V2 – Laid off folks, are you getting hired yet?

I was laid off about a month ago (senior software engineer). I remember the whole job search for my last position, back in June 2021, lasted all of about two weeks. This time, it feels like there's significantly fewer interesting positions open, and the ones I apply to aren't even leading to HR screening calls. I've probably applied to about 30 positions.

The one place that did call me back gave me their take-home coding test, but their automated grading system said I failed, so they sent me a rejection email with no details about what their automated system didn't like about my code and then never responded to my request for more info.

I've really enjoyed the first month or so of unemployment, getting to hang out more with my spouse, do hobbies, work on the house, etc., but the anxiety about running out of emergency fund runway is slowly creeping in. We've got about another 4 months before things get really dire, not accounting for unemployment checks. With UI, we can probably double that before we'd need to dip into investment accounts.

For sure a more fortunate position to be in financially than most get, but it's still really unnerving not knowing when/if I'll get another interview. I've been consistently employed full time since the moment I graduated high school (about 10 years ago), so this is literally the first time I've ever not had a job in my adult life.

I'll just repost one of my previous comments. Slight update: I'm now completely broke and living off of my girlfriend's income. (It feels horrible to say that out loud)

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Was laid off in August while working for a US-based company. My first layoff in a 10-year career. Still looking for a job. I'm broke. As in "can't pay my bills next month" broke. People are hiring but remote jobs are hard to find. (I have family responsibilities and cannot relocate)

I did find jobs. People who took 7 rounds of interviews then never released an offer letter. AFTER verbally confirming that I'd gotten the job. This has happened thrice now. I started with asking for $5000/mo (last drawn). But now, I'm willing to work for anything that pays the bills.

I'm in dire need and at my wit's end.

Got laid off mid-January from a smaller unicorn. 4+ YoE. I applied to ~80 places (mixture of cold applications and referrals), got to first rounds with maybe ~20, ended up with 5 offers (and pulled the plug on a few interviews due to fit or lack of interest.) 4 were startups of varying sizes, 1 was non-FAANG big tech, which I ended up taking for stability and WLB. Total time from getting laid off to signing the new offer was about 5 weeks.

Overall, I think things went ok for me because I have a fairly solid resume and a great network to lean on, and was able to do well in interviews. I also mostly applied to senior SRE and infra roles, which sounds like it’s harder to hire for than general SWE.

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.

I work as an AI research engineer, so I’m having a totally different experience than the others I’m seeing here. Job market is very very strong for senior AI roles. Multiple offers that were >2x what I was making at a BigTech research lab (depending on how you value the equity). Interview process was much easier than I was expecting- mostly situational interviews (although I was referred in for those).

Having said that, many places refused to interview me because I didn’t have experience with LLMs. I was surprised how strict some places were with experience requirements.

Got laid off in October, worked on open-source projects, two of those ended up in the front-page, got contacted and signed an offer this month. I felt like shit and spent too much time getting baked, but it's over now.

As a CTO the number of unsolicited inbound emails from recruiters with fawning profiles of potential candidates is not like anything I have seen before. I think it’s a signal that very highly paid engineering leaders are not able to find jobs like they had before easily.

It's like night and day from a year ago. I've known some very high quality people who had to do 8 onsites to get one offer (and obviously a lot more applications, recruiter calls, and tech screens to get those opportunities). There are still jobs out there but companies know they can be very very picky right now and will reject you for the smallest reason.

Laid off in October. Was making $130k as a mid-career embedded/C++/Python guy in LCOL USA. Supposed to start new job this Monday for $80k as an IT backend Java software developer at a University.

Been a very, very rough few months. The new pay will be difficult to service my debt properly.

Product designer, 10 years experience. Laid off mid-December. Recruiter screens and hiring manager interviews have picked up somewhat, but it’s still proving very hard to get into late-round interviews. I have only my third portfolio review in nearly three months coming up next week – here’s hoping.

I'm attempting to enter this field at possibly the worst time, with the worst qualifications. No YOE, no degree. I do have friends in the field that may be able to help but it's far from guaranteed.

Only thing I have going for me is that I have many years of non-professional programming experience and multiple great open source projects but at this point, I think my only hope is accepting anything. Any pay, any location, remote or in person. I'm already working near minimum wage jobs, so it's probably better to work something relevant on a resume.

I'm also in Canada so, it was sparse to begin with.

I was laid off a month ago, senior frontend engineer. I've reached out to my network and have been talking to various startups, but it seems like most of the bigger companies do not want to bite.

Compounding that is my desire to keep working remotely, or somewhere local to the DC metro area, so many of the same opportunities that would be available to me in the Bay area, had I remained there, are closed to me, because they're using a hybrid model.

I'm not in much of a rush, and I'm hopeful that I'll find interesting work with some startup.

I just interviewed a developer for a senior level front end position and they couldn't print a 2d array to the console. They apparently worked on a large web application and wrote typescript everyday.

What I've known for years, I'm finally seeing first hand: There are way too many people out there that should never have been engineers in the first place.

This is a rebalancing. Those who are competent will always be hired. Those who are are not, the jig is up.

I was laid off in November - few false starts here and there but I start my new gig on the 20th. Better yet I have $20k left from severance which is really nice.

Laid off in Jan (Senior Frontend Developer 7years exp) and took a few weeks off after getting laid off . I just cannot find an interview right now. I apply daily to around 5-10 jobs. It is making me question my skills as a developer. I never maintained an active github profie and seems like that was a mistake. Anyone has a remote job for frontend developer please help.

Bare in mind that this thread is going to be biased towards people who are struggling since they are more likely to share their plight.

Also bare in mind that the geography is going to make a big difference to your experience. Different countries are experiencing the recession in different ways and are at different points in the journey.

I’ve been posting where helpful, but early stage companies are still hiring!

If anyone is struggling and is on the mid/senior/director side of their career (3+ yrs), I'm helping place people at my friends' Seed and Series A companies. Email me at j{at}markovmanagement.com if I can help ya!

I've been hiring fairly steadily. The level of talent that is applying has definitely increased. My hiring managers are able to be way more picky, and people are accepting first offers at a higher rate.

There's toug competition for those looking to be hired.

I'm based in the UK with ~15 years experience as a professional web developer.

I lost my job early Jan and found a new role by early Feb. It was difficult though. This was the first time I've ever experience recruiters ghosting me. I hustled like crazy to find my current role and I think I got quite lucky honestly.

Every time I see these threads I feel the need to remind people that no one's circumstances will be the same. Experience and geography are two very important factors in our industry. There are jobs out there, and if you can beat out a few other candidates you'll probably do fine. If you can't do that then you may struggle.

I've only seen entry level positions being hired lately (across APAC). Market is very dry and layoffs continue across the industry.

people i knew got one or two years contractor with 10% more pay increase right away, i was offered more than that for two year contractor at meta twice so far but i prefer staying at where i am. we are all decades experience in embedded system,this field seems to be more aging proof? i am not sure.

Took a year off and have been trying to get a job for the last 3 months. It’s been crazy. I’ve applied to over 50 jobs and have only got a few interviews.

Terrible.

I’m getting rejected from everything and recruiter contact has been virtually non existent since December. A few recruiters have reached out, but they usually don’t go far because “oh you don’t have recent professional experience in random language/library we use”

It was a mistake to enter this industry in the first place, particularly the way I did it, it’s just unfortunate it was so expensive to learn.

I am! Laid off about five months ago now, finally find myself being courted by three employers: a local manufacturer, and two financial institutions. It's such a relief to have real offers on the table, and to have an interesting choice to make, instead of desperately scrabbling for anyone or anything. Five months is a long time without an income, and I've sent out ~100 applications in that time.

It could be a coincidence, but I've been writing more and more 'personal' cover letters, with more of a 'voice' and less formal stilted prose. Maybe people like it? Maybe people are just hiring again? Who knows.

Laid off a month ago (data scientist). I had been going through several technical interviews where the company told me I passed but then they either stopped contacting me or told me the position is being put on hold.

Now I'm pretty much in square one, some possible interviews but nothing strong. I'm from Argentina and I'm looking for remote work, I guess it's even more difficult because the usual companies that hire people like me are startups.

First time I experience something like this.

I had to quit in September due to burn out. Given how many better engineers now on market I feel there are no space for me anymore. Now burning my saving money on rent and food and going to commit suicide few months later.

If anyone is looking for remote/Canada, email me at endigma@fastmail.com, we may have a position for you.

I will reply to every person, no ghosting here.

Getting laid off soon, so I still have a few months to look for a job. I work in a somewhat niche field (search / information retrieval) and wanting to stay in that limits my options heavily.

Things are looking very very grim, even compared to how the market looked to me a few months back.

I’ve hope this is helpful, but our robotics start up is still hiring for multiple roles, head of product marketing, senior mobile engineer, data/ml engineer, solutions engineer, etc.! If you are interested to talk, email me at hazal@viam.com

company went under in December, i got one interview out of like 30 applications and to be quite fair i messed up a really simple Python question cus of nerves so i obv didn't get it. idc I'm chilling and I get time to shitpost so there's no rush.

I noticed that recruiter reach outs dropped to ~0 in Jan/Feb, but are starting to tick back up again. I'm fortunately still employed so when a recruiter does reach out I refer my friends.

As a fresh grad, with two internships at government boards and not even a single FAANG-esque company in my portfolio, this thread is deeply depressing and the outlook couldn't be more bleak.

guys, let me tell you one thing: even if you are completely broke, you can start a business, make some calls, don't rely your future to third parties.

Got laid off in Nov. Finally starting a new job on Monday