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Comment by avnfish | Hacker News Reader

If this person was laid-off on Jan 1st and spent one hour on each application, that averages to 12.5 hours of non-stop job applying every day for 197 days straight

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I've never spent close to an hour on a job application. In senior year of college I probably sent 200 out at 10? minutes each?

10 minutes? To find the position, see if you fit, customize your cover letter and resume to well fit, and go through their portal? I could see maybe with aid of a GPT this being possible nowadays but still non-trivial.

What's a cover letter? I've never submitted one of those for a software engineering job.

Send in a resume, of which there are only a few categories of customization. Certainly no need to customize for each specific company for SWE.

If you're sending 2500 applications, you're not doing custom resumes or cover letters, or even much seeing if you fit...

I generally change jobs every 2 years for the last 15 years. I have never used a cover letter. Your mileage may vary but I think they are generally ignored.

Who writes cover letters or modifies their resume per role? It's all spray and pray.

I spend a great deal of time on the cover letter, and I do modify my CV for the role (mainly to keep it to a reasonable length).

Dang!

I can't think of a position I applied for that I didn't spend at least an hour working on the initial application. And an hour would be fast-tracking it.

from the post: "my wife and brother helped me a lot in doing the application work which seriously is a crazy amount of work"

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