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... but aren't job postings a poor measure of actual hiring? Once you reach the point of not being able to hire the people you want in a timely manner, you can
by abeppu 4y ago
... but aren't job postings a poor measure of actual hiring? Once you reach the point of not being able to hire the people you want in a timely manner, you can create _lots_ of postings, on different channels, at different levels of seniority, with different kinds of focus, etc, as a desperate and ineffective measure of getting some qualified applicants in your pipe.
- csa 4y agoExactly. I’m fairly certain that there were quite a few job postings that were one of the following: - one of several for the same position, framed in different ways (as parent reply suggested) - fishing for a unicorn candidate who undervalued themselves - absolute fantasy… no one who was qualified for the job would take it with that company for what they were offering I think that some of this may have been used as an illusion to project growth where there was none.
- linuxftw 4y ago> - absolute fantasy… no one who was qualified for the job would take it with that company for what they were offering This is what we call the 'I can't find any qualified domestic candidates, so I need to sponsor an immigrant' hiring strategy.
- itqwertz 4y agoDon’t forget the diversity boost from this strategy!
- Gimpei 4y agoBut that would always be the case and wouldn’t explain the pandemic bounce. You need there to be a sudden relative increase in this type of behavior at the beginning of the pandemic.
- csa 4y ago> You need there to be a sudden relative increase in this type of behavior at the beginning of the pandemic. 1. Increased funds available to VC due to low interest rates and hot tech companies. 2. Many tech companies having a pandemic-fueled field day. 3. VCs pushing startups to hire aggressively to meet current demand (smart) and prepare themselves for the remote work, tech revolution paradigm shift (smart in moderation, less smart when leaned into too aggressively).
- yathaid 4y ago>> I’m fairly certain that there were quite a few job postings that were one of the following Can you show the analysis for this claim?
- csa 4y ago1. Have many personal and professional contacts in the tech industry. 2. Interact with said people. 3. Occasionally look at job postings to see what’s up. 4. Draw conclusions, usually via some sort of triangulation (i.e., not just using one source). That’s the process. Other than that, it’s anecdotal with many, many data points, and it’s completely not scientific (nor was it claimed to be). Feel free to believe me or not — I am just an observer and a peripheral participant in the performance art that is the tech world.
- crowbahr 4y agoJob postings on Indeed doubly so. If you're looking for jobs on Indeed I'm confused as to what you're doing. I found nothing useful there when looking in February, meanwhile LinkedIn was incredibly useful. Did about 15 interviews and accepted an offer. No issues. Indeed never had a single attractive company to apply to in that time: It was all consulting.
- wyclif 4y agoCan confirm. I don't think I've been shown a single authentic job posting on Indeed. It's mostly low-quality consulting filler.
- azemetre 4y agoMan I thought it was just me, but yeah Indeed is truly terrible. My only way of getting interviews has been linkedin (both applying to and getting messaged) or directly applying on company's websites thus far in my career. Are there any other job boards that are actually authentic?
- irrational 4y agoStackoverflow used to have a really good job board that we got great candidates from. I was really sad to see it go away.
- bbbnnnmmmkjkj 4y agoAgree with this. Forgot they removed the board as it’s been kind of a while now. One thing I didn’t really like was having your stack overflow profile be relevant in hiring decisions - probably good for some/many devs though
- kyawzazaw 4y agogood results with otta.com
- MichaelRo 4y ago
- Gigachad 4y agoI noticed there were a lot of job listings for crypto which just stayed up for ages. I suspect they had trouble hiring as they need someone smart enough to work on this stuff, while also lacking the ethics to avoid scamming people, and often being dumb enough to be scammed themselves in to having part of their payment be rug pull tokens with conditions blocking selling for x months/years (after the pull) These no hope listings probably inflated numbers a fair bit.
- Osiris 4y agoAs someone who worked in crypto, this assessment does not match my experience. I was always paid via normal payroll methods and never in tokens.
- Gigachad 4y agoHave one friend who was paid like this. Obviously not universal but it seems more prevalent than other jobs.
- SamReidHughes 4y agoI've been offered payment in tokens. I don't know if they'd have had conditions, though.
- dehrmann 4y agoWay back in ~2012, I remember Coinbase (or maybe another exchange) paid some people in Bitcoin, but that was a while ago.
- HideousKojima 4y agoI had an interview for a crypto startup in late 2021 and they asked if I would be ok with part of my compensation being in their token.
- otikik 4y agoWhat about the scams, any experience there?
- 4y ago
- tempsy 4y agoThe “day in the life of being a tech worker” tiktoks felt like the top for me. People filming themselves eating free snacks and doing yoga and whatever else other than working.
- Beaver117 4y agoNah, they were making those years ago too. 2021 was a much crazier time.
- Apocryphon 4y agoYeah, the "day in the life of a software engineer at X name brand company" has been on YouTube for years and definitely predates the TikTok trend. It dates to at least a few years prior to the pandemic.
- kadoban 4y agoTiktok is optimized for clicks (or at best amusement), not honesty.
- danjac 4y agoThe reality for most of us I suspect was sitting at home on our couch fixing an obscure bug in a CI pipeline while half-listening along to an all-hands meeting.
- Yoric 4y ago...while helping the kids do the homework (during the lockdowns).
- glenngillen 4y agoThey’re a terrible measure. From a comment I made about this assumption elsewhere on HN a few weeks ago: I am hiring at an early stage startup myself. There is absolutely no way we’d extend offers for all of the roles we have open if a candidate arrived for all of them next week. Growing that much so quickly would be a disastrous onboarding experience for most of the new hires and potentially risk our ability to build a consistent culture with the team. So we’ll hire whichever candidate(s) successfully complete the process first and then pause the other roles until we’re ready to onboard more people. Then there’s also the reality at this stage you need people who can wear multiple hats. And there’s a bunch of roles where your ideal candidate doesn’t have a neat pre-established label. So sometimes we’ll post the exact same role with different titles to try and make sure it gets the attention of someone who most strongly aligns with one of those job titles. At a previous place we worked remotely, and so the same job would be posted as both remote and then also as a dozen different specific city locations too. But if we were hiring multiple of any roles you wouldn’t multiply that, you’d just post the one listing(s) and keep it open until all the positions were filled. A jobs page is a marketing artefact for potential hires, it’s not a financial reporting/forecasting tool. TLDR: don’t make any assumptions from a job board about how many roles a company is realistically hiring for.
- sgerenser 4y agoThis would also explain part of the uptick in postings post-pandemic, as companies become more open to hiring remotely are more likely to post dozens of identical job postings in a variety of cities.
- petesergeant 4y agoActually I used to work producing data from job posting stats. I think there’s a strong correlation between job demand and job posts (job posts cost money, after all!) but as you point out, it may not be linear, as the more desperate people are to hire, the more they’ll post.
- dehrmann 4y agoThey don't necessarily match, but the aggregate directional numbers are meaningful. Indeed postings aren't free. The mismatch between tech and overall also matches the broader narrative about a tech recession, but the rest of the economy is doing sorta ok, at least until January 2023. So you're right, but it matches enough things that I wouldn't dismiss it.