Ask HN: Is the CS job market tightening? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is the CS job market tightening?

43 pointssceew34 comments

I have been talking to some people in the industry and it seems the general sentiment is that the CS job market is waning. Is this sentiment true?

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Yes it is, way too many candidates out there right now. The number of jobs hasn't changed, there are still looking for web, mobile, backend and all the basic roles. Companies have the luxury to say no to who ever the heck they want. Candidates don't get multiple offers anymore like it used to be last year so the ball is on the other side right now.

Is it temporary? Maybe...

Not necessarily true. We've been looking for a medior frontend dev with Magento experience (any will do) for almost a year, no one to be found.

That's what happens when you move away from the standard technologies.

You should look for a smart frontend dev instead who could learn a new framework easily. Search for a Frontend/php or frontend/javascript developer. You'll see the difference.

We are, as well. The problem is that we currently don't have the capacity to train a new colleague. We need someone who can make a running start.

Then you fall into a specific scenario where you need someone who has a very specific keyword on a Resume. There are a lot of candidates on the market right now for all the standard positions, web javascript, mobile objective-c and swift, backend NoSQL and java, etc. Which is what I was referring to.

What's the difference getting a good smart person now who can bring themselves up in a month vs waiting another month (or more!) for someone with the keyword?

I've been working professionally in eCommerce for 7 years and have been writing OO PHP code since I was 16. I've been out of work for 6 months and cannot find a job because my last job used the Zend framework and now the industry seems to only want Laravel and Magneto developers.

I've found my experience in eCommerce is in general is completely over looked simply because I don't have professional experience with the exact framework a company is using. I have a good understanding of everything else that goes into building eCommerce sites, things like payment gateways, eCommerce analytics, etc, but the conversation always goes like this:

- "We're looking for someone with strong PHP backend skills for our eCommerce site"

- "Cool, I've been working in eCommerce for 7 years now. And I have been using PHP for over 10. I should be a really good match."

- "What's your experience with Magneto?"

- "I've played with it a little in personal projects, but I don't have any industry experience. I'm very willing to learn though. I have professional experience with other frameworks and CMS's like Zend and Wordpress so I shouldn't find it too hard."

- "Yeah, sorry we're really looking for a Magneto whizz to help us out. I don't think you have the experience we need."

I'm not sure what devs who don't have the luxury of being in a job that changes tech stacks every 5 years are suppose to do. Another example is that I've been keeping up with Node & Express in personal projects, but I can't land a job in either because I don't have the "experience". So yeah, now I'm completely out of money and losing my house and car I've realised I'm going to have to restart my career and entire life because of this crap.

I would absolutely love to learn magneto. I'd be willing to put in 2 hours of my own time every day to catch up, but I find it hard to believe someone with a year of PHP and magneto experience would be more valuable to a company that me.

I also can't believe how many people are asking for version numbers of things I've worked with either. I have Angular experience, but I'm frequently told my experience with Angular 1 isn't good enough. It's really quite ridiculous considering it only took me about a week to get a decent grasp on Angular in the first place.

You wanted someone who could get a running start 12 months ago... It might be reasonable to conclude that you would be better off finding a qualified and flexible candidate in the next 2 months who could make progress in the following 1-3 months, rather than waiting another 6+ months for Godot.

What would you do if it was tightening? It's totally out of your control so don't worry about it. Just focus on your skills, CV, job hunting etc.

No idea about entry level but for those already in the industry for 3+ years, it's smooth as ever.

Until the SV bubble does not burst the situation will remain stable (high hiring, senior roles preferred). After it is gonna be a shitshow with thousand of "previous had an high salary" devs flooding the market.

Not in Toronto. We're having a hard time filling roles.

In terms of quality of programmers, volume of applications, or..?

Right now a lot of our quality devs are getting poached.

We rely mainly on interns coming back to join the company full time but recently we've had far more people leave than could be replaced by interns.

We're lucky in the sense that most of our interns are smart folks from solid institutions such as UoT, Waterloo etc.

I'm tempted to jump ship myself but I wanted to see out a project I'm working on first.

Are you looking for anecdotes or data?

What conclusion are you hoping to reach here?

No. It's tighten a bit for juniors, but I'm still seeing extremely high salaries for intermediates and pros.

Agreed. Bootcamp grads have begun to fill but not saturate the market opportunities for entry-level positions. Mid- to senior-level opportunities are plentiful. I don't see that changing as it it requires a lot of work and experience and technical competence to reach the "advanced" level.

I don't have historical data but, anecdotally, from my current company's (smaller, though very well known) hiring practices I would not want to be a new graduate. The HR filter currently applied basically means we end up only interviewing foreign masters students from large state universities in the south. We aren't doing anything that requires a masters, the interview for our entry level positions focus purely on fundamental bachelor level CS proficiency.

I'm not sure why this is but I know if it were 8 years ago my resume would never have made it through the HR filter.

I personally can't get a junior level role (first job after university).

Without knowing the particulars about your situation. My best advice is to have a proven track record of being able to deliver code.

Easiest way is have OSS contributions.

A resume means nothing without some code to back it up

I do lack OSS contributions. I do have a Github (nothing too complex) with some solid code, and a few running websites. I do have great recommendations from working on a two month contract for a startup.

You'll find lots of great advice about job hunts on HN. It can be really hard when you're getting turned down and failing tech interviews. Try to stay positive.

I don't know your particular situation, but one thing to consider, find a job at a company you want to work for, even if it's not the position you want. It's sometimes easier to transfer from within.

I've never encountered a tech interview in any of my phone calls or on-sites.

I've tried applying for QA, but got turned down on my second interview with an engineer, because they thought I would be bored, since I already had some dev experience from a two month contract.

I've already sought advice. This included coffee with other HN users, and posting top threads. One is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13726646

In Paris in my company we have a hard time finding even junior front-end devs, salaries are rising quickly

Developer salaries in Europe are ridiculously bad, not sure about Paris specifically, but one of my in-laws moved from Vienna to San Francisco and the salary boost was ridiculous (and housing in Vienna proper is extremely expensive too, so it's not as if he moved from a cheap country).

We've had developers move from Spain to Chile, and even Uruguay where I am, rather than France, so there must be some problem with salaries (they do have the advantage of the same language here of course).

Depends on where. The junior market is tightening, but mid and senior level seem to be still fine.

senior level are fine everywhere i think :)

Yep, it's screwed out there. The bubble has burst.

Depends on what you do. If you're yet another web dev who does little more than glue together other people's code, maybe. If you have a deeper skill set I think you'll be fine.

What kind of skill set are you referencing?

Robotics/instrument control, manufacturing automation, AI, image processing, computer vision, systems level stuff, large scale network/system engineering, whatever. Fields where you're solving hard problems that haven't been solved a million times already.

How does one bootstrap/find companies in this domain?

Seems OK here in the UK. A few years out of education and focused on Golang in which demand is outpacing supply, especially in London.

Where are you based?

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