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Ask HN: V2 – Laid off folks, are you getting hired yet?
Been a few weeks since last posted. How goes the hunt?
- hazalmestci 4y agoI’ve hope this is helpful, but our robotics start up is still hiring for multiple roles, head of product marketing, senior mobile engineer, data/ml engineer, solutions engineer, etc.! If you are interested to talk, email me at hazal@viam.com
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mock-possum 4y agoI am! Laid off about five months ago now, finally find myself being courted by three employers: a local manufacturer, and two financial institutions. It's such a relief to have real offers on the table, and to have an interesting choice to make, instead of desperately scrabbling for anyone or anything. Five months is a long time without an income, and I've sent out ~100 applications in that time. It could be a coincidence, but I've been writing more and more 'personal' cover letters, with more of a 'voice' and less formal stilted prose. Maybe people like it? Maybe people are just hiring again? Who knows.
- mfalcon 4y agoLaid off a month ago (data scientist). I had been going through several technical interviews where the company told me I passed but then they either stopped contacting me or told me the position is being put on hold. Now I'm pretty much in square one, some possible interviews but nothing strong. I'm from Argentina and I'm looking for remote work, I guess it's even more difficult because the usual companies that hire people like me are startups. First time I experience something like this.
- ulfw 4y agoI've only seen entry level positions being hired lately (across APAC). Market is very dry and layoffs continue across the industry.
- 71a54xd 4y agoNope, it's pretty bad. Out of maybe 40 applications I've had 2 interviews, made it to round two for one of them, no offer. LinkedIn positions get 150+ applications within hours. For the first time I got nearly zero response from HN Hiring as well. I think the issue is everything is skewing wildly towards senior roles, even non-senior roles are getting inundated with 200+ applicants that are over qualified. If you're like me and have 3yrs of (FAANG and growth stage startups) SWE and 1yr of product eng / TPM'ing you're basically fucked. Hard to tell if I've fucked my career (by not just working at one company with my longest tenure being 2yrs w/ zero resume gaps)or if the market is just not great rn. I've been staying afloat consulting for a friend's startup - granted SVB probably just nuked any chance of their series A actually happening. Future is very bleak atm - but thank god I have cash to live on.
- bosch_mind 4y agoHang in there. I’d say your experience is pretty good. Maybe try AB testing your resume structure and wording, improving social media, etc.
- h0l0cube 4y agoWhenever I've seen a situation with low supply/high demand, networks trump credentials
- drstewart 4y ago>situation with low supply/high demand https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/video/unemployment-rate-remains-at-50-year-low/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/video/unemployment-rate...
- pcthrowaway 4y agoThis is definitely not the tech industry
- 4y ago
- 40acres 4y agoI was laid off in November - few false starts here and there but I start my new gig on the 20th. Better yet I have $20k left from severance which is really nice.
- mhalberstram 4y agoGot laid off in October, worked on open-source projects, two of those ended up in the front-page, got contacted and signed an offer this month. I felt like shit and spent too much time getting baked, but it's over now.
- dboreham 4y agoUrban dictionary was handy for that one.
- coolspot 4y agoI also didn’t know that. For others like us: > get baked > Smoking a larger than normal quantity of marijuana, usually resulting in a good few hours of laziness, desire to eat fast food (or junk food) and/or fall asleep.
- hiddencost 4y agoUm, I just wanted to let you know that I had never considered that anyone didn't know that slang. So, thank you for that data point. There's such a big world out there!
- throwaway5959 4y agoSeriously. How has someone not gotten high at least once in their life?
- kortilla 4y agoPeople get high without knowing the term “baked”. That’s a culture/age-specific term.
- rippercushions 4y agoDrug slang is incredibly regional, so "baked" is common in the US but not elsewhere.
- synergy20 4y agopeople i knew got one or two years contractor with 10% more pay increase right away, i was offered more than that for two year contractor at meta twice so far but i prefer staying at where i am. we are all decades experience in embedded system,this field seems to be more aging proof? i am not sure.
- jnwatson 4y agoEmbedded took a huge hit recently. Google and Amazon uninvested significantly in IoT.
- synergy20 4y agoembedded is more than IoT though, I don't know how many embedded engineers Google has, seems not a lot as its consumer hardware are probably outsourced. Amazon does make it own devices and have quite a lot embedded engineers, from my circle, not a single engineer was let go so far, and I know more than 10 of them in various locations and departments. problem with embedded is that it was paid less than SWEs, maybe that's another reason it's "easier" to have jobs.
- jnwatson 4y agoGoogle does not outsource their consumer hardware design and software. Yet.
- monero-xmr 4y agoAs a CTO the number of unsolicited inbound emails from recruiters with fawning profiles of potential candidates is not like anything I have seen before. I think it’s a signal that very highly paid engineering leaders are not able to find jobs like they had before easily.
- bosch_mind 4y agoThink it’ll change at some point?
- monero-xmr 4y agoWe are profitable but in hiring freeze as we wait to see what happens. We were going to IPO last year but decided to delay because the market sucks. Interest rates need to stabilize and the IPO market needs to thaw before sentiment changes. People don’t get it because money was so cheap for so long, but the key word here is venture - this is extremely risky stuff. Adventurous. Uncertainty and low success rate is supposed to be standard.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoIf you don’t mind me asking, are y’all doing anything to provide liquidity to common shareholders until an exit event? Aggregating ground truth around what “almost IPOs” are doing.
- monero-xmr 4y agoYes, we are going to be repricing and giving amazing terms to vested employees
- helsontaveras18 4y agoI thought it was just me. LinkedIn, emails, calls from recruiters. It’s extremely aggressive.
- mortenjorck 4y agoProduct designer, 10 years experience. Laid off mid-December. Recruiter screens and hiring manager interviews have picked up somewhat, but it’s still proving very hard to get into late-round interviews. I have only my third portfolio review in nearly three months coming up next week – here’s hoping.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jurassic 4y agoIt's like night and day from a year ago. I've known some very high quality people who had to do 8 onsites to get one offer (and obviously a lot more applications, recruiter calls, and tech screens to get those opportunities). There are still jobs out there but companies know they can be very very picky right now and will reject you for the smallest reason.
- jp57 4y agoAre the onsites actually on site?
- betaby 4y agoNope, "virtual on sites". Zoom call and codepen.
- MuffinFlavored 4y agoBut HackerNews comments told me everybody makes $300k-$500k/yr working remote
- bruce511 4y agoPer year? No mate, that's per month... But on the other hand rent in SF (which is where I do my remote work from) is high, so I can't get ahead.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoIf you're making 6 million a year then rent--even in SF--should be manageable.
- blovescoffee 4y agoFriend, I feel like it was a joke
- 4y ago
- seneca 4y agoI've been hiring fairly steadily. The level of talent that is applying has definitely increased. My hiring managers are able to be way more picky, and people are accepting first offers at a higher rate. There's toug competition for those looking to be hired.
- elamje 4y agoI’ve been posting where helpful, but early stage companies are still hiring! If anyone is struggling and is on the mid/senior/director side of their career (3+ yrs), I'm helping place people at my friends' Seed and Series A companies. Email me at j{at}markovmanagement.com if I can help ya!
- throwaway5959 4y agoI hope this isn’t something to say in bad taste but do you think the whole SVB debacle will have an impact on that?
- fnbr 4y agoI work as an AI research engineer, so I’m having a totally different experience than the others I’m seeing here. Job market is very very strong for senior AI roles. Multiple offers that were >2x what I was making at a BigTech research lab (depending on how you value the equity). Interview process was much easier than I was expecting- mostly situational interviews (although I was referred in for those). Having said that, many places refused to interview me because I didn’t have experience with LLMs. I was surprised how strict some places were with experience requirements.
- jfrbfbreudh 4y agoAre we talking 7 figure offers? I was under the impression that $500k packages were not uncommon for AI researchers at Google.
- lettergram 4y agoLLMs have been interesting - I need to update my resume to focus on it. I have experience working on models like that since 2018 and are frankly less interesting than some alternatives (to me). My guess is a lot of companies / hiring managers are searching for key terms. Screening is likely not from people who know what they’re talking about
- ChatGTP 4y agoSame, feels like it's time to get the magic acronym on the resume too.
- Ralo 4y agoI'm attempting to enter this field at possibly the worst time, with the worst qualifications. No YOE, no degree. I do have friends in the field that may be able to help but it's far from guaranteed. Only thing I have going for me is that I have many years of non-professional programming experience and multiple great open source projects but at this point, I think my only hope is accepting anything. Any pay, any location, remote or in person. I'm already working near minimum wage jobs, so it's probably better to work something relevant on a resume. I'm also in Canada so, it was sparse to begin with.
- sharemywin 4y agolook at government jobs and universities. maybe non-profits.
- Ralo 4y agoThat's a good idea. I'll look into that
- ryan-allen 4y agoI got my first job at 19 after the dot com collapse, I was hired _because_ I had no work experience, no degree, and no expectations of salary (I was hired on minimum wage, though). They wanted a few people with no understanding of what it was like before the crash. I hope you find something!
- Ralo 4y agoI do find that hopeful. I assume the hardest jobs at the moment would be the senior positions. These companies still need projects moving but also don't have much cash to pay, so the senior are first to get axed. At least, in my thought. I have a brother whos a licensed electrician. When he was doing his on-job training, he always had steady work but once he got his full license and pay raise, he found himself getting laid off every year. The company would get less work for the winter and they axed the seniors right away.
- JohnFen 4y ago
- antibasilisk 4y agocompany went under in December, i got one interview out of like 30 applications and to be quite fair i messed up a really simple Python question cus of nerves so i obv didn't get it. idc I'm chilling and I get time to shitpost so there's no rush.
- spamboy 4y agoGot laid off mid-January from a smaller unicorn. 4+ YoE. I applied to ~80 places (mixture of cold applications and referrals), got to first rounds with maybe ~20, ended up with 5 offers (and pulled the plug on a few interviews due to fit or lack of interest.) 4 were startups of varying sizes, 1 was non-FAANG big tech, which I ended up taking for stability and WLB. Total time from getting laid off to signing the new offer was about 5 weeks. Overall, I think things went ok for me because I have a fairly solid resume and a great network to lean on, and was able to do well in interviews. I also mostly applied to senior SRE and infra roles, which sounds like it’s harder to hire for than general SWE.
- ericmcer 4y agoMakes sense that more specialized roles took less of a hit. I have to imagine the layoffs involved lots of generalists but they probably were not slashing their SREs.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- iaaan 4y agoI was laid off about a month ago (senior software engineer). I remember the whole job search for my last position, back in June 2021, lasted all of about two weeks. This time, it feels like there's significantly fewer interesting positions open, and the ones I apply to aren't even leading to HR screening calls. I've probably applied to about 30 positions. The one place that did call me back gave me their take-home coding test, but their automated grading system said I failed, so they sent me a rejection email with no details about what their automated system didn't like about my code and then never responded to my request for more info. I've really enjoyed the first month or so of unemployment, getting to hang out more with my spouse, do hobbies, work on the house, etc., but the anxiety about running out of emergency fund runway is slowly creeping in. We've got about another 4 months before things get really dire, not accounting for unemployment checks. With UI, we can probably double that before we'd need to dip into investment accounts. For sure a more fortunate position to be in financially than most get, but it's still really unnerving not knowing when/if I'll get another interview. I've been consistently employed full time since the moment I graduated high school (about 10 years ago), so this is literally the first time I've ever not had a job in my adult life.
- ericmcer 4y agoYeah I think it’s important to remember that we aren’t terrible failures, but the market has shifted completely. I’m entering my second month of looking really hard (30+ applications a month) and have only had a few interviews so far. For my last job I sent out a few lazy applications in early Jan 2021 and was debating which of 3 offers I wanted to take a few weeks later. I’m a better engineer than I have ever been, it’s just a rough market. Hopefully everyone has the savings and emotional fortitude for a long job search.
- inadequatespace 4y agoExactly. The market is a terrible failure.
- dev_0 4y ago[dead]
- Plasmoid 4y agoI noticed that recruiter reach outs dropped to ~0 in Jan/Feb, but are starting to tick back up again. I'm fortunately still employed so when a recruiter does reach out I refer my friends.
- hackily 4y agoI was laid off a month ago, senior frontend engineer. I've reached out to my network and have been talking to various startups, but it seems like most of the bigger companies do not want to bite. Compounding that is my desire to keep working remotely, or somewhere local to the DC metro area, so many of the same opportunities that would be available to me in the Bay area, had I remained there, are closed to me, because they're using a hybrid model. I'm not in much of a rush, and I'm hopeful that I'll find interesting work with some startup.
- bunnyhop 4y ago...You're in DC, NSA is in MD, CIA is in VA. The amount of contracting work in your area is ridiculous. As for non-major contracting companies, Amazon and Microsoft fork over silly bonuses for cleared workers, but that in itself is your barrier to entry... Can you pass an investigation? If so... go roll around in contractor money, there's no hiring freezes or layoffs right now.
- snizovtsev 4y agoI had to quit in September due to burn out. Given how many better engineers now on market I feel there are no space for me anymore. Now burning my saving money on rent and food and going to commit suicide few months later.
- hazalmestci 4y ago"better engineers" is subjective, some people have more technical skills and some more leadership skills, some more interpersonal skills etc. there is always space for you and everything you bring to the table, and you are so much more than your "labor" capacity. please don't commit suicide.
- dQw4w9WgXcQ 4y ago> and going to commit suicide few months later Come on now, why do you feel like that is the plan? Post your email in profile or something, plenty of us care for you. There's much more to life beyond a software job.
- imissmymind 4y agoYou're important to us. You are needed. This will pass and there are people who love you
- adamgamble 4y agoYou're better than you think you are, and there is space for you. You need to find someone to talk to, there is help. Please don't kill yourself.
- mishftw 4y agoIn the case that this was not a poor joke, please do consider calling 988 if in the US or any equivalent service in your locality: https://988lifeline.org https://988lifeline.org There is more to life than work - and it may be hard to see that in the face of cost and running out of money. Have you considered any adjacent or post-software gigs? I know some folks who have left to go study a particular science or end up in teaching. A good friend of mine left engineering to become a substitute and then full-time teacher.
- 4y ago
- snihalani 4y agoGot laid off in Nov. Finally starting a new job on Monday
- bmo333 4y agoTook a year off and have been trying to get a job for the last 3 months. It’s been crazy. I’ve applied to over 50 jobs and have only got a few interviews.
- sarang23592 4y agoLaid off in Jan (Senior Frontend Developer 7years exp) and took a few weeks off after getting laid off . I just cannot find an interview right now. I apply daily to around 5-10 jobs. It is making me question my skills as a developer. I never maintained an active github profie and seems like that was a mistake. Anyone has a remote job for frontend developer please help.
- p1esk 4y agoYeah, if I needed a front end dev I’d ask to see your portfolio. And for a senior role it has to be strong.
- runnerup 4y agoLaid off in October. Was making $130k as a mid-career embedded/C++/Python guy in LCOL USA. Supposed to start new job this Monday for $80k as an IT backend Java software developer at a University. Been a very, very rough few months. The new pay will be difficult to service my debt properly.
- dieselgate 4y agoWhat does starting a new role this coming week mean for you looking for jobs - will you continue searching or just hunker down for a bit?
- runnerup 4y agoWill stick with this for at least a year. I can take classes for free at a top tier university, which I love. Planning to use it to try to get into a well ranked masters program and then maybe FAANG? Pipe dream maybe, I went to a third tier university for a different engineering degree and got about a 2.9 GPA there. But I absolutely love learning and am excited to take courses. Just hard to decide which 1 course per semester to take. Maybe also see if I can help with some research in EE or CS or computational biology.
- delta_p_delta_x 4y agoAs a fresh grad, with two internships at government boards and not even a single FAANG-esque company in my portfolio, this thread is deeply depressing and the outlook couldn't be more bleak.
- CptFribble 4y agoOn the contrary, as a fresh grad with (presumably) lower COL requirements, you can be more flexible on the salary front than a lot of recently-laid-off senior SWE who may have homes + kids that need to be paid for. Take it from a millennial who graduated into the recession in 2011, even when everyone is saying the job market sucks, there are always opportunities for younger/fresher people out there, you just might have to be willing to take a "worse" position to get started - but in this industry you can always level up later once things calm down. Don't get distracted by all the people you see on here or Blind talking about their $500k TC in their mid-20s, those people are far, far outliers. I've never worked in FAANG, self-taught my way into webdev in my early 30s after two other half-careers in my 20s, and I managed to find a job with 0 experience during COVID because I adjusted my expectations down to "normal" salary ranges (sub-$100k), as long as it paid my bills and gave room to grow professionally. As a young person you have both lower salary requirements (requirements in the sense of "I need at least $XYZ per month to keep the lights on) and a lot of time, both of which are massive advantages when taking the long view of your career.
- foobazzy 4y agoI'll just repost one of my previous comments. Slight update: I'm now completely broke and living off of my girlfriend's income. (It feels horrible to say that out loud) --- older comment below --- Was laid off in August while working for a US-based company. My first layoff in a 10-year career. Still looking for a job. I'm broke. As in "can't pay my bills next month" broke. People are hiring but remote jobs are hard to find. (I have family responsibilities and cannot relocate) I did find jobs. People who took 7 rounds of interviews then never released an offer letter. AFTER verbally confirming that I'd gotten the job. This has happened thrice now. I started with asking for $5000/mo (last drawn). But now, I'm willing to work for anything that pays the bills. I'm in dire need and at my wit's end.
- Taurenking 4y ago[dead]
- sshine 4y agoMy condolences to hear that your confidence is broken. The previous time I was unemployed, I got rejected 7 times in a row. I found my humility and accepted a job doing PHP for a bunch of bullies at my career starting salary. This time I started out with pretty low hopes, but lined up 5 interviews in a week, went with the first offer in two days, and changed my mind with the second offer after one more day, ticking more boxes. I needed people to tell me I was aiming too low, because of bad memory. I’m trying to say, I was pretty broken the last time, and my confidence turned me into a job repellant. I hope you get paid soon, so you can heal your confidence. The bad voices turn this into being about something it’s not.
- endigma 4y ago[flagged]
- endigma 4y agoIf anyone is looking for remote/Canada, email me at endigma@fastmail.com, we may have a position for you. I will reply to every person, no ghosting here.
- pas 4y agocan you share some details, please, for the curious but luckily employed?
- endigma 4y agoWe're a Canadian company making hiring software using Go, Svelte and Typescript. We offer fully remote positions. I'm not the founder or hiring-person, but I will reply to your emails if you ask other questions. Coincidentally, we actually make a product that aims to get rid of the whole hiring, ghosting, no-reply, 7 rounds of interviews shenanigans; which is a problem a lot of people seem to be mentioning here.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwawaytoday_ 4y agoTerrible. I’m getting rejected from everything and recruiter contact has been virtually non existent since December. A few recruiters have reached out, but they usually don’t go far because “oh you don’t have recent professional experience in random language/library we use” It was a mistake to enter this industry in the first place, particularly the way I did it, it’s just unfortunate it was so expensive to learn.
- tricksforfree 4y agoI just interviewed a developer for a senior level front end position and they couldn't print a 2d array to the console. They apparently worked on a large web application and wrote typescript everyday. What I've known for years, I'm finally seeing first hand: There are way too many people out there that should never have been engineers in the first place. This is a rebalancing. Those who are competent will always be hired. Those who are are not, the jig is up.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ineedausername 4y agoBut it could be just temporary, I mean when the market finally shifts everyone will start advocating "learn to code" again.
- mattmanser 4y agoSounds more like you flustered someone then got all condescending and arrogant.
- tricksforfree 4y agoI'm sorry but if someone is trying to get a job with the title, "Software Engineer" in it and they cannot do a nested for loop (the slow O^2 solution) I don't know what to tell you other than that person is not fit for the job. In terms of basics it's akin to "fizz buzz".
- dastbe 4y ago> (the slow O^2 solution) whats the fast solution
- hinata08 4y ago> couldn't print a 2d array to the console. > should never have been engineers that's a challenge for a technician, not an engineer's role. I know plenty of engineers who can tell you how cars work, what customers like, how they should interact with the cloud, what functions make them safe,... They are ok at designing new models. But they would 100% feel distressed if they had to check their oil or tire pressure. Also, knowing how to properly print an array is probably something you can find on the internet, when you're not familiar with the specifics of a language. So it's not even a relevant skill to test for a technician. Secondly, "Those who are competent" is a terrible thing to hear from a recruiter. You usually hear that from mismanaged companies with no introspection nor continuous improvement process, who judge the candidates and absolutely not themselves nor their processes and job ads. They think that competence is an 1 dimensional absolute value, and interview you in java for a C# position, turn you down because you don't know the number of ports available in ipv4, or make you play games with dominoes. or in that case : > senior level front end position > console you think all developers know how to develop console applications. Unfortunately, a console application is pretty specific, uses specific packages and methods, and you never need that when you work on GUI apps or web apps. This question would have been a relevant if you wanted a sysadmin or a devops engineer to do scripts. But it is not relevant to interview a front end developer. FE developers have a knowledge of frameworks to build interfaces, as their title indicate. They don't do scripts for the console. "It's not the job ad, the position, or the interviewing processes that are flawed. That candidate was definitely not born competent but had to learn his job, and we only want naturally skilled persons here" aka >Those who are competent will always be hired. Those who are are not, the jig is up.
- usgroup 4y agoBare in mind that this thread is going to be biased towards people who are struggling since they are more likely to share their plight. Also bare in mind that the geography is going to make a big difference to your experience. Different countries are experiencing the recession in different ways and are at different points in the journey.
- kypro 4y agoI'm based in the UK with ~15 years experience as a professional web developer. I lost my job early Jan and found a new role by early Feb. It was difficult though. This was the first time I've ever experience recruiters ghosting me. I hustled like crazy to find my current role and I think I got quite lucky honestly. Every time I see these threads I feel the need to remind people that no one's circumstances will be the same. Experience and geography are two very important factors in our industry. There are jobs out there, and if you can beat out a few other candidates you'll probably do fine. If you can't do that then you may struggle.
- candiodari 4y agoHow's the situation remuneration-wise. Did you have to sacrifice pay?
- hinata08 4y agocongrats on finding a new job ! > Experience and geography are two very important factors in our industry. yeah, I was wondering to what extent they mattered. Like to what extent you should be willing to relocate or wait for an open job in your area ? And to what extent you should apply for the same job, or switch to a totally new job. I've usually been very quick to relocate and to get a new job, even underpaid bc I didn't have experience. But after just a few years, I believe I'm already paid more than if I continued on my first job. And there is a margin for progression, as the company still sees me as a beginner. Did you have to relocated ? or to get a new job ? or you're keeping your routine in what you're already good at ?
- inertiatic 4y agoGetting laid off soon, so I still have a few months to look for a job. I work in a somewhat niche field (search / information retrieval) and wanting to stay in that limits my options heavily. Things are looking very very grim, even compared to how the market looked to me a few months back.
- devstein 4y agoI'm working on a tool for candidates to make the transition from "not looking" to "actively looking" for a job easier. It plugs into your email and leverages your historic inbound opportunities to jumpstart your job search. It's still invite-only, but check it out at https://sharedrecruiting.co/ https://sharedrecruiting.co/ and let me know what you think!
- glminvictus 4y agoguys, let me tell you one thing: even if you are completely broke, you can start a business, make some calls, don't rely your future to third parties.