49 ms·

Laid off for the first time in my career, and twice in one year

292 points by luu 2y ago

duxup 2y ago
The biggest pain / fear related to layoffs for me isn't the immediate actual loss of income... It was that I have to go job hunting and how demoralizing and toil heavy that process is. Heck I'd likely go job hunting just out of curiosity, the idea of exploring other options should be interesting at the least, but naw it's too much of a pain. >Recruiters. Don’t discount or blow them off. That's all they do for me ... I suspect there's a subset of people who are very attractive to recruiters and they actually do things for those people and I am not in that group. The advice surrounding recruiters is always so disconnected from my experience that it seems strange.
- Salgat 2y ago
  The leetcode grind is my biggest dread. I can do it and I do well, but I'll be damned if it isn't a lot of mindless rote memorization that immediately leaves my brain the second I land the job, never to be used again (even in my job) until the next time I apply around.
  - diamondfist25 2y ago
    I wonder what’s the value of even doing leetcode when AI can solve it in 10 seconds…
    - zamalek 2y ago
      The highly specific/specialized problems leetcode has presented have never held value, outside of a very small set of companies (i.e. MOFAANG).
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        What's the O in the acronym?
        zamalek 2y ago
        Oracle
        jslaby 2y ago
        First time hearing that one, no doubt coined and promoted by Oracle themselves
    - nickff 2y ago
      It’s not about testing ability to solve those problems, it’s about testing conformity, determination, and IQ (while being job-specific and thus legal).
      - tptacek 2y ago
        IQ tests aren't illegal. Several big companies overtly use them.
        nickff 2y ago
        AFAIK Hasn’t been legal unless the test is closely related to the job since Griggs v. Duke Power Company, a 1971 SCOTUS case.
        tptacek 2y ago
        You can just go look this up with IQ test vendors; you don't have to derive it axiomatically. They proudly list their (large) clients.
        disgruntledphd2 2y ago
        You need to ensure that the test doesn't discriminate on the basis of a protected characteristic though.
        tptacek 2y ago
        These are just completely bog-standard cognitive aptitude tests; in fact, they are if anything less rigorous than a modern IQ test. They're generally not specialized to specific jobs. You can read Reddit threads about people taking (and studying for) them. Don't get me wrong: I think this is an incredibly dumb practice. But there's a mythology that IQ testing is a super-effective tool for recruiting that has been suppressed by anti-discrimination law. That is not the case. Most companies don't use IQ tests, because they're not fit for purpose.
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      While the actual implementation isn't particularly good having a decent understanding of algorithms is useful in a lot of contexts.
  - gedy 2y ago
    Honestly I just stopped interviewing at leetcode places and those that expect you to "prepare" for their interview, especially those that are dumb no-name SaaS companies. It's less about me being stubborn as it is those places are hiring based on the wrong skills, and those end up not being good places to work.
  - anarticle 2y ago
    Simply don't, lean on your network if you can. It ends up bottlenecking your search anyway.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      Except at smaller companies, your network just gets you a referral and interview. You still have to go through the same interview process. The two exceptions I have had were when a former coworker who is now the director of an f500 non tech company was going to create a strategic position for me. He needed someone he could trust. The other time was when a CTO and the director of application development were both former coworkers from another company and it was just a matter of me saying yes. The first job would have been more stress than I was willing to deal with and I don’t do large companies (I was suffering from PTSD from my time at AWS). The second didn’t have the budget to meet my compensation target.
      - anarticle 2y ago
        Oh totally! My aim is to avoid leetcode as a 10y+ developer with real track record delivering $XM projects. To me it is a game breaker to have to study up on leetcode problems, as it keeps me from juggling multiple interview in the pipeline. Every network job I've gotten (two) has been a walk on interview, I'm fine with this as long as I don't have to do circus problems.
        scarface_74 2y ago
        Sure you can avoid leetCode if you’re okay with not maximizing your compensation by working at one of the FAANG or adjacent companies that pay at top of market. But you aren’t going to have a walk on non leetcode interview at one of the companies that pay a quarter million+ for a mid level developer based on a referral. I’m not saying you are a mid level developer just giving an example of comp. The amount a returning intern I mentored when I was at BigTech had a return offer that was the same as I made two years prior at 60 person startup. Now that I’m out of BigTech, I had to get a job as a “staff software architect” at a 3rd party consulting company to come close to what I was making in 2020 as mid level consultant at AWS and I’m making over $80K less than I would make as a senior doing the same thing at AWS or GCP. I’m 50, an empty nester and I’m good with making that trade off. I would rather get an anal probe with a cactus than ever work at any large company again. But if I were 30 in 2024 instead of in 2004, yeah I would grind leetCode to make a 300K+ a year. And yeah I got into BigTech without a coding interview and could probably weasel my way into Google/GCP in the consulting department without one. But that needle would be hard to thread for the vast majority of prople That’s why I always advise anyone in CS to practice for coding interviews
  - eschneider 2y ago
    Look at this way: It's just something you do for money.
  - duderific 2y ago
    At least you can do it well, imagine the grind when you can't.
    - le-mark 2y ago
      Remember when fizzbuzz was the gold standard in trick interview questions? And Joel was a revolutionary for advocating it? Things have certainly changed.
      - throwaway2037 2y ago
        In some sense, leetcode is fizzbuzz on steriods. As I recall, the "trick" to fizzbuzz is knowing about the modulo operator. Most leetcode problems have a similar trick that you need to know/learn to complete them correctly.
        dagw 2y ago
        Fizzbuzz wasn't about seeing if a candidate knew the 'tricks', it was to test if you knew how to code at all. If you know about loops and if statements you can do fizzbuzz even you've never heard about modulo operators. Fizzbuzz was designed to catch the complete bullshitters who literally could not code. Apparently that was a real problem people were having at the time.
        throwaway2037 2y ago
        > Fizzbuzz was designed to catch the complete bullshitters who literally could not code. I'm unsure if we are in agreement or not. To me, the expansion of leetcode and friends is driven by the desire to filter for higher quality candidates. For example, in year 2000, fizzbuzz was good to filter out people who could barely write a for loop. Then, big tech needed higher and higher gates to keep out people who did not meet their standards. So fizzbuzz was given a healthy dose of anabolic steriods and told to "hit the gym". In a sense, fizzbuzz was transformed into leetcode, but the spirit was unchanged.
        pavel_lishin 2y ago
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    Lots of jobs don't require Leetcode. I haven't done it in years yet I still get jobs consistently.
    - rirze 2y ago
      Too many folks in this industry think any job other than FAANG/startups is not serious.
- luckylion 2y ago
  Might depend on the niche you're in, or your location. My experience with recruiters (on the hiring side) mirrored what I heard from friends who got hired through recruiters: they're basically match-makers. If you're not a well-known name, you can have your job-postings but you won't get any applications. Either you spend time on advertising and try to convince people that you're really real and actually really want to hire, or you just get yourself someone who introduces you to people who might be a good fit. That's a recruiter.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Out of the 10 jobs I have had since 1996, 6 came from external recruiters. I met five of them in person over lunch or in their office when I was looking for local jobs in Atlanta until 2022. The one I didn’t meet in person was a specialized recruiter for my niche. Two came from me reaching out to them and two were from internal recruiters
    - throwway120385 2y ago
      Yeah -- the best recruiters have been "let's meet in person and chat about what you're looking for" people who would send me jobs when I was looking. The worst ones open the conversation by asking for my social over the phone.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Izkata 2y ago
  I have 3 rock-bottom criteria for responding to a recruiter: 1) They use the correct email address, the one I used on my resume and to apply for jobs, and didn't dig out my personal one somewhere. 2) They don't say something stupid that reveals they didn't even look at my resume. ("I see you have C# experience", uh no I don't) 3) They include anything at all that's supposed to interest me, even if it actually doesn't. The vast majority fail at step 1. I've only ever had one email from a recruiter that passed all these criteria.
  - mvdtnz 2y ago
    You're saying that the "vast majority" of recruiters receive your CV (from wherever) and instead of contacting you on the email address on your CV they will Google around for your personal email address? I don't believe you. Why would anyone do that extra step when they already have your email address?
    - bradlys 2y ago
      Next to no recruiters out there are doing things by hand. Everything is automated. They’re not googling for you.
    - wil421 2y ago
      I’ve had recruiters find my work email after a phone call. They proceeded to send a bunch of emails while I was screen sharing. I was able to hide it but it was almost a disaster.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  > Heck I'd likely go job hunting just out of curiosity, the idea of exploring other options should be interesting at the least When I grew up, my father worked in commercial banking in the 1980s and 1990s. There were so many bankruptcies / mergers / financial crises, that he got (painfully) used to being laid off. Watching him go through this had a large impact on my view of my relationship with most employers (hostile, wary, defensive). He once said to me, "At my level (middle manager), as soon as I start my new job, I start looking for my next job." He was exaggerating, but the point stayed with me. I definitely agree with you: Looking for a job (or "keeping your doors & windows open to new opportunities") while having a job is much, much easier -- mentally. In my industry, most connections with head hunters are made through LinkedIn. You can set a special flag in your profile that says "I'm looking for work", but this is only visible to professional head hunters (they pay a lot of money for an account with these special privileges). It works very well. Normally, the calls start with: "Them: Are you looking at the moment? Me: No, but I am open to new and exciting opportunities. Them: Oh, great. I have something for you." Do that enough, and eventually something very good lands on your doorstep.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    > At my level (middle manager), as soon as I start my new job, I start looking for my next job." He was exaggerating, but the point stayed with me. That’s no exaggeration at all. I’m not always looking for a job. But everything I do I do with one eye toward how will this look when I get ready to interview? Am I working on tech that is demand? Am I working at the correct “scope, impact, and ambiguity” or am I just being a “ticket taker”?
- slothtrop 2y ago
  More than half of recruiters will ghost me after I've jumped through the hoops (phone call, CV, filling grid, security clearance forms, etc).
jongjong 2y ago
Tough times. I feel like this is caused by massive capital misallocation over decades. The vast majority of tech companies should not exist, if not for the financial environment propping them up. Now with interest rates going up, there is less cheap money and companies are forced to lay people off and/or shut down themselves. Reality is that there are too many software developers chasing a small number of value-creating opportunities in a sea of useless or highly inefficient tech companies. In the meantime, there aren't enough people to produce food, build houses, collect garbage, etc... So costs of essentials keeps going up. It's hard for software devs to transition to physical jobs so it's going to be a tough one.
- linotype 2y ago
  You say that, but everyone I know is working themselves to death. Companies just don’t want to hire. And why should they, if people will keep up the pace?
  - jongjong 2y ago
    Same. I guess those who weren't laid off have to work harder to make up for the reduced work capacity and to give credibility to their managers' narrative that efficiency has improved by x%. This doesn't mean that all the work they do adds any value to the economy. A lot of bullshit jobs are VERY demanding. A game of whac-a-mole can keep people REALLY busy too. You can measure that they're hitting more moles per minute and call that 'increased productivity', but whether or not hitting moles with a hammer is useful is a separate question. Also, there are questions of short term gains vs long term gains. It's relatively easy to trade away long term gains to obtain short term gains. The incentive structure of our system is predicated on it.
- nine_zeros 2y ago
  > I feel like this is caused by massive capital misallocation over decades Absolutely a large misallocation. And this is not just about the number of engineers. It is also about number of managers, 2 pizza teams, entire management chains merely doing promotion/PIP management, entire sets of VPs and execs with no market experience or engineering experience. Even a large number of PE investors and angel investors who just landed on money but actually don't have any skills beyond betting far and wide. Highly paid roles have been paying people who are just doing administrative work. This is misallocation. And all of a sudden, this misallocation has come to bare.
kjellsbells 2y ago
One little tip I learned the hard way: an applicant tracking system (ATS) can claim to have imported your fine-looking Word or PDF resume, but that does not mean that it has correctly parsed it and populated the key fields (eg skills) that it shows to the hiring manager. The problem seems to be that ATSes struggle with the "modern" style of resume, much beloved of Word template authors, where you might have a left column with your contact details, github, and maybe some skills and then a borderless table on the right side with your positioning statement and job history. I went from zero callbacks to 80% after I junked Word and rewrote my resume in a much more old fashioned, linear format. I used Overleaf (LaTeX) like it was 1999 and exported to PDF.
- zblevins 2y ago
  Coming back here to really thank you for this. I converted my resume into LaTex today then to pdf. Began uploading it to a few listings and where I would previously have to go back in and correct things this is no longer happening. Much thanks.
- mjevans 2y ago
  Can you elaborate on the exact layout syntax these ML idiot savant agents want to read? Lack of an industry wide standard data interface makes this terrible.
  - willquack 2y ago
    Get a boring LaTeX template like "Jake's Resume" I've spoken with two technical recruiters who say they prefer reading templates instead of hand-crafted Resumes on top of them also parsing better in the ATS system ):
    - kleiba 2y ago
      Can confirm a similar attitude from an HR person - they prefer a single-column, easy to scan resume that follows a tried and trusted standard structure and layout.
  - 2y ago
adamc 2y ago
Actual title says "for the First Time in My Career". Edited title is kind of weird.
- bagels 2y ago
  Actual title is weird. How is it both the first and second time?
  - hcs 2y ago
    There's just two songs in me, and I just wrote the third
ge96 2y ago
Random thought I used to reject 6mo contract offers but after being a laborer the 2.5X pay increase even for 6mo made sense. So I accepted one and now I'm here typing this on a 16" mac at a new job. I am now thinking about making better choices financially.
- the_real_cher 2y ago
  how do you even get those?
  - ge96 2y ago
    Fill out your linked in, turn it on Have a GitHub, resume, luck I wrote extensions to through LinkedIn's jobs and other boards but ultimately luck (some company person finds you). It's even harder for me no degree but I have 5yoe. My job though was niche my robotics/hardware projects stuck out to the interviewer. I worked labor for a year it sucked. But yeah I turned down a few 6mo roles thinking they were not secure but I was like f it I need change and will just pour my higher income into my debts.
  - Tade0 2y ago
    Luck mostly. You have to sift through tons of listings because companies which run such projects just throw it all in with the rest.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I sincerely wish this chap luck. I suspect that he'll be OK. > Keeping good connections with your coworkers and not burning bridges is one of the most important things I think you can do in your career. Words to live by. I wish more folks internalized this phrase.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  Related. But people should also keep in mind that layoffs throughout the industry are extensive. So don't make the mistake of only keeping good connections with your team and managers. Try, to the extent that it's possible, to keep good connections across whatever enterprise you work in. We could easily enter an era, especially in tech, where all of your team and managers are unemployed at the same time you are. Or they otherwise may not have the ability to help you. You should always have a plan for using connections in the event you find yourself in that situation. A prudent pillar of that contingency would be to expand your network as far as you can. Even the facilities guy or the guy in marketing may prove useful one day. No connection is too low or too high.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    >No connection is too low or too high. This is so true, one of my biggest corporate deals came from a guy I worked with a decade before, he was junior at the time.
purple-leafy 2y ago
Hey I got laid off too. It actually has worked out as a positive over-all. Job searching is a shit process though. I applied for ~40-50 jobs, only got 1 offer. Small country too, so thats basically all the jobs I could find. But landed in a really good company, and have a bit of a break before I start. So I've been using all my spare time to learn Graphics programming, C, and Audio Engineering. I've made a little Wolfenstein3D-type raycasting engine [0] that I'm proud of, as I'm just a frontend coder for work. [0] - https://github.com/con-dog/2.5D-raycasting-engine/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/con-dog/2.5D-raycasting-engine/blob/maste...
imranq 2y ago
I think its amazing that posts like this exist, and more should definitely be written so that people don't feel powerless after a layoff. Too often we tie our identity to institutions and it isn't doing anyone any good (well maybe it helps the shareholders).
- mooreds 2y ago
  This is the one I wrote about my lessons: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2020/05/04/how-to-go-through-a-layoff/ https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2020/05/04/how-to-go-thro...
coolThingsFirst 2y ago
u guys are getting interviews? 2 years of experience and it's hard. seems the old markers of dev competence are no longer there, some github projects, a degree were enough nowadays it's a lot harder even here in europe where the salaries are on the low end.
scarface_74 2y ago
I have been let go three times in almost 30 years and I’m on my 10th job. The first time was at a struggling startup. We all knew they were struggling and the company was very honest with us and kept us abreast of all the companies that our VC backers were pursuing. I was in some of the interviews with potential acquirers. Our backers promised all of us that “we would get paid for every hour we worked”. Of course they couldn’t promise us we would not get laid off. All of us stayed until the bitter end. That day we all got laid off after being acquired for scraps, we went to lunch together and hung out in the office just joking around until the end of the day. We all had something in our back pocket anyway and from looking at LinkedIn, everyone found a job that was either as good or better within a month. This was 2011. Our largest customer arranged for me to get contract with them to finish out a project, the acquiring company gave the customer access to all of their code and gave me permission to keep my work laptop and waived my non compete. They gave everyone a month severance. I was treated fairly and have no ill will toward anyone there. The second time it was Amazon in 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38474212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38474212 The third time it was a shit show of a company last year. But this is where I have problems with the author > How do you succinctly summarize and highlight all you’ve done there? I keep my resume and longer form career document up to date at least once per quarter. I list out the details of major accomplishments in STAR format while it’s still fresh. I have both a technical summary and a business oriented summary for non technical people. It looks like he learned that lesson too. > I was being selective and only applying for places I’d realistically want to work He has a newborn baby. His first priority is to work for any company that will allow him to exchange labor for money to support his family. Even if you do have savings, no need to use it unnecessarily. I got a 3.5 months severance from Amazon the year before last and my stretch goal was to get an offer before my paid out PTO of 9 days was over let alone dip into my severance. Of course I reached out to my network first and targeted outreach to companies specializing in my niche (strategic cloud consulting emphasizing app dev). I also spammed my resume to any CRUD enterprise app dev job as a Plan B. I could always keep interviewing while working. I was working remotely. I did end up getting a Plan A job offer within 9 days of leaving AWS. But I knew three months in that it wasn’t going to be a long term job. When the end did come, I was already in the early stages of interviewing for my current job and had an offer three weeks later. But again, I wasn’t going to let the perfect be the enemy of getting any job and I kept applying for Enterprise CRUD jobs until the offer was finalized. I did work on a side project in 2023. But I got paid for it. A former CTO had some work he needed done.
Aeolun 2y ago
> I really wish companies would start giving honest feedback even if it’s hard for the candidates to heard at first. It would be a much better way for candidates to improve themselves and we’re all adults here and can take the feedback. I’ve said it before, and I say it again. This isn’t true. When companies try to be helpful and give you well meaning feedback, you find out that their reasons for rejecting you are absolutely banal, and you’d have been better off not hearing anything.
- tracerbulletx 2y ago
  Going the other direction.. most of the time I've seen feedback given to a candidate, they freaked out about it and got defensive. Not worth the risk.
  - petesergeant 2y ago
    And even in the case where the candidate is right to push back on the feedback, the process has usually moved on with another candidate already, so it's just awkward for everyone.
- sfriskzo2005 2y ago
  Another issue is that positions which are advertised are often already filled by some acquaintance, but we need to go thru the motions of posting the job, sifting thru resumes, interview questions, leetcodes, etc. and interview theatre before we go and hire the acquaintance. Sometimes, HR doesnt know and the interview panel may not know.
- dilyevsky 2y ago
  It’s banal because nobody is going to share the truth for fear of retaliation unless they’ve never done this before
- Aurornis 2y ago
  When I first become a hiring manager I thought I'd be the exception and provide everyone with detailed and honest feedback. I didn't last very long. Candidates would see the feedback as an invitation to prove me wrong or argue with my assessment. I got a few very angry e-mails from people who took their rejection very personally and made it clear that I was their enemy. One person (who was actually very unqualified) even went on a mini rampage across the internet, trying to "name and shame" my company and even my personally for the rejection. There were even threats of a discrimination lawsuit. So I stopped. It's back to something like "We've decided to proceed with other candidates"
triyambakam 2y ago
I also got laid off during parental leave. I had a strong feeling that it would happen but due to the stress of a medically dangerous pregnancy, I made the excuse that I didn't have the capacity to simultaneously focus on a preemptive job search. That was a bad decision.
sfriskzo2005 2y ago
>> If you haven’t searched for a job since then it will surprise you how much more of an employers market it is now. Could you clarify further? Front what I hear on the news, there are hundreds of thousands of open engineering/ai positions in the US and we cannot find workers to fill them. You mention ZIRP, so I'm assuming you're probably in the US. Practically every news show in the past two weeks has noted the importance of having a concerted US policy to help fill these open positions. They also mention the existential risk to the US caused by the massive shortage of engineers. How does this square with you saying " If you haven’t searched for a job since then it will surprise you how much more of an employers market it is now." Where is the disconnect?
- nextworddev 2y ago
  Lots of job postings are fake
- leptons 2y ago
  Just because a position is advertised does not mean the position is going to be filled - a lot of companies advertise a job that doesn't really exist. They do this for several reasons - to look like they are more successful than they are (if they are hiring they are expanding), and some just collect resumes. They might even do a few interviews, which helps their team practice doing interviews even if the company isn't going to hire. I'm sure there are other reasons. I've been in the tech job market about 30 years, and this might be the second worst time for people in tech, the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s being the worst. My boss knows it too, he knows I can't leave and find another job that pays as well right now. A couple of years ago I was still getting about 20 recruiter contacts per week, and now I'm lucky if I get 1 per month. If you haven't noticed how bad it is, I have to wonder why?
  - sfriskzo2005 2y ago
    I mostly hire and dont actively code for work, so I never got 20 recruiter contacts per week before or now. Agree on not all postings are real (we do some because we're mandated to do a proper search when filling positions with people we know)
OptionOfT 2y ago
15 years of experience. Laid off twice last year. 10+ years at 2nd last role, 3 months at last. Like the article mentions, it's an employers market. The thing I struggle is the question to why you want to work at a place. Either I'm short and to the point, or it ends up written like I used to when working for one of the Big Three. And coincidentally, that is exactly the kind of stuff that ChatGPT generates.
- eschneider 2y ago
  "I have a mortgage and a family" is fine. Those people are highly motivated.
  - OptionOfT 2y ago
    I'll try that and I'll let you know!
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      It will end poorly. Even if it's objectively true, employers will not want to see such a reason, so you'll have to make something up, even if it's not true. It's just the name of the game.
      - lnsru 2y ago
        Exactly. It’s mating dance. Nobody cares about one’s family. One must talk about good products, nice working culture, positive vibes, professional development on topic X, suitable experience in topic Y, similar finished project Z, interesting personalities of the interviewers. Motherload of well crafted lies. I learned a lot to lie during interviews. As a graduate I was absolute truth teller and every interview changed me a bit. After hundreds of them during a decade I am comfortable with any lie. So sad when I think about it.
  - duskwuff 2y ago
    "Money can be exchanged for goods and services."
cryptozeus 2y ago
"How to Tell a Layoff is Coming" another tip from personal experience, a manager and key people always know. Be in the inner circle. Also I was once laid off on my Hawaii vacation, talk about perfect timing.
- PHGamer 2y ago
  i knew someone who was QA his boss approved his PTO to go to the dentist. however that day turned out to be the layoff day so HR threated him to come to the office. was hilarious. god i hate HR. anyways if you ever go on PTO turn your phone off completely.
  - ivraatiems 2y ago
    Threatened him with what? Being laid off?
    - vintermann 2y ago
      I assume at the point he didn't know, so yeah, that could have worked (and was probably basically it).
- saagarjha 2y ago
  Not true. Often managers are caught unawares of layoffs until they are executed.
game_the0ry 2y ago
> More than 150,000 layoffs were reported in 2024 and a whopping 264,000 in 2023. I switched careers in my 30s to get into tech. It was big, difficult pivot. At the moment, I do not regret it and really like what I do. But the job market is shockingly bad. I do not have an optimistic outlook, so I am looking to pivot again, likely a small business. All the extra cash I have after expenses, I put towards various side hustles. One big upside to being a SWE is that I can make whatever app I want and put it on the internet publicly.
- myth_drannon 2y ago
  You and the other million of devs think the same, that's why the indie dev market is exploding and twitter is full of influencers posting their app revenue..
  - paxys 2y ago
    This is so true, and I'm in fact going through this right now. One of my semi-technical friends followed an online tutorial and created a stock tracker web app, almost entirely using ChatGPT. It is a pretty good achievement (in the context of someone who isn't a programmer and started from scratch), and I'm encouraging him to keep going down this path and developing his skills. He is however convinced that he can launch this app and make millions, and is even considering quitting his job to do it full time. There is zero chance it is going to get any kind of traction, and I keep telling him that, but he is too enamored by all the "influencers" on LinkedIn/X telling him that he is basically a 10x engineer now.
    - purple-leafy 2y ago
      man, launching and leaving your job is definitely not the way to sustainably, or successfully work for yourself. I encourage others who want to work for themselves to reduce their core work hours if possible, and spend the new free time working on their projects. Otherwise you will burn out
      - 2y ago
skeptrune 2y ago
>Recruiters. Don’t discount or blow them off. They have a vested interest in getting you hired and 3 of my jobs have been found through them. Recruiters are often and perform a valuable service. Agree that it can be invaluable to find one you want to work with.
duderific 2y ago
Similar to the article's author, I also once got laid off shortly after being hired; three months in my case. I was promised they were on a growth track to nine-figure revenue. One month of down subscription growth, the CEO panicked, and I was gone. I still get mad thinking about it.
shove 2y ago
This thread has a lot of interesting anecdata so I’ll add mine. Over 25 years experience in frontend web, searching since July, and the water is as ice cold as I’ve ever felt it. Low response rates, low interview rates, zero offers. Wondering if the backend grass is slightly greener at the moment or that’s just my perception from the other side of the fence.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  If someone (I don’t know if it is true in your case or not) has a generic set of skills like - “full stack developer” or “front end developer”, there are hundreds of people applying for the same job and it’s hard to stand out. You have to lean on your network.
- Tade0 2y ago
  Also doing frontend, but my friends from the other side of the stack fence tell me that employers have been piling up responsibilities, so when you apply for a backend position, you're automatically assumed to fit a DevOps role as well. Anyway, I've found that back in our field it's largely React roles which were affected. Angular jobs are fewer and typically lowballed, but not nearly as much as the rest.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
I really, really wish the industry would give the fuck up on resumes. It's such a stupid way to hire. Huge waste of time for all involved, inaccurate, lengthy, difficult. As a hiring manager, I want: - Your references are already vetted and testimonials left on a public profile, private on invite for those who haven't left their job yet - Actual qualifications, like job training and certifications. Even Scrum Training. I want to know you were actually taught the right way at least once, by a reputable source - A written contract that what you say is your experience is true, and that I can use arbitration to seek damages if you lied - A standard set of tests administered by experts chosen at random. - Your requirements to be hired As a candidate, I want: - The salary range, hire type (contract/full-time), benefits - The location - A description of the project you want worked on and skills required - Your company's pitch deck or equivalent - Glassdoor reviews - My name, age, gender, picture, etc are hidden until the company has clicked a button that certifies they are interested in me based on my qualifications. I get that we can't stop hiring bias, but at least make it more obvious when they pass up why they have. We can't we just agree as an industry that we should all pitch in and make this? There's enough capital here, and it's not like we don't know how to build these things. Certainly there's enough people here motivated to work on it.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Linked in and Glassdoor already exist, though I don't trust Microsoft to administer. Needs an open alternative.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  All of these signals are problematic. Your references are already vetted and testimonials left on a public profile, No one is going to give you a negative reference on LinkedIn. That doesn’t provide any meaningful signal. Actual qualifications, like job training and certifications. Even Scrum Training. Certifications don’t prove competence. Anyone can memorize enough to pass a multiple choice test and there have been brain dumps for them for decades. I went through the 6 certification .Net “Architect” path back in 2010 basically as a guided learning path with a goal at the end. I knew even back then they were worthless as far as competence and never put them on my resume. More recently, at one point I had 9 of the then 12 AWS certs as late as 2021. I have 6 of the 9 current ones now and I’m working on the other 3 by the end of the year. I got my first one without ever opening the console in 2018. They also served as a guided learning path so I would know what I didn’t know and I could talk the talk. But I don’t consider myself knowing a service until I’ve used them. They are all very shallow marketing certs except I’ve heard good things about the Kubernetes certifications and that they require hands on problem solving. I want to know you were actually taught the right way at least once, by a reputable source How would you know that? I have a degree in CS. I graduated in 1996. Is the source I was taught COBOL and FORTRAN from “reputable” or “relevant”? A written contract that what you say is your experience is true, and that I can use arbitration to seek damages if you lied Arbitration is biased toward the client and the clients industry. The judges don’t get hired if they consistently make judgments that are against the industry that hires them. A standard set of tests administered by experts chosen at random. What I am looking for when hiring is specific to the company. But they have that already - leetCode style interviews that don’t give a signal to whether they are “smart and gets thing done”.
OnionBlender 2y ago
How are people searching for programming jobs? LinkedIn is garbage because it keeps showing jobs that don't even contain the word I searched for. I go directly to the big company's career pages, but it is hard to discover new jobs or new companies.
- adityamwagh 2y ago
  Using Google site search is a great way! For example - site:lever.co “Software Engineer, Machine Learning” OR “Machine Learning Engineer”. This is helped me search for a lot of jobs that weren’t advertised. You can do this similarly for greenhouse.io, ashbyhq.com, myworkdayjobs.com, breezy.hr, workable.com, dover.io, ats.rippling.com, icims.com and other popular ATS websites.
- begueradj 2y ago
  LinkedIn is a place to show your social status.
- GVRV 2y ago
  I miss StackOverflow jobs – it showed that jobs were probably published there because someone technical advocated for the platform.
- daemin 2y ago
  In the last 12 years of employment I've pretty much received all my jobs through the friends, friends of friends, and former colleagues network. There was one job which I actually applied for on their website and had a standard interview process for, but I had former colleagues already working there, so I include that. I am in Game Development so it is a much smaller community than the overall tech industry and you're more likely to know people in different companies as people slowly disperse after completing a project. I think as you get older you kind of have to find jobs in this way, relying on your network and reputation, rather than doing a fresh cold application each time.
- halfmatthalfcat 2y ago
  Find a job you find interesting and have a compelling value add. Find that job’s hiring manager on LinkedIn/Other Social. DM the hiring manager and start a conversation. Has worked for me multiple times. You cut the line (or black box) and start to build rapport instantly.
ypeterholmes 2y ago
Typo: "Your pay your taxes into the system" Sorry to be this way.
keeptrying 2y ago
If you code, you should be building a business on the side. Especially if you are early in your career and its becoming harder to land a stable job. you need to learn how to market your skills, get clients and deliver. No more excuses to sit in a job and do nothing. This is going to be critical to survive. Eventually I think companies are going to be much smaller entities than they once were which means your have to really buid your own biz.
- keeptrying 2y ago
  the most importat skills to learn: 1. Sales = learn to knock on a 100 doors to get one sale. 2. Marketing = learn to communicate your value prop to specific companeis and hiring managers. 3. Delviery = learn to deliver products/projects end to end with all the management that goes in between. If you know all 3 you'll never be in a position where you don't have income. It takes about 4 years to really get a grasp of all 3 so start now ... don't just do a 8 hour job and go home and watch tv. Keep trying to sell your services to others ... at least 2-3 hours after work to other companies/startups/other industries. Its a big world - smeone needs your services - your survival depends on finding those people nad packaging your skilsl so that they buy.
  - rwyinuse 2y ago
    Good advice if you don't have a family. Utterly impossible for someone with small kids and a wife who is also working.
    - travelthrowaway 2y ago
      time-management and sleep deprivation, should write a book with that title 0600 - 0900 Your project 0900 - 1600 Corporate job 1700 - 2100 Family & free time (you need to learn how to make the most of it so that you can recharge as well) 2100 - 2300 The low-CPU low demanding part of managing a business paired with some interesting background content goes here
      - 2y ago
maxehmookau 2y ago
Firing someone during their parental leave is a special kind of messed up. The fact that it's not completely illegal in any reasonable country is horrifying.
- throwway120385 2y ago
  It's illegal in my state in the US. Also if you do FMLA in the US it would be illegal if you're the parent who gave birth. Outside of a few states here in the US you're basically expected back at work as soon as you get out of the hospital unless you have a doctor's note.
magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
Misalignment of interests is the core error of reasoning the traditional employee makes in offering up unquestioning faith and loyalty to a random corporation run by strangers; that greedy incompetence will somehow give them enduring security. This is decidedly not the case. Instead, more sensible employees should form worker-owned co-ops to both share in the treasure of livable earnings with potential immense profits and structure themselves for the maximum security of those who "sail on that ship" together rather than optimizing short-term profits of someone else.
junto 2y ago
After the dot-com crash, I was laid off when the company I worked for went under. They specialized in creating e-learning courses for large corporations. That experience taught me a valuable lesson: there are some industries you just don’t want to be involved with when the economy takes a downturn. Companies tighten their budgets, and the first cuts often come from areas like training and marketing. On the consumer side, people quickly drop non-essential luxuries like streaming services or food delivery. If you work in industries that provide those kinds of services, they’re essentially “fair weather industries”—great during good times but highly vulnerable during tough ones. Since then, I’ve made a point of only working in what I call “recession-proof” verticals. These include energy (avoiding risky sectors), insurance (because companies rarely skip paying premiums), and certain areas of banking (where money flows abundantly). Another critical strategy is diversifying your skill set and building a strong internal network within your company. The more indispensable you become, the more secure your position. In more technical terms, this is akin to “obligate mutualistic symbiosis”—a relationship where both parties thrive because they rely on each other.
nephronaut 2y ago
Wait this header doesn’t make sense. Laid off for the first time? Twice?
uyfyxr8 2y ago
[dead]

292 points by luu 2y ago

The biggest pain / fear related to layoffs for me isn't the immediate actual loss of income... It was that I have to go job hunting and how demoralizing and toil heavy that process is. Heck I'd likely go job hunting just out of curiosity, the idea of exploring other options should be interesting at the least, but naw it's too much of a pain. >Recruiters. Don’t discount or blow them off. That's all they do for me ... I suspect there's a subset of people who are very attractive to recruiters and they actually do things for those people and I am not in that group. The advice surrounding recruiters is always so disconnected from my experience that it seems strange.

Salgat 2y ago
The leetcode grind is my biggest dread. I can do it and I do well, but I'll be damned if it isn't a lot of mindless rote memorization that immediately leaves my brain the second I land the job, never to be used again (even in my job) until the next time I apply around.
- diamondfist25 2y ago
  I wonder what’s the value of even doing leetcode when AI can solve it in 10 seconds…
  - zamalek 2y ago
    The highly specific/specialized problems leetcode has presented have never held value, outside of a very small set of companies (i.e. MOFAANG).
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      What's the O in the acronym?
      - zamalek 2y ago
        Oracle
        jslaby 2y ago
        First time hearing that one, no doubt coined and promoted by Oracle themselves
  - nickff 2y ago
    It’s not about testing ability to solve those problems, it’s about testing conformity, determination, and IQ (while being job-specific and thus legal).
    - tptacek 2y ago
      IQ tests aren't illegal. Several big companies overtly use them.
      - nickff 2y ago
        AFAIK Hasn’t been legal unless the test is closely related to the job since Griggs v. Duke Power Company, a 1971 SCOTUS case.
        tptacek 2y ago
        You can just go look this up with IQ test vendors; you don't have to derive it axiomatically. They proudly list their (large) clients.
        disgruntledphd2 2y ago
        You need to ensure that the test doesn't discriminate on the basis of a protected characteristic though.
        tptacek 2y ago
        These are just completely bog-standard cognitive aptitude tests; in fact, they are if anything less rigorous than a modern IQ test. They're generally not specialized to specific jobs. You can read Reddit threads about people taking (and studying for) them. Don't get me wrong: I think this is an incredibly dumb practice. But there's a mythology that IQ testing is a super-effective tool for recruiting that has been suppressed by anti-discrimination law. That is not the case. Most companies don't use IQ tests, because they're not fit for purpose.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    While the actual implementation isn't particularly good having a decent understanding of algorithms is useful in a lot of contexts.
- gedy 2y ago
  Honestly I just stopped interviewing at leetcode places and those that expect you to "prepare" for their interview, especially those that are dumb no-name SaaS companies. It's less about me being stubborn as it is those places are hiring based on the wrong skills, and those end up not being good places to work.
- anarticle 2y ago
  Simply don't, lean on your network if you can. It ends up bottlenecking your search anyway.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Except at smaller companies, your network just gets you a referral and interview. You still have to go through the same interview process. The two exceptions I have had were when a former coworker who is now the director of an f500 non tech company was going to create a strategic position for me. He needed someone he could trust. The other time was when a CTO and the director of application development were both former coworkers from another company and it was just a matter of me saying yes. The first job would have been more stress than I was willing to deal with and I don’t do large companies (I was suffering from PTSD from my time at AWS). The second didn’t have the budget to meet my compensation target.
    - anarticle 2y ago
      Oh totally! My aim is to avoid leetcode as a 10y+ developer with real track record delivering $XM projects. To me it is a game breaker to have to study up on leetcode problems, as it keeps me from juggling multiple interview in the pipeline. Every network job I've gotten (two) has been a walk on interview, I'm fine with this as long as I don't have to do circus problems.
      - scarface_74 2y ago
        Sure you can avoid leetCode if you’re okay with not maximizing your compensation by working at one of the FAANG or adjacent companies that pay at top of market. But you aren’t going to have a walk on non leetcode interview at one of the companies that pay a quarter million+ for a mid level developer based on a referral. I’m not saying you are a mid level developer just giving an example of comp. The amount a returning intern I mentored when I was at BigTech had a return offer that was the same as I made two years prior at 60 person startup. Now that I’m out of BigTech, I had to get a job as a “staff software architect” at a 3rd party consulting company to come close to what I was making in 2020 as mid level consultant at AWS and I’m making over $80K less than I would make as a senior doing the same thing at AWS or GCP. I’m 50, an empty nester and I’m good with making that trade off. I would rather get an anal probe with a cactus than ever work at any large company again. But if I were 30 in 2024 instead of in 2004, yeah I would grind leetCode to make a 300K+ a year. And yeah I got into BigTech without a coding interview and could probably weasel my way into Google/GCP in the consulting department without one. But that needle would be hard to thread for the vast majority of prople That’s why I always advise anyone in CS to practice for coding interviews
- eschneider 2y ago
  Look at this way: It's just something you do for money.
- duderific 2y ago
  At least you can do it well, imagine the grind when you can't.
  - le-mark 2y ago
    Remember when fizzbuzz was the gold standard in trick interview questions? And Joel was a revolutionary for advocating it? Things have certainly changed.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      In some sense, leetcode is fizzbuzz on steriods. As I recall, the "trick" to fizzbuzz is knowing about the modulo operator. Most leetcode problems have a similar trick that you need to know/learn to complete them correctly.
      - dagw 2y ago
        Fizzbuzz wasn't about seeing if a candidate knew the 'tricks', it was to test if you knew how to code at all. If you know about loops and if statements you can do fizzbuzz even you've never heard about modulo operators. Fizzbuzz was designed to catch the complete bullshitters who literally could not code. Apparently that was a real problem people were having at the time.
        throwaway2037 2y ago
        > Fizzbuzz was designed to catch the complete bullshitters who literally could not code. I'm unsure if we are in agreement or not. To me, the expansion of leetcode and friends is driven by the desire to filter for higher quality candidates. For example, in year 2000, fizzbuzz was good to filter out people who could barely write a for loop. Then, big tech needed higher and higher gates to keep out people who did not meet their standards. So fizzbuzz was given a healthy dose of anabolic steriods and told to "hit the gym". In a sense, fizzbuzz was transformed into leetcode, but the spirit was unchanged.
        pavel_lishin 2y ago
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Lots of jobs don't require Leetcode. I haven't done it in years yet I still get jobs consistently.
  - rirze 2y ago
    Too many folks in this industry think any job other than FAANG/startups is not serious.
luckylion 2y ago
Might depend on the niche you're in, or your location. My experience with recruiters (on the hiring side) mirrored what I heard from friends who got hired through recruiters: they're basically match-makers. If you're not a well-known name, you can have your job-postings but you won't get any applications. Either you spend time on advertising and try to convince people that you're really real and actually really want to hire, or you just get yourself someone who introduces you to people who might be a good fit. That's a recruiter.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Out of the 10 jobs I have had since 1996, 6 came from external recruiters. I met five of them in person over lunch or in their office when I was looking for local jobs in Atlanta until 2022. The one I didn’t meet in person was a specialized recruiter for my niche. Two came from me reaching out to them and two were from internal recruiters
  - throwway120385 2y ago
    Yeah -- the best recruiters have been "let's meet in person and chat about what you're looking for" people who would send me jobs when I was looking. The worst ones open the conversation by asking for my social over the phone.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Izkata 2y ago
I have 3 rock-bottom criteria for responding to a recruiter: 1) They use the correct email address, the one I used on my resume and to apply for jobs, and didn't dig out my personal one somewhere. 2) They don't say something stupid that reveals they didn't even look at my resume. ("I see you have C# experience", uh no I don't) 3) They include anything at all that's supposed to interest me, even if it actually doesn't. The vast majority fail at step 1. I've only ever had one email from a recruiter that passed all these criteria.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  You're saying that the "vast majority" of recruiters receive your CV (from wherever) and instead of contacting you on the email address on your CV they will Google around for your personal email address? I don't believe you. Why would anyone do that extra step when they already have your email address?
  - bradlys 2y ago
    Next to no recruiters out there are doing things by hand. Everything is automated. They’re not googling for you.
  - wil421 2y ago
    I’ve had recruiters find my work email after a phone call. They proceeded to send a bunch of emails while I was screen sharing. I was able to hide it but it was almost a disaster.
throwaway2037 2y ago
> Heck I'd likely go job hunting just out of curiosity, the idea of exploring other options should be interesting at the least When I grew up, my father worked in commercial banking in the 1980s and 1990s. There were so many bankruptcies / mergers / financial crises, that he got (painfully) used to being laid off. Watching him go through this had a large impact on my view of my relationship with most employers (hostile, wary, defensive). He once said to me, "At my level (middle manager), as soon as I start my new job, I start looking for my next job." He was exaggerating, but the point stayed with me. I definitely agree with you: Looking for a job (or "keeping your doors & windows open to new opportunities") while having a job is much, much easier -- mentally. In my industry, most connections with head hunters are made through LinkedIn. You can set a special flag in your profile that says "I'm looking for work", but this is only visible to professional head hunters (they pay a lot of money for an account with these special privileges). It works very well. Normally, the calls start with: "Them: Are you looking at the moment? Me: No, but I am open to new and exciting opportunities. Them: Oh, great. I have something for you." Do that enough, and eventually something very good lands on your doorstep.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  > At my level (middle manager), as soon as I start my new job, I start looking for my next job." He was exaggerating, but the point stayed with me. That’s no exaggeration at all. I’m not always looking for a job. But everything I do I do with one eye toward how will this look when I get ready to interview? Am I working on tech that is demand? Am I working at the correct “scope, impact, and ambiguity” or am I just being a “ticket taker”?
slothtrop 2y ago
More than half of recruiters will ghost me after I've jumped through the hoops (phone call, CV, filling grid, security clearance forms, etc).

jongjong 2y ago

Tough times. I feel like this is caused by massive capital misallocation over decades. The vast majority of tech companies should not exist, if not for the financial environment propping them up. Now with interest rates going up, there is less cheap money and companies are forced to lay people off and/or shut down themselves. Reality is that there are too many software developers chasing a small number of value-creating opportunities in a sea of useless or highly inefficient tech companies. In the meantime, there aren't enough people to produce food, build houses, collect garbage, etc... So costs of essentials keeps going up. It's hard for software devs to transition to physical jobs so it's going to be a tough one.

linotype 2y ago
You say that, but everyone I know is working themselves to death. Companies just don’t want to hire. And why should they, if people will keep up the pace?
- jongjong 2y ago
  Same. I guess those who weren't laid off have to work harder to make up for the reduced work capacity and to give credibility to their managers' narrative that efficiency has improved by x%. This doesn't mean that all the work they do adds any value to the economy. A lot of bullshit jobs are VERY demanding. A game of whac-a-mole can keep people REALLY busy too. You can measure that they're hitting more moles per minute and call that 'increased productivity', but whether or not hitting moles with a hammer is useful is a separate question. Also, there are questions of short term gains vs long term gains. It's relatively easy to trade away long term gains to obtain short term gains. The incentive structure of our system is predicated on it.
nine_zeros 2y ago
> I feel like this is caused by massive capital misallocation over decades Absolutely a large misallocation. And this is not just about the number of engineers. It is also about number of managers, 2 pizza teams, entire management chains merely doing promotion/PIP management, entire sets of VPs and execs with no market experience or engineering experience. Even a large number of PE investors and angel investors who just landed on money but actually don't have any skills beyond betting far and wide. Highly paid roles have been paying people who are just doing administrative work. This is misallocation. And all of a sudden, this misallocation has come to bare.

kjellsbells 2y ago

One little tip I learned the hard way: an applicant tracking system (ATS) can claim to have imported your fine-looking Word or PDF resume, but that does not mean that it has correctly parsed it and populated the key fields (eg skills) that it shows to the hiring manager. The problem seems to be that ATSes struggle with the "modern" style of resume, much beloved of Word template authors, where you might have a left column with your contact details, github, and maybe some skills and then a borderless table on the right side with your positioning statement and job history. I went from zero callbacks to 80% after I junked Word and rewrote my resume in a much more old fashioned, linear format. I used Overleaf (LaTeX) like it was 1999 and exported to PDF.

zblevins 2y ago
Coming back here to really thank you for this. I converted my resume into LaTex today then to pdf. Began uploading it to a few listings and where I would previously have to go back in and correct things this is no longer happening. Much thanks.
mjevans 2y ago
Can you elaborate on the exact layout syntax these ML idiot savant agents want to read? Lack of an industry wide standard data interface makes this terrible.
- willquack 2y ago
  Get a boring LaTeX template like "Jake's Resume" I've spoken with two technical recruiters who say they prefer reading templates instead of hand-crafted Resumes on top of them also parsing better in the ATS system ):
  - kleiba 2y ago
    Can confirm a similar attitude from an HR person - they prefer a single-column, easy to scan resume that follows a tried and trusted standard structure and layout.
- 2y ago

adamc 2y ago

Actual title says "for the First Time in My Career". Edited title is kind of weird.

bagels 2y ago
Actual title is weird. How is it both the first and second time?
- hcs 2y ago
  There's just two songs in me, and I just wrote the third

ge96 2y ago

Random thought I used to reject 6mo contract offers but after being a laborer the 2.5X pay increase even for 6mo made sense. So I accepted one and now I'm here typing this on a 16" mac at a new job. I am now thinking about making better choices financially.

the_real_cher 2y ago
how do you even get those?
- ge96 2y ago
  Fill out your linked in, turn it on Have a GitHub, resume, luck I wrote extensions to through LinkedIn's jobs and other boards but ultimately luck (some company person finds you). It's even harder for me no degree but I have 5yoe. My job though was niche my robotics/hardware projects stuck out to the interviewer. I worked labor for a year it sucked. But yeah I turned down a few 6mo roles thinking they were not secure but I was like f it I need change and will just pour my higher income into my debts.
- Tade0 2y ago
  Luck mostly. You have to sift through tons of listings because companies which run such projects just throw it all in with the rest.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

I sincerely wish this chap luck. I suspect that he'll be OK. > Keeping good connections with your coworkers and not burning bridges is one of the most important things I think you can do in your career. Words to live by. I wish more folks internalized this phrase.

bilbo0s 2y ago
Related. But people should also keep in mind that layoffs throughout the industry are extensive. So don't make the mistake of only keeping good connections with your team and managers. Try, to the extent that it's possible, to keep good connections across whatever enterprise you work in. We could easily enter an era, especially in tech, where all of your team and managers are unemployed at the same time you are. Or they otherwise may not have the ability to help you. You should always have a plan for using connections in the event you find yourself in that situation. A prudent pillar of that contingency would be to expand your network as far as you can. Even the facilities guy or the guy in marketing may prove useful one day. No connection is too low or too high.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  >No connection is too low or too high. This is so true, one of my biggest corporate deals came from a guy I worked with a decade before, he was junior at the time.

purple-leafy 2y ago

Hey I got laid off too. It actually has worked out as a positive over-all. Job searching is a shit process though. I applied for ~40-50 jobs, only got 1 offer. Small country too, so thats basically all the jobs I could find. But landed in a really good company, and have a bit of a break before I start. So I've been using all my spare time to learn Graphics programming, C, and Audio Engineering. I've made a little Wolfenstein3D-type raycasting engine [0] that I'm proud of, as I'm just a frontend coder for work. [0] - https://github.com/con-dog/2.5D-raycasting-engine/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/con-dog/2.5D-raycasting-engine/blob/maste...

imranq 2y ago

I think its amazing that posts like this exist, and more should definitely be written so that people don't feel powerless after a layoff. Too often we tie our identity to institutions and it isn't doing anyone any good (well maybe it helps the shareholders).

mooreds 2y ago
This is the one I wrote about my lessons: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2020/05/04/how-to-go-through-a-layoff/ https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2020/05/04/how-to-go-thro...

coolThingsFirst 2y ago

u guys are getting interviews? 2 years of experience and it's hard. seems the old markers of dev competence are no longer there, some github projects, a degree were enough nowadays it's a lot harder even here in europe where the salaries are on the low end.

scarface_74 2y ago

I have been let go three times in almost 30 years and I’m on my 10th job. The first time was at a struggling startup. We all knew they were struggling and the company was very honest with us and kept us abreast of all the companies that our VC backers were pursuing. I was in some of the interviews with potential acquirers. Our backers promised all of us that “we would get paid for every hour we worked”. Of course they couldn’t promise us we would not get laid off. All of us stayed until the bitter end. That day we all got laid off after being acquired for scraps, we went to lunch together and hung out in the office just joking around until the end of the day. We all had something in our back pocket anyway and from looking at LinkedIn, everyone found a job that was either as good or better within a month. This was 2011. Our largest customer arranged for me to get contract with them to finish out a project, the acquiring company gave the customer access to all of their code and gave me permission to keep my work laptop and waived my non compete. They gave everyone a month severance. I was treated fairly and have no ill will toward anyone there. The second time it was Amazon in 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38474212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38474212 The third time it was a shit show of a company last year. But this is where I have problems with the author > How do you succinctly summarize and highlight all you’ve done there? I keep my resume and longer form career document up to date at least once per quarter. I list out the details of major accomplishments in STAR format while it’s still fresh. I have both a technical summary and a business oriented summary for non technical people. It looks like he learned that lesson too. > I was being selective and only applying for places I’d realistically want to work He has a newborn baby. His first priority is to work for any company that will allow him to exchange labor for money to support his family. Even if you do have savings, no need to use it unnecessarily. I got a 3.5 months severance from Amazon the year before last and my stretch goal was to get an offer before my paid out PTO of 9 days was over let alone dip into my severance. Of course I reached out to my network first and targeted outreach to companies specializing in my niche (strategic cloud consulting emphasizing app dev). I also spammed my resume to any CRUD enterprise app dev job as a Plan B. I could always keep interviewing while working. I was working remotely. I did end up getting a Plan A job offer within 9 days of leaving AWS. But I knew three months in that it wasn’t going to be a long term job. When the end did come, I was already in the early stages of interviewing for my current job and had an offer three weeks later. But again, I wasn’t going to let the perfect be the enemy of getting any job and I kept applying for Enterprise CRUD jobs until the offer was finalized. I did work on a side project in 2023. But I got paid for it. A former CTO had some work he needed done.

Aeolun 2y ago

> I really wish companies would start giving honest feedback even if it’s hard for the candidates to heard at first. It would be a much better way for candidates to improve themselves and we’re all adults here and can take the feedback. I’ve said it before, and I say it again. This isn’t true. When companies try to be helpful and give you well meaning feedback, you find out that their reasons for rejecting you are absolutely banal, and you’d have been better off not hearing anything.

tracerbulletx 2y ago
Going the other direction.. most of the time I've seen feedback given to a candidate, they freaked out about it and got defensive. Not worth the risk.
- petesergeant 2y ago
  And even in the case where the candidate is right to push back on the feedback, the process has usually moved on with another candidate already, so it's just awkward for everyone.
sfriskzo2005 2y ago
Another issue is that positions which are advertised are often already filled by some acquaintance, but we need to go thru the motions of posting the job, sifting thru resumes, interview questions, leetcodes, etc. and interview theatre before we go and hire the acquaintance. Sometimes, HR doesnt know and the interview panel may not know.
dilyevsky 2y ago
It’s banal because nobody is going to share the truth for fear of retaliation unless they’ve never done this before
Aurornis 2y ago
When I first become a hiring manager I thought I'd be the exception and provide everyone with detailed and honest feedback. I didn't last very long. Candidates would see the feedback as an invitation to prove me wrong or argue with my assessment. I got a few very angry e-mails from people who took their rejection very personally and made it clear that I was their enemy. One person (who was actually very unqualified) even went on a mini rampage across the internet, trying to "name and shame" my company and even my personally for the rejection. There were even threats of a discrimination lawsuit. So I stopped. It's back to something like "We've decided to proceed with other candidates"

triyambakam 2y ago

I also got laid off during parental leave. I had a strong feeling that it would happen but due to the stress of a medically dangerous pregnancy, I made the excuse that I didn't have the capacity to simultaneously focus on a preemptive job search. That was a bad decision.

sfriskzo2005 2y ago

>> If you haven’t searched for a job since then it will surprise you how much more of an employers market it is now. Could you clarify further? Front what I hear on the news, there are hundreds of thousands of open engineering/ai positions in the US and we cannot find workers to fill them. You mention ZIRP, so I'm assuming you're probably in the US. Practically every news show in the past two weeks has noted the importance of having a concerted US policy to help fill these open positions. They also mention the existential risk to the US caused by the massive shortage of engineers. How does this square with you saying " If you haven’t searched for a job since then it will surprise you how much more of an employers market it is now." Where is the disconnect?

nextworddev 2y ago
Lots of job postings are fake
leptons 2y ago
Just because a position is advertised does not mean the position is going to be filled - a lot of companies advertise a job that doesn't really exist. They do this for several reasons - to look like they are more successful than they are (if they are hiring they are expanding), and some just collect resumes. They might even do a few interviews, which helps their team practice doing interviews even if the company isn't going to hire. I'm sure there are other reasons. I've been in the tech job market about 30 years, and this might be the second worst time for people in tech, the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s being the worst. My boss knows it too, he knows I can't leave and find another job that pays as well right now. A couple of years ago I was still getting about 20 recruiter contacts per week, and now I'm lucky if I get 1 per month. If you haven't noticed how bad it is, I have to wonder why?
- sfriskzo2005 2y ago
  I mostly hire and dont actively code for work, so I never got 20 recruiter contacts per week before or now. Agree on not all postings are real (we do some because we're mandated to do a proper search when filling positions with people we know)

OptionOfT 2y ago

15 years of experience. Laid off twice last year. 10+ years at 2nd last role, 3 months at last. Like the article mentions, it's an employers market. The thing I struggle is the question to why you want to work at a place. Either I'm short and to the point, or it ends up written like I used to when working for one of the Big Three. And coincidentally, that is exactly the kind of stuff that ChatGPT generates.

eschneider 2y ago
"I have a mortgage and a family" is fine. Those people are highly motivated.
- OptionOfT 2y ago
  I'll try that and I'll let you know!
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    It will end poorly. Even if it's objectively true, employers will not want to see such a reason, so you'll have to make something up, even if it's not true. It's just the name of the game.
    - lnsru 2y ago
      Exactly. It’s mating dance. Nobody cares about one’s family. One must talk about good products, nice working culture, positive vibes, professional development on topic X, suitable experience in topic Y, similar finished project Z, interesting personalities of the interviewers. Motherload of well crafted lies. I learned a lot to lie during interviews. As a graduate I was absolute truth teller and every interview changed me a bit. After hundreds of them during a decade I am comfortable with any lie. So sad when I think about it.
- duskwuff 2y ago
  "Money can be exchanged for goods and services."

cryptozeus 2y ago

"How to Tell a Layoff is Coming" another tip from personal experience, a manager and key people always know. Be in the inner circle. Also I was once laid off on my Hawaii vacation, talk about perfect timing.

PHGamer 2y ago
i knew someone who was QA his boss approved his PTO to go to the dentist. however that day turned out to be the layoff day so HR threated him to come to the office. was hilarious. god i hate HR. anyways if you ever go on PTO turn your phone off completely.
- ivraatiems 2y ago
  Threatened him with what? Being laid off?
  - vintermann 2y ago
    I assume at the point he didn't know, so yeah, that could have worked (and was probably basically it).
saagarjha 2y ago
Not true. Often managers are caught unawares of layoffs until they are executed.

game_the0ry 2y ago

> More than 150,000 layoffs were reported in 2024 and a whopping 264,000 in 2023. I switched careers in my 30s to get into tech. It was big, difficult pivot. At the moment, I do not regret it and really like what I do. But the job market is shockingly bad. I do not have an optimistic outlook, so I am looking to pivot again, likely a small business. All the extra cash I have after expenses, I put towards various side hustles. One big upside to being a SWE is that I can make whatever app I want and put it on the internet publicly.

myth_drannon 2y ago
You and the other million of devs think the same, that's why the indie dev market is exploding and twitter is full of influencers posting their app revenue..
- paxys 2y ago
  This is so true, and I'm in fact going through this right now. One of my semi-technical friends followed an online tutorial and created a stock tracker web app, almost entirely using ChatGPT. It is a pretty good achievement (in the context of someone who isn't a programmer and started from scratch), and I'm encouraging him to keep going down this path and developing his skills. He is however convinced that he can launch this app and make millions, and is even considering quitting his job to do it full time. There is zero chance it is going to get any kind of traction, and I keep telling him that, but he is too enamored by all the "influencers" on LinkedIn/X telling him that he is basically a 10x engineer now.
  - purple-leafy 2y ago
    man, launching and leaving your job is definitely not the way to sustainably, or successfully work for yourself. I encourage others who want to work for themselves to reduce their core work hours if possible, and spend the new free time working on their projects. Otherwise you will burn out
    - 2y ago

skeptrune 2y ago

>Recruiters. Don’t discount or blow them off. They have a vested interest in getting you hired and 3 of my jobs have been found through them. Recruiters are often and perform a valuable service. Agree that it can be invaluable to find one you want to work with.

duderific 2y ago

Similar to the article's author, I also once got laid off shortly after being hired; three months in my case. I was promised they were on a growth track to nine-figure revenue. One month of down subscription growth, the CEO panicked, and I was gone. I still get mad thinking about it.

shove 2y ago

This thread has a lot of interesting anecdata so I’ll add mine. Over 25 years experience in frontend web, searching since July, and the water is as ice cold as I’ve ever felt it. Low response rates, low interview rates, zero offers. Wondering if the backend grass is slightly greener at the moment or that’s just my perception from the other side of the fence.

scarface_74 2y ago
If someone (I don’t know if it is true in your case or not) has a generic set of skills like - “full stack developer” or “front end developer”, there are hundreds of people applying for the same job and it’s hard to stand out. You have to lean on your network.
Tade0 2y ago
Also doing frontend, but my friends from the other side of the stack fence tell me that employers have been piling up responsibilities, so when you apply for a backend position, you're automatically assumed to fit a DevOps role as well. Anyway, I've found that back in our field it's largely React roles which were affected. Angular jobs are fewer and typically lowballed, but not nearly as much as the rest.

deleted 2y ago

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0xbadcafebee 2y ago

I really, really wish the industry would give the fuck up on resumes. It's such a stupid way to hire. Huge waste of time for all involved, inaccurate, lengthy, difficult. As a hiring manager, I want: - Your references are already vetted and testimonials left on a public profile, private on invite for those who haven't left their job yet - Actual qualifications, like job training and certifications. Even Scrum Training. I want to know you were actually taught the right way at least once, by a reputable source - A written contract that what you say is your experience is true, and that I can use arbitration to seek damages if you lied - A standard set of tests administered by experts chosen at random. - Your requirements to be hired As a candidate, I want: - The salary range, hire type (contract/full-time), benefits - The location - A description of the project you want worked on and skills required - Your company's pitch deck or equivalent - Glassdoor reviews - My name, age, gender, picture, etc are hidden until the company has clicked a button that certifies they are interested in me based on my qualifications. I get that we can't stop hiring bias, but at least make it more obvious when they pass up why they have. We can't we just agree as an industry that we should all pitch in and make this? There's enough capital here, and it's not like we don't know how to build these things. Certainly there's enough people here motivated to work on it.

mixmastamyk 2y ago
Linked in and Glassdoor already exist, though I don't trust Microsoft to administer. Needs an open alternative.
scarface_74 2y ago
All of these signals are problematic. Your references are already vetted and testimonials left on a public profile, No one is going to give you a negative reference on LinkedIn. That doesn’t provide any meaningful signal. Actual qualifications, like job training and certifications. Even Scrum Training. Certifications don’t prove competence. Anyone can memorize enough to pass a multiple choice test and there have been brain dumps for them for decades. I went through the 6 certification .Net “Architect” path back in 2010 basically as a guided learning path with a goal at the end. I knew even back then they were worthless as far as competence and never put them on my resume. More recently, at one point I had 9 of the then 12 AWS certs as late as 2021. I have 6 of the 9 current ones now and I’m working on the other 3 by the end of the year. I got my first one without ever opening the console in 2018. They also served as a guided learning path so I would know what I didn’t know and I could talk the talk. But I don’t consider myself knowing a service until I’ve used them. They are all very shallow marketing certs except I’ve heard good things about the Kubernetes certifications and that they require hands on problem solving. I want to know you were actually taught the right way at least once, by a reputable source How would you know that? I have a degree in CS. I graduated in 1996. Is the source I was taught COBOL and FORTRAN from “reputable” or “relevant”? A written contract that what you say is your experience is true, and that I can use arbitration to seek damages if you lied Arbitration is biased toward the client and the clients industry. The judges don’t get hired if they consistently make judgments that are against the industry that hires them. A standard set of tests administered by experts chosen at random. What I am looking for when hiring is specific to the company. But they have that already - leetCode style interviews that don’t give a signal to whether they are “smart and gets thing done”.

OnionBlender 2y ago

How are people searching for programming jobs? LinkedIn is garbage because it keeps showing jobs that don't even contain the word I searched for. I go directly to the big company's career pages, but it is hard to discover new jobs or new companies.

adityamwagh 2y ago
Using Google site search is a great way! For example - site:lever.co “Software Engineer, Machine Learning” OR “Machine Learning Engineer”. This is helped me search for a lot of jobs that weren’t advertised. You can do this similarly for greenhouse.io, ashbyhq.com, myworkdayjobs.com, breezy.hr, workable.com, dover.io, ats.rippling.com, icims.com and other popular ATS websites.
begueradj 2y ago
LinkedIn is a place to show your social status.
GVRV 2y ago
I miss StackOverflow jobs – it showed that jobs were probably published there because someone technical advocated for the platform.
daemin 2y ago
In the last 12 years of employment I've pretty much received all my jobs through the friends, friends of friends, and former colleagues network. There was one job which I actually applied for on their website and had a standard interview process for, but I had former colleagues already working there, so I include that. I am in Game Development so it is a much smaller community than the overall tech industry and you're more likely to know people in different companies as people slowly disperse after completing a project. I think as you get older you kind of have to find jobs in this way, relying on your network and reputation, rather than doing a fresh cold application each time.
halfmatthalfcat 2y ago
Find a job you find interesting and have a compelling value add. Find that job’s hiring manager on LinkedIn/Other Social. DM the hiring manager and start a conversation. Has worked for me multiple times. You cut the line (or black box) and start to build rapport instantly.

ypeterholmes 2y ago

Typo: "Your pay your taxes into the system" Sorry to be this way.

keeptrying 2y ago

If you code, you should be building a business on the side. Especially if you are early in your career and its becoming harder to land a stable job. you need to learn how to market your skills, get clients and deliver. No more excuses to sit in a job and do nothing. This is going to be critical to survive. Eventually I think companies are going to be much smaller entities than they once were which means your have to really buid your own biz.

keeptrying 2y ago
the most importat skills to learn: 1. Sales = learn to knock on a 100 doors to get one sale. 2. Marketing = learn to communicate your value prop to specific companeis and hiring managers. 3. Delviery = learn to deliver products/projects end to end with all the management that goes in between. If you know all 3 you'll never be in a position where you don't have income. It takes about 4 years to really get a grasp of all 3 so start now ... don't just do a 8 hour job and go home and watch tv. Keep trying to sell your services to others ... at least 2-3 hours after work to other companies/startups/other industries. Its a big world - smeone needs your services - your survival depends on finding those people nad packaging your skilsl so that they buy.
- rwyinuse 2y ago
  Good advice if you don't have a family. Utterly impossible for someone with small kids and a wife who is also working.
  - travelthrowaway 2y ago
    time-management and sleep deprivation, should write a book with that title 0600 - 0900 Your project 0900 - 1600 Corporate job 1700 - 2100 Family & free time (you need to learn how to make the most of it so that you can recharge as well) 2100 - 2300 The low-CPU low demanding part of managing a business paired with some interesting background content goes here
    - 2y ago

maxehmookau 2y ago

Firing someone during their parental leave is a special kind of messed up. The fact that it's not completely illegal in any reasonable country is horrifying.

throwway120385 2y ago
It's illegal in my state in the US. Also if you do FMLA in the US it would be illegal if you're the parent who gave birth. Outside of a few states here in the US you're basically expected back at work as soon as you get out of the hospital unless you have a doctor's note.

magic_smoke_ee 2y ago

Misalignment of interests is the core error of reasoning the traditional employee makes in offering up unquestioning faith and loyalty to a random corporation run by strangers; that greedy incompetence will somehow give them enduring security. This is decidedly not the case. Instead, more sensible employees should form worker-owned co-ops to both share in the treasure of livable earnings with potential immense profits and structure themselves for the maximum security of those who "sail on that ship" together rather than optimizing short-term profits of someone else.

junto 2y ago

After the dot-com crash, I was laid off when the company I worked for went under. They specialized in creating e-learning courses for large corporations. That experience taught me a valuable lesson: there are some industries you just don’t want to be involved with when the economy takes a downturn. Companies tighten their budgets, and the first cuts often come from areas like training and marketing. On the consumer side, people quickly drop non-essential luxuries like streaming services or food delivery. If you work in industries that provide those kinds of services, they’re essentially “fair weather industries”—great during good times but highly vulnerable during tough ones. Since then, I’ve made a point of only working in what I call “recession-proof” verticals. These include energy (avoiding risky sectors), insurance (because companies rarely skip paying premiums), and certain areas of banking (where money flows abundantly). Another critical strategy is diversifying your skill set and building a strong internal network within your company. The more indispensable you become, the more secure your position. In more technical terms, this is akin to “obligate mutualistic symbiosis”—a relationship where both parties thrive because they rely on each other.

nephronaut 2y ago

Wait this header doesn’t make sense. Laid off for the first time? Twice?

uyfyxr8 2y ago

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