4 ms·

Can the market absorb this? If feels like it’s already saturated plus we have the steady stream of new grads. I do not envy anyone who has to look for a job rig

Can the market absorb this? If feels like it’s already saturated plus we have the steady stream of new grads. I do not envy anyone who has to look for a job right now

hijinks 3y ago
depends.. i think it feels saturated if you are a poor performer. I've always said when times were good you had people in tech that shouldn't be in tech but they are able to some sort of bare min task, usually not good but good enough to get the job done. I think its hard on them but if you are somewhat good at your job, finding a new job in this market isn't hard
- tkzed49 3y ago
  are you trying to get hired right now? How long have you been in the industry? I have a feeling that this sentiment is not coming from people who have been laid off. I know people that have left voluntarily who are not having an easy time either.
  - greesil 3y ago
    What's it like these days?
    - tkzed49 3y ago
      For me, it's been pretty rough. I have about 3 YOE at a very grown-up startup, looking for mid level positions. My specialty is frontend (plus some more niche tech, and of course full stack competency). I've been very slowly finding my way into interview loops, mostly through LinkedIn and occasionally HN. I've been completing them at a very high rate, and getting passed up for people with more experience, or at least that's what I've heard when I've actually gotten feedback. The other early-career people I know are having trouble as well.
  - hijinks 3y ago
    didn't get laid off but got a job 2 weeks after i started to look
    - tkzed49 3y ago
      very impressive, interviews usually take me longer than that.
- epicureanideal 3y ago
  > depends.. i think it feels saturated if you are a poor performer. There's a lot of luck involved in getting hired right now, even for high performers. There are a lot of other high performers competing for the same jobs. I know some people who were laid off and found jobs in a few weeks, several others who were on the market for many months, and there was not a significant skill-based correlation.
  - candiodari 3y ago
    Problem with getting rehired in a few weeks (technically -2 weeks) is that you may have chosen, for comp reasons, to go into consultancy. Which means temporary contracts ...
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I think it really depends on the role. From a very non-scientific review of what I see on LinkedIn from former colleagues/friends that have now been unemployed for at least 3 months or more: 1. Software engineers and others with specific technical skills are still in high demand. During the boom years, many companies simply couldn't afford the tech talent they wanted/needed because there was so much competition. However, I think it's safe to say some folks who got laid off from FAANGs will literally never make those total comp numbers again. 2. The people I see really struggling are more in the "tech adjacent" roles: think HR, recruiting, some product managers, lots of non-tech marketing folks like social media managers, roles like "agile coaches", etc. In some cases I've seen people completely leave tech because they just couldn't find work. 3. Lots of demand for good salespeople. Good salespeople are kind of always in demand, though.
- seattle_spring 3y ago
  I'd also assume a non-zero amount of those folks are intentionally taking employment breaks. I took almost a year off, but to the average stranger it may have looked like I was unemployed and couldn't find a job.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
    Yeah, I tend to take 3 months between jobs, it's great for your mental and physical health. And I'm honestly said people in other fields don't have this opportunity.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  Way to put "agile coach" in sneer quotes, when the whole purpose of that whole career path is to help make sure devs aren't wasting their time on bullshit from incompetent business folks, or being burned out, or re-inventing the wheel AGAIN, which in turn earns the shareholders more money and decreases turnover via not burning people out. But then again, I guess we're back to "I'm an engineer, all these non-technical people are non-value-add because I can engineer everything." Even when some of them are, actually, technical themselves and just chose another path to use their skills.
lovich 3y ago
I don’t know how the ex faang employees are taking this but we’re picking up people at basically a 10-20% higher talent rate than before the faang layoffs and there seems to be a large hunger for this. The way it plays out between our engineering management and hr is that we are hiring people who would have been evaluated at the top end of whatever level N we filtered on at the bottom of the N+1 level. We obviously aren’t getting the people who did things like invent completely new technologies but we’re are grabbing a ton of people for seats we needed filled anyway, at a higher skill level than expected
- sheepscreek 3y ago
  So, are you seeing a larger pool of say, L5s that are applying for L4 jobs? Or does your company have generic openings, and you’re saying that people are now more comfortable with offers a lower level than they’d qualify for? (which puts them at the top of level N vs bottom of N+1). In either case, it sounds very much like an employers market right now. The only exceptions would likely be individuals in high demand roles (like AI/ML).
- tayo42 3y ago
  What company? Finding places with decent openings is brutal. You can Add Gmail to my username if you prefer and don't mind sharing.
mrweasel 3y ago
The US job market is weird when you view it from the outside. Other countries are in the situation where they are missing pretty much every skill you can think of. Denmark probably have thousands of IT jobs available and pretty much zero people to fill them. Given how little the tech giants seems to suffer from their layoffs, there's a pretty good chance that they where massively over-hiring for years, actively hurting other companies and inflating salaries in some areas of the country. If I was an investor in Meta or Amazon, I'd start question if the company is actually well managed, when they apparently have had hundreds, if not thousands of people on payroll that isn't actually required to run the business.
- medellin 3y ago
  The over-hiring was at least somewhat acknowledged tactic big tech companies use to starve future potential competitors. If all the good talent is taken even for only 5 years you can extend the time that you have an advantage without having to innovate

Can the market absorb this? If feels like it’s already saturated plus we have the steady stream of new grads. I do not envy anyone who has to look for a job right now

hijinks 3y ago

depends.. i think it feels saturated if you are a poor performer. I've always said when times were good you had people in tech that shouldn't be in tech but they are able to some sort of bare min task, usually not good but good enough to get the job done. I think its hard on them but if you are somewhat good at your job, finding a new job in this market isn't hard

tkzed49 3y ago
are you trying to get hired right now? How long have you been in the industry? I have a feeling that this sentiment is not coming from people who have been laid off. I know people that have left voluntarily who are not having an easy time either.
- greesil 3y ago
  What's it like these days?
  - tkzed49 3y ago
    For me, it's been pretty rough. I have about 3 YOE at a very grown-up startup, looking for mid level positions. My specialty is frontend (plus some more niche tech, and of course full stack competency). I've been very slowly finding my way into interview loops, mostly through LinkedIn and occasionally HN. I've been completing them at a very high rate, and getting passed up for people with more experience, or at least that's what I've heard when I've actually gotten feedback. The other early-career people I know are having trouble as well.
- hijinks 3y ago
  didn't get laid off but got a job 2 weeks after i started to look
  - tkzed49 3y ago
    very impressive, interviews usually take me longer than that.
epicureanideal 3y ago
> depends.. i think it feels saturated if you are a poor performer. There's a lot of luck involved in getting hired right now, even for high performers. There are a lot of other high performers competing for the same jobs. I know some people who were laid off and found jobs in a few weeks, several others who were on the market for many months, and there was not a significant skill-based correlation.
- candiodari 3y ago
  Problem with getting rehired in a few weeks (technically -2 weeks) is that you may have chosen, for comp reasons, to go into consultancy. Which means temporary contracts ...

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I think it really depends on the role. From a very non-scientific review of what I see on LinkedIn from former colleagues/friends that have now been unemployed for at least 3 months or more: 1. Software engineers and others with specific technical skills are still in high demand. During the boom years, many companies simply couldn't afford the tech talent they wanted/needed because there was so much competition. However, I think it's safe to say some folks who got laid off from FAANGs will literally never make those total comp numbers again. 2. The people I see really struggling are more in the "tech adjacent" roles: think HR, recruiting, some product managers, lots of non-tech marketing folks like social media managers, roles like "agile coaches", etc. In some cases I've seen people completely leave tech because they just couldn't find work. 3. Lots of demand for good salespeople. Good salespeople are kind of always in demand, though.

seattle_spring 3y ago
I'd also assume a non-zero amount of those folks are intentionally taking employment breaks. I took almost a year off, but to the average stranger it may have looked like I was unemployed and couldn't find a job.
- hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
  Yeah, I tend to take 3 months between jobs, it's great for your mental and physical health. And I'm honestly said people in other fields don't have this opportunity.
psunavy03 3y ago
Way to put "agile coach" in sneer quotes, when the whole purpose of that whole career path is to help make sure devs aren't wasting their time on bullshit from incompetent business folks, or being burned out, or re-inventing the wheel AGAIN, which in turn earns the shareholders more money and decreases turnover via not burning people out. But then again, I guess we're back to "I'm an engineer, all these non-technical people are non-value-add because I can engineer everything." Even when some of them are, actually, technical themselves and just chose another path to use their skills.

lovich 3y ago

I don’t know how the ex faang employees are taking this but we’re picking up people at basically a 10-20% higher talent rate than before the faang layoffs and there seems to be a large hunger for this. The way it plays out between our engineering management and hr is that we are hiring people who would have been evaluated at the top end of whatever level N we filtered on at the bottom of the N+1 level. We obviously aren’t getting the people who did things like invent completely new technologies but we’re are grabbing a ton of people for seats we needed filled anyway, at a higher skill level than expected

sheepscreek 3y ago
So, are you seeing a larger pool of say, L5s that are applying for L4 jobs? Or does your company have generic openings, and you’re saying that people are now more comfortable with offers a lower level than they’d qualify for? (which puts them at the top of level N vs bottom of N+1). In either case, it sounds very much like an employers market right now. The only exceptions would likely be individuals in high demand roles (like AI/ML).
tayo42 3y ago
What company? Finding places with decent openings is brutal. You can Add Gmail to my username if you prefer and don't mind sharing.

mrweasel 3y ago

The US job market is weird when you view it from the outside. Other countries are in the situation where they are missing pretty much every skill you can think of. Denmark probably have thousands of IT jobs available and pretty much zero people to fill them. Given how little the tech giants seems to suffer from their layoffs, there's a pretty good chance that they where massively over-hiring for years, actively hurting other companies and inflating salaries in some areas of the country. If I was an investor in Meta or Amazon, I'd start question if the company is actually well managed, when they apparently have had hundreds, if not thousands of people on payroll that isn't actually required to run the business.

medellin 3y ago
The over-hiring was at least somewhat acknowledged tactic big tech companies use to starve future potential competitors. If all the good talent is taken even for only 5 years you can extend the time that you have an advantage without having to innovate