Ask HN: Hiring managers for SWEs, how is the market changing for open positions? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Hiring managers for SWEs, how is the market changing for open positions?

37 pointspm9020 comments

With all the recent layoffs, are you getting flooded with too many great applicants? Are open positions filling up lightning quick? Or has it been more gradual?

Just want to understand what the environment looks like post major layoffs from the hiring side.

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Most people getting laid off aren't SWEs. This is what I'm hearing from a headhunter friend. She also said that hiring folks are using layoffs as a proxy for "not high performer". I told her this was unfortunate and probably not that accurate of a heuristic.

It's certainly not accurate. I was laid off from my SRE role despite having saved the company huge amounts of money. I'm sure that some executive did a simple calculation of salary compared to seniority/experience and I came up towards the top of the spreadsheet.

So I was let go without a deeper analysis of my contributions or highly positive performance review.

I have been having some success getting interviews at decent companies despite it being the slowest time of year for hiring but I do get the impression that some recruiters are looking my layoff negatively.

Stop calling it a layoff :) You left, the reason is immaterial.

If pressed for a reason, explain that you feel that you have achieved all that you could at the company and are excited for a new challenge where you can apply everything you’ve learned through your career. As long as you don’t explicitly lie, it’s not going to matter… and as long as you had the job for at least 6 months, nobody would question why you left — I’ve quit jobs after 6 months with no new job lined up and it has never been an issue in subsequent hiring processes.

The signal of a layoff isn’t great but it’s a very weak signal that a hiring manager would rely on only if they didn’t have any better signals. Don’t give them the opportunity to be lazy and rely on it. You’re pitching yourself, only give them the information you think benefits you.

This is actually great advice. You previous employer won't give any explanation if someone asks, they'll confirm your dates of employment nothing more nothing less. Some recruiters might ask if you're eligible for re-hire as a proxy but most companies will refuse to answer.

This - some swe’s but market still pretty tight there. I think tougher market in some of the other spots. Have some friends sitting longer periods in open to work.

I am personally not hiring. But the hiring landscape is very different. I had a conversation about this with another manager who is hiring at work. Very anecdotal info below:

We may see much higher applications. Most are going to be backed with good brands. It's hard to let go of the bias that we maybe looking at the bottom quartile for these companies. Most will be extremely good at the interviewing. The candidates will also have very different motivations.

The bottom quartile at some of these companies could still easily be in the top decile at many other companies. Unfortunately every company thinks they need, and are deserving of "Top Talent".

> top decile

I think you’re overestimating the hiring ability of big companies, and underestimating the people at small companies.

I think people at big companies often overestimate their own ability and often underestimate people who work at smaller companies.

I think working at a bigger company is a somewhat different skillset involving a lot more navigating bureaucracy, meeting certification standards, documenting and presenting, etc.

Smaller companies focus a lot more on "get stuff done, figure out the details later"

I think a lot of big corp employees look down at startups because it’s a huge gamble. They get paid less and have unstable careers. And so they confuse it for ability. Personally, I think those that work at startups learn to be more adaptive and gain more valuable skills outside of bureaucracy.

Bad time of year to look at this. I'd be more interested in this answer in a month.

Surprisingly no.

Several clients have reduced hiring and while there is a steady stream of SWE applicants, they’re not from prominent tech companies.

This is for multiple small, funded, successful startups.

The suits fear funding will be all dried up next season, so there aren't any open positions.

Not even close to true. I've received about 20 recruiter messages this week and most of my colleagues have had the same experience

> With all the recent layoffs, are you getting flooded with too many great applicants?

Why do you think the people who were laid off were "great" to begin with? Surprises me a lot the folks who think that a software engineer with Twitter in their CV is a "great" software engineer. The majority of good software engineers out there do not work for FAANG. This is pure statistics.

They are probably very good at leet coding and FAANG interviews.

With the scale of layoffs it seems obvious that there are many great applicants in the pool again. There's no way you can argue that 100% of laid off FAANG employees were poor performers.

The majority of good software engineers don't work for faang but the majority of faang engineers are good

Based on what data?

The data of their acceptance into faang. It sets a minimum bar of effort and knowledge

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