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Comment by pyre | Hacker News Reader

  | "but most of my team had new jobs lined up
  | by the time they left the building anyway."

I've never experienced this. Does this mean that they were already looking, or that they were able to immediately call someone up and get a job offer on-demand?

Edit: To be clear, having 'a job lined up' to me means that they already at least have an offer, rather than just a bunch of emails from recruiters and/or people looking to hire them. It seems really amazing to go from laid off to "have a job offer" in an afternoon. I could definitely see laid-off-to-interviews-lined-up in an afternoon though. Am I being too specific in my reading of this?

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If it's anything like San Francisco, once word spreads that a gaming company is shuttering, there's pretty much a "land grab" from the other local companies for talent.

Especially at a company like Zynga, that at least as far as I know, had a fairly rigorous interview process. It's a chance to get a pre-screened engineer, possibly on the cheap.

understandably a company would want to pay less for higher quality work, but at the same time if the process was rigorous and assuming many tech recruiters are also trying to poach the employees - i would think 'on the cheap' wouldn't really apply given supply/demand here

I agree with you as long as the candidate is sufficiently competent at negotiating. Unfortunately, a large number of developers are not.

It is on the cheap in the sense that they wouldn't expect to screen such people as much. It obviously isn't free, costs more than hiring from within, but cheaper versus trying to gauge recent graduates and the like.

ah yea, didn't think that all the way through

Indeed, I have "Zynga" on my linkedin profile and got roughly a dozen emails from recruiters last night.

Linkedin revenues probably had a nice bump in the past 24 hours.

Every time one of these things happens, I actively see (employed) game-dev buddies on Facebook publicly advertising jobs at their present companies to their newly laid-off friends.

Game developers are still a pretty tight-knit group. It's not like getting laid off from a Wal-Mart.

There are a zillion people trying to get into games. This actually makes it hard to find those who have actually made games. So when a (relatively) known quantity becomes available, there are immediate opportunities.

I have been approached by this sort of situation before with a "Hey <name>, if you ever change your mind, we have 3 places we could use you the next day. Call me if you ever change your mind about working for <your current employer>".

It's all about working with a range of people who value your skillset, and having a skillset that's valuable to a lot of people in useful ways and not setting off alarm bells, and understanding truly what other companies do (so they know you know what you'd be getting into without a lengthy interview/whatever process).

Giving talks at conferences, user groups, and helping people randomly (small amounts) for free on places like mailing lists builds tremendous goodwill in this arena and demonstrates your mannerisms, knowledge, and community relationships to everyone observing it.

On the other side of it, I have a list of people if I know they sound unhappy in their jobs or got laid off or fired, I'd thrust them in front of 3-5 people in front of my network INSTANTLY as I know they're not the sort of people you get by any other means. The golden handcuff type employees.

"It seems really amazing to go from laid off to "have a job offer" in an afternoon."

Really depends on how small the particular world is. When I was in Hollywood, it wasn't uncommon for a high-level exec to be fired from Paramount one morning and walk into work at Warner Bros the next day. Of course, that business is particularly incestuous, everyone knows each other, and the same people trade jobs the way schoolchildren play musical chairs.

Of course, things are probably a little bit more rigorous in this case. There might be a big talent grab in the wake of mass closures or layoffs -- but it seems unlikely that just anybody walks off with a legitimate job offer in supershort order. Known commodities and highest performers? Maybe. Those with great networks and recruiter relationships? Also possible. Anyone else? They'll get some halo and attention from the announcement, but they're not going to auto-convert that attention into an offer in a few hours. I suspect the part about "...had new jobs lined up by the time they left the building" is a slight exaggeration.

Both? I've been in situations where a company implodes like this, and employees at the company are often already being head-hunted by previous employees (who departed during a prior round of lay-offs, or who left of their own volition before the company fell apart) before they are fired.

While it's often something of a surprise when you finally do get the axe, you usually have a sense of impending doom, and a feeling that bad things are going down, before it happens. Projects stop getting traction. Upper management stops caring as much about what you're working on. Everyone becomes very apathetic. You get a rash of invites on LinkedIn, and people start updating their resumes.

So, it's rarely a complete surprise, and people often already have some idea of where they're going to go, or are ready to start looking.

"You get a rash of invites on LinkedIn, and people start updating their resumes."

When I was working at chumby industries and it was imploding, it occurred to me that somebody could probably write a really good predictor of imminent company failure by scrapping LinkedIn data and watching for sudden surges of activity from people working at the same company.

I'd be surprised if someone (or multiple someones) doesn't already have something like that running, even if just for their own private purposes.

Can you subscribe to some kind of 'firehose' feed on LinkedIn that lets you get to that information? Or do you have to be connected to each and every person?

(BTW thanks for Chumby while it lasted. Great product.)

I never really looked too much at the LinkedIn API, I suspect for the idea to work well you'd probably need to scrape data from the frontend and preferably be connected to a few "super node"-esque people (recruiters, etc).

(You're welcome for what bits of chumby I touched. Of course I was just one developer in a team of wonderful developers and hardware designers. It was a great job and a lot of fun. I still haven't decided if we were a bit too late (introduction of iPhone and Android) or too early (explosion in hackable maker devices like Raspberry Pi). I guess a bit of both.

I believe (subscribed) recruiters can already search by which profiles have been most recently updated. Just keeping track of that info plus the linked company would be enough, particularly if they expose it via an API.

Presumably, when a company is laying someone off, ex-employees don't have to worry about non-poaching agreements they might have in place with the employer. The easiest person to hire is someone you've worked with in the past and liked, and the easiest job to pick is one working for/with people you know.

They don't necessarily even need to make a phone call. Once I heard the news I sent emails to about 10 lead/senior developers.

It happened to me once. It was a weird surreal experience. This was back in 2001. Company went under while I was flying across the country. I learned about it as I left the plane at my destination.

I ended up accepting a new job offer later that day and rescheduling my return trip. It's still weird for me to think about that.

I definitely got lucky with that one.

Probably not on demand. Some would have already been looking. Some people never stop scanning the employment horizon either because the bore easily, as a safety net, or in case something higher paid wafts past. Others will have found something during their notice periods. Some of the best may even have been head-hunted by people who know (or know of) them or their work and not had to look at all.

I got the axe at a job a few years ago at lunch on a Thursday. By 3pm I had a new gig lined up start the following Monday.

Networking and contacts (and I mean legitimate networking) really play a big part in your overall success.

I'm in a large city, but nothing like NYC or the Valley either.

  | I mean legitimate networking

Are you trying to distinguish relationships vs. contacts/acquaintances here (i.e. "knowing people professionally" vs. "knowing people from going to a couple of meetups")?

Probably vs. LinkedIn and online, in particular.

Networking and contacts (and I mean legitimate networking) really play a big part in your overall success.

Networking and relationship building is huge. I got laid off from my previous $DAYJOB back in Jan '12. I showed up at the office at ~9:30am, got called into my manager's office almost immediately, left by 10:00am, made 2 phone calls from my car on the way home... by ~3:00pm that afternoon I had a new job all but lined up (had to interview and everything as a formality, but the job was essentially offered already).

Why? Because I take networking seriously, get to know a lot of people, participate in a lot of groups, do some public speaking, organize Meetups, etc., and more than a few people in my area know who I am and what my skills are. And I also knew exactly who was looking for the same reasons. So the 2 phone calls I made were extremely targeted, as I specifically knew those firms were looking to hire.

Now it might not always work out that way, but I absolutely endorse the idea that networking is crucial.

That's why it's a good idea to maintain good relationships with recruiters on LinkedIn even when you're not looking. I recently went through the process of losing my job (more accurately, a job I had been offered and had accepted was rescinded mid-relocation). Thanks to existing contacts, I called some people, told them I had changed my mind, and had multiple interviews that day.

You'd be surprised at how many startups are hiring in NYC: http://nytm.org/made-in-nyc

There's also many other companies not on that list too. If you're a smart engineer in NYC who wants a new job, if you really want to, you could totally play offer letter Pokemon on a pretty short time scale. ("Gotta collect em all!")

Psa: if you're a smart engineer in NYC and you're not being paid market rate, please get a new job now, your equity has a median value of zero anyways. The lowest I've seen a smart junior engineer take at a non startup was 90k, and that depressed salary is sortah compensated by the mentoring learning opportunities at that organization.

What is a good salary for a (full stack) software engineer in NYC with 7 years of experience in the field?

With leadership responsibilities or just individual contributor role?

With leadership responsibilities. Say a medium-to-small sized team, less than 10 people.

One could say the position would be either; Senior Software Engineer or Technical Lead.

Making a lot of assumptions about the job and yourself, obviously, but that strikes me as a $150K position, if not higher. I've seen a few roles like that go for $180-200K total comp in the NYC area.

It may a little bit of negotiation finesse (or more realistically, holding several offers in hand at once and willing to play them against each other).

sounds about right, also really really depends on the scope of the role, size of the org, and what kinds of specialist/domain knowledge related to the tech/biz are needed.

Hmm... that sounds sky-high. Couple of my friends are working for startups in the NYC area, and making $60k (they're all recent graduates). They're really smart and really good at what they do.

A lot of my acquaintances are working at those various Wall Street firms earning about $85k.

Finally, I have a friend who switched to Google NYC after about 9 months at a Wall Street firm (at $85k). Google started him off at $150k. But um, that's Google...

I didn't know people made so much in NYC. I thoughts these $200k jobs were only found in the Californian wonderland of Silicon Valley :-/

I even have a friend who did Computer Engineering (not CS) at college, and found a job involving low-level assembly/C programming for embedded systems. The company said they'd pay him $18/hour for the first few months; and if they liked him, they'd hire him for real at $60k. Phew. (This company is actually in Long Island.)

I'm always bemused by the sky-high consulting rates & salaries I hear on HN. I'm not sure if I live on the same planet...

Tell your friends to dust off their resumes ;)

Seriously though, $60K in NYC is extremely below market for almost any type of programming work. The only scenario I can imagine that happening is if you're writing VB6 Excel macros. Hell, even that in NYC is probably more than $60K.

$85K is also very below market. In fact, unless you're working in a niche that's extremely under-demanded, anything below six-figures I'd consider very suspect. If you have experience with something in demand (web, mobile, data, etc) hitting six figures should be a matter of course, and anyone giving that type of work for below $100K in NYC is ripping you off (or giving you an oil tanker of equity).

Embedded is a different ball game - demand for that type of work is pretty low in the NYC area. If you are proficient in standard enterprisey stacks (.NET, Java, etc) or "Valley" stacks (Rails, Node, etc) you can make quite a bit of money here.

Google NYC pays on the high end, but they are not a huge outlier. Remember that they are competing for the same talent pool as everyone else who wants capable hackers. I've seen plenty of startups and companies play in the mid-$100Ks range.

My email is in my profile. Feel free to drop me a line and I can put you in touch with a couple of recruiters I trust (and aren't slimy).

Thanks for being real and talking about figures guys, a lot of people on HN skirt around the actual #s but say things like "You are being paid well below market value" or similar. On a number of occasions I've seen salary ranges posted pertaining to SV but always brushed it off. When I came into the NYC tech field I started out below market value but aggressively negotiated my way up after talking to a few people.

All I can say about those who make 60-90k is good luck, it's harder to work your way up to the rate that you deserve organically starting at that low of a rate.

Curious -- I'm a video guy. What's your sense on the market in NYC for streaming digital video jocks?

Zero idea, sorry :( I'm really most familiar with enterprise and web/mobile dev.

potatolicious is absolutely right. EMPHATICALLY so.

let him help you :)

And, given the 10k users/mo and requirement to display the logo, that list pretty much ignores the B2B market in NYC which might be even bigger.

I'm guessing it's a little exaggerated...

I live in the Denver/Boulder area, and I'm 90% confident that if I were laid off today I could have an approximately equal job in less than 3 months. I wouldn't say I have a new job lined up, but somebody could spin it that way.

Also, I'd imagine people from a well known company like OMGPOP, in a big tech hub like SF or NYC, would have an easier time finding something new.

I used to live in Denver, and today I live in San Francisco. I can tell you, this story is not an exaggeration. When I was in Denver I did PL/SQL and C# types of things. Today I do Python and Javascript and basically standard technology things. I can tell you, there's a vast difference in Denver vs San Franscisco. You drive down the streets of San Francisco and you see signs saying, "Developers! We freakin love you, come work for us!" You ride the subway, and there are signs for game companies hiring developers. Really: it's not like Denver, honest.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a billboard truck driving in Redwood City that was trying to get developers to consider working for Walmart.com. If you like big data... they have it.

It's a surreal place.

In any town with a lot of programmers (e.g. Bay area, NYC, Seattle, Boston,...) lots of people know each other and socialize. You'll go out drinking with your buddies and they'll say "company X just got a new contract - you to work with Alex at company Y didn't you? I'll bet if you called he'd be interested."

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