Is anyone else having a similar experience or is it just me?
Employers are swamped right now, there are a lot of people seeking few positions. I've gone from giving personal replies and spending time on most applicants, from spending time sourcing, to just trying to keep up with the inbound applications.
It's obviously a very hard market right now, and I feel for those who are searching in this climate.
I last applied for jobs several years ago, and there are still dozens of companies I've not gotten a rejection from. A "fire and forget" strategy of sending out hundreds or thousands of applications is the only thing that makes sense to do if you're not getting a job through networking.
I got 150+ applications per day.
At some point, you just have to close the window. I can only realistically do 10/25 résumé per day and still do my job.
All most all hiring has a strong element of luck. I've hired really good engineers that can't write a resume or aren't self promoting enough in an interview and they seem kinda flat. But they roll in and make good decisions, good products, good documentation and they are easy to work with.
If I could, I'd talk to everyone on the phone for a few minutes to get a feel but I can't do that either.
Adding an application-cost to the dynamic seems to be one sensible approach to applicant-spamming.
It's also why reducing costs of communications can backfire in all kinds of obnoxious ways. I remember getting my first email account, nearly forty years ago now, and being able to communicate near instantaneously, and with no cost, to ... a very, very, very small handful of people.
Even in the corporate world of the early 1990s, email addresses were sufficiently rarified that for the most part you'd communicate with a few colleagues at the same firm, and perhaps some contacts at other companies, if you were in a technical position (as I was at the time).
I can distinctly recall being in a bookstore in the late 1990s the first time I heard a mother talking with her daughter about a new friend the daughter had made, and the mother asking if the daughter had shared her email address.
Other than cost imposition, the best suggestion I've had for information overload is to have a cheap, unbiased, low-cost, no-regrets information rejection capability.
Earlier mentions: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37440218> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22208255>.
Of course, for established contacts you'd want to override that.
I am a very senior PM with two big name tech companies on my resume, and the track record of bringing multiple products from zero to one and creating revenue (and even profit!) from them.
In the old days, I had recruiters in my LinkedIn, I would breeze through the first 30 minute screener calls, and get lots of call backs. My hit rate for job applications for non-FAANG cold applies was fairly high.
Two months ago when I was looking, I was getting basically zero job application responses, half my screeners ghosted me, and I had very few recruiters reaching out. I think maybe 3 in 3 months-ish.
I got very lucky and landed a job, but it was a mild pay cut, and the company is basically on fire
Both them and my previous massively growing employer are not hiring ANYONE, even software engineers, which is the easier role to get picked up for.
My buddy who’s unemployed in PMM, can’t get a call back from anyone. It’s really bad
I just have hard time understanding how 1 year ago, everyone was hiring SE and now nobody is. Shouldn't this be indicative of some huge economic meltdown? But economy isn't melting down. Can skills mismatch suddenly be so dramatically different? AI is great but it can't have this much impact already. Could over-hiring during Covid really have this much impact?
It just feels like there is something shifting below the surface.
In short, it probably won't recover to bubble territory in the next 20 simply due to the huge supply of devs. On the other hand, the field does require some education, some IQ threshold, some persistence, etc, so there will be ok-paying jobs for a while. But again, if you started working circa 2021-2023, you will need to adjust your expectations.
And it really goes beyond 2021-2023. The tech job market for the last decade or more has not been normal in the sense that tech jobs, especially on the US west coast (though also quantitative trading), have paid well out of line with pretty much every other STEM position which was not historically the case. When I was a product manager back in the day, I'm pretty sure the computer system hardware and software people were paid pretty comparably as I probably was as well.
I think there are questions about where adtech goes. If it has a major downturn, some companies are going to really feel it.
Essentially, you've got an oligarch class in the US/World with more money than they know what to do with and it gets put to weird uses. Tech/VC seem to be the sexiest use of that money and so it gets directed in that direction and comes out everywhere. ZIRP exacerbates it. And it seems the end of ZIRP and other effects finally pop the bubble. What really sucks is when your family's healthcare is dependent on your employer playing the above game.
Most of us have had high paid jobs funded by some billionaire VC burning their wealth on unprofitable ventures, because they were willing to lose 10 bets to win 1.
Today, investors (whether VC, private equity, public markets) want to own businesses that are profitable or can reasonably be expected to be soon. Correspondingly, far fewer jobs paying six figure salaries while the company loses millions of dollars for their investors/owners.
I compensated by taking the occasional long lunch.
Sticking it to the man.
I did see my former employer was looking for someone in India or Eastern Europe to fill a dev position requiring my exact stack. I do wonder if taking whatever pay cut down to the lower salary they’re presumably offering would have been worth it for both sides.
As it stands, I’m in a mild panic about my future career despite knowing I’m capable. I may end up using my CPA to switch back into accounting for the time being. Or perhaps start up my own thing. Hopefully things get better after a short amount of time.
Considering AI advances, I think I will be fully unemployable in 4-5 years. I am making plans for exiting IT and maybe starting my own company or buying land and growing food.
Having started my career in the shadow of the dotcom bust, I can say that this is exactly what most technical workers did. I started my career outside of tech and most of my grad school classmates were people trying to find a new career outside of software.
Many of the people I knew in this situation who were truly passionate about software ended up eventually returning, but quite a few others found the alternate career more satisfying in the long run.
The problem right now is that nobody else has really abandoned their tech career, still too early with too much money on the line. This means the signal to noise ratio for hiring is abysmal. If this keeps on long enough that software is no longer cool (and more importantly, not as high paying), it will be easier to reenter the industry.
Till then the only people that won't be struggling to find work are people with good networks and/or really standout backgrounds.
I've so far only contacted one recruiter I trust, and even he only had one job I could apply to.
BTW, if anyone is looking for a full stack web dev in London (TypeScript, React, Next, Node / Bun / Deno, even a bit of Rust), you can contact me at https://www.lajili.com).
Again, not saying this is the problem you're facing or that every company needs to have long-duration and less-transient staff. This is just one issue I'm seeing and it's possible that it could potentially be a contributing factor.
In my experience this may be a sign that your company does not offer anything that retains people.
If people conclude that there is no growth opportunity and/or that the overall conditions are poor they will leave within 2 years even if they want to be committed for the long run.
These issues might affect even new hires joining with the best of intentions.
When the market rate salary increases 5-10% a year, year over year, and you're giving 2-3% raises, it's no surprise people leave for a 30% range after a few years.
I'm relatively new myself (1.5 yrs in) and we're in a growth phase, but the organization lacks structure for communication to flow efficiently. It's a problem we are actively working to fix via restructuring. That being said, when a candidate resume is received and there is a history of job-hopping, we will generally pass on that resume.
I've definitely heard companies saying this when it wasn't the case, "industry standard" means different things to different people I guess, and also depends what country you're hiring from.
I've always heard that the best strategy to raise your salary is to change jobs every couple of years. Could this be the flip-side of that?
Nothing teaches you software architecture like dealing with your own crap from 3+ years ago. You cannot call yourself an experienced engineer if you haven’t done this.
I think the flip side is that you won't build a reputation with 1 year stints at 10 companies. I currently work with a VP of product who's only stayed max 1 year at their last 6 companies, and I can feel the lack of engagement and ownership since the day they joined. So I definitely resonate with GP's point.
What makes everything worse is that at the end of the day, you'll never get straight feedback from someone on why they left so soon. Laying bare all the issues serves little purpose when you're leaving a company, so I end up thinking most companies have very skewed views of retention and hiring. It's not an open conversation since both parties have selfish interests.
Everyone needs to think for themselves what they're maximizing for. For me, I feel like my reputation is worth way more than any single job, so I try to avoid jumping around too much.
And yes, it there is definitely a mindset that jumping companies frequently is the best path to higher salary. There is even some truth to that, people who don't know you may value perceived potential higher than the company that knows you well. That said, if you do it too much you do risk ending up in the "jumps ship too frequently" pool and you'll start to be overlooked.
I wasn't looking for 5-10 years from an employee, I don't think that's realistic today. But somewhere in 2-4 for sure. Jumping after 4 years is pretty common as it's a frequent vesting cliff, even at large companies.
Solves the problem of hires wanting to jump ship even if they started 10-20% below their target salary but know that committing can get them decently above their target salary in a year
I’ve had so many people promise things and have someone else them prevent them from following through.
I’ve had a department head reporting to the CEO try to keep me but HR wanted me gone. HR knew how to play politics and I was gone.
Actually, I'm suggesting the top-level poster explicitly state they do this, so candidates know they aren't fucking around.
The age of committing yourself to a company for ten years is over. That’s a recipe for obsoleting yourself ten times over. You’ll also miss out on the best talent, since by definition they have lots of options. I wouldn’t want to work at a place that filters by that criteria, on that basis alone.
It might seem like this is a reasonable thing to you, especially right now that the season is tough for programmers. But it’s an illusion.
On the other hand, if the resume is all 1-3 year segments, yeah, there's no reason to think you're going to be different.
As a side effect, a good 10% of our employee base is at 10+ years (including me at 12) and around half the company is at 5+. Which is incredible considering the company is only 17 years old.
I tend to work pretty short stints at places, but in the vast majority of cases am shipping things to prod the first week or so and building and releasing revenue generating products in the first 6 months. Most of the places I've left, even after a short tenure, are continuing the work I started just fine and generally get lasting value from a even a year of my time.
With few exceptions, most of the teams I've left are sad to see me go, but that doesn't diminish the befit my time there has provided.
On the other hand most of the people I know that have worked 7+ years at a place aren't particularly engaged in the products and certainly aren't keeping up with major industry trends/changes/etc, and generally just go to work each morning without leaving much of an impact. Even at places like Google, most of the 10+ year people (with some notable exceptions) are the "rest and vest" types.
I'm starting to gear up for a job search myself, and I'm definitely going to be looking for quality places where I think the odds are good I can do another 10 year stretch happily. I don't job hob any more.
If you need people to stay 5 years then give them a gracious 5 year vesting schedule
People stay or quit based on factors during the job. Is the salary good? Is the company growing? Are their career goals being met? Is the management competent? Are they feeling burnt out? Focus on all of these and retention will automatically go up.
I don't think GP is asking a candidate to know whether they'll stay for years at GP's org -- they're asking that the candidate have the intention of staying ~somewhere~ for a longer stint.
Very few people interview thinking "I'm going to take all the info I can here then leave in a year." Most people want to work somewhere for a long time and become an expert and master their craft. The most rewarding job I had I was there for almost 8 years and the last 2-3 I was really in the zone and felt like I could do anything.
There's an old saying about how if you're constantly smelling shit you need to check your own shoes. If a bunch of people come then leave, look at your own house first before assuming it's something wrong with them.
- Stay unemployed until I find a job that seems interesting enough to work there for years. Apply, get rejected because companies don't like hiring unemployed people.
- Get a job that I don't like, then be constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to leave. Get rejected because I haven't been on my job for long enough.
What should I do?
In an idealist world, you're the perfect employer and I should be your employee. I want to believe that these employers exist but my conventional wisdom says, they are just textbook version, real world is different.
A little bit about me: In my 12 yoe (still at same place with steady growth), worked 6 years for one team, built a framework. one SE was dumping his new projects and moving to fresh ones while I get to maintain them, soon moved to different team. I stayed, maintained, stabilized, scaled, tuned, left only after then to different team (actually I'm the only one) to work on a new product. Again same situation, many have joined and left, few after 1 year and none of them contributed anything significant to the product. None of them cared about the product or the company, just optimizing for their career and pay. But then what's the passion in it if you don't care about what you've built and make it better.
I'm now pivoting to new team (don't know yet) planning to build something again from scratch. I'm optimizing for my passion, but some where deep inside I'm worried about my future prospects because of long haul.
On a nominal basis I would expect to make more money in 10 years by switching companies every few than sticking around at one company for the duration. Beyond that, a lot of companies don't really care about what kind of growth/trajectory you want. It seems most employers are looking to fill a role and could care less about growing/developing your talent in new/existing ways.
Employers will need to really make an effort to understand their employees and connect with their needs/wants for them to stick around for the long haul. Maybe that's a tall ask, but offering a salary/healthcare/retirement is the norm now and isn't necessarily competitive in itself.
Can I really count on my employer to honor my well-being and interests or are they going to string me along until they don't need me? I think it's perfectly fair for employees to do the same, it's a two-way street.
Once that game ended, all bets were off.
- Almost any job is preferred over no job at this time.
- Some cities in the US are a bit less impacted by recession (eg. Omaha, Nebraska), or have labor shortages because the area offers zero glamour and zero Starbucks.
- Technical skills are needed by USGOV, directly and generally not via body shops. Your country needs you if you're in the US.
- US has a shortage of skilled blue collar labor. Welding, electricians, plumbing, fabrication, etc. Manufacturing in the US is on the rise, though likely never to achieve the rhetorical aims of policy makers. Consider a career change.
Recessions are an inescapable event in any economy, and we were/are overdue. Bad times separate well run and well capitalized businesses from those less so. Such times reward productivity innovations. And, those of you resilient enough to persist & position yourselves smartly - get rewarded during the next boom cycle.
https://www.comptia.org/newsroom/press-releases/tech-industr...
Lots of ghosting after the 2nd or 3rd interview. Very few positions for Sr. Systems admin / Engineer that I see as of late, much more "full stack or devops", but they really want a full time developer with a lot of front end experience. I do not really create web-applications, though. So it is tough.
My last pref. review I was told “you’re the guy we ask to solve problems 10x harder than the other devs. Anyone can patch a bug, we always ask you to figure out the things nobody else can.” Which unfortunately doesn’t translate well on a resume or in an interview.
I have your background and doing this increased my scope and kills significantly.
However. If you _Are_ a seasoned "sysadmin", you can pickup the cloud stuff. It's a different paradigm but if you have skill, you can do it. Time to learn new stuff!
You can email me in my bio for more questions, referral to this role: https://apply.workable.com/ccri/j/AF5E000507/
It was psychically exhausting.
But then I went from have 0 good news to having 3 jobs racing each other to make offers. Go figure.
This is a challenging time to be an applicant. Hang in there! Also, completely ignore LinkedIn as a source for jobs to apply to. It’s worthless. Each opening I looked at had captions like “be sure not to pass on this opportunity so amazing that 437 people have already applied to it! Subscribe to LinkedIn Platinum or whatever to boost your chances!” It’s basically an RPG with pay-to-win loot drops. Don’t get into their feedback loop. It’ll drive you nuts.
In those terms, LinkedIn feels like “click here to win a date with Taylor Swift!” Realistically, that’s not gonna happen. (Not the the least because my wife would kill me before date night even if I won. Sorry, Taylor! Maybe in the next life!) I’m not going to be the #1 candidate in that stack. Well, someone has to be, true, but the odds just aren’t great.
I saw over 100 people applied for the role, but it's hard to imagine many (if any) other folks had the same direct experience with everything the role entailed. Yesterday, I got a cold rejection email. I was shocked enough to reply asking for any feedback on why I was not being considered based on how well my experience and achievements matched the role - I don't expect an answer.
I am also seeing a high percentage of cold rejections at later stages in the process than I am used to. Where the last interview step was usually down to 1-3 candidates, it's now down to 3-8.
It's just my opinion, but I think the huge volume of applicants is leading to them to go way beyond the job they are hiring for. Like, they post a position for a front end engineer with 3 years React experience and they end up with a 10+ year FS engineer, a FE engineer who worked for 7 years at Facebook, a BE with 8 years experience and 2 years of FE/FS, or a contractor in RU with 10+ years.
Historically speaking, just because you "solved the problems" doesn't mean you "get the job".
When I first started working (not originally in tech, but plenty of tech places did this too) this is how (professional, skilled) jobs were filled:
- Position posted with a deadline for submissions (usually 2 weeks to a month out, sometimes more).
- Organization waits until all applications are received.
- Resumes/Cover letters are reviewed.
- Calls to screen candidates.
- 1/2 day to full day onsite scheduled (depending on level of role).
- 1 candidate gets selected from the pool who made it to the final round. It was also not uncommon that the organization would decide that none of the candidates had the qualifications they were looking for and they would simply, wait and start the process over in 3 months.
It was much closer to buying a house in a hot sellers market than tech hires in the last decade.
This world of continuous hiring where the goal is to maintain a headcount rather than fill a role is fairly exclusive to the recent tech boom where growth was what mattered most. It's historically normal to get to the final onsite and still lose the offer because competition beat you out.
I am a ML Engineer working at a big Co with 15+ YoE. This is how things are going for me:
* I started looking in September last year. So far I had 3 complete loops. One rejected me and two down leveled me.
* Although recruiters reach out a lot, more than half of them ghost me.
* When I started looking I used to ask for salary bands. Most companies top of band was around half of my current comp, so I declined. Now I'm saying yes to just about anything, just to prove to myself that I can get a job offer.
* Particularly in the ML space, requirements from companies are simply insane. One company was hiring a role doing exactly what I'm doing in the same domain. They rejected me because they wanted someone who was an expert at all of software engineering, data science and this particular domain, and apparently I'm not good enough. Oh, there is also this company who rejected me at the screening phase because I had "only" 6 years of experience with their particular technology instead of 8.
Draw your own conclusions about how good or bad the job market is.
10 year ago I started a business that had hundreds of engineers in London and New York.
I am now starting a new one and this time I am hiring talent from all over the world now that it is more acceptable for us and our clients.
Surely this must be a factor in people in expensive western markets?
Yea, this was/is my main fear with remote work. It will "even out" the pay ranges across the globe...not perfectly (due to language, timezone, regulatory, and general cultural barriers), but the imbalance will be less severe as western salaries come down and int'l salaries rise from the new demand. I expect this to happen over the course of 5-10 years, not overnight, but seems like the early signs are already there now that Covid is 4 years old.
I guess we'll see less developers getting promoted in total, with more of the higher rank positions filled from lines that aren't as remote as development.
Company leadership could be done from home during covid, right?
I always assumed that the PE overlords take a dozen or so executives and lock them in a room with half a dozen knives and tell them to figure it out on their own, but it's possible I'm a bit overly cynical and have a vivid imagination.
It was absolutely maddening to see mass-scale denial in real-time.
Sure, there might be some kind of network knowledge going on in Silicon Valley, but now with work from home, that's pretty much fading away.
There are just a lot of barely skilled people in the industry with minimal passion. Hiring processes haven't caught up yet to filter for quality in this environment.
I have recently seen large American companies where managers/team leads are full-time employees while their teams are mostly contractors from LatAm. And even those managers are not on PST. They advertise "W2 contract-to-hire" roles here in the US though.
Compensation packages and hiring processes were traditionally very regional. I remember having a very hard time finding work in a city I wanted to move to because I was not physically there.
Now they are not.
The push for remote work from our own was the second biggest "fuck you; I've got mine; should've been born earlier" moment I've ever seen in tech right behind OpenAI and Microsoft (whose engineers are paid extremely well) touting how well ChatGPT can replace engineers.
It shouldn’t be different now. They reduce WFH to manage employees better (stupid but that’s what they think), but WFH is still accepted where I live (France, up to 3 days a week).
The remote work movement chickens have come home to roost
The reason to have some US devs is that the Latam hires are technically contractors and they need US engineers to hedge against the risk a change in Argentina tax law forces employees to quit.
Im sure it's very difficult to be a US based junior or mid right now.
I didn't make this up - I'm in my 40s and use Generative AI for most of my work today (currently with a custom toolset that I'll open source soon). There will be some work which will require human ingenuity, but most software patterns have been done before by someone else.
We do not need any more juniors or more staff provided the current staff embrace the time saving that the AI, LLM, etc can provide.
I'm not having applications rejected as much as I'm having them get ghosted.
My percentage of ghosted applications is up 25% from 2022 and 20% from 2020, while my number of outbound applications is up 40% from 2022 and 45% from 2020.
Like many folks here, I used to get a good amount of inbound recruiter activity prior to 2023, but that's all but stopped. That channel is _barely_ picking back up again.
The good news is that applications following up from referrals have gotten me interviews fairly consistently. The bad news is that places with open headcount are harder to find.
A lot of it is spam and people who clearly are using AI to fill in our form. One applicant didn’t even bother to remove “ChatGPT:” from the answer.
Of the remaining applicants I do feel that even those with years of experience at big companies are kind of hothouse flowers. They are skilled at using complex and costly frameworks, but they are often missing what I used to think of as the basics.
A lot of those frameworks are themselves ZIRPs! I kind of think the current generation has been cheated a bit. If I were starting out today I don’t know how I would have learned anything.
We had a candidate who detailed some of their achievements at their previous employer, things like “I got this third party service to feed their logs into that third party service”. And they are not wrong, this was a titanic effort and they had to navigate complex change procedures to get it done. But… this isn’t what I’m hiring for.
Candidates are also under a lot of pressure. I read an application the other day which was clearly human-written, but they gave two or three word answers to essay questions. The answers were actually correct, just not with the kind of detail we wanted. But I imagine that we were one of ten applications the guy filled out that day. In this environment I don’t know how much time I can legitimately expect a candidate to spend on us.
Personal networks didn't work as well during bubble/ZIRP times because everybody good was employed and either they already made more than what you were offering, or were holding out for a company that paid more.
Nowadays everybody knows someone good who has been laid off or is worried about being laid off. Or maybe they made major lifestyle changes during the pandemic and now they'd have to move a small family from Omaha back to the Bay Area.
As for screening questions, there's never going to be an automated way that detects AI or AI-influenced answers, for obvious reasons. There are countermeasures I have in mind but I'm not sharing them here.
Also he's been interviewing some Russian-speaking candidates willing to relocate from the US, Israel and Germany. Among the candidates are Russians who have been living there for 15 years. Their reasons to leave: bad attitude towards Russians at all levels, unwillingness to pay taxes that are used for war against Russia, lack of actual freedom of speech, and LGBT propaganda starting from 1st grade elementary.
Regarding quality of life here, for instance, even a PHP mid can get around 280-320k RUB/month net. Head of arch can get 1200k. And 300-400k RUB/month even in Moscow has greater purchasing power than 5-7k EUR/month net in, say, Munich. Plus, long-term prospects, stable economy, healthy food, high-quality affordable internet, good and cheap public transit, instant person to person money transfers, great digital government services, strong combat-proven army with best in the world air defense etc and beautiful women…
Oh well! My 4 hours of coding was not totally a waste.
6 months later you hear some nepotistic hire takes the position.
maybe companies prefer people they know rather than 1000s of applicants.
also a toxic culture of seeking perfection and a cargo culting attitude prevalent among many senior/lead engineers and managers. maybe justified, i dont know and i dont care anymore.
In defense of hiring friends: If the referer is considered a trustworthy employee, it's probably going to be your highest information hire.
I interviewed with a well-known startup here on HN that required a lengthy application material submission, which I spent a few hours on. Then talked with the CTO and felt the conversations went well. After two conversations I was ghosted.
Submitted to a large software company in Washington state which indicated they had "up to 100% remote" for specific roles. In the application I indicated "not available for relocation" and have only received automated rejection emails for them. I mention that last point because I suspect that may have been the reason.
I have also applied to roles from the last few Who's Hiring posts in positions that are more of a stretch for my line of work but with overlap in core technologies, but have not received so much as a conversation. One just silently rejected my application (I had to view in their workday site to see what the status was).
On the other hand, large companies like Google, Apple, etc. are (or were) very eager to move forward to interview me, even for multiple roles. But I cannot relocate and had to inform the recruiters I am unfortunately inflexible with this. Ironic, I find.
NVIDIA, Meta, many smaller companies (gitlab, duckduckgo, kagi, and other startups found here) seem to be the only tech employers that explicitly advertise remote work is okay with them. But some roles in the smaller companies aren't always a great match for my interests (maybe the culture would be, so I am trying to keep an open mind).
Luckily I'm employed full-time. But my pay isn't good at all, so I've been exploring other options.
Rejected the first time, low-balled below my communicated expected salary the second time.
The interview processes felt a lot like tech hazing - multiple interviews, a coding assignment, and an arbitrary review of said assignment compared to the job responsibilities. At the end, I felt plenty invested(both emotionally and timewise) to the point that I amused the idea of accepting the low-ball offer. I guess that even might have been the company's strategy.
I continue with my freelance work and looking.
*edit: I am in the EU.
Best of luck with your search!
Is it staff in HR departments comprised of what HN likes to call "non-technical people"?
Did so-called "non-technical people" seek a 10x increase in the number of applicants and then enlist software developers to make it happen.
What is the story behind the spread of "ATS".
My email is in my bio if you want to apply, also, I could give you some actionable feedback on your resume based on what I'm seeing a lot lately.
I had TN specifically in my mind because I had a remote coworker from there at my SF startup. He was a great guy and super talented, and lived on a beautiful farm he had no intention of leaving. That’s the guy you want to be targeting. Hire my old neighbors from Missouri. That brilliant kid in Nebraska. Someone from Iowa, although I don’t know why you’d want to do that, go Huskers. Take advantage of all the things we scrambled to build out to make full time remote jobs completely feasible these last few years.
There's far too many recruiters (internal and agency) that behave poorly and or act unethically.
This is not you - this is just the nature of the cycle. You got to enjoy the high but how you have to survive the lows. Conserve cash; do work for comp that you once thought was once below you. The good times will come again. Don't get too down about it but also don't get too stubborn about maintaining what you once had.
But I have been in the same employer for the last 6 years, so I didn't get to enjoy the high :/
I built this to help developers find jobs. May be of use.
First up was a screener with one non technical recruiter, final question of the interview was something like "would you be open to other roles too?". I said sure, but I was mainly interested in the role I applied for.
End up moving to the next stage with a technical interview, same question at the end of that.
Third interview was with someone else for a completely different role. I asked what about the first role and the recruiter put me back on a screener with the same non technical guy I had talked with the previous week.
This guy then said they'd filled the other role I didn't initially want, that the role I had originally applied for was still open but if I'd consider other roles again. I responded that I'd actually like to try for, you know, the role I'd actually applied for in the first place. Recruiter says sure...
Then silence, haven't heard from them in about a year.
Start your own thing.
Seriously.
The best time to start a business was five years ago, the second best time is now.
Most people out there need to put food on the table for their families and make rent next month, and so don't have the above luxuries.
And it’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity for a knowledge worker, imho.
Working on my own (non-monetized, small, used by no-one) stuff has created a string of achievements that created a positive psychological feedback loop during a very dark time.
Additionally, it let me work on things that then let me pivot in a completely different direction compared to what I was doing before and make money this way.
Personal development is good. Even / especially if you need to whore yourself out at the same time.
HR has already frozen salaries - no increases for existing employees, and they're already starting to cut salaries for newly posted positions.
When you do get a position posted you get a ton of applicants: one of my managers hired for a senior SWE and had to filter through over 700 resumes. And you can't meaningfully filter that, at best you take a sample and pick from there, so plenty of good candidates are going to end up on the wrong end of a "select all, delete". This also lets HR be way more aggressive, so offers before that were a negotiation have turned into "take it or leave it" up front.
I mean, it kinda makes sense... ZIRP is over, free money is gone. And plenty of companies are going to be like mine and servicing debt payments from growth and acquisitions with an interest rate that has tripled over time.
The real sentiment right now is "batten down the hatches".
I have also encountered this - salary negotiation with HR/recruiter at first contact. This was before any interviews or coding tests, at a point when I only had the vague job posting as a guide for the role. There seemed to be two filters: a remoteness/WFH/RTO test; and a low-ball salary bludgeon.
As Groucho Marx almost said, I'm very glad I don't work for a company like that :)
Could be worse, I guess. Other managers I've talked to have said that their organizations are actively running the numbers on salary cuts to "normalize" wages after things heated up so much in 21-22.
In the relatively awesome market in 2021 I did 70+ applications, 10+ screens, 4 loops, and ended up with 2 offers. And that was all as an internal transfer, with tends to be a little easier.