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Comment by _ed7m | Hacker News Reader

It took me 200 applications to land my job, and I think the rest of everyone I know who’s a decent programmer had similar situations. The bottom line is that everyone has employment and only had to move for it if they’re taking a high (120k+ TC for entry level) paying position.

This is “falling of trees” compared to any other industry. Being able to land a middle class job directly in the field of your education without having to move is a very nice thing. Even if it takes 200 applications. It’s not common outside of engineering.

The median individual income in the U.S. is 32k [1]. Software engineers in the U.S., as a generalization of industry around the world, is literally the best that it gets.

That being said. Job hunting is soul sucking. Good luck.

1. https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore...

(Edit because people are concerned about my 200 number. I got an offer for the first 60k position I applied for and decided to turn it down. I was shooting a tad higher. I’m also counting “one click” applications: Zip Recruiter and Linkedin.)

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Is this first job in the industry or mid-senior level? I don't think I've ever sent 200 applications in any of my job searches. Last time I didn't send any; I just flicked the switch on LinkedIn and Hired and had almost 60 recruiters reach out to me (followed up with about 18, had initial interviews with about 8 companies, ended up with 4 late stage interviews and 2 offers).

And I wouldn't consider myself an amazing developer (I do alright, but I'm not 10x) or have an amazing portfolio and I don't have a FAANG on my resume, just a large corporation that no one has heard of, a couple medium-sized companies, and several smaller companies / failed startups.

Might be a bit different now, this was back in June/July 2021.

About 10 years ago I applied tot about 200 jobs.

My impression is that it was a lot different back in June/July 2021.

Also that sounds like an impressive background, 6 or 7 or more companies over I'm guessing 10-15 years? Also the stuff on your HN profile looks pretty good too. Don't sell yourself short.

Once you're a part of the club it's dramatically easier to get a job. A year and change ago I made the move into a legit tech company. I think it took me 50ish applications to get that one offer. That job was not meant to be and I went looking after a few months. With just that brief stint I applied to like 10 places, got some level interest from all of them, and ended up with an offer.

This is called a CV stuffing position. It works very well because recruiters can identify brands, but not skill.

> Might be a bit different now, this was back in June/July 2021.

That was near the peak, it was a completely different world back then.

This is one of the reasons why I made this post, to put some numbers out there. A lot of people on HN have ideal backgrounds so that they really are going to get constant unsolicited offers, or at least an interview anywhere they apply. Other people are on the hiring side struggling for one reason or another and blaming it on a hot market. If you're in a group like that, it's easy to get the wrong impression, and worse to repeat it.

I definitely agree that developers have it better than most people. Anyone who's watched someone outside the field look for work should understand that. But there is a huge middle ground between the Stanford graduate working at Google for whom every application results in an offer, and people applying to bad jobs with a 90 minute commute just to find something. That middle ground is what you and I are talking about, where you do have to send out a lot of applications, 100 or 200 or more, but there are also a lot of companies, you can work remotely and they pay really well compared to other jobs in the U.S., let alone worldwide.

I've been a developer going on 10 years now. Do not give up. Stick with it. My first job offer right out of college was for 35k. Sometimes it takes a while to get a job offer. Sometimes you accept a job offer and find out a week or month in, its not a good fit. However know somewhere out there, there is a good fit. Aim for one where you are happy and the company is happy.

Not the OP, but your definition of "falling off trees" and mine are very different if it took 200 applications to land a job.

I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying I would never use that expression to describe it.

It's actually kind of soul sucking bad, and I have trouble coming to terms with that "this is just how it is now."

I really do feel for those without a decent network.

I would consider sending out 200 applications (for someone with some experience to reasonably targeted openings) to be an extraordinarily high number. I doubt if I sent out that many form letter scattershot from pre-internet grad school.

Certainly hasn't been the case since. To be sure, the few other jobs I've had have all come through personal connections.

I had just assumed that if someone was sending out 200 applications, it was pretty much the same resume going to all of them (no catering it to the individual interests of the employer) - with perhaps some exceptions to jobs the applicant was particularly interested in.

I can't imagine sending out that many having spent large quantities of time on each one.

[edited to fix typing the wrong word]

I would assume so as well although that may be the problem.

Though I'm also open to the possibility that some companies just want to hire some number of developers with 3-5 years of experience in $TECHNOLOGY and aren't too fussy beyond that. In which case, it may indeed become more of a numbers game if a company is basically picking a handful of resumes at random that clear some minimum bar.

OP here. When I think of an employer as desperate to hire, I think of it in the same way that I'm desperate to get more milk when I'm out of milk. I go to the store with milk on my mind, I pick from the few on offer, buy it and take it home. I don't need to taste test or anything like that.

Of course everyone wants to be a premium brand but sometimes it just doesn't work out like that.

A challenge is that most job listings are mostly "3-5 years of experience in $TECHNOLOGY," or rather there are so many $TECHNOLOGIES listed that almost no one is going to be an expert in all of them. It's difficult to tell from the outside whether they want someone who has experience in at least some of the core and can learn the rest, or whether they're holding out for the perfect candidate.

Given that you're talking about a 60 K position I can only assume that this is out of your first job or at the very least you're a junior or entry-level position.

So of course this is only anecdotal but I've never sent more than 5 applications out at a time even back when I was a junior dev. In the last 10 years I don't even bother looking for jobs actively anymore, I just turn the switch on my LinkedIn indicating that I'm seeking employment, and let recruiters do the rest.

I'm not sure what the difference is, but I would consider myself to be an outlier as far as traditional engineers go, in that I am both exceptionally articulate and naturally extroverted. If I can get to the point where I have a face-to-face or a phone interview, I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to acquire an offer. Without specifics I can only recommend that engineers work on developing their soft skills if they don't already have them.

On the other hand I'm not particularly picky in terms of companies, and I have a wide range of senior level experience in major platforms including C# and node/typescript/JavaScript.

Just a counterpoint for all the gloom and doom but I'd say that you have nothing to worry about if you have the following:

- in demand skillset (ts/js/c#)

- people skills / charisma

- US citizenship

- 10+ years experience

- reasonable salary expectations (140-175k)

If you're selling something that's both highly in-demand and niche, then lots of people will contact you and everyone who contacts you already wants what you're selling. Soft skills aren't really involved other than to avoid messing up the sale. I'm sure you're a very personable sort but I don't think that's really the issue here.

>in demand skillset (ts/js/c#)

Sorry, but what does "ts" stand for?

typescript

Per capita median income is what you get when you include retirees, teenagers, those who do not work at all (they will still have some income from welfare/disability/gifts), and other part time workers. It's not a good measure of average employment earnings in an economy in which labor force participation is only 61%.

What you should look at is median earnings of full time workers, which is about $1000 per week, or $52K per year. This does not include benefits - in the U.S. things like healthcare are primarily funded by the employer and retirement is roughly half funded via social security matching contributions, so total compensation would be about 70K/year.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/usual-weekly-earnings/usual-weekl...

I'm not in the US; if I had to send out 200 or even 100 applications I would change career. If I had to send 50 I would be starting to investigate other careers.

I applied to 500 openings to get my first job. I think persistence is what matters.

My first development job as a graduate I applied to 5 positions, got 3 interviews and offers from all 3 interviews. Degree from somewhere middle of the road in my country, some side projects, applying to large but not FAANG tech cos. I think I had a good CV for a graduate nothing _that_ spectactular. There's definitely some diverging experiences going on here.

Maybe people should have their resume looked over? I have seen some very talented people make some pretty glaring errors and/or just be pretty bad at making things presentable. I think they may be getting tossed out of the pile due to something they just aren't realizing.

Maybe, but probably not a huge percentage. There are tons of resources for helping review resumes and provide practice interviews. Mine was reviewed by at least 4 people and still took over 200 applications to get a job.

OP here. I'm getting a roughly 15%-20% success rate converting a cold application to a first interview. That's around the industry average from what I've seen on various sites. If my resume were a disaster I'd expect something closer to 0%.

I think it depends, if you're early in your career you're basically trying to find a company willing to take a chance on you and train you. Once you have some accomplishments under your belt companies will start being more aggressive at hiring you because you can hit the ground running.

If you're applying for "senior" positions and have the CV to back it up and you're still batting 1/200 getting to the first interview then you are either the unluckiest person ever or there's a red flag you haven't noticed.

Yeah. You're just graduating from school. Maybe it's not a well-known school--or maybe it's not even the "right" (or any) degree. Maybe you're grades aren't the best. It's very reasonable that getting someone to take a chance on you for a job you're not obviously qualified to grow into can be pretty hard.

But, with a track record and you aren't trying to career change? That is a lot.

OP here. GGP said 200 applications to get a job, not an interview. I've had a bit under a 20% success rate on getting a first interview after an application but haven't gotten an offer yet.

Also, there are red flags, and there are red flags. I have some red flags I can't do anything about, I just have to push through them, but they shouldn't be a dealbreaker for anyone actually desperate to hire.

"and train you"

Frankly, companies don't train. Mt company talks about training all the time and it's a joke.

If you are one of these companies, you're the reason I could even get into this space!

The company I ended up working for basically would stick 10-15 potential Junior engineers (majority from bootcamps) in a room for 2 months and give them all 2 identical features to ship. Then access to the dev codebase, docs and the ear of senior engineer.

People would help each other, it was expected. People would go learn parts of the stack come back and teach everyone else (this is how I learned about GraphQL). At the end of the 2 months anyone who couldn't preform was let go, everyone else was placed.

I understand this was a boomtime thing that only works as massive companies, but it makes getting a new person on your team easier if they know the codebase/workflow. For the new engineer it also really helps to get used to how code works in a massive repo when all you've done is tiny self run projects.

I've been a developer in the US and held... oh... 8 or 9 tech jobs since about the year 2000. I don't think I've ever sent more than 10 applications in a job search. My average is probably 3-4. I'm entirely unremarkable and also didn't have a degree for the first IIRC 4 jobs (I floundered and bailed on a non-tech Bachelor's the first time, then several years later got a CS degree from an unremarkable—but at least not infamous—university).

But I also target the mid-tier, not FAANG, finance, or top-tier startups that hire like FAANG. I'd break down halfway through one of their day-long interviews no matter how much I studied leetcode, and I know it. Put me in any kind of meeting for more than a couple hours and I'm braindead, and interviews count as meetings. Even worse than ordinary meetings, really.

Yeah, if I had to send 50, let alone 200 applications in one search... I can't even imagine. If I hit 100 with no offers I'd for-sure reckon my career was over and I needed to look at jobs several notches down the economic and social ladder (and tech's already not that high on the social ladder).

I've had it take 80 applications to actually get one on-site interview before (and I have a pretty good resume). I would not be suggesting people consider major life changes based on a few dozen attempts not progressing, it can definitely take more than that without reflecting on you.

I'm in the UK and have:

- previously passed a loop with FAANG ( didn't join tho ) - have a strong portfolio in a hard to resource niche

Easily send out 200 apps and get ignored.

The market is dumb, not sure I should quit over it tho

If you’re a FAANG level developer (very top of your field) then surely you’ve got a network of people you can ask for a job anytime rather than having to apply as normal?

I’m not even remotely FAANG level but if I wanted a job I’d email some people I know or Tweet that I’m looking - not fill in a form.

Have you tried working your network? Emailing some friends?

I hate that there's so much talk about networks. There's a ton of talk about anti-discrimination, equity/equality, etc in other areas of HN.

What's the word for cronyism if the person is qualified?

It’s not cronyism - it’s people knowing your portfolio of work and abilities.

And at the end of the day - do whatever you need to within reason to put food on your own table. Don’t worry about someone else judging you for cronyism for feeding your family.

There's nothing wrong with networking, but if we're all agreeing that networking is important to having a job search that doesn't involve hundreds of applications, then let's just be honest about that. In particular let's make sure people who don't have that network and who do have to job search know what they need to do to get where they need to be.

> if we're all agreeing that networking is important to having a job search that doesn't involve hundreds of applications, then let's just be honest about that

I think we already were? That's exactly what I said. Who do you think isn't being honest?

No one's lying but one of the grandparent comments said that they would change careers if they needed to send out 100 applications for a job search. If 100 applications is necessary for even a good developer without a strong network, that's a misleading recommendation.

I expect it varies enormously. I can readily believe that people with relatively straightforward in-demand skills, an easy to follow track record, and maybe the right schools can probably (in a reasonable economy) just turn on LinkedIn and let interview requests flow in.

Someone who doesn't really check boxes and doesn't have a network may have to play a numbers game.

On the other hand, more senior and more specialized people (both in and out of engineering) will often have a much smaller number of holes that they would fit properly in and just sending out resumes is unlikely to be nearly as effective as networking.

Yeah you’re also disadvantaged as a senior when you apply by a form - people will obviously think ‘why is this FAANG-level person applying blindly like that’ and think it’s off and discard your application.

This is an odd take given that the majority of remote software developer jobs I've found, with form applications, are specifically listed at the senior level or higher. Maybe you're suggesting it's something like Groucho Marx's quote "I wouldn't belong to a club that would take me as a member."

I think a FAANG-level developer would probably email a team they’re interested in working with.

Is that how it works? Imagine your typical 51-200 person company with your, I don't know, mobile, backend, product teams, whatever you call them. Is there some unspoken rule you pick up at FAANG or the Ivy League that the front door is for the unwashed and people in the know use back channels to get an invitation? If someone reached out to me and I redirected them to the careers page, would I be committing some kind of faux pas? I'm joking but only a little, I really don't know how those circles operate.

> Is there some unspoken rule you pick up at FAANG or the Ivy League that the front door is for the unwashed and people in the know use back channels to get an invitation?

Err yeah kind of. I always recommend people find someone in the team they want to join and reach out to them personally or via a mutual.

If you fill in the form without someone on the other end waiting to pick your application out of the firehouse it can get lost in the HR mystery machine.

I think that’s a pretty common opinion? I’ve never gotten a job with a blind application. I’ve gotten every job I applied to when I did it by reaching out.

At smaller places the HR mystery machine is one or two people with names and faces. If they're not passing resumes down to the tech teams then there is some problem that should be sorted out. The dynamic would have to be pretty broken for me to help some random stranger bypass the system everyone in the company has agreed to use. Plus, accepting back channel applicants could mess up relationships with external recruiters, or DEI hiring initiatives.

Also the teams in smaller places are not anything spectacular, just backend, frontend, data, whatever, with a lot of overlap, so the idea that someone would be aiming for a particular team, meaning whoever is working on that part of the stack this month, is also strange.

What you're saying makes sense with big, complex companies with huge HR processes and teams of varying levels of prestige and expertise. Probably a good idea if you're aiming particularly for a team at Google that works on a particular thing you like.

I'm certainly more likely to know people at a random large company, but I know a lot of people in the industry to various degrees from we've met at a conference to I've worked with them. If I were thinking of applying somewhere, one of my first steps would be figuring out who I knew there. I won't automatically refer someone if I don't think they'd be a good fit but if I know them well enough to have a positive opinion about them, I'll let them know what I know or can find out and put in a referral.

BTW, this isn't a FAANG/Ivy League thing. In fact, I expect that it's even more common in a lot of other areas. Friend of a friend jobs are incredibly common. If you're just trying to navigate the system from the complete outside by handing your resume around, you're at an incredible disadvantage.

My understanding is that GP wasn't talking about a friend of a friend situation, but approaching strangers on the team purely to bypass HR.

I didn't call it cronyism. I asked what cronyism would be called if the qualifications were met.

The point is that giving preference to someone you know reduces or even eliminates the other person's opportunity. This is especially important for minority groups that may not have as many connections in a given industry. Sure, people do what they need to for work, but people skipping in line...

> but people skipping in line...

But picking someone to join your team isn’t taking the first person who appears in line.

No, but it is timeboxed and it's supposed to be taking the best candidate. Even internally at my company, you have people being selected for positions before the position is even posted. So yeah, you have someone skipping the process while you're standing in line for something that isn't even available.

Err this is obviously a bit of a thread now, but the point of my post wasn't asking for help, but rather pointing out that frustrations with the market, and the front door, as it were, are universal.

In the UK the market is pretty dumb. Folks are mainly looking for reasons to exclude you rather than focusing on the positives. Ergo, I fire and forget resumes and only really put effort into the ones that come back positively.

When I get past the gate keepers, I almost always get an offer.

So my point is, "hang in there".

I'm also very surprised by these numbers. I'm a senior dev in Ireland and my success rate over the past number of years would be around 1 in 5 CV submissions lead to a first interview / tech screen. And once I reach that stage around 1 in 3 lead to an offer.

I'm a reasonably good developer, but not top tier by any means.

But my starting point is usually a recruiter contacting me. It's been a long time since I've chased a recruiter or company. And I've never sent out 100+ applications in my 22 year career.

Maybe geography plays a part. London and Dublin are full of tech jobs. Isolated cities in the US might be different, with moving or commuting to a different city not an easy option.

I'd like to see some of the CVs that keep getting rejected or passed over, because that volume (100-200) doesn't feel right to me.

> The median individual income in the U.S. is 32k

The median full-time income in the US - which is a much more applicable reference point - is around $55,000.

I believe that's household income. Quick google shows census reporting median income at ~31k

Source?

I thought it was $42k a year or two ago, but haven't looked since, and I don't remember if it was strictly full-time.

Asking "source" and saying what you thought it was doesn't contribute to the conversation.

Searching Google for "median full time income" pops up $51,480 in bold. The next link is to the BLS (US Bureau of Labor Statistics): https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm

For Q3'22, it was $1,068/wk, or $55,536/yr.

I would have said thanks.

When I graduated in aerospace engineering in 2008 during the great recession, I applied for maybe 40 places total and got 2 offers. I probably could have pulled some strings to get 1-2 more from the places where I had interned (didn't bother applying to them because I wasn't interested). Aerospace in the US requires US citizenship so the number of applicants is 1/10th SWE. SWE also just has insane demand from people in India and China. So SWE is a crazy outlier because of salary, remote opportunities, established educational bases in some regions etc.

> SWE also just has insane demand from people in India and China.

this sentence is confusing to me. Are you saying there are a lot of SWE jobs in India and China? Or are you saying there are a lot of people from those places looking for SWE jobs.

Or something different?

The latter. They're looking for H1B jobs in the US. Sorry, woke up too early.

This comparison of what it's like outside is not helping. People usually like to maintain and better their quality of life, and a drop in status hurts no matter where you are. People buy houses, pay mortgages, connect in social circles according to their financial status. No matter who you are, selling your house or not being able to hangout with friends doing the things you love sucks.

Even if it's true, a random statistic fact cannot make your situation better. For example, earning $32K puts you in the top 1% of the incomes across the world. Does it make you feel any better?

It’s always easier to get a job when you have one then when you don’t.

> It’s always easier to get a job when you have one then when you don’t.

This should be emphasized. I have a friend who quit a terrible, stressful job without something new lined up, and it took him a year to find another one. After an excessive number of interviews at one company for one position, he got annoyed and asked them what the deal was. They said that they were impressed by him, but were honest and said they were trying to figure out "what was wrong with him," since he wasn't employed, and then gave him an offer.

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