5 ms·

I want to agree, however, it will take every bit of that time for some to find new placement. These AI cuts aren't just making it harder to keep a job, but hard

I want to agree, however, it will take every bit of that time for some to find new placement. These AI cuts aren't just making it harder to keep a job, but harder to get a job as well.

stingraycharles 5mo ago
This isn’t my experience, but I think it depends highly on the segment. We have mainly senior C++ devs (database company), and it’s still a challenge to find great engineers. I think the current job market isn’t “one size fits all”. Having said that, obviously if they’re getting laid off, they may very well be in the segment that’s less desirable.
- ifwinterco 5mo ago
  Very regional as well, Eastern europe is supposedly doing well, western europe (UK/NL) is doing alright, north america seems significantly worse
  - dozerly 5mo ago
    Yes Poland in particular is booming. It’s an outsource destination that’s higher skill and less risk than India.
  - lbreakjai 5mo ago
    I've got a couple of friends that left London to go back to Poland during covid. They first continued to work remotely, but ended up switching to Polish companies because the pay was better.
    - ifwinterco 5mo ago
      Yes I think salaries are still a bit lower, but the gap has closed a lot. And cost of living is lower in Poland plus there is some tax break for self employed contractors that means you only pay ~20% tax compared to ~40% in the UK. With those two factors you could easily end up better off overall, especially if you have kids
      - lbreakjai 5mo ago
        The kids factor is even bigger if you move back close to relatives. The ability to drop your children at grandma's instead of paying for childcare is an easy 1k a month you're saving.
        robohoe 5mo ago
        I wtedy przynajmniej babcia będzie szczęśliwa pilnować dzieci.
        amonith 5mo ago
        Daycare is completely free in Poland since 2024 (you need to submit an application to ZUS, but there are no limits, it's always accepted), even the private ones. You only pay separately for food (10 zł per day the child is actually attending to the daycare).
    - amonith 5mo ago
      I switched from a Polish company to a German one (both remote), but my pay is more or less the same. The difference is that in Poland to get that money I have to be a "top performer" with a lot of stress and not a lot of time, while in Germany I can be just a mid dev.
matwood 5mo ago
> but harder to get a job as well. I just tried hiring someone and received over 200 resumes that looked mostly fake. Thinking about adding a final in person interview in an attempt cut down the garbage when I repost.
- antonymoose 5mo ago
  Use a good recruiter to do the dirty work for you, it’s not cheap but it’s worth the lack of hassle. With that said, at my firm we switched to using an in-house non-technical HR recruiter using nothing but a LinkedIn Job listing and the results are exactly as you’re experiencing. Perhaps 1 in 100 is a real human with a real resume, the rest are AI being fed our job description to generate a resume. Onsite final interviews and technical assessments are our stop-gap.
  - gcr 5mo ago
    How can humans stand out to companies like yours? I’ve considered writing informally and putting subtle typos in my cover letters, for example, to signal humanity. Is this a good idea or do recruiters look down on it?
    - shimman 5mo ago
      You can't, this is the issue with an extremely unregulated industry. You want to stand out as a single individual among 10,000 similar qualified people on paper? Good luck. This is likely an unintentional, but beneficial, side effect in thwarting labors power. Since workers have a hard time getting interviews due to AI slop, that means they'll have a harder time developing leverage rather than being forced into accepting any job because the alternative is to become homeless and die.
    - cullenking 5mo ago
      The people I hired in my last round, with over 600 slop and fake applicants, had honest and informal cover letters that stood out. I’m sure I passed up on real decent people as a result, but there’s no perfect way to avoid this right now. It helps that we have something closer to a lifestyle business, where I can ask for a brief paragraph about your relationship to the outdoors and cycling, but that just means I had 500 slop cover letters gushing about cycling. The three that made it through were short concise honest and linked to real world activities they did. Good luck, it’s a hard problem , and very very adversarial. You have true scam level applications from North Korea and India, and you have unqualified people trying to appear qualified. Sprinkled in are unqualified people who would be a good hire because of raw capability, and qualified people who are looking to do bare minimum.
_heimdall 5mo ago
For better or worse, it isn't a company's job to pay laid off employees until they find a new role. The industry standard for severance is 1-2 weeks pay per year at the company, paying out roughly 7 months is a big deal (and yes, an acknowledgment of how rough they know the job hunt will be).
- gcr 5mo ago
  Not in tech. Larger severance packages are common. Going forward, I wonder if severance packages should be a point of competitive recruiting advantage
  - bluGill 5mo ago
    They are for CEOs and have been for decades. We call them "golden parachutes", and a lot of people hate them.
    - _heimdall 5mo ago
      I assumed we weren't talking about CEOs though. Can't say I've ever heard of a CEO being impacted by layoffs.
      - bluGill 5mo ago
        CEOs get fired once in a while. It is different but the same.
        _heimdall 5mo ago
        Not as part of a layoff, though yes they can get fired. If they play their cards right apparently they can also be rehired days later and install a board that better suits them.
  - _heimdall 5mo ago
    Are smaller tech companies also commonly doing larger severances? I've only been laid off once and its when the company was basically out of money, but my understanding was always that it was only FAANG and similar that considered larger severance packages.
mghackerlady 5mo ago
Depends on what you specialise in. Sysadmins seem to be in demand (which isn't a programming job but is in tech still) and embedded hasn't been killed by AI yet (and I doubt it will)
Aurornis 5mo ago
> however, it will take every bit of that time for some to find new placement. Isn't this another way of saying the severance package is generous enough to cover the time needed to find another job even in a down market? If a severance package that covers the time needed to find a job isn't enough then it's starting to feel like we're being angry just to be angry. I don't like layoffs either (I've been laid off before) but if a company is giving 7 months of severance on what was already a very high paying job, that's very good.
- harimau777 5mo ago
  I don't think that seven months is near enough to reliably cover the time it takes to find a job in this market.

I want to agree, however, it will take every bit of that time for some to find new placement. These AI cuts aren't just making it harder to keep a job, but harder to get a job as well.

stingraycharles 5mo ago

This isn’t my experience, but I think it depends highly on the segment. We have mainly senior C++ devs (database company), and it’s still a challenge to find great engineers. I think the current job market isn’t “one size fits all”. Having said that, obviously if they’re getting laid off, they may very well be in the segment that’s less desirable.

ifwinterco 5mo ago
Very regional as well, Eastern europe is supposedly doing well, western europe (UK/NL) is doing alright, north america seems significantly worse
- dozerly 5mo ago
  Yes Poland in particular is booming. It’s an outsource destination that’s higher skill and less risk than India.
- lbreakjai 5mo ago
  I've got a couple of friends that left London to go back to Poland during covid. They first continued to work remotely, but ended up switching to Polish companies because the pay was better.
  - ifwinterco 5mo ago
    Yes I think salaries are still a bit lower, but the gap has closed a lot. And cost of living is lower in Poland plus there is some tax break for self employed contractors that means you only pay ~20% tax compared to ~40% in the UK. With those two factors you could easily end up better off overall, especially if you have kids
    - lbreakjai 5mo ago
      The kids factor is even bigger if you move back close to relatives. The ability to drop your children at grandma's instead of paying for childcare is an easy 1k a month you're saving.
      - robohoe 5mo ago
        I wtedy przynajmniej babcia będzie szczęśliwa pilnować dzieci.
      - amonith 5mo ago
        Daycare is completely free in Poland since 2024 (you need to submit an application to ZUS, but there are no limits, it's always accepted), even the private ones. You only pay separately for food (10 zł per day the child is actually attending to the daycare).
  - amonith 5mo ago
    I switched from a Polish company to a German one (both remote), but my pay is more or less the same. The difference is that in Poland to get that money I have to be a "top performer" with a lot of stress and not a lot of time, while in Germany I can be just a mid dev.

matwood 5mo ago

> but harder to get a job as well. I just tried hiring someone and received over 200 resumes that looked mostly fake. Thinking about adding a final in person interview in an attempt cut down the garbage when I repost.

antonymoose 5mo ago
Use a good recruiter to do the dirty work for you, it’s not cheap but it’s worth the lack of hassle. With that said, at my firm we switched to using an in-house non-technical HR recruiter using nothing but a LinkedIn Job listing and the results are exactly as you’re experiencing. Perhaps 1 in 100 is a real human with a real resume, the rest are AI being fed our job description to generate a resume. Onsite final interviews and technical assessments are our stop-gap.
- gcr 5mo ago
  How can humans stand out to companies like yours? I’ve considered writing informally and putting subtle typos in my cover letters, for example, to signal humanity. Is this a good idea or do recruiters look down on it?
  - shimman 5mo ago
    You can't, this is the issue with an extremely unregulated industry. You want to stand out as a single individual among 10,000 similar qualified people on paper? Good luck. This is likely an unintentional, but beneficial, side effect in thwarting labors power. Since workers have a hard time getting interviews due to AI slop, that means they'll have a harder time developing leverage rather than being forced into accepting any job because the alternative is to become homeless and die.
  - cullenking 5mo ago
    The people I hired in my last round, with over 600 slop and fake applicants, had honest and informal cover letters that stood out. I’m sure I passed up on real decent people as a result, but there’s no perfect way to avoid this right now. It helps that we have something closer to a lifestyle business, where I can ask for a brief paragraph about your relationship to the outdoors and cycling, but that just means I had 500 slop cover letters gushing about cycling. The three that made it through were short concise honest and linked to real world activities they did. Good luck, it’s a hard problem , and very very adversarial. You have true scam level applications from North Korea and India, and you have unqualified people trying to appear qualified. Sprinkled in are unqualified people who would be a good hire because of raw capability, and qualified people who are looking to do bare minimum.

_heimdall 5mo ago

For better or worse, it isn't a company's job to pay laid off employees until they find a new role. The industry standard for severance is 1-2 weeks pay per year at the company, paying out roughly 7 months is a big deal (and yes, an acknowledgment of how rough they know the job hunt will be).

gcr 5mo ago
Not in tech. Larger severance packages are common. Going forward, I wonder if severance packages should be a point of competitive recruiting advantage
- bluGill 5mo ago
  They are for CEOs and have been for decades. We call them "golden parachutes", and a lot of people hate them.
  - _heimdall 5mo ago
    I assumed we weren't talking about CEOs though. Can't say I've ever heard of a CEO being impacted by layoffs.
    - bluGill 5mo ago
      CEOs get fired once in a while. It is different but the same.
      - _heimdall 5mo ago
        Not as part of a layoff, though yes they can get fired. If they play their cards right apparently they can also be rehired days later and install a board that better suits them.
- _heimdall 5mo ago
  Are smaller tech companies also commonly doing larger severances? I've only been laid off once and its when the company was basically out of money, but my understanding was always that it was only FAANG and similar that considered larger severance packages.

mghackerlady 5mo ago

Depends on what you specialise in. Sysadmins seem to be in demand (which isn't a programming job but is in tech still) and embedded hasn't been killed by AI yet (and I doubt it will)

Aurornis 5mo ago

> however, it will take every bit of that time for some to find new placement. Isn't this another way of saying the severance package is generous enough to cover the time needed to find another job even in a down market? If a severance package that covers the time needed to find a job isn't enough then it's starting to feel like we're being angry just to be angry. I don't like layoffs either (I've been laid off before) but if a company is giving 7 months of severance on what was already a very high paying job, that's very good.

harimau777 5mo ago
I don't think that seven months is near enough to reliably cover the time it takes to find a job in this market.