4 ms·

Ask HN: How do you find your next job?

After 18 months of building a data analytics startup it looks like we are going to run short of cash within 6 - 8 weeks, with insufficient investor interest to continue. As much as I don't want to be distracted from our work, I need to start thinking about what to do next. I've been absurdly lucky in my engineering career to have interesting jobs fall into my lap, so I feel ill-prepared to tackle this. Any general advice or things to consider? I have a family to support, but also 4 or so months of savings before I'll really start sweating.

penguinlinux 12y ago
I work in the analytics space myself and jobs keep coming left and right. I don't know if you work more on the dev side or the Ops side or project management? but I can tell you that in the ops and dev side there are lots of companies looking for people with experience working with all sort of analytics tools Kafka, Hadoop, Hbase, Hive, MongoDB, Python flask or django , Map Reduce. If you have some of those skills under your belt I would suggest to reach out to your network on linked in. Specially if you have some recruiters as contacts . Also if you are in NY city or would consider moving to NY i can make some introductions.
- closebutnocigar 12y ago
  Thanks, good advice. I live in the flyover states, but in my experience location is less of an issue these days than in the past. (Current company is on the east coast.) I'm old enough now (40) to be at an inflection point in my career where I'd like to write less code but still remain technical. I've started to reach out to my network, quietly, as you suggest. Mostly I think I just need to be patient to find something that's interesting and motivating, and resist the urge to grab the first available option.
lscore720 12y ago
Well, you're proactive, that's a solid start; plus, with your skills in this tech job market, you can get away with being "ill-prepared"! Reaching out to decision-makers (hiring managers) is another route to begin learning about opportunities. Assuming there's a potential alignment between you and the company, many CTO's, Directors, Managers are happy to hop on the phone, grab coffee. It's a nice, casual way of dipping your toes in the water.

penguinlinux 12y ago

I work in the analytics space myself and jobs keep coming left and right. I don't know if you work more on the dev side or the Ops side or project management? but I can tell you that in the ops and dev side there are lots of companies looking for people with experience working with all sort of analytics tools Kafka, Hadoop, Hbase, Hive, MongoDB, Python flask or django , Map Reduce. If you have some of those skills under your belt I would suggest to reach out to your network on linked in. Specially if you have some recruiters as contacts . Also if you are in NY city or would consider moving to NY i can make some introductions.

closebutnocigar 12y ago
Thanks, good advice. I live in the flyover states, but in my experience location is less of an issue these days than in the past. (Current company is on the east coast.) I'm old enough now (40) to be at an inflection point in my career where I'd like to write less code but still remain technical. I've started to reach out to my network, quietly, as you suggest. Mostly I think I just need to be patient to find something that's interesting and motivating, and resist the urge to grab the first available option.

lscore720 12y ago

Well, you're proactive, that's a solid start; plus, with your skills in this tech job market, you can get away with being "ill-prepared"! Reaching out to decision-makers (hiring managers) is another route to begin learning about opportunities. Assuming there's a potential alignment between you and the company, many CTO's, Directors, Managers are happy to hop on the phone, grab coffee. It's a nice, casual way of dipping your toes in the water.