5 ms·

This has been my experience too. Companies never stopped looking for senior talent. Junior talent is getting squeezed. Quite a few people in my circle have been

by chomp 4y ago

This has been my experience too. Companies never stopped looking for senior talent. Junior talent is getting squeezed. Quite a few people in my circle have been getting job offers after interviewing at one or two companies, it's still somewhat of a hot market.

paxys 4y ago
Junior talent isn't getting squeezed either; there are just too many unqualified people trying to break into the industry. The time when you could get a high paying tech job with a bootcamp certificate or a couple of trivial projects on your Github is over. People with CS degrees, internships or a year or two of professional experience are fine.
- dr-detroit 4y ago
- chomp 4y ago
  I guess that is true. I mentor CS students at my local university and they're having tougher times breaking into the industry than past years. We helped them with resumes and making contacts, and where maybe 3/4 of students previously would have been placed by now, only maybe 1/4 are getting placed. Companies in my area seem interested in talking to students, but not actually hiring them (yet.) A couple students got job offers in place 6 months out (!) I do believe the bootcamp certificate crowd will have a harder time than this though. I'm seeing way more "degree required" postings than I did 5 years ago.
  - paxys 4y ago
    > A couple students got job offers in place 6 months out (!) This is standard in the tech industry. The bulk of college hiring happens August-October for start dates in May-August or even later. And the local market is always going to be difficult in non tech hubs. Relocation is almost always a requirement for the better jobs.
    - bobkazamakis 4y ago
      Maybe in the 90s? You speak pretty confidently about this, but relocation being necessary is not even close to the truth.
      - kaesar14 4y ago
        Relocation to the Bay was impossible for me to avoid as someone who graduated with 3 FAANG offers and a multitude of other big tech and startup offers as a 2019 grad. All SF or Bay mandatory. Don't know if that's changed post COVID though.
  - screwturner68 4y ago
    I've mentored a couple of college kids and have pointed out some good jobs at good companies and the response I got was "they're boring". They might be boring but they pay well and have good benefits, I guess it's got to be a generational think because I would have jumped all over a $80K gig at a boring company vs a $32K gig at some BS startup at 23-24.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  I'm still uncertain when that was ever so easy. Leetcode, take home exercises, and all of the hiring processes that are the stuff of a hundred irate blog articles posted to HN have been around since the late 2000s. And it feels like bootcamp grads were feeling the squeeze as early as ~5 years ago.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    A few decades ago maybe. It is easier compared to the other majors, but easy makes it sound like a firm handshake is the only necessity. Hasn't been like that since 2008 minimum.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      I wonder if any company really only asked fizzbuzz for the technical segment.
      - chucky_z 4y ago
        I used to ask it for a pre-pre screen. It had a maybe 20% fail rate.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
        Back in the dotcom boom, most certainly. I had a friend who had taken exactly one programming course in some obscure financial language and she got hired at the, to her, insane amount of $45/hour. At that time, pretty much any warm body that had ever looked at a computer was being hired.
  - Hermitian909 4y ago
    I know someone who founded a bootcamp around 2010. According to him they had a 99% placement rate within 3 months of finishing bootcamp till around 2015, with starting comp in the 80-120k range. The basic setup over 3 months: 1. Crash course in basic dev tooling setup (git etc.) 2. Crash course in data structures and algorithms (e.g. leetcode) 3. Crash course in setting up a production environment 4. Group interview prep sessions post-graduation According to him this worked because: 1. There was very little talent on the market at all 2. Very few CS students had any experience writing production code, even for toy apps. This meant their ramp up time was often slower than bootcamp grads 3. There was a backlog of otherwise highly competent people trying to break into tech that just needed guidance on how to get in None of these things are true anymore and he has sinced closed his bootcamp since it began to felt exploitative.
- seaucre 4y ago
  the main bootcamp in my city is still doing quite well, but it's not startups that are hiring - it's big banks and the companies the contract out to them. many of the bootcamp grads are only getting QA positions, but that's still a step up from their old work, and some are still getting entry level developer positions.
- spamizbad 4y ago
  The problem is the "funnel" is clogged. You can slip through with a referral, a degree from a tier-1 school, and/or some solid internships but everyone else just has to hope they get lucky. I do agree about the under-qualified part though. We do some basic technical pre-screening that has candidates spend maybe 15 minutes answering 2 fizzbuzz-style questions just to save everyone time and there's a solid minority of candidates that can't do a question they didn't rehearse in leetcode training.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
madaxe_again 4y ago
I’m seeing the opposite at PE-backed firms. Blackstone, for instance, have been firing anyone who costs anything, and moving every technical role to the lowest bidder. I’ve watched the entire technical and leadership teams for businesses get fired this year, and replaced with $10/hr coders. It’s going to make them look rosy for the next few Qs while everyone else haemorrhages cash. Long term, not so much, but the long term isn’t important to the market.
- starwind 4y ago
  Seems like business as usual for private equity
- WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
  There's no future beyond the current quarter.

by chomp 4y ago

paxys 4y ago

Junior talent isn't getting squeezed either; there are just too many unqualified people trying to break into the industry. The time when you could get a high paying tech job with a bootcamp certificate or a couple of trivial projects on your Github is over. People with CS degrees, internships or a year or two of professional experience are fine.

dr-detroit 4y ago
chomp 4y ago
I guess that is true. I mentor CS students at my local university and they're having tougher times breaking into the industry than past years. We helped them with resumes and making contacts, and where maybe 3/4 of students previously would have been placed by now, only maybe 1/4 are getting placed. Companies in my area seem interested in talking to students, but not actually hiring them (yet.) A couple students got job offers in place 6 months out (!) I do believe the bootcamp certificate crowd will have a harder time than this though. I'm seeing way more "degree required" postings than I did 5 years ago.
- paxys 4y ago
  > A couple students got job offers in place 6 months out (!) This is standard in the tech industry. The bulk of college hiring happens August-October for start dates in May-August or even later. And the local market is always going to be difficult in non tech hubs. Relocation is almost always a requirement for the better jobs.
  - bobkazamakis 4y ago
    Maybe in the 90s? You speak pretty confidently about this, but relocation being necessary is not even close to the truth.
    - kaesar14 4y ago
      Relocation to the Bay was impossible for me to avoid as someone who graduated with 3 FAANG offers and a multitude of other big tech and startup offers as a 2019 grad. All SF or Bay mandatory. Don't know if that's changed post COVID though.
- screwturner68 4y ago
  I've mentored a couple of college kids and have pointed out some good jobs at good companies and the response I got was "they're boring". They might be boring but they pay well and have good benefits, I guess it's got to be a generational think because I would have jumped all over a $80K gig at a boring company vs a $32K gig at some BS startup at 23-24.
Apocryphon 4y ago
I'm still uncertain when that was ever so easy. Leetcode, take home exercises, and all of the hiring processes that are the stuff of a hundred irate blog articles posted to HN have been around since the late 2000s. And it feels like bootcamp grads were feeling the squeeze as early as ~5 years ago.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  A few decades ago maybe. It is easier compared to the other majors, but easy makes it sound like a firm handshake is the only necessity. Hasn't been like that since 2008 minimum.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    I wonder if any company really only asked fizzbuzz for the technical segment.
    - chucky_z 4y ago
      I used to ask it for a pre-pre screen. It had a maybe 20% fail rate.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
      Back in the dotcom boom, most certainly. I had a friend who had taken exactly one programming course in some obscure financial language and she got hired at the, to her, insane amount of $45/hour. At that time, pretty much any warm body that had ever looked at a computer was being hired.
- Hermitian909 4y ago
  I know someone who founded a bootcamp around 2010. According to him they had a 99% placement rate within 3 months of finishing bootcamp till around 2015, with starting comp in the 80-120k range. The basic setup over 3 months: 1. Crash course in basic dev tooling setup (git etc.) 2. Crash course in data structures and algorithms (e.g. leetcode) 3. Crash course in setting up a production environment 4. Group interview prep sessions post-graduation According to him this worked because: 1. There was very little talent on the market at all 2. Very few CS students had any experience writing production code, even for toy apps. This meant their ramp up time was often slower than bootcamp grads 3. There was a backlog of otherwise highly competent people trying to break into tech that just needed guidance on how to get in None of these things are true anymore and he has sinced closed his bootcamp since it began to felt exploitative.
seaucre 4y ago
the main bootcamp in my city is still doing quite well, but it's not startups that are hiring - it's big banks and the companies the contract out to them. many of the bootcamp grads are only getting QA positions, but that's still a step up from their old work, and some are still getting entry level developer positions.
spamizbad 4y ago
The problem is the "funnel" is clogged. You can slip through with a referral, a degree from a tier-1 school, and/or some solid internships but everyone else just has to hope they get lucky. I do agree about the under-qualified part though. We do some basic technical pre-screening that has candidates spend maybe 15 minutes answering 2 fizzbuzz-style questions just to save everyone time and there's a solid minority of candidates that can't do a question they didn't rehearse in leetcode training.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

madaxe_again 4y ago

I’m seeing the opposite at PE-backed firms. Blackstone, for instance, have been firing anyone who costs anything, and moving every technical role to the lowest bidder. I’ve watched the entire technical and leadership teams for businesses get fired this year, and replaced with $10/hr coders. It’s going to make them look rosy for the next few Qs while everyone else haemorrhages cash. Long term, not so much, but the long term isn’t important to the market.

starwind 4y ago
Seems like business as usual for private equity
WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
There's no future beyond the current quarter.