Ask HN: Struggling to find a job in Ireland as a Ukrainian refugee, why? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Struggling to find a job in Ireland as a Ukrainian refugee, why?

5 points_v1ww17 comments

hi HN!

I’m a Ukrainian refugee currently residing in Dublin. Do front-end for living, have 2.5+ years of solid experience in various projects, all Angular (hate react and don’t trust Vue). Looking for a job in Ireland. Easily go through interviews, reach final stages and then I hear something like ‘We need someone with at least 3 YOE’, ‘Your experience is not quite aligned with our expectations’, etc. I‘m not familiar with hiring processes in Ireland and in whole Europe, could it be that they just don‘t say me a real reason?

My gut feeling is that they are afraid that I’m going back once the war is over. I clearly address this with the fact that anyway I never liked my country and people and planned to move to US in two years. Maybe they are not familiar with this new thing Temporary Protection Directive which entitles me to work in Europe at least for one year. I tell them that I won’t ask them to sponsor my visa in future.

I can happily provide any further details on demand. Any advice?

I wonder if being vocal about your sentiment about your country and people (ie, saying you never liked them) could be turning them off a bit? There is a lot of solidarity with Ukraine and Ukrainians right now. I don't know why you don't like us, but whatever the reason it may not be the reassuring sentiment you think it is to potential employers.

Besides, saying you were planning to move to the US may not be very reassuring to an employer in Ireland since now they may worry that you'll just leave them for the US (unless you're specifically applying for short term/one-year roles).

Maybe you can indicate your reliability and desire to stay in Ireland in a different way? Good luck!

yeah, I also was thinking that maybe I shouldn’t be that transparent in my thoughts. And you’re right about US, this may look to others just like you described. Thanks for the piece of advice!

edit: typo

Definitely don't mention plans that will disrupt or interfere with your employment. Try to be a bit up beat and positive. Highlight good things about Ireland instead of negative things about Ukraine, for example.

got this, thank you

for ones who’s curious, I never liked my country and people because of

• corruption

• poverty

• litter and unjustified aggression with grumpiness all over the streets

• Ukrainians not caring about our own country in general, e.g. all government-sponsored workers doing shitty job and doing it way too long

• road rage and disrespect to driving rules and others on roads, e.g. someone on a pricier car usually doesn’t give a shit to someone driving a cheaper one

also I will never forgive government who, when I tried go to school for the second time, asked me to compensate all the money they paid for my first try. I dropped out the first time because I had no means to live and then they ask 20 year old to give them back $1.3k (really big money for a young Ukrainian) only because I wanted to get a degree. For context: both times my exam grades entitled me for free education. Where is support for ones who’s willing to get a degree? How was I supposed to pay this money? Parents stopped giving me money since I was 15, so that wasn’t an option. Anyway back then I was already working as a software engineer and managed to get a debt to pay this amount, then I dropped out for the second time. The law says that I must compensate money for this try too, but no one ever reached me about this so I never payed them back. You can call me infantile for being offended at government but that’s what I feel

my heart is completely with victims of this idiotic war, but it’s unfair to be blinded by the events and forget everything in my opinion

thanks everyone for you thoughts! That was really eye-opening. Starting from today I’m learning React and filtering what I say on interviews. Now your pieces of advice seems so obvious, I should definitely ask earlier. Have a wonderful rest of the weekend!

edit: list formatting

I'd think most likely its the bit about React. I don't think it would be likely its about going back to Ukraine.

React is sort of the one used all over, it takes a bit more risk to use Angular, Vue or Svelte and those would predominantly be in startups. The issue is it is actually hard to hire people with Vue and Angular so React is the one chosen.

Do you mention when applying you could work with React?

I'm not sure if it is React specifically or it the general attitude that this is reflective of.

thanks for sharing your thoughts!

I hate React because it’s a library, not an opinionated framework. I don’t want to choose a library for basic stuff over and over again and care if it was a good decision and will it be maintained in the next few months. And it doesn’t include TypeScript out of the box what leads to a handful of untyped projects on which I have zero willingness to work on. Even with types, from my experience culture of ‘type as much as you can’ is much stronger amongst Angular devs rather than React ones.

> I never liked my country and people

yeah, dont call us we will call you

Every Angular dev I knew switched to React because they couldn't find good positions...

makes me wondering maybe I was in a sterile information vacuum. I used to think Angular naturally protects me from all this BS mediocre react projects because of its ’enterpriseness‘ and ‘the choice for serious projects’. Thank you for the note, I’ll take this into account

Make sure you're generalising your experience and not advertising yourself as an angular dev. Many jobs expect you to take 6 months to a year to fully get up to speed anyway in my experience.

I was doing exactly opposite (Angular-only) but now I see that maybe times when there were plenty of Angular positions with often more interesting projects are gone

Yeah. Around 2019 most companies I interviewed for started telling me they're rewriting their Angular projects to React. Before that there was a good number of Angular projects, but I'm seeing only React since then, occasionally some Angular maintenance when it's not worth it to rewrite (so you don't really want to work there usually).

thanks for your insight

I would try to start on a contract first, maybe. Just put it in your resume.

I wanted to get a full-time job offer to get a working visa ASAP, but yeah probably it’s saner to start with contract and see how it’s going

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