14 ms·

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 ev

by _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.
heywherelogingo 4y ago
I'm not in the US; if I had to send out 200 or even 100 applications I would change career. If I had to send 50 I would be starting to investigate other careers.
- jason-phillips 4y ago
  I applied to 500 openings to get my first job. I think persistence is what matters.
  - Macha 4y ago
    My first development job as a graduate I applied to 5 positions, got 3 interviews and offers from all 3 interviews. Degree from somewhere middle of the road in my country, some side projects, applying to large but not FAANG tech cos. I think I had a good CV for a graduate nothing _that_ spectactular. There's definitely some diverging experiences going on here.
    - Eisenstein 4y ago
      Maybe people should have their resume looked over? I have seen some very talented people make some pretty glaring errors and/or just be pretty bad at making things presentable. I think they may be getting tossed out of the pile due to something they just aren't realizing.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        Maybe, but probably not a huge percentage. There are tons of resources for helping review resumes and provide practice interviews. Mine was reviewed by at least 4 people and still took over 200 applications to get a job.
      - anon50118810 4y ago
        OP here. I'm getting a roughly 15%-20% success rate converting a cold application to a first interview. That's around the industry average from what I've seen on various sites. If my resume were a disaster I'd expect something closer to 0%.
nocman 4y ago
Not the OP, but your definition of "falling off trees" and mine are very different if it took 200 applications to land a job. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying I would never use that expression to describe it.
- fwsgonzo 4y ago
  It's actually kind of soul sucking bad, and I have trouble coming to terms with that "this is just how it is now." I really do feel for those without a decent network.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I would consider sending out 200 applications (for someone with some experience to reasonably targeted openings) to be an extraordinarily high number. I doubt if I sent out that many form letter scattershot from pre-internet grad school. Certainly hasn't been the case since. To be sure, the few other jobs I've had have all come through personal connections.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nocman 4y ago
    I had just assumed that if someone was sending out 200 applications, it was pretty much the same resume going to all of them (no catering it to the individual interests of the employer) - with perhaps some exceptions to jobs the applicant was particularly interested in. I can't imagine sending out that many having spent large quantities of time on each one. [edited to fix typing the wrong word]
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I would assume so as well although that may be the problem. Though I'm also open to the possibility that some companies just want to hire some number of developers with 3-5 years of experience in $TECHNOLOGY and aren't too fussy beyond that. In which case, it may indeed become more of a numbers game if a company is basically picking a handful of resumes at random that clear some minimum bar.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
adventured 4y ago
> The median individual income in the U.S. is 32k The median full-time income in the US - which is a much more applicable reference point - is around $55,000.
- tomrod 4y ago
  I believe that's household income. Quick google shows census reporting median income at ~31k
- giantg2 4y ago
  Source? I thought it was $42k a year or two ago, but haven't looked since, and I don't remember if it was strictly full-time.
  - smugma 4y ago
    Asking "source" and saying what you thought it was doesn't contribute to the conversation. Searching Google for "median full time income" pops up $51,480 in bold. The next link is to the BLS (US Bureau of Labor Statistics): https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm For Q3'22, it was $1,068/wk, or $55,536/yr.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      I would have said thanks.
brightball 4y ago
It’s always easier to get a job when you have one then when you don’t.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > It’s always easier to get a job when you have one then when you don’t. This should be emphasized. I have a friend who quit a terrible, stressful job without something new lined up, and it took him a year to find another one. After an excessive number of interviews at one company for one position, he got annoyed and asked them what the deal was. They said that they were impressed by him, but were honest and said they were trying to figure out "what was wrong with him," since he wasn't employed, and then gave him an offer.
cableshaft 4y ago
Is this first job in the industry or mid-senior level? I don't think I've ever sent 200 applications in any of my job searches. Last time I didn't send any; I just flicked the switch on LinkedIn and Hired and had almost 60 recruiters reach out to me (followed up with about 18, had initial interviews with about 8 companies, ended up with 4 late stage interviews and 2 offers). And I wouldn't consider myself an amazing developer (I do alright, but I'm not 10x) or have an amazing portfolio and I don't have a FAANG on my resume, just a large corporation that no one has heard of, a couple medium-sized companies, and several smaller companies / failed startups. Might be a bit different now, this was back in June/July 2021.
- giantg2 4y ago
  About 10 years ago I applied tot about 200 jobs.
- anon50118810 4y ago
  My impression is that it was a lot different back in June/July 2021. Also that sounds like an impressive background, 6 or 7 or more companies over I'm guessing 10-15 years? Also the stuff on your HN profile looks pretty good too. Don't sell yourself short.
- treis 4y ago
  Once you're a part of the club it's dramatically easier to get a job. A year and change ago I made the move into a legit tech company. I think it took me 50ish applications to get that one offer. That job was not meant to be and I went looking after a few months. With just that brief stint I applied to like 10 places, got some level interest from all of them, and ended up with an offer.
  - miohtama 4y ago
    This is called a CV stuffing position. It works very well because recruiters can identify brands, but not skill.
- rr888 4y ago
  > Might be a bit different now, this was back in June/July 2021. That was near the peak, it was a completely different world back then.
rsj_hn 4y ago
Per capita median income is what you get when you include retirees, teenagers, those who do not work at all (they will still have some income from welfare/disability/gifts), and other part time workers. It's not a good measure of average employment earnings in an economy in which labor force participation is only 61%. What you should look at is median earnings of full time workers, which is about $1000 per week, or $52K per year. This does not include benefits - in the U.S. things like healthcare are primarily funded by the employer and retirement is roughly half funded via social security matching contributions, so total compensation would be about 70K/year. https://www.bls.gov/charts/usual-weekly-earnings/usual-weekly-earnings-over-time-total-men-women.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/usual-weekly-earnings/usual-weekl...
carabiner 4y ago
When I graduated in aerospace engineering in 2008 during the great recession, I applied for maybe 40 places total and got 2 offers. I probably could have pulled some strings to get 1-2 more from the places where I had interned (didn't bother applying to them because I wasn't interested). Aerospace in the US requires US citizenship so the number of applicants is 1/10th SWE. SWE also just has insane demand from people in India and China. So SWE is a crazy outlier because of salary, remote opportunities, established educational bases in some regions etc.
- theonething 4y ago
  > SWE also just has insane demand from people in India and China. this sentence is confusing to me. Are you saying there are a lot of SWE jobs in India and China? Or are you saying there are a lot of people from those places looking for SWE jobs. Or something different?
  - carabiner 4y ago
    The latter. They're looking for H1B jobs in the US. Sorry, woke up too early.
throwaway675309 4y ago
Given that you're talking about a 60 K position I can only assume that this is out of your first job or at the very least you're a junior or entry-level position. So of course this is only anecdotal but I've never sent more than 5 applications out at a time even back when I was a junior dev. In the last 10 years I don't even bother looking for jobs actively anymore, I just turn the switch on my LinkedIn indicating that I'm seeking employment, and let recruiters do the rest. I'm not sure what the difference is, but I would consider myself to be an outlier as far as traditional engineers go, in that I am both exceptionally articulate and naturally extroverted. If I can get to the point where I have a face-to-face or a phone interview, I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to acquire an offer. Without specifics I can only recommend that engineers work on developing their soft skills if they don't already have them. On the other hand I'm not particularly picky in terms of companies, and I have a wide range of senior level experience in major platforms including C# and node/typescript/JavaScript. Just a counterpoint for all the gloom and doom but I'd say that you have nothing to worry about if you have the following: - in demand skillset (ts/js/c#) - people skills / charisma - US citizenship - 10+ years experience - reasonable salary expectations (140-175k)
- anon50118810 4y ago
  If you're selling something that's both highly in-demand and niche, then lots of people will contact you and everyone who contacts you already wants what you're selling. Soft skills aren't really involved other than to avoid messing up the sale. I'm sure you're a very personable sort but I don't think that's really the issue here.
- GameOfFrowns 4y ago
  >in demand skillset (ts/js/c#) Sorry, but what does "ts" stand for?
  - muttled 4y ago
    typescript
dumpHero2 4y ago
This comparison of what it's like outside is not helping. People usually like to maintain and better their quality of life, and a drop in status hurts no matter where you are. People buy houses, pay mortgages, connect in social circles according to their financial status. No matter who you are, selling your house or not being able to hangout with friends doing the things you love sucks. Even if it's true, a random statistic fact cannot make your situation better. For example, earning $32K puts you in the top 1% of the incomes across the world. Does it make you feel any better?

by _ed7m 4y ago

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.

heywherelogingo 4y ago

I'm not in the US; if I had to send out 200 or even 100 applications I would change career. If I had to send 50 I would be starting to investigate other careers.

jason-phillips 4y ago
I applied to 500 openings to get my first job. I think persistence is what matters.
- Macha 4y ago
  My first development job as a graduate I applied to 5 positions, got 3 interviews and offers from all 3 interviews. Degree from somewhere middle of the road in my country, some side projects, applying to large but not FAANG tech cos. I think I had a good CV for a graduate nothing _that_ spectactular. There's definitely some diverging experiences going on here.
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    Maybe people should have their resume looked over? I have seen some very talented people make some pretty glaring errors and/or just be pretty bad at making things presentable. I think they may be getting tossed out of the pile due to something they just aren't realizing.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      Maybe, but probably not a huge percentage. There are tons of resources for helping review resumes and provide practice interviews. Mine was reviewed by at least 4 people and still took over 200 applications to get a job.
    - anon50118810 4y ago
      OP here. I'm getting a roughly 15%-20% success rate converting a cold application to a first interview. That's around the industry average from what I've seen on various sites. If my resume were a disaster I'd expect something closer to 0%.

nocman 4y ago

Not the OP, but your definition of "falling off trees" and mine are very different if it took 200 applications to land a job. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying I would never use that expression to describe it.

fwsgonzo 4y ago
It's actually kind of soul sucking bad, and I have trouble coming to terms with that "this is just how it is now." I really do feel for those without a decent network.
ghaff 4y ago
I would consider sending out 200 applications (for someone with some experience to reasonably targeted openings) to be an extraordinarily high number. I doubt if I sent out that many form letter scattershot from pre-internet grad school. Certainly hasn't been the case since. To be sure, the few other jobs I've had have all come through personal connections.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nocman 4y ago
  I had just assumed that if someone was sending out 200 applications, it was pretty much the same resume going to all of them (no catering it to the individual interests of the employer) - with perhaps some exceptions to jobs the applicant was particularly interested in. I can't imagine sending out that many having spent large quantities of time on each one. [edited to fix typing the wrong word]
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I would assume so as well although that may be the problem. Though I'm also open to the possibility that some companies just want to hire some number of developers with 3-5 years of experience in $TECHNOLOGY and aren't too fussy beyond that. In which case, it may indeed become more of a numbers game if a company is basically picking a handful of resumes at random that clear some minimum bar.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

adventured 4y ago

> The median individual income in the U.S. is 32k The median full-time income in the US - which is a much more applicable reference point - is around $55,000.

tomrod 4y ago
I believe that's household income. Quick google shows census reporting median income at ~31k
giantg2 4y ago
Source? I thought it was $42k a year or two ago, but haven't looked since, and I don't remember if it was strictly full-time.
- smugma 4y ago
  Asking "source" and saying what you thought it was doesn't contribute to the conversation. Searching Google for "median full time income" pops up $51,480 in bold. The next link is to the BLS (US Bureau of Labor Statistics): https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm For Q3'22, it was $1,068/wk, or $55,536/yr.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    I would have said thanks.

brightball 4y ago

It’s always easier to get a job when you have one then when you don’t.

tablespoon 4y ago
> It’s always easier to get a job when you have one then when you don’t. This should be emphasized. I have a friend who quit a terrible, stressful job without something new lined up, and it took him a year to find another one. After an excessive number of interviews at one company for one position, he got annoyed and asked them what the deal was. They said that they were impressed by him, but were honest and said they were trying to figure out "what was wrong with him," since he wasn't employed, and then gave him an offer.

cableshaft 4y ago

Is this first job in the industry or mid-senior level? I don't think I've ever sent 200 applications in any of my job searches. Last time I didn't send any; I just flicked the switch on LinkedIn and Hired and had almost 60 recruiters reach out to me (followed up with about 18, had initial interviews with about 8 companies, ended up with 4 late stage interviews and 2 offers). And I wouldn't consider myself an amazing developer (I do alright, but I'm not 10x) or have an amazing portfolio and I don't have a FAANG on my resume, just a large corporation that no one has heard of, a couple medium-sized companies, and several smaller companies / failed startups. Might be a bit different now, this was back in June/July 2021.

giantg2 4y ago
About 10 years ago I applied tot about 200 jobs.
anon50118810 4y ago
My impression is that it was a lot different back in June/July 2021. Also that sounds like an impressive background, 6 or 7 or more companies over I'm guessing 10-15 years? Also the stuff on your HN profile looks pretty good too. Don't sell yourself short.
treis 4y ago
Once you're a part of the club it's dramatically easier to get a job. A year and change ago I made the move into a legit tech company. I think it took me 50ish applications to get that one offer. That job was not meant to be and I went looking after a few months. With just that brief stint I applied to like 10 places, got some level interest from all of them, and ended up with an offer.
- miohtama 4y ago
  This is called a CV stuffing position. It works very well because recruiters can identify brands, but not skill.
rr888 4y ago
> Might be a bit different now, this was back in June/July 2021. That was near the peak, it was a completely different world back then.

rsj_hn 4y ago

Per capita median income is what you get when you include retirees, teenagers, those who do not work at all (they will still have some income from welfare/disability/gifts), and other part time workers. It's not a good measure of average employment earnings in an economy in which labor force participation is only 61%. What you should look at is median earnings of full time workers, which is about $1000 per week, or $52K per year. This does not include benefits - in the U.S. things like healthcare are primarily funded by the employer and retirement is roughly half funded via social security matching contributions, so total compensation would be about 70K/year. https://www.bls.gov/charts/usual-weekly-earnings/usual-weekly-earnings-over-time-total-men-women.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/usual-weekly-earnings/usual-weekl...

carabiner 4y ago

When I graduated in aerospace engineering in 2008 during the great recession, I applied for maybe 40 places total and got 2 offers. I probably could have pulled some strings to get 1-2 more from the places where I had interned (didn't bother applying to them because I wasn't interested). Aerospace in the US requires US citizenship so the number of applicants is 1/10th SWE. SWE also just has insane demand from people in India and China. So SWE is a crazy outlier because of salary, remote opportunities, established educational bases in some regions etc.

theonething 4y ago
> SWE also just has insane demand from people in India and China. this sentence is confusing to me. Are you saying there are a lot of SWE jobs in India and China? Or are you saying there are a lot of people from those places looking for SWE jobs. Or something different?
- carabiner 4y ago
  The latter. They're looking for H1B jobs in the US. Sorry, woke up too early.

throwaway675309 4y ago

Given that you're talking about a 60 K position I can only assume that this is out of your first job or at the very least you're a junior or entry-level position. So of course this is only anecdotal but I've never sent more than 5 applications out at a time even back when I was a junior dev. In the last 10 years I don't even bother looking for jobs actively anymore, I just turn the switch on my LinkedIn indicating that I'm seeking employment, and let recruiters do the rest. I'm not sure what the difference is, but I would consider myself to be an outlier as far as traditional engineers go, in that I am both exceptionally articulate and naturally extroverted. If I can get to the point where I have a face-to-face or a phone interview, I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to acquire an offer. Without specifics I can only recommend that engineers work on developing their soft skills if they don't already have them. On the other hand I'm not particularly picky in terms of companies, and I have a wide range of senior level experience in major platforms including C# and node/typescript/JavaScript. Just a counterpoint for all the gloom and doom but I'd say that you have nothing to worry about if you have the following: - in demand skillset (ts/js/c#) - people skills / charisma - US citizenship - 10+ years experience - reasonable salary expectations (140-175k)

anon50118810 4y ago
If you're selling something that's both highly in-demand and niche, then lots of people will contact you and everyone who contacts you already wants what you're selling. Soft skills aren't really involved other than to avoid messing up the sale. I'm sure you're a very personable sort but I don't think that's really the issue here.
GameOfFrowns 4y ago
>in demand skillset (ts/js/c#) Sorry, but what does "ts" stand for?
- muttled 4y ago
  typescript

dumpHero2 4y ago

This comparison of what it's like outside is not helping. People usually like to maintain and better their quality of life, and a drop in status hurts no matter where you are. People buy houses, pay mortgages, connect in social circles according to their financial status. No matter who you are, selling your house or not being able to hangout with friends doing the things you love sucks. Even if it's true, a random statistic fact cannot make your situation better. For example, earning $32K puts you in the top 1% of the incomes across the world. Does it make you feel any better?