Ask HN: Has the market for software engineers diminished at all? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Has the market for software engineers diminished at all?

20 pointsbaron81612 comments

There was a big rush of layoffs a few months ago, but has that significantly impacted the industry? Was there enough demand for experienced engineers that those who were laid off were able to quickly find a place?

I’m still getting contacted by recruiters, and yesterday’s “Who is hiring” had plenty of postings.

What’s the experience like been for people who are trying to find a job? Do offers seem lower?

What about from those who are still trying to hire? Do candidates seem to be of higher quality?

View on HN

My gig ended due to covid, and I've spent the past few months interviewing for IC and leadership positions (12+ years experience).

Personally I've been getting plenty of meetings and interviews, but out of 10 virtual on-site interviews I've yet to receive an offer. I'm based in the US, and these were remote positions.

I interviewed with two companies for leadership positions which would have required hiring developers. Both CEOs were adamant about hiring non-US developers. One stated that because he was forced into a remote environment he would rather hire 2 or 3 offshore workers than one US based engineer.

Interviewing is tough. I think I'll need to take a few months before I can start accepting interviews again. The processes are all so long and the results at times can seem so arbitrary.

While I do need a job, accepting an interview is effectively agreeing to several phone meetings, a couple of automated hackerrank style coding tests, 6+ rounds of technical and non-technical interviews, all to receive a canned rejection email.

I'm not sure what kind of job you prefer but startups can sometimes speed the interviewing process up. If you can easily get interviews with companies, you can be frank that 6 or 5 hours of interviews for an onsite is too much.

Thanks for the tip, I'll give that a shot.

Thanks for asking this. As someone who's probably going to have to get a job in this climate very soon, I was about to pose nearly the same question.

>...and yesterday’s “Who is hiring” had plenty of postings.

At the time of writing (July 2020), the current thread is over day old with 578 comments. By contrast, the July 2019 thread had 912 comments.

I did happen across this comment, which is bleak: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23586183

Likewise upon hearing about senior engineers with 20+ years of experience being out of jobs and grinding leetcode, it made my blood run cold.

First-hand accounts on either side of the process would be great, or even more formal analysis.

Just how brutal is it out there? How high has the bar been raised? What's the approximate chance of success applying for a typical position prior to COVID and now?

Thanks for sharing. I was curious and checked the trend too:

Comments: May 2018 (1,199), 2019 (1,018), 2020 (697)

Comments: June 2018 (911), 2019 (799), 2020 (671)

Comments: July 2018 (857), 2019 (912), 2020 (622)

The hiring environment is a mess.

For example, big tech (FANG etc) is vacuuming up folks everywhere from startups to those hit hard like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb.

The top career priority in times of uncertainty is stability. So you have not just those laid off from the those companies, but those still employed and nervous, who are eyeing and applying to big tech. Startups that survive and grow now and after will have the advantage of less business competition, but will see a drop in candidates who will need more time to re-adjust to risk.

There was a decline for sure, here in London I noticed hiring has almost completely stopped for 2-3 months during the lockdown. Now it's starting to pick up again from my observation but it might take long time before job market is back to normal. By September it should be much better already imho.

I wouldn't use "Who is hiring" as a significant representation of "market software for engineers". It's difficult to answer your question since every single answer in this post is highly biased towards personal experience. In my personal experience: no, the market for software engineers has not diminished at all.

Despite layoffs, I think the market for engineers is going to grow. Working remote is just going to increase the number of people building tools to make working remote better.

Hiring is definitely down. Been so since before the pandemics. Pandemics just accelerated it. The upside of pandemics, remote is more acceptable. There's a slight upswing since early June though.

The "who is hiring" threads have had a slight decline but it doesn't seem much.

https://imgur.com/a/omLukeG

On the bright side, there's a marked increased in remote jobs.

In the US I would suspect trump's H1b freeze to push up the market value for any engineer, especially the middle standard deviation skill-wise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com