29 ms·

Laid off tech workers quickly find new jobs

209 points by cmbailey 4y ago

cmbailey 4y ago
https://archive.vn/20221227114050/https://www.wsj.com/articles/laid-off-tech-workers-quickly-find-new-jobs-11672097730 https://archive.vn/20221227114050/https://www.wsj.com/articl...
bearjaws 4y ago
As someone working hiring engineers (4+ positions open), it's been about 10% easier than mid-2022. Like the article states, way more open jobs than people looking for them still.
- pryelluw 4y ago
  Mind sharing an email address or link to postings? Have people looking and happy to send them your way.
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    Same
- adrr 4y ago
  We haven’t been ghosted on interviews since September. First half of the year was another story. Candidates wouldn’t show up to interviews and when we tried to contact them, they didn’t respond.
  - bogwog 4y ago
    There are engineers complaining about not enough jobs/getting ghosted by employers, and employers complaining about not enough candidates/getting ghosted by candidates. It's easy to assume that the complaining engineers aren't qualified, or that the complaining employers have bad hiring processes. In the end, I've learned nothing about the state of the job market.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      In normal conditions - I wouldn't be surprised if >20% of people interviewing aren't really interested in working at the company. You need competing offers to get a good offer - so you need to interview at places you have little interest in actually working for. I would expect a lot of these people either got a good enough offer, or good enough competing offers, or just didn't get an offer from where they actually want to work - so don't need competing offers. Additionally, there's a lot of people that interview for practice just to keep fresh for when they do need a job, and a lot of people that interview at a few places as practice before they interview at the places they're really targeting. I'd expect a lot of no-shows from this cohort.
      - ryandrake 4y ago
        On the other side, in normal conditions, I wouldn't be surprised if >20% (probably far higher) of companies interviewing candidates aren't really interested in hiring anyone. They may be getting a pulse check on the hiring market. They may be interviewing simply to check off due diligence, but intend to only hire their already pre-determined candidate. They may need to have backup candidates if an offer they just extended falls through. They may be trying to pre-vet candidates so that they can quickly hire later if headcount suddenly opens up. They may be doing it because simply company policy is to always be interviewing. A lot of the process seems to be performative and not really being done for the purpose of matching a real job seeker with a real job.
        onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
        Possibly 20% of companies - but I really doubt 20% of positions.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        siva7 4y ago
        I doubt that is true. Interviewing candidates is a huge time sink for which every manager i know of would rather want to skip.
- xvedejas 4y ago
  Is the pool of open positions shrinking or growing? That might give a better idea of the rate that companies are able to hire now, compared to before
  - ghaff 4y ago
    My first hand observation is that many companies are still hiring. But it's much harder to get reqs for positions and the hiring is much more selective.
    - dbcurtis 4y ago
      The hiring _can_ be selective. My group is hard to hire for (we are looking for a rare combination of skills). We had unlimited reqs before the crash. We are lucky enough to have unlimited reqs now. But we can be choosier now.
      - killjoywashere 4y ago
        What's a 'req'?
        ghaff 4y ago
        Requisition. In this context it means an approval to hire someone for a position.
        dbcurtis 4y ago
        hiring requisition. Basically approved headcount to hire against. And a job description for the recruiters to post and also use as guidance for matching people to openings.
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  We had trouble hiring last year because in Seattle the competition is fierce and we’re not the top of the pile. Today it’s yeah maybe 10% easier but we’re still can’t be too picky
- mkhpalm 4y ago
  My take is there are always positions open but only if you aren't paying market rates. The MASSIVE spike in whats considered a normal salary after inflation and COL has made it so a bunch of employers are perpetually looking. If they raise their salaries to become competitive again they will fill their positions. If they keep going with normal compensation from 3+ years ago they will keep looking to hire and losing their best employees.
  - bradlys 4y ago
    Yep. If there was such a big issue with hiring - we wouldn’t see these insane leetcode and system design interviews that require months of dedicated studying in order to pass them. (Even though you’re a perfectly adequate engineer and working already) This process isn’t just FAANG either. Most of SV does this and so do many other startups outside of SV.
    - wildrhythms 4y ago
      Everybody wants to set the bar at FAANG level but not pay a FAANG salary.
- feudalism 4y ago
  If I've learned how to code on my own but lack professional experience, what site(s) would I have the best chance of finding employment as a software engineer / QA / etc.? I've been looking on Indeed, HN: Who is Hiring, and angel.co but have had zero luck this past year. I get that companies don't want to take on the risk of a potential bad hire but c'mon. I can't even get an interview.
  - MarkMarine 4y ago
    If you have no experience as a software developer, it would probably be a lot easier for you if you have some other method of displaying your work. Extensive open source contributions, where I can read your code and see how you interface with other developers, is far more valuable to me when choosing a hire than even the recommendation of some other manager at another company that I don’t know and can’t really tease out what their inner team workings are like.
    - legerdemain 4y ago
      I have ten years of industry experience. To me, "extensive open source contributions" is synonymous with either deep industry expertise or academic research. It's the realm of people writing app frameworks, databases, and distributed software. To be frank, "too inexperienced to get a job? time to contribute to open source!" is almost always a glib and unhelpful retort. If someone can't get recruiters to reach out, they probably don't have the expertise to build open source, and vice versa. Open source is not a dumping ground for inexperienced newcomers.
      - tracker1 4y ago
        I'm not sure I'd go that far. My suggestion there is generally work on something you use, want or otherwise need. In general, getting something done counts for a lot. And many floss projects will welcome contributions. There will generally be feedback, need adjustments for testing etc. But there's room to do productive things.
      - MarkMarine 4y ago
- Existenceblinks 4y ago
  > way more open jobs than people looking for them still How is that possible when every 1 job has 100 applicants?
  - loandbehold 4y ago
    Each applicant, on average, applying for more than 100 positions?
    - Existenceblinks 4y ago
      It's even problematic in theory. If there's more open jobs than applicants, the jobs will absorb (filled) applicants pretty fast, and they won't have more chance to apply more.
  - ProZsolt 4y ago
    A person can apply to multiple positions. Most of the applicants already have a job. Even if one position is filled a new position is likely to open up to backfill the other.
- poulsbohemian 4y ago
  You should add a link or contact info here, bet there are HNers looking for gigs...
ghaff 4y ago
There's some glass half full/glass half empty in that story. So workers are still finding new jobs. But it's taking months on average (which is actually fairly normal for a lot of professional workers--though many US tech people probably consider that long). And this says nothing about what compensation packages look like.
- fatnoah 4y ago
  I'm in the 20+ years of experience bucket. It took me about 3 months to find a new job, and luckily my start date coincided with the end of my WARN act garden leave. Compensation at the new role is about 50% of my previous comp, but I'm also much happier in the role.
  - arcbyte 4y ago
    What blows my mind is how are companies turning you down? You have 20 years of experience. You can do literally anything. It's crazy that companies are so broken they pick subpar candidates over you, even at similar compensation levels.
    - rboyd 4y ago
      seems like there's a thin line between "This person would be a valuable contributor / I could learn a lot from working with this person" and "This person threatens my own career progression", especially towards the staff+ roles
      - psychphysic 4y ago
        Hell kill it I've they're looking for people with 20year experience. But most jobs are looking for 2-10 years. At 20+ years if you're not headhunted you're kind of screwed.
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      > You have 20 years of experience. I've heard it often said that it depends on what kind of experience, not necessarily its length. Someone could have one year of experience twenty times, or be working in old tech and hasn't kept up with modern practices, costs too much to hire, or a myriad of other reasons for not being preferable over greener candidates.
zach_garwood 4y ago
My recent experience lines up with the article's stated average of three months. But I would hardly call that "quick". I did close to 50 interviews, and some companies' processes took nearly a month, only to lead to a rejection without feedback.
- chasd00 4y ago
  When i was hired at my last job i made a phone call to a higher up that ended with "yeah we'd love to have you, consider yourself hired. We just need to work through the process". Even then, it was 30 days until an offer letter and start date was in my inbox. If you're starting from scratch then 2-3 months sounds about right to me.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    In my current role, which I've been in for quite some time at a tech company but not a developer, it was similar. Called someone (very) higher up I knew and, as far as I know, the whole process went smoothly but it still took a couple months with travel schedules etc.
    - autotune 4y ago
      Took a whole two weeks or so to go from reaching out to recruiter to offer letter with the current org. Coincidentally, I am now making more here than I have in any previous role while living in a MCOL area.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    The speed of the process seems to depend entirely on the company, and it has nothing to do with how weak or strong the hiring market is. We've all heard stories about you-know-who in FAANG who's notorious for taking months and months to go through the process. I once applied for a really interesting incubator-within-telcom-giant role, which I thought would be a cool and unique experience. First red flag was it took about a month to just set up a phone interview, but I dealt with it because of how unique the role sounded. Then, after about two months, they flew me down to San Antonio for the onsite. They informally told me "You're a great match, we're going to get our ducks in a row and then call you with next steps!" Then... ghosted. After a few months, I gave up and found a different job. Moved my family across the country, signed the rental lease, and so on. Then, out of the blue, about a year after that initial interview, that telcom called me back with "Hi, [candidate], I'm calling to schedule a second interview for that [incubator] role. When would work for you?"
sbuccini 4y ago
My main issue with these types of articles is that "tech workers" != SWEs. Of the people profiled in this article: - 1 videographer - 1 "systems engineer" (not sure what this means, but doesn't seem like it involves programming since they taught themselves Python after getting laid off) And that's it. The article makes the point that the number of SWE job openings are way down, -50% YoY. It's clear that there is less slack at the moment. What's unclear is when it will become a full crunch. I heard the same thing in 2020 when I got laid off, and it took me __a year_ to get back on my feet. I speculate on why this was the case in Hard Truth #3 in a post I just published.[0] Good luck to everyone searching! It was a really rough time for me, but I learned a lot about myself and, as trite as it sounds, forced me to take a hard look at my skills and be more targeted in my outreach. Now I'm the happiest I've been in my entire career. Feel free to contact me if you need to vent, contact information in profile. [0] https://www.stevenbuccini.com/8-hard-truths-on-getting-laid-off https://www.stevenbuccini.com/8-hard-truths-on-getting-laid-...
- wirthjason 4y ago
  You’re going to have to grind Leetcode. Yes, even the dynamic programming problems. You will have to interview for jobs where you will use a language you despise. Maybe even Java. Definitely Javascript. You might need to commute to the office again. Perhaps every day! These were the best lines of your article. I laughed at the dynamic programming quip. :)
  - jackmott42 4y ago
    A lot of people view this stuff with cynicism but I found the leetcode practice to be useful, and learning new languages to be useful. Fun too! But I'm still young at 44.... Commuting though, oh no...
    - coffeebeqn 4y ago
      I think it’s fine, I wish they would just do one interview about that stuff though. Having to get lucky enough to solve 5 in a row is just cruel
GingerGator 4y ago
Agree with this article 100%
throwawayhhh 4y ago
of course, software engineers are the most talented and high in demand. We dont have to worry about job security at all
tschellenbach 4y ago
Hard to say how bad it will get. VCs I talk to seem to expect it to get much worse. At the end of the day though, as long as you make sure you're excellent at your job, you'll be able to find something new in any market.
- sbuccini 4y ago
  My personal opinion is that the crunch will hit towards the end of Q1 2023. My thinking. 1. VC market was frozen towards end of 2022. VCs will point to seasonality; my guess is they were waiting for valuations to stabilize. 2. 2023 headcount has already been planned. While there are still some openings, many companies no longer seem to be in expansion mode. 3. Blitzscale startups will be hitting Sand Hill Road in a few days. Many will take severe downrounds and have to drastically downsize as a result; others will implode altogether. 4. There still might be a more severe market downturn, in which case even larger companies will be forced to make cuts. Of course, there's a feedback loop in play here so the situation can change very quickly.
  - chasd00 4y ago
    i'm doing a presentation in Feb for a large, public sector, project scheduled for two years. If we win the deal then I can ride out the downturn there. If we don't then things get a bit more spicy. /fingers crossed
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    I can't recall any recessions / downturns that were known in advance with such certainly. I question if it will really materialize for this reason.
    - pcthrowaway 4y ago
      No one knows anything with certainty right now, but that doesn't stop people from speculating. Some people speculating will be right, some will be wrong. I see almost as much speculation that "we've already seen the worst" for this recession as I do that "it's going to get much worse". Even among the crowd that thinks it's going to get worse in 2023 before recovering in 2024, they can be right and also wrong (it could continue to get worse until 2025)
black_13 4y ago
[dead]
joegahona 4y ago
A few observations: • Weirdly vague headline to the article -- no specificity, and could be talking about 2 people or 200,000. (To emphasize, I am not dogging the person who posted this on HN -- the HN thread title is a mirror of the article title.) Feels click-baity, but perhaps I'm being too rigid or cynical. • The subhead is unrelated to the title. "Openings exceed unemployed Americans" is a different topic from "people who were laid off quickly found a new job. • The article is based on 1 survey conducted by an online job-hunting portal (ZipRecruiter), and it took place in October, before ~5k people left Twitter, ~10k people left Facebook, and ~10K people left Amazon. 2,550 U.S. residents were surveyed. • I'm guessing another person will notice this, but "tech worker" seems to be used loosely. I would not call a videographer who is now pivoting to social-media work a tech worker.
sacnoradhq 4y ago
It depends. Mid-level and senior engineers, absolutely. Even "hiring freeze" companies are still hiring senior engineers without official openings by reusing attrition head count. Always be hiring! (top talent) unless going out of business.
Charlie11 4y ago
[dead]

209 points by cmbailey 4y ago

https://archive.vn/20221227114050/https://www.wsj.com/articles/laid-off-tech-workers-quickly-find-new-jobs-11672097730 https://archive.vn/20221227114050/https://www.wsj.com/articl...

bearjaws 4y ago

As someone working hiring engineers (4+ positions open), it's been about 10% easier than mid-2022. Like the article states, way more open jobs than people looking for them still.

pryelluw 4y ago
Mind sharing an email address or link to postings? Have people looking and happy to send them your way.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  Same
adrr 4y ago
We haven’t been ghosted on interviews since September. First half of the year was another story. Candidates wouldn’t show up to interviews and when we tried to contact them, they didn’t respond.
- bogwog 4y ago
  There are engineers complaining about not enough jobs/getting ghosted by employers, and employers complaining about not enough candidates/getting ghosted by candidates. It's easy to assume that the complaining engineers aren't qualified, or that the complaining employers have bad hiring processes. In the end, I've learned nothing about the state of the job market.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    In normal conditions - I wouldn't be surprised if >20% of people interviewing aren't really interested in working at the company. You need competing offers to get a good offer - so you need to interview at places you have little interest in actually working for. I would expect a lot of these people either got a good enough offer, or good enough competing offers, or just didn't get an offer from where they actually want to work - so don't need competing offers. Additionally, there's a lot of people that interview for practice just to keep fresh for when they do need a job, and a lot of people that interview at a few places as practice before they interview at the places they're really targeting. I'd expect a lot of no-shows from this cohort.
    - ryandrake 4y ago
      On the other side, in normal conditions, I wouldn't be surprised if >20% (probably far higher) of companies interviewing candidates aren't really interested in hiring anyone. They may be getting a pulse check on the hiring market. They may be interviewing simply to check off due diligence, but intend to only hire their already pre-determined candidate. They may need to have backup candidates if an offer they just extended falls through. They may be trying to pre-vet candidates so that they can quickly hire later if headcount suddenly opens up. They may be doing it because simply company policy is to always be interviewing. A lot of the process seems to be performative and not really being done for the purpose of matching a real job seeker with a real job.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
        Possibly 20% of companies - but I really doubt 20% of positions.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - siva7 4y ago
        I doubt that is true. Interviewing candidates is a huge time sink for which every manager i know of would rather want to skip.
xvedejas 4y ago
Is the pool of open positions shrinking or growing? That might give a better idea of the rate that companies are able to hire now, compared to before
- ghaff 4y ago
  My first hand observation is that many companies are still hiring. But it's much harder to get reqs for positions and the hiring is much more selective.
  - dbcurtis 4y ago
    The hiring _can_ be selective. My group is hard to hire for (we are looking for a rare combination of skills). We had unlimited reqs before the crash. We are lucky enough to have unlimited reqs now. But we can be choosier now.
    - killjoywashere 4y ago
      What's a 'req'?
      - ghaff 4y ago
        Requisition. In this context it means an approval to hire someone for a position.
      - dbcurtis 4y ago
        hiring requisition. Basically approved headcount to hire against. And a job description for the recruiters to post and also use as guidance for matching people to openings.
coffeebeqn 4y ago
We had trouble hiring last year because in Seattle the competition is fierce and we’re not the top of the pile. Today it’s yeah maybe 10% easier but we’re still can’t be too picky
mkhpalm 4y ago
My take is there are always positions open but only if you aren't paying market rates. The MASSIVE spike in whats considered a normal salary after inflation and COL has made it so a bunch of employers are perpetually looking. If they raise their salaries to become competitive again they will fill their positions. If they keep going with normal compensation from 3+ years ago they will keep looking to hire and losing their best employees.
- bradlys 4y ago
  Yep. If there was such a big issue with hiring - we wouldn’t see these insane leetcode and system design interviews that require months of dedicated studying in order to pass them. (Even though you’re a perfectly adequate engineer and working already) This process isn’t just FAANG either. Most of SV does this and so do many other startups outside of SV.
  - wildrhythms 4y ago
    Everybody wants to set the bar at FAANG level but not pay a FAANG salary.
feudalism 4y ago
If I've learned how to code on my own but lack professional experience, what site(s) would I have the best chance of finding employment as a software engineer / QA / etc.? I've been looking on Indeed, HN: Who is Hiring, and angel.co but have had zero luck this past year. I get that companies don't want to take on the risk of a potential bad hire but c'mon. I can't even get an interview.
- MarkMarine 4y ago
  If you have no experience as a software developer, it would probably be a lot easier for you if you have some other method of displaying your work. Extensive open source contributions, where I can read your code and see how you interface with other developers, is far more valuable to me when choosing a hire than even the recommendation of some other manager at another company that I don’t know and can’t really tease out what their inner team workings are like.
  - legerdemain 4y ago
    I have ten years of industry experience. To me, "extensive open source contributions" is synonymous with either deep industry expertise or academic research. It's the realm of people writing app frameworks, databases, and distributed software. To be frank, "too inexperienced to get a job? time to contribute to open source!" is almost always a glib and unhelpful retort. If someone can't get recruiters to reach out, they probably don't have the expertise to build open source, and vice versa. Open source is not a dumping ground for inexperienced newcomers.
    - tracker1 4y ago
      I'm not sure I'd go that far. My suggestion there is generally work on something you use, want or otherwise need. In general, getting something done counts for a lot. And many floss projects will welcome contributions. There will generally be feedback, need adjustments for testing etc. But there's room to do productive things.
    - MarkMarine 4y ago
Existenceblinks 4y ago
> way more open jobs than people looking for them still How is that possible when every 1 job has 100 applicants?
- loandbehold 4y ago
  Each applicant, on average, applying for more than 100 positions?
  - Existenceblinks 4y ago
    It's even problematic in theory. If there's more open jobs than applicants, the jobs will absorb (filled) applicants pretty fast, and they won't have more chance to apply more.
- ProZsolt 4y ago
  A person can apply to multiple positions. Most of the applicants already have a job. Even if one position is filled a new position is likely to open up to backfill the other.
poulsbohemian 4y ago
You should add a link or contact info here, bet there are HNers looking for gigs...

ghaff 4y ago

There's some glass half full/glass half empty in that story. So workers are still finding new jobs. But it's taking months on average (which is actually fairly normal for a lot of professional workers--though many US tech people probably consider that long). And this says nothing about what compensation packages look like.

fatnoah 4y ago
I'm in the 20+ years of experience bucket. It took me about 3 months to find a new job, and luckily my start date coincided with the end of my WARN act garden leave. Compensation at the new role is about 50% of my previous comp, but I'm also much happier in the role.
- arcbyte 4y ago
  What blows my mind is how are companies turning you down? You have 20 years of experience. You can do literally anything. It's crazy that companies are so broken they pick subpar candidates over you, even at similar compensation levels.
  - rboyd 4y ago
    seems like there's a thin line between "This person would be a valuable contributor / I could learn a lot from working with this person" and "This person threatens my own career progression", especially towards the staff+ roles
    - psychphysic 4y ago
      Hell kill it I've they're looking for people with 20year experience. But most jobs are looking for 2-10 years. At 20+ years if you're not headhunted you're kind of screwed.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    > You have 20 years of experience. I've heard it often said that it depends on what kind of experience, not necessarily its length. Someone could have one year of experience twenty times, or be working in old tech and hasn't kept up with modern practices, costs too much to hire, or a myriad of other reasons for not being preferable over greener candidates.

zach_garwood 4y ago

My recent experience lines up with the article's stated average of three months. But I would hardly call that "quick". I did close to 50 interviews, and some companies' processes took nearly a month, only to lead to a rejection without feedback.

chasd00 4y ago
When i was hired at my last job i made a phone call to a higher up that ended with "yeah we'd love to have you, consider yourself hired. We just need to work through the process". Even then, it was 30 days until an offer letter and start date was in my inbox. If you're starting from scratch then 2-3 months sounds about right to me.
- ghaff 4y ago
  In my current role, which I've been in for quite some time at a tech company but not a developer, it was similar. Called someone (very) higher up I knew and, as far as I know, the whole process went smoothly but it still took a couple months with travel schedules etc.
  - autotune 4y ago
    Took a whole two weeks or so to go from reaching out to recruiter to offer letter with the current org. Coincidentally, I am now making more here than I have in any previous role while living in a MCOL area.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  The speed of the process seems to depend entirely on the company, and it has nothing to do with how weak or strong the hiring market is. We've all heard stories about you-know-who in FAANG who's notorious for taking months and months to go through the process. I once applied for a really interesting incubator-within-telcom-giant role, which I thought would be a cool and unique experience. First red flag was it took about a month to just set up a phone interview, but I dealt with it because of how unique the role sounded. Then, after about two months, they flew me down to San Antonio for the onsite. They informally told me "You're a great match, we're going to get our ducks in a row and then call you with next steps!" Then... ghosted. After a few months, I gave up and found a different job. Moved my family across the country, signed the rental lease, and so on. Then, out of the blue, about a year after that initial interview, that telcom called me back with "Hi, [candidate], I'm calling to schedule a second interview for that [incubator] role. When would work for you?"

sbuccini 4y ago

My main issue with these types of articles is that "tech workers" != SWEs. Of the people profiled in this article: - 1 videographer - 1 "systems engineer" (not sure what this means, but doesn't seem like it involves programming since they taught themselves Python after getting laid off) And that's it. The article makes the point that the number of SWE job openings are way down, -50% YoY. It's clear that there is less slack at the moment. What's unclear is when it will become a full crunch. I heard the same thing in 2020 when I got laid off, and it took me __a year_ to get back on my feet. I speculate on why this was the case in Hard Truth #3 in a post I just published.[0] Good luck to everyone searching! It was a really rough time for me, but I learned a lot about myself and, as trite as it sounds, forced me to take a hard look at my skills and be more targeted in my outreach. Now I'm the happiest I've been in my entire career. Feel free to contact me if you need to vent, contact information in profile. [0] https://www.stevenbuccini.com/8-hard-truths-on-getting-laid-off https://www.stevenbuccini.com/8-hard-truths-on-getting-laid-...

wirthjason 4y ago
You’re going to have to grind Leetcode. Yes, even the dynamic programming problems. You will have to interview for jobs where you will use a language you despise. Maybe even Java. Definitely Javascript. You might need to commute to the office again. Perhaps every day! These were the best lines of your article. I laughed at the dynamic programming quip. :)
- jackmott42 4y ago
  A lot of people view this stuff with cynicism but I found the leetcode practice to be useful, and learning new languages to be useful. Fun too! But I'm still young at 44.... Commuting though, oh no...
  - coffeebeqn 4y ago
    I think it’s fine, I wish they would just do one interview about that stuff though. Having to get lucky enough to solve 5 in a row is just cruel

GingerGator 4y ago

Agree with this article 100%

throwawayhhh 4y ago

of course, software engineers are the most talented and high in demand. We dont have to worry about job security at all

tschellenbach 4y ago

Hard to say how bad it will get. VCs I talk to seem to expect it to get much worse. At the end of the day though, as long as you make sure you're excellent at your job, you'll be able to find something new in any market.

sbuccini 4y ago
My personal opinion is that the crunch will hit towards the end of Q1 2023. My thinking. 1. VC market was frozen towards end of 2022. VCs will point to seasonality; my guess is they were waiting for valuations to stabilize. 2. 2023 headcount has already been planned. While there are still some openings, many companies no longer seem to be in expansion mode. 3. Blitzscale startups will be hitting Sand Hill Road in a few days. Many will take severe downrounds and have to drastically downsize as a result; others will implode altogether. 4. There still might be a more severe market downturn, in which case even larger companies will be forced to make cuts. Of course, there's a feedback loop in play here so the situation can change very quickly.
- chasd00 4y ago
  i'm doing a presentation in Feb for a large, public sector, project scheduled for two years. If we win the deal then I can ride out the downturn there. If we don't then things get a bit more spicy. /fingers crossed
- osigurdson 4y ago
  I can't recall any recessions / downturns that were known in advance with such certainly. I question if it will really materialize for this reason.
  - pcthrowaway 4y ago
    No one knows anything with certainty right now, but that doesn't stop people from speculating. Some people speculating will be right, some will be wrong. I see almost as much speculation that "we've already seen the worst" for this recession as I do that "it's going to get much worse". Even among the crowd that thinks it's going to get worse in 2023 before recovering in 2024, they can be right and also wrong (it could continue to get worse until 2025)

black_13 4y ago

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joegahona 4y ago

A few observations: • Weirdly vague headline to the article -- no specificity, and could be talking about 2 people or 200,000. (To emphasize, I am not dogging the person who posted this on HN -- the HN thread title is a mirror of the article title.) Feels click-baity, but perhaps I'm being too rigid or cynical. • The subhead is unrelated to the title. "Openings exceed unemployed Americans" is a different topic from "people who were laid off quickly found a new job. • The article is based on 1 survey conducted by an online job-hunting portal (ZipRecruiter), and it took place in October, before ~5k people left Twitter, ~10k people left Facebook, and ~10K people left Amazon. 2,550 U.S. residents were surveyed. • I'm guessing another person will notice this, but "tech worker" seems to be used loosely. I would not call a videographer who is now pivoting to social-media work a tech worker.

sacnoradhq 4y ago

It depends. Mid-level and senior engineers, absolutely. Even "hiring freeze" companies are still hiring senior engineers without official openings by reusing attrition head count. Always be hiring! (top talent) unless going out of business.

Charlie11 4y ago

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