pool of cheap hires.
  • Salgat 4y ago
    ML falls into a few broad categories: model design, data preparation, and deployment. Unfortunately if you don't have a PhD, most serious places won't have you doing model design. To add to that, data preparation is very tedious. So the "sexy" part of ML (making the models) is pretty difficult to gain access to.
    • bluedino 4y ago
      I don't have a degree, period, so I can't be hired where I work (contractor). But I spend a lot of time fixing Python code written by PhD's. There's a lot of 'glue' work to be done that traditional IT can't really handle and the actual scientists doing the work usually don't know much about.
      • Salgat 4y ago
        You'd fall under the deployment category. The "sexy" part of ML, designing the models, is done by the PhDs, then you clean up their code to help make it production ready.
    • Der_Einzige 4y ago
      You don't need the Ph.D if you do Ph.D things (publishing at top conferences). Hidden cheat code they don't tell grad students about.
• smt88 4y ago
  I wonder if this is related to the transition to remote work. A lot of companies are passing on comparatively expensive US developers and getting the same level of experience for 1/2 or 1/3 the cost in other countries.
  • halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
    I've seen the opposite - more on-shoring after realizing that offshoring has led to a lot of tech debt due to a variety of factors. The economy is spooking people though and anecdotally, we've greatly slowed (but not stopped) hiring.
  • pacifika 4y ago
    Well communication is more important in remote work, so local developers have an advantage in my opinion.
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    The large majority of remote jobs I've seen on LinkedIn and other job boards, or applied to, are U.S.-only, sometimes restricted to particular states. Companies using the transition to remote to expand worldwide must be advertising elsewhere and are not really an issue for me.
    • yrgulation 4y ago
      I am elsewhere and even here jobs are limited to within the country. Op is spreading a far right anti work from home conspiracy theory.
      • smt88 4y ago
        I'm surprised to learn that I'm far-right and against working from home, since I've worked from home my entire career and have a 100% remote team.
        • hnfong 4y ago
• throwawaysleep 4y ago
  I am curious about this as I am not a FAANG person either, have just 3 years of experience, and am having no trouble getting to the verbal offer stage. I am just playing around, so I don't go beyond that, but it is getting there. LinkedIn remains clogged. Are you sure the tech screens are going well?
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    They're going well enough for anyone serious about hiring. See my other comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33600444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33600444.
• nickphx 4y ago
  If you're not passing tech screens, why are you assuming this means lack of demand on employer side?
  • JohnBooty 4y ago
    Any developer with a "mediocre but solid portfolio" would know if they bombed a tech screen. Frankly I think even somebody with zero experience knows if they've bombed an interview. So I've no reason to doubt OP there. I'm choosing to trust OP here - after all this is HN and we assume best intentions. If you're not passing tech screens, why are you assuming this means lack of demand on employer side? Well, perhaps not so much "lack of demand" as much as "supply exceeding demand." If you have e.g. 50 applicants who've passed the tech screen you might only seriously pursue 5-10 of them.
    • anon50118810 4y ago
      OP here, thank you. I've given many tech interviews from the hiring side and know what bombing looks like. In my case as a candidate it's less bombing and more a bad feeling after struggling with trivia questions or a time crunch. Of course I don't know exactly how it's perceived on their side, only that they get back to me later saying they don't want to proceed. However between the various parts of my portfolio it should be obvious I can deliver high-quality code and complete reasonably complex projects, so all this extra stuff shouldn't be necessary if just need someone who can do that.
      • hnfong 4y ago
        To be honest I'm not sure you really know what you claim to know about hiring. On the hiring side, the condition for extending an offer is not "didn't bomb the interview", but rather, being the best applicant that passes the hiring bar (the bar may or may not be reasonable). Perhaps other candidates were indeed better in some of the cases. Perhaps the interviewers thought they saw some red flags. Or even some other stupid reason. For all I know about hiring processes essentially the planets have to align and maybe a company would make an offer to some random candidate that they believe is the most suitable. Also, I'm not sure I agree even in principle that an interviewer could obviously see from a portfolio that a candidate could write high quality code in reasonably complex projects. Unless the code available to inspect on github, claims about past work on a CV (or during interviews) don't really mean much. It's not so much about "lying" but rather that it's hard to get an accurate picture from a couple brief descriptions. I've had similar misunderstandings from colleagues reporting their work progress during stand ups (eg. Bob says he completed tasks X and Y. Turns out they didn't work for the difficult case of interacting with Z, which he wasn't aware of and would take another two weeks to complete). The other thing is that when people talk about past work, I get no information about how much support their team or company gave them, how much credit should be given to their colleagues, and how robust the project would be upon stresses, etc. There's also the well-known Dunning–Kruger effect. As for github, nobody actually spends significant time reading a candidate's code in github, that's what the interview is for.
• devsatish 4y ago
  1) Tail end of the year - its hard to get full time roles , The hiring definitely picks up after Jan 2nd week or so. 2) Try consulting/contracting - That space is still brimming w hiring. Much faster on-boarding /hiring.
  • jebr224 4y ago
    2) Consulting makes sense, companies are less likely to hire in a downturn (because they want to avoid increasing ongoing cost). However,is still work to be done, and timelines to be made. A "one time" expense is easier to justify.
  • humanlion87 4y ago
    Any suggestions on how to look for good contracting roles? LinkedIn only seems to have FTE roles.
    • perfecthjrjth 4y ago
      Put your resume on Indeed and Dice, and keep a google voice number, you will get a lot of calls from "offshore recruiters" working for primary and secondary vendors.
      • throwawaysleep 4y ago
        How legitimate are those? Do they have real jobs? I've just been ignoring anything from an Indian sounding name as they seemed to me to be scams.
        • perfecthjrjth 4y ago
          Yes, they are real jobs. But you have to make sure that it is from primary vendors. Often times, many secondary vendors source for the same job listed by primary vendor. One way to cut down secondary vendors, ask for decent rates. If someone asks you to work for $60 per hr, just say NO. Even primary vendors have outsourced their recruiting to India.
• 1letterunixname 4y ago
  The macro economic conditions are such that only senior technical people and similar high-value employees are getting jobs.
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    It's absolutely true that almost all of the remote jobs I'm seeing are explicitly senior or above, or require 3+ years of experience. I meet this, but for entry level people looking for something immediately, I'd recommend support or QA work to stay afloat while building a personal portfolio and hoping to get lucky with an employer who is actually desperate for developers.
    • falcolas 4y ago
      I'm not so sure that QA work even still exists. And I'm pretty certain it's been eliminated as a path to being a developer. There's been an insanely strong push to eliminate QA and put that work on developers (in addition to all the other specializations they now generalize in) in the past decade.
      • monkpit 4y ago
        What a wild thing to post
      • forgotusername6 4y ago
        The majority of my team started their career as manual testers. We are all software engineers now and do not have a manual test team at all. We don't even have an automation test team. The company does have a few roles like that still but they are massively reduced.
      • xtracto 4y ago
        QA is a position/work that has been heavily outsourced. I know because I've met several QA outsourcing firms in Mexico and Ukraine that have really good business in the US.
      • 4y ago
• avbanks 4y ago
  If you failed the tech screens why would they be desperate to hire you?
  • toast0 4y ago
    If they were desperate to hire somebody, they'd lower the bar on the tech screens.
    • physicsguy 4y ago
      I don’t agree - I’d rather wait than take on someone that can’t meet the standard, because they’re likely to be an active drag rather than a help. I can hire contractors if I need to fill a seat that quickly.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • more_corn 4y ago
        I’ve never met a tech screen that adequately measured candidate quality (actually I take that back Okta’s SRE interview was fantastic). I tried to hire a known, trusted, high performing engineer at Google. He was rejected. After reading his packet I could not figure out why. I had to call the recruiter and ask her if he’d said something so unmentionable they couldn’t even write it down. They decided to pass on him because he was so good his promotion path at the role would be inadequate. I could have told them that before they wasted his time flying him out and sitting him through 8 hours of tech screen. I literally had to fly him back out and do it all again, because “that’s the process” I hate to break it to you but the process is broken.
        • physicsguy 4y ago
          Our process is not particularly difficult, I’m not doing Leetcode or anything. I just ask questions at interview which test whether people have a surface level understanding or whether we’ll have to hand hold people through things. For e.g. I’ve interviewed backend devs with 5+ years of Django experience who haven’t been able to tell me the general methods of how they might go about tackling a poor performing ORM query. I’m not asking them to even be able to write the code here, I’m just asking them to tell me roughly what their approach would be. If people aren’t able to talk me through that in general terms, they’re not going to help much. I had one this week where a guy took user input on an API and then used “eval” to run it as code. Where do you even start with that? On CV terms, this person had 10 years of decent looking experience.
• mixmastamyk 4y ago
  They never were. Oh, they think they are but insist on unicorn candidates that don’t make a single mistake over ~four hours. Almost lottery-level luck required, along with nerves of steel. Five years ago I saw CRUD jobs unfilled a year after I started looking. They are effectively not desperate. There’s a reason that the SAT (for example) is hundreds of questions taken as a whole and not a series of several sudden death pass/fail tests over the breadth of a four year degree. The second is simply unrealistic for squishy meat bags. Next up, the "STEM shortage." :-D
• add-sub-mul-div 4y ago
  It's true that the number of job openings doesn't tell a complete story just as the number of layoffs doesn't. The layoffs aren't a general crash, they're a correction of overhiring and overconfidence by certain companies that disproportionately gained from covid. And while there are endless job openings, the average urgency to hire is low. Companies are not making offers if they don't fall in love.
• dnissley 4y ago
  I think we need more info: Age bracket? Are you only going for remote roles? If not, in what metro are you searching?
• endigma 4y ago
  We are desperate to hire developers, HMU if you want a job.
  • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    Contact info would make that easier...
    • endigma 4y ago
      hussle.work/jobs/hussle
      • AS37 4y ago
        "Hussle Inc is not currently hiring."
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    OP here. I don't feel comfortable applying for a job in connection with this anonymous handle, but I've been checking the HN hiring threads since I've started my job search. If you post your job there next time, I should see it and apply if I'm still looking and it's a good fit.
• binkHN 4y ago
  Maybe they’re trying to hire all the FAANG developers that are getting laid off?
• dariusj18 4y ago
  My experience is it's impossible to find people who's experience actually matches their resume.
  • physicsguy 4y ago
    Same. The tech exercise we give to candidates is to write two very simple CRUD end points in Django/DRF, and to add date filtering to one of them. There are various ways to implement this and I’d accept a lot of variation in the final solution, but probably 80% of them didn’t work correctly. And that’s from people that mostly say they “know” Django on their CV.
  • mxuribe 4y ago
    I've heard this so many times....But, i believe that there is always the possibility that someone who is not a perfect match can evolve and learn to become the perfect match. I've also seen the case - though rare - where the "perfect candidate" fails to evolve to learn new things, or fails to adapt to new conditions because they're too intsrested in only a specific scenario. I've been on both the candidate side as well as (many times) the hiring manager side. I think too many HR departments and hiring mangers lack the mechanism to gauge candidates, so they fall back to metrics that might be too generalized. Granted, a non-standard approach to finding that candidate who can evolve is not super-scalabel - i get it - but its still my preferred direction. In all cases, when i have hired using my approach, i have always had great candidates; my approach has yet to fail me. Meanwhile, my peers who hire using too rigid a set of metrics...well, let's say that they've gotten good candidates only about half the time.
    • dariusj18 4y ago
      That is the case when hiring entry level and junior, but a senior level should be able to hit the ground running on at least one part of the job requirement.
      • mxuribe 4y ago
        Agreed, that is true. A senior does not need to meet all requirements but at least 1 or 2, yeah.
• _ed7m 4y ago
  It took me 200 applications to land my job, and I think the rest of everyone I know who’s a decent programmer had similar situations. The bottom line is that everyone has employment and only had to move for it if they’re taking a high (120k+ TC for entry level) paying position. This is “falling of trees” compared to any other industry. Being able to land a middle class job directly in the field of your education without having to move is a very nice thing. Even if it takes 200 applications. It’s not common outside of engineering. The median individual income in the U.S. is 32k [1]. Software engineers in the U.S., as a generalization of industry around the world, is literally the best that it gets. That being said. Job hunting is soul sucking. Good luck. 1. https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore&mprop=income&popt=Person&cpv=age%2CYears15Onwards&hl=en https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore... (Edit because people are concerned about my 200 number. I got an offer for the first 60k position I applied for and decided to turn it down. I was shooting a tad higher. I’m also counting “one click” applications: Zip Recruiter and Linkedin.)
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    This is one of the reasons why I made this post, to put some numbers out there. A lot of people on HN have ideal backgrounds so that they really are going to get constant unsolicited offers, or at least an interview anywhere they apply. Other people are on the hiring side struggling for one reason or another and blaming it on a hot market. If you're in a group like that, it's easy to get the wrong impression, and worse to repeat it. I definitely agree that developers have it better than most people. Anyone who's watched someone outside the field look for work should understand that. But there is a huge middle ground between the Stanford graduate working at Google for whom every application results in an offer, and people applying to bad jobs with a 90 minute commute just to find something. That middle ground is what you and I are talking about, where you do have to send out a lot of applications, 100 or 200 or more, but there are also a lot of companies, you can work remotely and they pay really well compared to other jobs in the U.S., let alone worldwide.
    • keneda7 4y ago
      I've been a developer going on 10 years now. Do not give up. Stick with it. My first job offer right out of college was for 35k. Sometimes it takes a while to get a job offer. Sometimes you accept a job offer and find out a week or month in, its not a good fit. However know somewhere out there, there is a good fit. Aim for one where you are happy and the company is happy.
• oneplane 4y ago
  I'm still receiving tons of mails and LinkedIn offers, even phone calls, and I haven't really seen much of a difference or decline. If anything, the compensation packages have only gone up, but the offers are as tone deaf as always.
  • ravenstine 4y ago
    That's interesting because my recruiter messages and emails have dropped off a cliff. I might get a few a week now versus getting multiple ones every single day, which was the experience I've had for several years. Maybe whatever bot recruiters are using to blast messages to me was decommissioned? lol Not that I'm complaining. I loathe most recruiters. It's just an observation of mine that _seems_ to correlate with the state of hiring in tech.
• rr888 4y ago
  > Lots of no responses or form rejections To be fair, this was normal at the peak too. (as well as ghosting after doing 3 rounds)
• guessmyname 4y ago
  I work at Apple and my team has been “hiring” for the last 2 years with no offers so far. Why? Because even if you are a good candidate, hiring is not as easy as people think. Among the many challengues we have I can list the following: 1. The people interested in your profile have minimal influence in the process, 2. There are people who are always chasing for the shiny new object (or person, in this case), 3. There is a sea of resumes in our hands, and we pick the best, but they want the world and lose them during negotiations, and the ones at the bottom of the list who really want the job, move on because the process to get to them takes too long (several months), 4. People over estimate their qualifications. Their abilities may be good, but they write over the top accomplishments in their resumes that are hard to believe, at least without proof, and they are the first ones to get rejected, 5. HR interferes too much in the process. They sometimes change the job requirements, sometimes ignore candidates that we explicitely tell them to follow up with, sometimes extend meaningless offers just to keep potentially good candidates in the hook (people with offers at other Big Co.), sometimes force candidates to accept offers without a signed paper, so on and so forth. Obviously, good candidates get fed up with this and decline/renege the offer, we lose them, and the people below them too because the negotiation took too long (3-5 months), 6. I really want to hire motivated individuals, and I know many people like me across different teams, but we lose motivation over time because of all the roadblocks, and the cycle(s) described above repeats. The whole process is kind of silly. I have reviewed hundreds of resume from people who are doing amazing work at other companies, but we reject them for very small things. Only two of approximately 20 referrals got an offer, and I am 100% sure that all of those referrals are as good or better than me (facepalm).
  • ryandrake 4y ago
    A lot of companies say "we're hiring" but are not hiring, defined as actually extending an offer and actually employing someone. They're fishing, but not catching, or they're catching and releasing. We need a more precise word than "hiring". Everyone can say they're hiring, but they're not actually hiring anyone--they're just fishing.
    • rapind 4y ago
• heyflyguy 4y ago
  I'm a business owner and hire SE roles on a regular clip. I'll share some things with you, the market is totally unpredictable right now. Even with some projected wins, we don't know what a new/mixed US Administration will mean. Investigations? Deadlock? New laws that impact us? We have record inflation for our career lifetimes and we seem to have entered a recession, but people still disagree on if we're in it and how long we'll last. My customers are all experiencing this, and while that emotion has slowed orders they have not stopped. All of these things together as a business owner, going into holiday times; make me keep the mindset that hiring anyone right now for a non-essential position can probably wait until I can understand better what our company's financial picture is going to look like. edit for typo
  • thisarticle 4y ago
    > I'll share some things with you, the market is totally unpredictable right now. Even with some projected wins, we don't know what a new/mixed US Administration will mean. How does what the US admin look like impact your business? Do you provide services to the government?
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    This is a good example of what I mean by saying employers aren't desperate. If you're thinking about the outcome of the election or any of that, you're not desperate. Desperate means you have a pile of work and the value proposition of pulling someone in to do it is obvious. There's nothing wrong with that unless you're giving mixed signals to your applicants. Accepting resumes for a perpetual "general interest" position is no problem. Posting a new listing for a specific position and then assuring an applicant during the first interview that you're actively recruiting when in fact you're really ambivalent is not good. I'm not accusing you of doing that, I'm just saying, is all.
• ct520 4y ago
  Not sure what you are doing. But for the few jobs I applied for I always got an offer. Maybe take a look at the jobs you are applying for and what you are putting in your resume?
• ryandrake 4y ago
  Honestly, this doesn't sound much different than a year ago, five years ago, or ten years ago. Companies never seem to be serious about hiring: they go fishing but never reel anyone in, they ghost you after a few communications, they reject your application with automation, and even if you have an internal referral, the referrer is usually only able to do "Go apply through the normal funnel and if you get through the automation, I'll vouch for ya!" I've got ~20 years in the industry, including startup-sized companies, medium sized companies and FAANGs. Every job hunt for me is still around 100 applications : 10 interviews : 1 offer. These ratios have remained pretty reliable through bull and bear hiring markets. I suspect people for whom "jobs are falling off trees" are rarer than HN commenters might have you believe.
  • tra3 4y ago
    When I looked for a job 6 months ago, I had the same experience. A dozen applications and no responses. Working with recruiters that put me in front of a hiring person was how I ended up finding my current job.
  • atrettel 4y ago
    > Every job hunt for me is still around 100 applications : 10 interviews : 1 offer. These ratios have remained pretty reliable through bull and bear hiring markets. This rough estimate agrees with the data I've collected from my own job hunting. My data say 100 applications : 14 interviews : 3 offers, specifically.
  • PainfullyNormal 4y ago
    > Every job hunt for me is still around 100 applications : 10 interviews : 1 offer. These ratios have remained pretty reliable through bull and bear hiring markets. Same here. But, I'm horrible at selling myself. > I suspect people for whom "jobs are falling off trees" are rarer than HN commenters might have you believe. I don't think so. The people for which jobs are falling off trees are those who have spent at least 10 years building their brand and their network. It reminds me a bit of this comic I see on occasion: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRwe2qaU8AAwLE5?format=jpg&name=900x900 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRwe2qaU8AAwLE5?format=jpg&name=... And it's accurate for me. I'm lazy. That's why I became a programmer to begin with.
• lwhi 4y ago
  I've been contracting for the past five years. Still luckily have work when I want it. However, my general feeling is the market is cooler here in the UK. I used to get annoyed on a regular basis by the number of recruiters who contacted me .. it's happening a lot less often now.
• ian_dot_so 4y ago
  I think this is over-generalizing I've been both on the hiring side and candidate side this year and demand is still very strong (granted moreso for more senior applicants than junior). Couple of tips that have worked for me: * Make sure your Linkedin is up-to-date, you have "open to work" turned on and that your experience is filled with direct results and accomplishments. Example of a bad bullet point (Used javascript to build a user-facing dashboard). Example of a good bullet point (Built a new dashboard product that manages x for y number of users. Ultimately drove z result. * Tweak your resume details over time. Don't blindly apply to 100+ roles with the same resume. Not only could there be something wrong with it that's throwing off employers, it doesn't serve you as well as it could. If it's a full stack role, highlight more of those skills in your resume. If it's a iOS role, make sure more mobile experience is called out. Note: this doesn't mean filling it with things that aren't accurate about your background. * Don't underestimate a solid cover letter (especially for smaller companies) and also reaching out to recruiters at those companies. Both of these things should take < 15 mins. * Have a skills section somewhere on your resume that lists the technologies you are familiar with. This is critical to get passed resume screeners and it also helps free up your experience section to list more accomplishment details than technology ones. * Leetcode, leetcode, leetcode. I know it sucks and it feels like a waste of time but your point of "several places where I was rejected after either the initial or tech screen" makes me feel like you could use some work here. Try to do as many mediums as you can. When I've been deep in interview mode, I try to solve 1 medium problem/day every single day. I set a 45 minute time and make sure I can get something working in that time. If I fail, I study the answer and get ready for the next day. After 1-2 months you should be in good shape. Hope this helps!
  • i_am_toaster 4y ago
    I don’t agree on a few of these. I wouldn’t personalize your resume for any company, nor do I recommend writing a personalized cover letter for any of them — you have no idea the skill set that will be valued by the person reading the resume, as they are an unknown random variable. I feel it’s just a time waste and there is no proof that this sort of thing is fruitful. Also fuck leetcode. I’ve refused to do the leetcode and still gotten the offer to do an interview without it. Imo, we should all show some backbone and stop accepting all this superstitious mumbo jumbo as the accepted form of recruitment.
• elforce002 4y ago
  This is anecdotal but if you can, create a LinkedIn account and put your resume there. That's the only good thing about posting your resume there. I think the market will correct itself in Q2(2023).
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    OP here. A LinkedIn profile is essential, not only to have in general but also because most applications ask for it. However the really irreplaceable thing is having visible connections to people at past or current jobs. I feel like this shows you're an actual person who has worked at the places you say you've worked at and aren't just making things up on your resume. Maybe that's just me, though, because no one else seems to hype up that part of it.
    • ghaff 4y ago
      For me the value of LinkedIn is 1.) A self-updating Rolodex given that actual Rolodexes and business cards, for the most part, don't exist any longer and 2.) Because people expect you to have one. That said, the information I have on LinkedIn is very scanty and I've never used it for job hunting although I've (very rarely) responded to recruiters who reached out to me.
• f0e4c2f7 4y ago
  LinkedIn's algorithm seems to be related to how active you are. One step you could try is reaching out to any recruiters you may have added over the years and ask them if they know of any open positions you might be a good fit for. If you haven't added any you might be able to look in your feed to see if there are any advertising jobs and reach out to them from there. I know LinkedIn and recruiters get kind of a bad rap but I really like working with them over applying the old fashioned way. You get more phone calls but it beats filling out forms. If you get multiple recuriters working on your behalf you can setup situations where you try to interview for lots of companies at once in batches. If you're currently unemployed and have the time for that, some companies will eliminate time consuming steps in their interview process to hire you before one of the other companies does. I haven't looked in the last few months but this is most of my strategy for finding good jobs without having to bother with annoying things like job applications or too many interviews. Long term an additional thing you can do to boost this is continue to add recruiters on linkedin even when you're not actively looking. I don't enjoy the job search, so I let the recruiters do it for me. You can be pretty straightforward with them too because they're incentivized to get you a job with commissions. You might be surprised with what they come back with if you tell them very explicitly what you're looking for (money, remote, type of interview, etc). Of course the more recruiters you work with the more likely some of them will be able to turn up these roles. I also like this system because it ensure you are only working with companies extremely motivated to hire. At the point where a company has hired an external recruiter, they have already spent thousands of dollars to try to hire you, failed, and now they're spending thousands more in commission to send someone out into the wild to find them someone they can please hire. One last thing I'll throw out if you're still having trouble past that or if that strategy is unpalatable to you. You could pick up a couple AWS certifications. They aren't easy, but they aren't that hard either. AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate AWS Certified Developer These certs are extremely similar and if you study for one you can do just a little more and pass the other too. Cloud skills are in especially high demand and some companies agreements with AWS even require them to employ a minimum number of people with AWS certs. The AWS certs in particular are nice because they are quite cheap compared to many certifications. $150 each for the 2 I mentioned. You'll want study materials as well. I really liked the courses offered by acloudguru which I believe is now owned by linux academy. https://acloudguru.com/forums/certified-solutions-architect-associate https://acloudguru.com/forums/certified-solutions-architect-... https://acloudguru.com/course/aws-certified-developer-associate https://acloudguru.com/course/aws-certified-developer-associ... In any case sorry you're in that situation. Job change is always stressful, especially when it doesn't go smooth. Good luck!
• sharkster711 4y ago
  It's unlikely the screening bar has gone up - are you sure you're doing well on the tech screens?
  • neon_electro 4y ago
    Sometimes the tech screens have been frustrating enough to just abandon the effort and save everyone some time.
• neon_electro 4y ago
  Been on the grind 9 months now, totally seeing what you're seeing. I'm looking for full-stack Web development work, strongest with Ruby, but flexible to hop into any environment and be productive within 2-3 months.
  • yrgulation 4y ago
    Ruby is in low demand, always has been.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • anon50118810 4y ago
      I don't know about always has been but Ruby is definitely not where I'd stake my career today.
      • foundajob 4y ago
• siliconc0w 4y ago
  Go for quality vs quantity - which means personalized approaches and use of your network/recruiters. A cold application through an online portal has a very low probability of success but if you go through a recruiter, previous colleague, or just a friend of a friend your chances are much better (and you might get some inside info like are they really hiring or is that open senior position just for appearances/unicorn candidates - I suspect this is a majority of companies who have are already over-hired and are have been told to preserve cash for 1+ years).
  • nyc_data_geek1 4y ago
    Came here to say this. Rather than a metric of "how many total jobs have I applied to", a perhaps more effective metric would be "how many high quality applications have I put in, how many opportunities have I been exposed to via referral, how many friends do I have looking on my behalf/providing introductions to hiring managers who are actively hiring". Blindly applying to listings you find online with no "in", is going to be a lot of applications to get to a single conversion/hire event. Find your buddies, the recruiters who respect your time and expertise, even "friend of a friend" as parent mentioned is worlds better than "just another resume on the stack".
    • anon50118810 4y ago
      OP here. Great advice for people with a big network, though of course if a company is waiting for a strong referral before hiring, they're not really that desperate, which was my thesis.
      • nyc_data_geek1 4y ago
        I would posit that time spent building that network is more valuable than the equivalent amount of time spent blasting out resumes to random job listings. You can network with recruiters to find the right ones with no prior exposure to them. For the most part, desperate employers are not the ones you want to work for anyhow. They're desperate for a reason. It's not like there's some scarcity of candidates now, especially as layoffs before more common.
• sharkster711 4y ago
  I think the job market will get better by mid January 2023, when budgets open up. TC will probably be quite a bit lower than 2021 offers, but there's work to be done everywhere.
  • steviesands 4y ago
    Is this how it works at most companies where new budget leads to new headcount and hiring in January? Is it due to an annual process?
    • TedKroft 4y ago
      Yes, it is pretty common for hiring to pick up in January. Usually there are approved number of hires approved and they run out toward the end of the year and then many teams stop trying to hire until new headcounts are approved for the next January.
    • MisterBastahrd 4y ago
      Yes. Think of it this way: From mid-November to the end of December, there are two major US holidays where most employees will take one if not two weeks of vacation. Onboarding is an issue because you won't always have a full team in place to support the new hire. Vacation is an issue because new employees generally don't get any accrued vacation time, so you end up with idle, directionless, new employees for almost half the period. It's also easier to hide budget issues if you don't hire someone who isn't going to be useful anyway. It's just easier for everyone if you shut it down in November and start again fresh in January.
  • deathanatos 4y ago
    > TC will probably be quite a bit lower than 2021 offers I mean, if nominal TC is lower, then you're not "desperate to hire". You're not going to woo over someone offering them less TC than their current position, and most of us that are probably ready for a switch are looking to fill a 10% gap in real TC caused by the economy. Just like my landlord says "the economy" and then raises prices faster than CPI, so too am I going to be adjusting my expectations on the real value of offers made. But you certainly have to come in above BATNA.
• nonethewiser 4y ago
  I've had a flurry of recruiter's contact me lately. A lot more than I usually get. So there is another anecdote for you all.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • bluedino 4y ago
    I've been getting bombarded on LinkedIn recently, but it's all low pay, low quality jobs, or things I'm only remotely qualified for and not really looking to do (generic 'cyber-security' position or some software or system I have on my LinkedIn profile involving a job from 8 years ago, for example)
    • mrweasel 4y ago
      That might be a little different from person to person and market to market, but I've been getting more and more qualified recruiters contact me. Overall there are fewer, but the messages are now clearly from recruiters that have read my resume and aren't reaching out in bulk. That being said, I think operations people and SREs are currently doing better than developers.
      • neon_electro 4y ago
        Wishing you well and success. Been at it 9 months now, full-stack Web, plenty of contacts, dozens of interviews and tech assessments, one offer that was shit, zero signed agreements.
  • newaccount2021 4y ago
• nonethewiser 4y ago
  I've had a flurry of recruiter's contact me lately. A lot more than I usually get. Non-FAANG, 2 YOE. So there is another anecdote for you all.
  • ramesh31 4y ago
    Recruiter spam is just noise. It has almost no correlation to job offers whatsoever.
    • nonethewiser 4y ago
      A lack of recruiters and surplus of candidates would lead to less recruiter spam on average.
• breck 4y ago
  We are. https://pldb.com https://pldb.com
• capableweb 4y ago
  > My personal goal is at least 100 applications before seriously considering pivoting to something else. I don't think I have especially cool resume or anything, nor do I have extremely many years in the industry as well, but I'd never consider applying for 100 different companies. I don't even know deeply about 100 companies I think, which is something I learn about a company before even considering applying to it. I think I've applied to about 5 different full-time positions over the years and I have been in about 10 full-time positions in the same time, 5 of those applied to and the others was companies "applying" to me instead. Then bunch of consulting and freelancing gigs in-between.
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    No one knows deeply about 100 companies, especially 100 random companies scattered around the U.S. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
    • abhaynayar 4y ago
      Maybe that is the problem. Instead of applying to 100 companies out of desperation, if a candidate practices and develops specific marketable skills and targets specific roles, he only needs to apply to 10 companies that he knows deeply and are in tune with his skills. The law of reversed effort — When you focus on your own skills and self-worth instead of desperately pursuing random externalities, externalities that are actually suited to you in turn get attracted to you strongly. So then even if you apply to 10 companies, the number is low but the expected value of an offer is higher than if you applied to 100 companies the other way.
      • TedKroft 4y ago
        That sounds nice, but it can be a bad really limiting to have high expectations of only getting jobs that initially appeal to you for multiple reasons. 1. Time spent researching or preparing for a job doesn't guarantee you anything. 2. Sometimes the most appealing jobs are the most competitive, meaning you might have less of a chance of getting them and they might have worse comp or quality of life 3. Some positions on websites are already filled or cancelled. 4. Not everything on a job listing is accurate and you can only get a limited sense of what the job will be like after talking to people during the interview process. Definitely play up your strengths and be selective and discriminating. I've got some jobs through network and some through scattershot, but never have got an offer after sending out only 10 applications. Most companies don't even respond.
• foundajob 4y ago
• ravenstine 4y ago
  Contrasting with even just a year ago, the job market is in a lackluster state the way I see it. Don't be gaslit by all the people insisting that it's still a gold rush. It's not that there aren't jobs out there, but many companies right now are either laying off employees, under hiring freezes, or simply aren't that serious about hiring besides through nepotism. Since I got started as a software developer full time 9-ish years ago, I've been relentlessly blasted with messages from various recruiters. In the last 6 months, recruiter activity has slowed to a crawl, and I don't believe it's because there's something wrong with me. Back when I chose to stop working for almost a year, I still got plenty of recruiters reaching out to me. To add to your point about resumes, people need to not underestimate the power of networking. Networking has been the key factor to my advancement for the last 3 jobs. It's just the way things are. People want to work with developers who aren't dicks, and interviewing is a time suck for both interviewees and interviewers. Today I was informed by a colleague that someone he was interviewing couldn't write a basic loop. Though the need for mere competence is reduced significantly, it's definitely still there. Another thing to consider is to find companies that actually have a real profit model and apply to those. This is not the time IMO for feeding from the trough of easy money, because that whole phenomenon appears to be hitting a wall.
  • bityard 4y ago
    > To add to your point about resumes, people need to not underestimate the power of networking. Networking has been the key factor to my advancement for the last 3 jobs. It's just the way things are. It's hard to overstate the importance of this. Without networking, your chances of landing the kind of job you _really_ want are vanishingly close to zero. Every single one of my civilian jobs has come about either through personal friendships ("hey bityard, my work is hiring and I'd like to work next to you") or due to name recognition, e.g. moving in and around the same groups of people that the hiring people are in. I have probably blindly fired off less than two dozen resumes in my decades-long career and while some resulted in an interview, none resulted in a hire. For someone just starting out in their career, maybe blindly firing off 100 or 200 resumes for entry-level positions is the only option they have. But they should also be broadcasting their availability far and wide to friends, family, randos on the street, basically anyone that will listen. Local tech meetups. Online tech meetups. Career fairs, etc. But if you've been in the industry for more than 2 or 3 years, and don't have a network that you can leverage in a job search, that is something you need to fix like immediately. That well must be filled BEFORE you need to drink from it.
• cbm-vic-20 4y ago
  I was interested in an open position that I was uniquely suited for- I have expertise in their field, and I even know a number of people at the company, as they were former co-workers. I wasn't even able to get an interview there because I'm in the US- and they're only willing to hire in Canada and Latin America. I work at a "second tier" tech company, I'm not making FAANG money, and I wouldn't be asking for FAANG money, but companies may be shying away from US employees who are more expensive than whoever they could find elsewhere.
• eric4smith 4y ago
  Now, a lot of people might be saying… “Hire remote”. Here’s why most companies won’t do it. 1. An employee is a big investment to non-FAANG companies. 2. Does the candidate demonstrate that they are capable of remote work? (Sorry, more than 50% aren’t). 3. Employers want to see competence first before they would allow remote work. These days only companies who are desperate, or have a solid competence and experience in managing remote workers will do it.
• francisofascii 4y ago
  Anecdotally speaking, but I suspect is common: We were hemorrhaging employees a year ago, but the bleeding has stopped. So we hired over the past year, slowly filled all those empty roles, and are now more picky with new hires. And honestly, we probably were not picky enough a year ago. Some candidates are struggling get work done or have issues with remote work.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• asah 4y ago
  pro-tip reminder: specialize to differentiate! you only need one job, and employerXYZ needs an expert in <stack>. ultimate example: COBOL developers are not concerned about this downturn!!
• theknocker 4y ago
• Railsify 4y ago
  During a period where there is a perceived shortage of new devs, existing dev teams still have to meet deadlines and move the ball, this forces streamlining of processes and thus reduces the immediate need for new team members. If someone on my team leaves and I need to back-fill engineering time on a process or app, and I can't back-fill quickly, what other choice do I have other than to reassess the entire process and change it so that it requires less commitment moving forward?
• freedom2099 4y ago
  I guess I am lucky… but I never had to “look for a job”. My fort job after graduation was the company itself that reached out while I was finishing my studies (and was not the only one… I was overwhelmed by offers). After that every time I changed job is because the company I moved to reached out to me. I am in Europe though… maybe the market in the US is tough!
• stronglikedan 4y ago
  Not now, but they were, about a year ago. I was one of them. Now, I'm turning away resumes, because we've filled the positions, after a long slog.
  • jsjsof 4y ago
    So you advertise jobs, but turn candidates away.
• ghusto 4y ago
  I'm not so cynical as to suggest the industry is putting out fake posts like this in order to make it easier on themselves, but I'm not so trustful as to put it past them. I can only speak for parts of western Europe like the U.K., and it's fine here? I've not had to go looking for work for about 15 years, and I've moved a bunch.
• jabart 4y ago
  It's end of the year, hiring managers may be taking weeks off. Businesses are likely in a unannounced hiring freeze without announcing it. This happened all the time in the corporate world with open jobs but an unspoken hiring freeze. Next year's budgets have not been finalized. Hiring someone now means you might have to pay them a bonus come Q1. A lot of different factors. Since you are in the US, I would try to reach out to some recruiters and get feedback. Hopefully one responds with something instead of nothing like the ones you have already contacted. Try to schedule a lunch of coffee with a few. Those metrics are tracked so they have to schedule them at the places I know.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• dadjoker 4y ago
  I experienced this same thing in 2020 when I was hunting for my current job. I lost count of how many places I applied to. Over the past year, I have been on the hiring side, and I can offer a few tips as well, based on filtering through many resumes and doing many interviews. 1) Don't list 20 different technologies and claim to be an expert in all of them. There is no way for someone to be a true "expert" in many technologies/languages, and if you get specific questions about these technologies, you will be exposed (something that happened multiple times when I was interviewing). 2) Pay attention to what tools the job requires and tailor your resume/cover letter accordingly. It doesn't do us much good to tell me you have experience with something else that we don't use or care about. That being said, if you don't have a lot of experience with what we use, make it clear that you are willing to learn. We know that we will not always get someone who meets every requirement. 3) As amazing as it is to have to say this; be courteous and communicate. For instance, if something comes up and you can't make an interview time, let the company know ahead of time; ghosting will hurt you. 4) If you don't do well on a code test (Leetcode, TestDome, etc), don't blame the platform for not doing well. If you are not willing to accept responsibility now, what will you do when you are working for us and something goes wrong with your code?
  • neon_electro 4y ago
    Do you really think code tests like the ones you mentioned are an effective way to screen candidates? I will outright drop out of consideration for a role if Leetcode is mentioned. I'm not putting up with it.
    • dadjoker 4y ago
      Yes, but it depends. In our case, we purposely made them fairly simple, with a 50% passing score required, just to make sure they can do the basics. When I was applying, I would get code tests that were off the charts, and would take hours, where they would say that setting up a user and roles system on top of everything else should only take 3 or 4 hours, or I would get grilled on language minutia that were things I had never encountered in my day to day work. In ou se case, ee were just trying to have them demonstrate a minimal amount of code capability without overwhelming them.
• Joel_Mckay 4y ago
  Ever tried negotiating budgets between the CEO, division managers, and CTO? You basically run into a few arguments: 1. Can't hire Juniors as they cost a lot to train, and keep leaving for better paying firms 2. Can't hire Seniors as they cost too much, and tend to be a challenge to manage 3. Why don't we keep piling on the ticket queue till the existing teams starts to burnout, as they will burnout in a year anyway 4. That is a "no" to your budget request, as the staffing-agent/Marketer thinks we can get these positions filled for 34 cents to the dollar. I dream of being a plumber everyday... Check out some local trade-shows in the field you are interested in, and chat with a few folks. =)
  • P_I_Staker 4y ago
    Seniors are tougher to manage? I see some ways how, but this seems wrong overall.
    • hnfong 4y ago
      Probably correct in that specific context: "till the existing teams starts to burnout". Seniors would just call out on your BS and let your ticketing queue burn.
      • P_I_Staker 4y ago
        Yeah, I can see a number of scenarios where seniors can be more difficult. They're indoctrinated by a different process. If you want to do something they didn't do in the passed, they'll throw a fit, and insist it isn't needed; after all would a genius senior engineer like them fail to do something? No, they're too smart and accomplished for that. Similarly, if you don't want to do something that they HAVE done in the passed, they're liable to raise a big stink, maybe go over your head, or try to rally the team to their side. If someone so smart and senior like them was doing something before, it must be crucial, and a prudent use of time.
        • Joel_Mckay 4y ago
          There comes a point in your career where a 60 hour workweek is unacceptable, and unnecessary. Yet some corporate cultures do not accept people have a life outside a project. There is also the youth employment tax-credit driven layoff cycles the industry likes to hide as a subsidy. Over 28? good luck staying with some firms... You are probably thinking this is some dubious startup, but you would be wrong... "They eat their own" is the warning most kids rarely heed. Have a wonderful day =)
• Tade0 4y ago
  > and employers don't seem desperate. Hiring follows predictable patterns throughout the year, namely the last month of the quarter is usually relatively hot. It's November now, so there's still ample time to fulfill recruitment KPIs. My experience is that hiring only picks up speed come mid-December, when there's simply fewer candidates than normally due to Christmas. That being said this September, which usually burns through the backlog from the summer vacation season, was unusually slow.
• jollyllama 4y ago
  How long have you been at it? Recruiting at non-FAANG employers works differently. The father you get from FAANG or startups, the less urgency you will find on the part of your prospective employers. Don't let this discourage you. Have you had to job search much before? I've found it's often a months long process. You might not be at the beginning, but at the middle of it.
  • aiisjustanif 4y ago
    Lol I find this to be exact opposite, FAANG has had very long wait times, Google probably with the longest streak of that. I find non-FAANG to be much quicker.
• stack_framer 4y ago
  I recently spent four weeks interviewing before landing a job, which is not an unusual amount of time compared to years prior (at least for me). The company I joined went from first interview to a good offer in two weeks—they were definitely eager. I put my application out approximately 50 times. Changing my LinkedIn status to "Open to work" helped. The biggest difference this time around: Several companies invoked a hiring freeze while I was in the middle of their interview process. I've never had that happen before, so it felt like a storm brewing. Some were nice enough to tell me right away, while others went completely dark for weeks before getting back to me. Good luck with the job search! I know it can be utterly miserable, but stay positive and keep those live-coding skills sharp as a razor.
• emmp 4y ago
  I'm NOT a developer. I'm actually in tech support. I can write scripts, identify bugs in code, and am up to date on cloud and k8s, but mostly I don't write code, I debug systems, write up bug tickets, and deal with customer issues. Even with these less impressive skills I was able to land 3 offers above 150k base comp for TECHNICAL SUPPORT in the past month. It's still a seller's market for skilled people in tech. Yes you need to pump out as many applications a day as you can -- the vast majority will never get back to you, will ghost, or will freeze midway through the pipeline. But there are still plenty of offers going around and only so many people who can credibly do the work.
• lowbloodsugar 4y ago
  At some point, one has to consider that the crazy highly salaries of last years gold rush was putting a dent in shareholder value, and so Something Had To Be Done.
  • mejutoco 4y ago
    Exactly. Taking the market and supply and demand as justification when salaries are low and complaining when the price is too high for their taste.
• jsjsof 4y ago
  Not only that, but lying and stringing people along is extremely prevalent. I truly feel like people doing the hiring have mental health issues.
  • neon_electro 4y ago
    I think it's incentives gone wrong/"metric gaming" masquerading as "hiring/interviewing". People on the other side of the table have metrics to meet and a pipeline to keep filled. They care less about how many offers are extended.
• kidsil 4y ago
  Beyond 6 years of experience (let's say 2-3 companies), it's somewhat a waste of time for an engineer to apply for jobs. Your time is better spent reaching out to your existing network and ex-colleagues to fish for openings in my experience.
• alexpotato 4y ago
  Every time I see people mentioning that they've sent X00 applications for jobs, I always think of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__lvS2pjuSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__lvS2pjuSg Recap: - Think of a job search as social engineering your way into an organization - Use that framework to figure out what the org cares about, who cares about it and then how to position yourself so that person sees your "work" - "Work" b/c it's not your resume, it's something that CLEARLY identifies that you are the perfect person for the role.
  • b3kart 4y ago
    And after all of this work your resume gets ignored because the recruiter got distracted for the 5 seconds that he has to look at each of 1000 resumes in his pile.
    • alexpotato 4y ago
      The point of this whole process is to bypass the gatekeeping recruiter.
• atraac 4y ago
  I've just spent over two months looking for a Senior role in EU. I believe EU landscape is vastly different than US but I noticed similar trends. I had a ton of 'offers' on LinkedIn. I applied to few dozens. I got any kind of meeting with a recruiter with maybe third of them. Roughly half of those paid below the market rate. The other half I interviewed with further. Some ghosted me, some straight out told me no after take home assignment without a reason, some had assignment so ridiculously time consuming I just refused to do them. I got to around 5 proper tech interviews, got offers from 3, one being heavily underpaid(even though they knew what I asked for since the beginning). I was fairly picky as I aimed at the higher side of western salaries even though I live in Poland. I managed to get something well paid albeit really boring that I might end up changing in a year. Worth noting that I have mainly experience with .NET/Azure so that limits my options heavily. Very few companies want generalists besides FAANG.
• Ken_At_EM 4y ago
  This does not describe our company. We want to hire developers.
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    I looked at the jobs page off your HN profile. It looks like you're trying to hire firmware developers in-office in Houston, who also have to do customer support with an on-call rotation, and are paying on the low end of what web development pays. Kudos for being so upfront but looking at that I have a sense of where the challenges are for you.
    • aiisjustanif 4y ago
      As cliche as it sounds, beggars can’t be choosers. I’ve done customer support and on-call and it can be manageable.
      • anon50118810 4y ago
        "Beggars can't be choosers" is true in both directions. The problem with hiring beggars into a subpar situation is that they're going to jump as soon as their situation improves. The job listing talks about 12 month goals which suggests they want people for the long haul. Really though this looks like one of those rare cases where hiring new grads and training them from scratch is the way to go.
• P_I_Staker 4y ago
  I'm a little disheartened by this apparently getting downvoted heavily. This needs to be talked about more. The market for developers is not what many people claim. Also, most organizations have blanket policies that restrict who they can hire and disqualify a huge percentage of applicants.
  • Etheryte 4y ago
    This makes no sense, stories can't even get downvotes, only comments can.
    • P_I_Staker 4y ago
      Huh? They do show up different like downvoted comments
      • ergl 4y ago
        The text of a story always shows up a bit dimmed, similar to downvoted comments, but the similarity is only aesthetic.
        • P_I_Staker 4y ago
          Others don't. Maybe it's just so weird to see body text on HN
• aiisjustanif 4y ago
  Opinion: Too much of a blanket statement in my opinion. The way I see it as a consultant that has talked to multiple devs and management over the last year at multiple companies is that remote jobs are competitive at the moment, in person jobs less so, and contracting jobs are always hiring. We are at the end of the year and operational expenditure is low and getting renewed, while capital expenditure is high and increasing which is good for contractors and consultants. Factual Anecdote: Personally if I were you I would go up the top 100 market cap companies [1]. I’m at a company that hired 75 dev in my department alone in the last year. I know personally places like Costco, Home Depot, Caterpillar, Abbott, and Comcast have been steadily having new employees and job postings. Just don’t stick the jobs that Indeed and LinkedIn throw at you. [1]: https://companiesmarketcap.com https://companiesmarketcap.com
  • anon50118810 4y ago
    I spot-checked some of the companies you listed. Problem is that they're a mix of not remote, have complex applications requiring logins which I assume are big time sinks into black holes, the software jobs aren't in the U.S., they use enterprise technology which is fine but just not my skillset, all that sort of thing. Also I'm assuming, maybe wrongly, that big enterprises have a hiring cycle of several months which is just too long for me at the moment. If you know of any big companies that have startup-like departments than I can apply to separately, that would be great. Otherwise these aren't really a good fit for me, personally. Maybe other people though! Also, other people have suggested contracting jobs but I'm not really sure what that means, see my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33598270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33598270. If you know of a place that is actually always hiring, meaning they will almost certainly hire you if you have skills and are who you say you are, I'd really appreciate some examples, because I don't know what that looks like.
    • aiisjustanif 4y ago
      > I spot-checked some of the companies you listed. Problem is that they're a mix of not remote, have complex applications requiring logins which I assume are big time sinks into black holes, the software jobs aren't in the U.S., they use enterprise technology which is fine but just not my skillset, all that sort of thing. Personally I don’t think this viewpoint does your point justice. There are jobs, good paying ones. Just the ones you want are less prevalent. Also, I don’t think you would like contract work in this case. I’m a consultant that works for a firm and the pay is very good. Working no more than 40 hours most weeks. I have a goal of building out my network this way. Examples of big consulting firms are KPMG, Bain, Accenture, and Cognizant. Alternatively get a start going to recruiting firms like, Michael Page Interim or Hays for contract jobs.
• fbrncci 4y ago
  You are right about the portfolio, I personally have one together which is quite nice, I brush it up every month, and it has had companies chasing me.
• kazinator 4y ago
  Employers who do happen to be desperate for developers can easily hide that sentiment amid big tech layoffs.
• quickthrower2 4y ago
  Outside the US. I always find job searches a grind. No one hands you a job, but if you work it hard you can get multiple offers. I never worked for a company who "got a new round of funding though" - so that might be a tell. Try adding boring companies (bootstrapped, profitable, serve a customer segment that isn't tech) and government into the mix.
• jhoelzel 4y ago
  Keep your head up and in mind its allmost christmas and in december basicallly nothing much happens ever. ;) As for external recruiters: remember their job is not to be there for you. They usually only eat when they fill positions and there is ABSOLUTELY NO entry requirement to become a recruiter.
• Juliet245 4y ago
• Ava4312 4y ago