HACKER Q&A
📣 throwmeaway222

How is the job search going?


Out of work since August. I have submitted many resumes. I have to work remotely, so that might be against me, but I have never seen this kind of job market. In the past I would have 40 offers by this point with the number of applications I have submitted. My wife is pointing out that many jobs these days may be scams. This is something new to me since in the past I would have no problem just applying to a few jobs in the monthly HN job postings and something might land pretty quickly (within a month or so). I also found it really really odd that in the weeks after the Nov 1 post, I have been getting a LOT of new spam. I think some of the posters are fake.

At this point, our financial situation is getting dire, as we eat away our savings to pay bills. Does anyone know if this is related to the higher interest rate? When will the situation change?

How are y'all doing in your searches?

  👤 Cypher Accepted Answer ✓
Horrible, I have mental break down and depression now. Forced to stay in current role getting harassed and pressured to leave.
👤 throwaway629
Poorly. I lost a ML/OR project with an back in August, usually I can pick up DS projects fairly easily. I haven't had one since.

Last week I had an interview with some startup founders where I *swear* I was their entertainment.

It's a weird time. I'm pretty desperate to finish a contract before Christmas, or everyone is getting coal.

👤 biglyburrito
TLDR: It's the worst tech market I've ever seen, and I started back in the late 90s. However, there _are_ still jobs to be had.

I had a feeling I was gonna get laid off late last year, so I started my job search immediately on January 1st. As expected, I got laid off at the end of March... even so, it still took me another two months before I landed a new job.

In terms of raw stats, I applied to 175+ roles, got callbacks from maybe 20% of those, and received a single offer (which I accepted). Fortunately, my new job is still a full-remote role; I was worried I'd have to accept an on-site or hybrid role. Almost every single interview I had was doing the HackerRank/LeetCode thing; the company that extended me the offer was the only one that didn't.

👤 gaws
For the past two years, I've been applying just to see what else is out there, and I've been getting interviews, most of which led to offers. Unfortunately, I've had to turn them down because there wasn't a pay increase, remote work isn't really "remote," or some combination of the two.
👤 Jabbs
Yea I have also been laid off since June. I also have 10+ yrs experience and not much luck.

In the meantime I’ve been building an app that scrapes jobs listings directly from company websites and trying to turn that into a saas product (www.unlistedjobs.com). Might be helpful to you since it has lots of engineer jobs bc so many companies are tech

👤 firecall
There is a maxim in marketing that consumer spending slows on the run up to an election.

Something like the 2024 US election has an impact globally.

Like I say, it’s a maxim and YMMV!

However, the election distraction effect could certainly be impacting recruitment.

👤 JSDevOps
Lots more work coming from government projects in the UK at the moment.