Hacker News Reader

Comment by lelandfe | Hacker News Reader

Interesting how different our job market experiences were.

First, only 8 applications! That’s fantastic - I likewise am starting a senior software eng role… but after 6 months of unemployed full time interviewing, and around 80 applications. FE, not BE, though.

In terms of content, I think every coding round required time/space complexity analysis, and (as an FE!) most had me doing things like building recursive binary tree checkers, solving medium Leetcode problems, etc.

> I made a point of challenging it and asking whether it was representative of the role

Yes! Love this. I had a systems design round, which are usually my time to shine, that focused exclusively on designing an app’s database. A DBA I am not, and I essentially flunked. I brought it up to their CTO on a later call, as I really didn’t think that was a fair assessment of me.

That wound up being the place that hired me :)

View on HN

I have had a kind of similar experience. 5 years experience, feel underpaid so started looking for a job. Did hired.com, was contacted by about 20 companies. That turned into 5 phone screens, 0 on sites. 2 of the phone screens said I passed and were going to schedule an onsite but ended up ghosting me.

I also applied to about 10 other places directly but never heard back from any of them. Got contacted by Meta but then they cancelled my interview. Weird to me that everyone is saying that it is a white hot market but I can't even get an onsite.

It was a white-hot market last year. Now a lot of large startups are laying off staff and some companies are implementing hiring freezes.

For example, Meta probably cancelled your interview because they now have a hiring freeze on E5 (Senior) and below.

Is this due to the interest rates hikes?

Well, the root cause is likely the interest rate hikes but the proximate cause is that the economic environment has become drastically worse in the last ~6-9mo.

Tech stocks are down a ridiculous amount and funding for startups is now much harder to come by. Probably other factors I don't know about as well.

>Tech stocks are down a ridiculous amount

Any idea why that happened? Were they overvalued and the bubble finally burst?

For stocks like Netflix I understand why, that's obvious, but for the rest, I'm kinda scratching my head.

Good to see I am not the only one interviewing a ton. I have a different experience than yours for FE interviews. No leetcode questions. Mostly take home or live coding React/Vanilla JS stuff. No system design rounds either mostly talking about the tech stack in breadth and sometimes in-depth.

You guys are not alone. My last job search was probably on the order of 100 applications, 10 interviews, 1 offer. It's been this way my whole 20+ year career. I don't know who these Captains Of Industry geniuses are who are getting multiple offers from 20 job applications, but I'm sure it's not the norm.

> My last job search was probably on the order of 100 applications, 10 interviews, 1 offer.

This is bizarre to me. How many years of experience do you have? I am in the US.

I get almost a 1/1 interview to application ratio and numerous offers, and I'm nothing special. I've just "been around the block" and I can convey that I've dealt with the big, difficult problems in the real world and have tackled them head on. Maybe it's the honest "been there, done that" I can convey after 20 years in the industry.

We may also be applying to different types of companies. I don't go for the "5 rounds of social fit" type companies, I go for straight engineering.

That's been my experience as well. Last job search, I put in 3 or 4 applications and after all the calls and interviews were done I ended up with 3 offers.

I'm nothing special. But I do learn a little about each company I'm applying to and tailor my resume to each position. If possible I develop an internal contact so I can get some informal information on the position from the inside in advance. I only had inside contacts for two of the companies last time though.

I can't imagine doing that for 100+ companies like some people apply to. I have to imagine most people applying to that many are just doing a spray-and-pray method.

Or maybe advertising themselves but not selling themselves. In some cases a 2% conversion rate is a decent goal for a marketer advertising to the general public, but would be pretty bad for a salesman getting commission from personalized sales.

I'm no salesman, but approach the job hunt like an enterprise salesman who needs to land a good account with a good commission to live on.

Not who you're replying to, but I have 10 years FE experience, and have managed small teams (3-5). My hit rate for interviews to applications was around 1:6. My only requirements around applications were: no early startups, a modern tech stack, and a minimum engineering team size.

The overwhelming majority of companies simply ghosted my application – Spotify, Atlassian, ADP, Lyft, Stripe, and Squarespace were all applications I made in one week, none of whom ever responded.

Hopefully I'll be closer to 1:1 once I've got 20 years under my belt ;)

OP here, I didn't keep an accurate log, but yea it's all ghosting. I'd estimate it's about 85% "never contacted" ghosting, about 5% ghosting after an initial call w/ company recruiter, and 10% ghosting after doing at least one phone screen. I don't know whether these companies are just incredibly disorganized and forget people, whether the jobs don't really exist in the first place, or if it's just their cowardly way to say "no" to a candidate without actually saying "no".

It is my belief that, like most tech companies, they have pretty much a huge raging river of good candidates to choose from, so they have to use a very coarse filter (ignoring almost everyone), in order to deal with a manageable number of them.

is this some US thing?

here in Eastern EU if you have >= 3 years of xp then probably almost all of companies that are hiring will try to talk to you if you apply

ofc if your skills/tech matches their requirements somewhat reasonably

>is this some US thing?

Western EU thing as well. There's an oversupply of candidates (everyone wants move/live here) and a low supply of jobs (in some countries), so companies can afford to be very picky.

Eastern EU has the opposite phenomenon, oversupply of jobs due to outsourcing/nearshoring coming in, and lack of skilled candidates since may skilled ones moved west.

Over Supply in the West?

Yes. My no-name company paying average or below average wages, in my no-name western EU town in Austria, has received over 30 applications for one position within a week, most from outside the EU (I think the Russo-Ukrainian conflict added a lot of gas on the fire).

So most companies here have raised the hiring bar accordingly due to this oversupply of applicants, therefore getting a job now is pretty rough if you're not at the top of your game in terms of experience and skillset.

This was my first time going after “senior” titles, and was also the first time I’d seen system design interviews. They only cropped up in final rounds. I had them at Amazon, Uber, and three other companies.

I was supremely nervous about them before but I actually wound up doing really well (save aforementioned DB crap). It was a chance to talk about my personal niches, like accessibility and load times.

Frustratingly, every single one was wildly different. I found that approx. 0 of the “cracking the system design” stuff I read beforehand helped in anyway.

Glad that I am not alone. Just got another rejection email. No LeetCode, problems seemed realistic, I solved them all. Really have no idea what they were looking for.

This was my 4th application where I was rejected after final round. A lot more where I didn't get past initial screening etc. Feeling down right now.

I have 15 years of technical experience, I never got a chance to specialize but I can handle everything, DevOps, database, frontend, & backend. Perhaps that's my fault for just getting work done instead of focusing on my career. Perhaps I am getting really old for this industry. Maybe I really should go in the management.

I'm so sorry to hear it. I will tell you that I likewise had a lot of final round rejections. The most soul-crushing rejection came after 9 interviews, a 10hr take home, and a 4hr on-site – and through all of it, every decision maker told me they were excited to start me.

Nope, rejection comes 2 weeks after the on-site with no explanations, and they refused to elaborate further.

The sole advice I can give is unfortunately to just keep going. Wish I had more. Best of luck.

Thank you!

Until this job search, I usually had two interviews, one technical screen and one behavior interview. And this was for senior roles. And usually, I almost always got offers. Most of the time, I was deciding between two jobs.

I think everyone is trying to replicate FAANG's success by copying their hiring practices. Maybe this is a hazing ritual to find really obedient workers.

Either way, we have to play this game and keep trying.

80? I'm at 600 already, fuck me.

600? Did you got any feedback? Maybe there's something in your CV that's being perceived as a red flag but ok to you. 600 applications without an offer seems way off.

> Did you got any feedback?

No. Companies don't give feedback for the most part.

> Maybe there's something in your CV that's being perceived as a red flag but ok to you.

I have shared my resume with many people in the industry, and they only suggested minor changes which I made.

I had similar numbers when I got my first dev job (was close to 1000). Seems high for 2nd+ job.

Are you utilizing your IRL social circle? 100% of the jobs I've had in the last 15 years have come from someone I know reaching out and saying, "hey, the company I work for is hiring and I think you'd be a great fit."

Now, some of that was motivated by referral bonuses on their part, but still.

The old cliche that "it's not what you know but who you know" is still very much a thing.

I'm not the parent, but I can't do that, because, I get shot if I do better than my "friends" so yes, we want you, but you can't be better than me. I try to find other people. But yeah...

I did. Mostly, I did not get an interview. The few places I did, I did not make it through the onsite.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com