The Job Market Is Hell | Hacker News Reader

The Job Market Is Hell

theatlantic.com

57 pointsdcarmo27 comments

I applied to hundreds of jobs. By now it's maybe even over a thousand. Most of the time it's either no response or "we decided to move further with a candidate which is more aligned...". And later I see the same job posting emerge again.

The ones I got through were extremely random. Some rejected me because of money, some just ghosted me after the code challenge. But they have one thing in common - the competition is insane. With the hungry crowd on the market, the companies can pick the best of the best. At one place I got rejected at the final round, they had two screening rounds: code assignments. They told me, that both of these challenges were cleared only by 15% of total applicants. So I imagine it's not easy to get through 15% -> 15%, and then you have a set of the top candidates and you can pick the toppest.

The current situation on the market is extremely demotivating.

> He would read a posting carefully, scrub his résumé, tailor an introductory note, answer the company’s screening questions, hit “Send,” hope for the best, and hear nothing in response—again and again and again.

That sums the process up pretty well. The advice for "surveying friends and former employers for leads" seems like the best bet (and referrals probably always have been), just a shame no one in my network works anywhere I'm interested in.

I've also been on the hiring side of this. Within an hour of making a job posting on LinkedIN, I'll usually have 150+ applicants.

95%+ are unqualified and wading through the applications is a nightmare.

But the fact such a high percentage are unqualified leads me to believe a big part of all of this is people are reaching for jobs they cannot actually do creating unnecessary noise.

1. What is your willingness to consider a candidate who does not match 100% of your requirements?

2. How willing are you to hire someone without the exact background or industry but can adapt and learn quickly due to transferable skills?

3. Do you recognize a bias for "people like you" (nepotism/cronysm, race, nationality, etc.) vs. the rest of the pool? Is this your "fit" criteria without admitting it due to legal reasons?

I generally look for high IQ and work ethic more than anything else. I don't even care if they don't have experience in the framework I need for example because good programmers can figure out stuff quickly.

So 1: very willing 2: Very willing 3: I don't even look at stuff like that

I just hire people that are skilled and capable.

Yes, you don’t need to go to school to learn programming. But maybe you are unaware of other biases: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gonza-penovi_a-recruiter-play...

What about nontechnical roles?

> 1. What is your willingness to consider a candidate who does not match 100% of your requirements?

I'm not the person you were responding to, but in my experience most of the candidates aren't even close.

You post a staff position and get dozens of college graduates.

You post a job requiring some C++ or Rust and you'll get 50 people who haven't written anything other than Ruby on Rails or Python.

I'm always open to impressive candidates who don't have exactly the right skills yet, but the majority of the spam applications can't even show that they're impressive candidates. They're just spamming the same resume to every job they see.

Bots, and other automated crap, I would presume?

I’m super happy the EU AI Act exists. All use of AI in the process of employment needs to be classified as high risk:

AI systems used in employment, workers management and access to self-employment, in particular for the recruitment and selection of persons, for making decisions affecting terms of the work-related relationship, promotion and termination of work-related contractual relationships, for allocating tasks on the basis of individual behaviour, personal traits or characteristics and for monitoring or evaluation of persons in work-related contractual relationships, should also be classified as high-risk, since those systems may have an appreciable impact on future career prospects, livelihoods of those persons and workers’ rights.

“High-risk” in this sense requires:

1. Comprehensive logging (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...)

2. Transparency in how the systems work (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...)

3. Human oversight (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...)

4. A named individual in the EU with responsibility for the system (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...)

https://archive.is/380kL

Last time I applied out in 2023, I probably submitted 700+ applications. I've been CTO of several medium sized organizations, CEO of a startup that exited, and am a great backend coder and software architect.

I got 2 interviews. One wanted me to be CTO to manage a 50 person team for $180k. I made $200k in 2014 managing a smaller team.

I gave up and do consulting now. It's actually easier to find clients and I can collect 3-5 paychecks. Works much better.

edit: I forgot a recruiter was working with me. I asked him what was going on. He said I was "too senior", "looked expensive", and "no one wants to hire white males right now."

How exactly do you find clients as a consultant? I'm facing a similar issue now, and the networks I used to rely on for clients have all gone downhill recently.

That's by far the hardest part. Almost all referrals. I've tried everything including hiring a sales team paid on commission and nothing reliably works.

Because of that my pay varies pretty dramatically. Something always seems to come in at the right time, but I still haven't figured out how to reliably find clients, despite how many companies are looking for people out there (I'm an AI expert and lots of companies are interested in my work but they are very hard to find).

> edit: I forgot a recruiter was working with me. I asked him what was going on. He said I was "too senior", "looked expensive", and "no one wants to hire white males right now."

Out of curiosity, what chronological age do you "present" as? Ageism I suspect is a factor on top of the overt racism that is seemingly OK as long as it's against a single group.

I hire staff in an unrelated field.

In recent decades, 100 % of my hire have been recommended by previous staff.

Whenever anyone leaves us ( generally after many years and almost invariably on friendly terms ) we ask them if they have someone they could recommend to take over their role.

We value cultural fit hugely. We have staff of multiple ethnicities ( Norwegian, Filipino, Sicilian etc ), body shapes, ages ( oldest is 70 ). We do value those who are friendly and will fit in with our team.

> a paid internship at a civic-consulting firm, years of volunteering at environmental-defense organizations, experience working on farms and in parks as well as in offices, a close-to-perfect GPA, strong letters of recommendation

> He would do anything—filing paperwork, digging trenches—to build his dream career protecting California’s wildlife and public lands

> He applied to 200 jobs. He got rejected 200 times. Actually, he clarified, he “didn’t get rejected 200 times.” A lot of businesses never responded

I'm not sure this has anything to do with AI.

It's hard enough to land an environmental non-profit, state, or federal environmental job. It is doubly difficult to do so when both the Federal [0] and State [1] government are slashing hiring across the board.

This article is just "AI washing" austerity measures and offshoring that is occuring in the US.

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_federal_m...

[1] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/california-governor-ai...

Agree that these are very very hard industries in which to secure employment.

At the least the anecdote is not that informative about the effects of AI, given the details.

Both Harris and Martine's anecdotes provide little evidence about AI being linked to their hiring issues.

The author is just conjecturing that AI has had an impact on their job markets, when both are primarily targeting government and government adjacent roles when state and federal governments are in the process of slashing funding.

Wow. What was it, 4 years ago when applicants were in the drivers seat and The Great Resignation was in full swing?

How the turns have tabled.

I think it's that and combined with a lot of people who had good jobs, but decided when they could work from home they just left and moved to places where they really are no jobs if it wasn't for work from home. Now they are trying to get back, but their positions have been filled.

I can't help by hiring today, but I can help with some training, building your resume and vouching for you.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jon-s-stevens_the-fact-that-1...

This was on the front page 5 minutes ago and gaining traction. Now it's not even on the 2nd or 3rd page.

What gives? This is an important topic.

This is why I prefer hckrnews so I can view submissions by time.

Wow thanks, didn't know about this.

Only for the poors. That’s why.

>asking recruiters out for coffee

What is this? Dating?! Is this really a thing??

Like everyone else, recruiters are up to their eyeballs in AI-generated resumes. If you can prove that you're 1) a human who 2) knows their stuff, that makes you stand out from the other 999 resumes they just got hit with. In turn, recruiters cost, so they tend to get hired by companies that are more serious about hiring than the median company with a job opening.

So, yeah, it could really work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com