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Comment by shaftway | Hacker News Reader

Senior SWE, 20+ years of experience, based in the bay area, laid off from Meta in November. I reached out to my network and had a couple applications in same-day. One of those panned out and I just started this week.

I also did a bunch of cold job applications, but didn't get a callback from any of them. The whole process led to a ton of anxiety and was really nerve-wracking, especially reading about layoffs from other tech firms in the same time period. I kept worrying that my new company was going to hit layoffs and that my offer would be rescinded, especially when the recruiter told me they were reducing hiring. Having it take about 3 months just drug that anxiety out.

I still have a bit of anxiety about getting laid off, but no more than I'd have anywhere else.

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Man, there's definitely something broken with the cold application process. I'd estimate my success rate of getting an interview from a cold application is something like 1-5%. I almost always resort to referrals or getting lucky networking with recruiters.

I think it's a lot of luck and being one of the first people to apply. Once the flood comes in then people start filtering on metrics that don't really matter. "Oh, you only have 10 years of Java? This candidate over here has 11."

I also think there's a weird game going on with remote roles. On my new team everyone is "remote", but of the 10 people 3 are in the bay area and the other 7 are in 6 different cities, but each city has an office. The company has ~8 offices in North America, so the statistics are bothering. This matches with my circle of friends' experience; the only callbacks people get for remote roles are ones where they're already in the same city.

I suspect "remote" really means "remote, but in a city that we have a presence in, just in case we decide to force you to come into an office."

It can for sure. I felt that way interviewing with Google and Facebook. I typically go for "remote first" companies that either don't have an office presence at all, or companies with a significant number of engineers across the nation/world. It's one of the primary questions I tend to ask during the initial interview phases.

I've hired a bunch of people (well my boss, but I'm on the interview panel so I have a real say though I'm not hiring). We generally agree that living near an office is an advantage. We have hired people from all over, but those closer to an office are more valuable just because sometimes we need someone to go physically look at a failing test setup.

I've heard for my entire life that referrals are way, way more successful than cold applications, in any industry. It's part of the reason I work hard to cultivate relationships at work! It could be that things are "broken" and have been for a very long time, but rather I think a referral is just truly a much better indicator than anything that could be learned from a cold application.

It's ironic because you would think companies would want engineers who actually are eager to work there.

When connecting to companies through recruiters, you're expected to still come up with some semi-BS about why you're so excited to work there. But you need to go through the motions because the places you are actually excited to work won't even interview you.

Most companies are boring. Why is anyone excited about a company that makes sewage systems, but it must be done. Or accounting software, or any of the millions of other jobs. Even if you are building exciting games, most of the work is boring (if you get to play that game it is spending hours running in walls on the starting level), likewise tracking down a bug is just as tedious in a game as any other software.

Yup, and these same companies that don't reply to their application process or require extra leg work (cover letter, etc) just to apply, are the same companies complaining that recruiter fees are too high. As a dev, I've had far, far, far better luck working with external recruiters than attempting internal channels.

A lot of companies are on a hiring freeze but have not taken down their job listings because of the image connotations.

I'm definitely seeing a pattern in the posts here.

Referrals and recruiters = success.

Apply to a position = failure.

I've had in the past a few recruiters on the lazier side ask me to "please apply directly at the company portal" and that had a perfectly round 0% success rate.

The best part is hot referrals to a large company, when they ask you to apply for the role a day AFTER receiving a verbal offer.

I have had 4 jobs in my software engineering career so far -- I have gotten none of them from applying (despite applying to many, many listings and even having gotten interviews through those applications).

1 personal connection, 2 recruiters employed by the hiring company, 1 third party recruiter on contract through the hiring company.

It just seems to me like a company having put out an application just doesn't mean they are all that motivated to hire. Having hired recruiters on the other hand...

Referrals directly or indirectly will always triumph the manual application. Whenever a recruiter/lead suggests "please apply directly" I know it's not worth the time. Something you have to learn through experience.

My cold application process works pretty well historically. I can’t speak for the current conditions though.

I’ve gotten all my jobs through non-referrals in the past. It does work. Can’t speak for now though - could be most places just aren’t hiring even though they make it seem like they are.

Folks here need to spend more time on the hiring side and see how the meat is made.

It really shows that recruiters do next to nothing. It was a cushy job that was easy in the tech boom when everyone was being hired for anything. Now that more filtering needs to happen, the process breaks down.

As it stands today, a "warm" candidate is brought into the system by someone else. Recruiters just give them information, match them with the processors (interviewers), and tell the candidate results. MAYBE, some advocacy. MAYBE.

Then they ignore "cold" candidates.

Recruiters are really the bottleneck here, imo.

> Man, there's definitely something broken with the cold application process.

A couple years ago I did an experiment and sent out 25 applications through linkedin for job postings I was very qualified for. Never heard a peep back from any of them. Good thing I wasn't actively looking! Based on that I'm fairly convinced none of those ever went anywhere or were seen by anyone.

Same experience with cold applications, despite similarly “prestigious” CV. Did the same thing two years ago and had about 80% hit rate, this time it was close to 0%. My only hits have been through network and responding to recruiters on LinkedIn.

I think part of it is that I was applying to a lot of larger companies with efficient hiring pipelines, none of which are currently hiring.

> I reached out to my network and had a couple applications in same-day.

> I also did a bunch of cold job applications, but didn't get a callback from any of them.

This was my experience when I was let go in Mar 2020 (not from any place as prominent as Meta, however). The network of people you have worked with and know has been by far the best way I've found to get a job. Even when you're senior, cold applications are a low-chance bet.

Cold apps never really worked for me either. Even scammy recruiters are more likely to land you something.

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