Hacker News Reader

Comment by 71a54xd | Hacker News Reader

Nope, it's pretty bad. Out of maybe 40 applications I've had 2 interviews, made it to round two for one of them, no offer.

LinkedIn positions get 150+ applications within hours. For the first time I got nearly zero response from HN Hiring as well.

I think the issue is everything is skewing wildly towards senior roles, even non-senior roles are getting inundated with 200+ applicants that are over qualified.

If you're like me and have 3yrs of (FAANG and growth stage startups) SWE and 1yr of product eng / TPM'ing you're basically fucked. Hard to tell if I've fucked my career (by not just working at one company with my longest tenure being 2yrs w/ zero resume gaps)or if the market is just not great rn.

I've been staying afloat consulting for a friend's startup - granted SVB probably just nuked any chance of their series A actually happening.

Future is very bleak atm - but thank god I have cash to live on.

View on HN

>If you're like me and have 3yrs of (FAANG and growth stage startups) SWE and 1yr of product eng / TPM'ing you're basically fucked.

I hope you find something soon, but let's be realistic here, claiming SWEs with FAANG experience on the resume are "fucked" is some real extreme hyperbole.

If you could pass the engineering hiring bar at FAANG, surely you can do an approximation of how many people with 4 years of career experience don't have FAANG on their resume, aren't engineers, or both. You have an advantage over nearly all of them.

Like others have said, networking/connections are key, but that's still true even when the job market is hot.

Maybe in the sense that the firehose monthly paycheck cannot be found at another company so I have to agree with you that the parent's comment seems very distorted.

Parent, try imagining a career like mine: 16+ years of working for startups that paid in the $60K ~ $80K range. Now feel better about yourself.

In many places in the world even with comparable economies you'd earn less.

Get LinkedIn premium and msg the recruiters for the job. I have a non FAANG profile and am regularly collecting offers doing that.

Going through the resume pile is work. The recruiter would rather not have to do the work and get a hire in the job.

Will do, thanks for the tip. I'm somewhat tempted to start grifting Blind and just paying for recs.

Hang in there. I’d say your experience is pretty good. Maybe try AB testing your resume structure and wording, improving social media, etc.

Whenever I've seen a situation with low supply/high demand, networks trump credentials

>situation with low supply/high demand

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/video/unemployment-rate...

This is definitely not the tech industry

Source?

Totally agree, fortunately I have a decent network to draw from. Unfortunately, I have to refresh leetcode to take up friends who have rec's to offer + most of those friends work for orgs that have completely frozen hiring pipelines.

Network could be better though, going to spend the week at a friend's in Austin at SXSW to accelerate potentially growing the network at cringe founder events. Yes, I'm that desperate.

For me, when hiring someone, I want to have a track record with them. Having known them over a long period of time helps me be less guarded and more sure of their intentions.

This also applies if the person is a friend of a friend — building a “network” just means knowing people who can vouch for you as a valuable and trustworthy person.

The ability to build relationships and be stable over time is a merit.

So you're looking to hire people you know and people you don't know don't have a chance to be hired? I don't know how to distinguish this from nepotism.

Not at all. But if I have to decide between two people who are equal “on paper”, and I know someone who can vouch for one of them, I will pick the “in-network” person every time.

Any suggestion for boosting that when you live in a non tech city? Spam LinkedIn cold messages

If I were you, I'd go out and talk to people. Talk to friends in the industry. Go to tech meet ups. Even your neighbors might know someone who knows someone. If you can be adaptable, and self-promote, you might even find opportunities to help non-tech orgs improve their systems. If you're like me, and social skills aren't innate, it might take some exposure therapy, but as long as you maintain a friendly and positive attitude, that will register. It's all about building trust.

I wouldn't say that networks trump demonstrated ability (I prefer that to "credentials" because that's what credentials are a proxy for), but in any economic environment, your network is as valuable as your demonstrated ability. This is for many very rational reasons.

> I wouldn't say that networks trump demonstrated ability (I prefer that to "credentials" because that's what credentials are a proxy for)

That's not what I said. To emphasize my own comment:

> Whenever I've seen a situation with low supply/high demand

In context to the GGP I was making reference to improving resumes when the labor market is over-saturated. Many orgs will sooner hire someone who's been vouched for than to sift through 100s of Github repos and contact 100s of references. They might not be as good as the best candidate in the pool, but the expense of verifying that might be too much, especially if they don't have the bandwidth to do that (e.g., HR staff, time from tech staff). And in times like these, candidates will be just leaping out of their networks.

> Hard to tell if I've fucked my career (by not just working at one company with my longest tenure being 2yrs w/ zero resume gaps)or if the market is just not great rn

Take it from an old-timer: your career is still far too young to be fucked.

Have someone look over your resume and see if it can't be improved in areas like readability.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com