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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

Ok, I'll bite.

How can I find you online? Do you have a blog with even a modicum of activity? Do you have a linkedin that says "I'm good with X"? Some github activity? At least a twitter account where you post sometimes?

Software engineers have a NEGATIVE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE. Negative. If you're not getting recruiterspam, you're not findable. And that's totally on you, not on anyone else. It's 2017, it has never been easier to be findable. Do something, anything, and put it out there.

If recruiters can find you with "Software engineer with a pulse", you will get emails. Maybe not every day, but at least once in a while.

This advice [probably] does not work for many other professions.

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Do you even read this forum? "Negative unemployment rate" couldn't be further from the truth. There are tons of qualified programmers who get rejected left and right. I'm experiencing this at the moment myself. If there were really negative unemployment rate, then I should get 10 offers for sending out 10 resumes. In reality I'm getting 0 offers for every 10 resumes sent out.

If you're looking for work, you should put contact info in your profile here. If you're in Seattle, email me.

Well that's not necessarily true. From one of your other submissions, you stated "...I am very bad at interviewing..."

So the problem seems more of, "Hiring Mangers think I'm unqualified" rather than "There aren't enough jobs for qualified developers"

Hiring an unqualified developer is MUCH worse than not hiring a developer at all. It's wasted time and money for the company. I've been on both sides of the table so if you want some feedback on your resume/interviewing skills feel free to shoot me an email.

Shoot you an email where exactly?

You should check your HN profile visibility from a browser where you're not logged in. You don't have email in your profile.

The email address field in your profile is only shown to mods so they can contact you if there's a problem.

HN users who want to be contacted should put their email address in the "about" box.

Have you considered that you might not be a fit for companies where you are applying? For example, I would bomb at any enterprisey company, and I do really well in small early stage startups.

I could apply to hundreds of corporate jobs and I'm pretty sure I'd get none of them. Whereas for small startups I have historically rejected more offers than I've taken.

In fact, I have never gotten an offer from any company bigger than 30 or so employees. And yet my inbox gets at least 1 recruiter spam per week.

But that's besides the point. If there are very many engineers out there who aren't getting jobs within, say, 1 year of actively starting to look. And if there are very many companies out there that can't hire engineers within, say, 1 year of actively starting to look. Then there's something wrong with market fluidity in one way or another.

That said, I don't think I've ever heard of a competent engineer who can't land a job within a year of actively seeking.

Then again, I've heard that if you aren't doing anything useful for over a year, your prospects start to dwindle because people wonder what's your deal and see it as a red flag.

> Software engineers have a NEGATIVE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE.

> land a job within a year of actively seeking

A year lead time is what a negative rate looks like?

If you keep applying for jobs you're not a fit for? Yes.

I'd say 1 year is a high upper bound though. Specifics really depend.

But here's some general stats: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-biggest-predictor-o...

That link says that with a bachelor's degree or more, 17% are unemployed for 6 months or less, and 19% for a year or more. That gives a really big percent for people between 6 months and a year.

The reason I brought up the 1 year number was more to point out that there's a big difference between "I can't get a job [at all]" and "I can't get a job I really love as quickly as I want".

I mean, it doesn't matter what the unemployment rate for software engineers is, if you want a job as an AI expert at Google and all you've ever done is building simple Wordpress sites for your buddies.

> If you're not getting recruiterspam, you're not findable. And that's totally on you, not on anyone else.

Which is, to say the least, awesome? Nothing better in the world than not being found, in this day and age.

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