I also wrote something here on how to stand out: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2022/09/19/ways-to-stand-...

Finally, you ask:

> Is it better to get any job than keep searching for the job I'd be most suited for?

That depends on your financial situation and emotional runway, but my advice would be that in general it is far easier to get a job once you have a job. I wouldn't advise taking a job digging ditches (unless you need the $$$), but if you can find something that is related to your chosen profession, isn't clearly toxic, and is a full time paying job, take it.

If the company is good, you'll have the ability to grow internally and you'll be a known quantity.

If the company is not great, you'll at least have some experience to put on your resume. You may even be able to help improve the company. At worst you'll have a salary and title and be able to job search from there.

Two lessons

1. Spend your lunchtimes job hunting. Treat it like a job

2. Move around as a new grad. Think of it like dating, you have to kiss a few frogs just to get an idea of what is out there.

(Most people who stay in one job really mean lots of different jobs inside one giant conglomerate)

So don't be afraid to move around. And focus on the code. Ignore the management bullshit, the meetings the agile talk. Focus on code.

This is related, but I got my start in a small consulting company and think it is a great place for anyone to start. Small is anything from 10 to 100. The one with 100 employees will have more process and stability, but your impact at a 10 person company will be larger (and possibly easier to get hired by). Pick your poison.

You'll get lots of experience across domains and technologies, because it is a consulting company.

What you write and do will actually matter, because it is small.

And, of course, at a consulting company, as a developer, what you do is directly tied to revenue for the company, since they typically sell hours (or dev expertise, bundled in project scopes, which are measured internally in hours or hour equivalents).

I wrote some advice on how to approach these companies here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34253168

If they're good and have been around for a while, they'll know how to ride out the ups and downs that are coming (because they actually probably had ups and downs even during the good times; that's the nature of consulting).

Consulting, and specifically exposure to a large number of corporate cultures in your clients, is a great accelerator at the start of a career.

It doesn't even need to be a giant conglomerate. Roles evolve. Products/projects/priorities/technologies change. Certainly at the two 10K, give or take, employee companies I've worked for over ten years, I've done a lot of different things even though I went by some variant of the same title the whole time.

... but not too much/too soon. Best to understand what you can/should learn and try and achieve that before looking for a change.

As far into my career as I am at this point, I've both a finely honed radar and zero tolerance for toxic bullshit, but as a new developer, it's a whole lot harder to have both the self-confidence and self-awareness to recognize that the reception you're getting isn't because you're an unqualified idiot, it's because Sr. Developer Jim's dad was an asshole and Engineering Manager Bob doesn't know how to or have the confidence in his role to rein in his Sr. Developer from berating the new grad for things that new grads do until emotionally balanced mentors teach them not to. I have good friends who've spent a lot of time in therapy undoing what toxic workplaces did during vulnerable years.

My advice, look for some decent, experienced people in any job you have, but even more so in your first. Build a trustfull relationship with at least one of those folks and get as much advice, mentoring and context out of them as possible.

The one thing you don't want to do is to talk about these things with a report or with a co-worker, and I've seen too many managers making this mistake with me.

I could be getting paid more, but my current workplace has only a couple completely worthless human beings. The supervisor knows who they are and what they're like and steps right in if there's a conflict. That's worth at least an extra $20k/year in my book. For my part, I try to advocate for less-established coworkers who are getting hit with the same crap I did from those individuals. Keeps the couple jerks from running off potential talent who will make my job more pleasant in the long run.

That happened to a report of mine once, obviously with a previous mutual agreement, but some recruiters mentioned that trend to me as well.

I think having a set date to leave is healthy, especially at this point in someone's career. You just do your job and you're rewarded with money and experience. You shield yourself from toxicity in a way, since don't want to depend on the job for having "best friends". Also you don't play office politics since you know it's ephemeral.

When you hire a new grad, and then spend a year getting them all up to speed with the process and CI system and code reviews and familiarization with the code base and they're just now starting to take on the responsibility for some of the code... and they leave a year and a day after you hired them.

And so then you hire another new grad... and {repeat}... and they leave a year and a day after you hired them.

At this point, management is a bit frustrated. They give it one more go... and they leave a year and a day after you hired them.

And now, when that position is opened up again, it is no longer an entry level position but rather a mid level. We forgo the extensive onboarding and gradual ramp up for a new grad and instead have a mid who should be able to understand the nature of a CI system, issue tracking, and so on and be able to start being a positive contributor in a month or two and so if they also leave a year and a day later, we've had several months of them being a positive contribution on the team.

... and now its just that much harder for a new grad to find a job.

With new grads, we can't hold 'em at all. For people who came in with 5+ years of experience, the average tenure here is 15 years. People are more likely to retire than quit. (Seriously, I've got 200 hours of "manager makes sure you use it" vacation, sabbatical accrual, an honest to goodness funded pension, and one of the better health insurance policies).

Furthermore, it's easier to negotiate, and you'll feel less desperate (and thus hopefully less stressed) about the process as a whole. Prospective employers know you can walk away if you already have a job -- but they also know you aren't likely to walk away if you don't.

The good news for me was that even though I had terrible grades, I knew how to code a Knight’s Tour or 8 Queens, work through some algorithm that appears to be N^2 but has a clever N solution, or if someone asked me about manholes, I could say “that’s a stupid question, here’s the default answer, and here’s why I think it’s a stupid question.”

I think I got 9 job offers from 10 interviews with a <3.0 GPA (before the dotcom crash).

In short, studying for the test helped with the SAT’s and it helped get my first job. When I applied to a FANG years later, there was not leetcode, just different design questions or basic things like making sure I could reverse a linked list or implement substr without an off by one error.

That being said, I've never interviewed at FAANG before. I suspect they are the ones who would be asking the tougher questions if only just to reduce the absurd number of applicants they receive.

Sure, but why exactly? I hate when FAANGs reach out to senior, employed people - then whole process afterwards assumes they're the ones begging to work there. Kind of tiring to hear the "we get soo many applicants" tone when they are the ones reaching out.

The only thing I would add is to always try to shoot for a company where technology is seen as an asset and not just a cost center. Traditionally, that was software companies and places like Wall Street. Now that net is wider, but beware jobs with titles like "Programmer II" or "Programmer/Analyst", indicators of companies where IT is a cost center and you get stuck as a minor cog in a minor wheel.

On the hiring side, I've found quite a bit of anecdotal success finding really talented junior engineers who have fallen into this trap, where a close read of the resume and cover letters shows a passion that's not covered by the actual keywords on the resume. I'll often stretch our requirements to give interviews to people I have a good gut feeling about - "diamonds in the rough" so to speak. But it takes a lot of time and focus to not simply screen out a resume based on these negative keywords - and given that recruiting teams at a lot of companies have been reduced as well, many won't have the time to do this well, if they ever did to begin with.

As a candidate you can absolutely mitigate this with open-source contributions, if you have time. But it can be hard to find that focus, time, and mentorship/community, especially if the day-job environment is toxic.

This is even more straightforward. Yes it is.

I know many who are being hit by layoffs. The situation sucks. I don't think there's any advantage to downplaying this right now whether in your own mind or through advice to others. There's a huge number of tech workers laid off simultaneously and very bluntly you should look for any job that supports your Visa as the priority.

On the above I would correct that it’s not “US Citizen” but someone with full employment eligibility, which could be for example a Green Card holder.

That doesn't matter if they all find a new job very quickly, what's more relevant is the unemployment rate. Is it increasing?

At least when it comes to the overall unemployment rate, it seems to be very low when I see articles like this: https://www.businessinsider.com/december-jobs-report-labor-m...

I didn't find IT-specific stats to be fully sure (well it's somewhere on https://www.bls.gov if you're so inclined), but I'd be surprised if the IT industry were much worse (if at all) than the average over all industries.

The truth is that they can't find someone with the skills who will work like a pittance and who will worry about being deported if they leave/get fired.

Practicality, in my experience, has always been of tremendous importance.

Also, for me, I tended to take low-paying jobs, if the technology/company interested me, because I wanted to learn.

Learning is difficult; especially learning to ship. Feasts of Humble Pie, Egg-On-Face, and Crow, with side orders of stress and overwork. A surprising number of folks don't actually want to do it.

In my experience, it has always been worth it; even the "negative learning" experiences.

The first 2 jumps were due to compensation, was able to get a nice raise each time.

The third job was a good fit, however the role evolved into something I didn't like as much and didn't fit my career goals.

I took the fourth job to try something new, quickly found out the role had nothing I enjoyed doing.

All of the experiences were valuable in terms of experience: different industries, meeting different people, and learning what I like to do.

Though after reading HN long enough, I have to question whether you ever end up in this relatively bad situation, especially if every jump was basically a promotion.

Someone who has stayed at a place or two for a couple years and been promoted there and then had a bunch of 1-year stints? I’m more open to hearing the explanation.

I took a non-tech job for survival money, and in spare time looked for a high paying dev job.

Everyone was pushing me to take an entry level tech support position.

There’s no shame in a survival job, especially if it helps you find a good position.

When I interview, I get asked why I left so many jobs developer (companies went under), but nobody asks why I left my job as a janitor.

I ended up close to insolvent during the 2008 recession, and I bit the bullet and took a terrible job just to get by. Be willing to swallow your pride and do the same if that's what it takes. That little voice in the back of your head that says "Well I just graduated from Stanford! Surely I can do better than this!" Ignore it for now.

Now it's all coming back down to reality and I'm rapidly re-adjusting my expectations. Interviews are getting much much harder, I'm getting ghosted after final stages, and it's easy to get discouraged. Looking at the news it's not just me becoming a crap dev overnight, but the entire tech economy looking like crap.

Let's hope it at least stabilizes soon. As is I think I'll have to take a massive paycut.

I interviewed with Amazon last year and was specifically informed that it isn't possible to interview with them more than once a year. How did you interview four times in two years?

Yikes. I have been in Software Engineering for about 11 years and never had it any other way and even then interviewing and managing applications was stressful. Having to apply to 10s, 100s of companies would destroy me. I am very, very scared of my company going under and me having to compete in this market. I hope it gets better soon and people stop doing the "learn to code to get rich quick" routine.

If you do get laid off you can reach out to these folks immediately and get recommendations or even just feedback on your resume. The sooner you start doing this the better, don't wait to be called into a private meeting with HR and your boss to start this process. The harsh reality is that for senior positions you're either going to spend a LOT of time smashing submit on hundreds and thousands of applications while hearing _nothing_ back, or you're going to tap your connections and have a job lined up relatively quickly. New grads have it a lot easier in the open market IMHO.

This advice always cracks me up.

Most people don’t have deep networks of people who can hook them up with a senior level engineering position. Like, even the people I know who are quite well connected don’t really have this option.

Sure, everyone has a buddy who’d love to pay them half for twice the work. But we’re talking relatable fields and jobs that are worth it and that’s just not realistic for majority.

Alternatively, if people had social networks with people who have potentials roles for them, who wouldn’t already think in the social media era “oh yeah, i’ll ask the people I know who have an in instead of going to random strangers”

And, yet, all three jobs I've had in the last 25 years (including one in 2001), I landed because I knew someone senior at the company pretty well. Not strictly engineering but tech and tech ecosystem companies. Was that lucky and atypical? Perhaps. But those were my experiences.

The last job I got through "normal" channels was from a campus interview at grad school.

If you started your career 25 years ago, you were present in the field before it massively expanded. Your peers are nothing like my peers (Started 13 years ago), and nothing like the peers of someone who started 3 years ago.

It's my reading!

Your friends are statistically more likely to be closer to the top of the pyramid than mine, and my friends are closer to the top than a fresh no-name college graduate's.

Connections obviously aren't the only way to land jobs. But, especially in leaner times, having someone you've worked with lay eyes on your resume certainly helps.

I’ve had around 5 jobs, am much younger, and none of them were due to connections (which I have well over 100 professional people who would vouch for me)

I think you’re either in a very fortunate place in society or you’re old enough in this industry to feel the small world effects

Trust me, for the vast majority your situation isn’t normal.

Maybe the top 10% of new CS grads have it easy, by virtue of having easier access to university -> big tech hiring pipelines for junior engineers.

But there’s no comparison to the ease of being a senior and having job offers flood in to your LinkedIn on a weekly basis. Getting a new job becomes a function of simply contacting the past 5 recruiters and asking for the interview.

Splitting hairs a little here, but I've got > 25 years of experience and have not once, ever, received a job offer through LinkedIn, let alone weekly. I've had recruiters showing varying levels of interest contact me there, but never "Hi, person I've never met, great resume! Here is your job offer letter, we're offering $XXX,XXX compensation..."

Senior people do get contacted by recruiters, but they're fishing, and all of these contacts are extremely early in the pipeline. We have to go through the whole process, just like junior folks. The endless phone screens, the whiteboard hazing, the ghosting, the salary negotiation. Being senior and experienced doesn't let you bypass it. "Networking" doesn't let you bypass it.

I know that's probably what you mean, but the simplifying-meme "job offers flooding your inbox" gets repeated and I think people get the wrong idea about how easy it is.

Oh, the irony…

And we're not talking some fluke small company with no controls. This was a fortune 500. The job had no particularly interesting requirements so I guess somebody just said fill the seat for a few months and I was just grabbed. At the time I was doing a lot of international wandering so it was a nice easy refueling top up stateside.

It scarred us forever.

I also have a good friend who is already department head in my countries biggest bank. I keep telling me he can always get me a job when I can‘t fall asleep.

I disagree with this take entirely.

* Senior engineering positions, at least looking at the layoffs over the past year, trend to be the least impacted by layoffs. Empirically this appears to be the case, and it makes logical sense: they may be more expensive, but if that person/role is capable of doing more with less then its worth that investment versus training up mid-levels/juniors, dealing with inexperience, etc. Of course, ideally companies want both, but the industry has matured well past the point of "just keep the cheapest people"; we know better nowadays versus previous recessions.

In other words; during a layoff, there's less liquidity in the senior engineering talent pool than in other pools.

* In a similar vein; when companies have openings in this recession; they want Senior people. Either in the title, or just a bias when interviewing candidates; seniority matters. I've seen this in my own small-city startup community; startups with three or four junior/mid-level engineers, put up a posting for Senior talent, and it stays up for months (I'm looking at some right now which date back to October). Great companies, great culture, great compensation (not FANG, but); just very low liquidity in that talent pool to meet the demand.

The one caveat; Senior engineers who come from a FANG-salary background may have issues if they enter interviews with that expectation. But there's a lot of numbers between entry-level compensation and FANG-compensation.

* Why do companies hire junior/mid-level talent? Its the most liquid talent pool. Cheaper. Maybe you make the argument that junior talent has more loyalty/staying power because they can grow with the company. Etc. One issue with this recession is: All of these companies still have a LOT of money. This isn't, for most companies (especially FANG), an issue of "we don't have the money to meet payroll so need to cut"; its an issue of spending the past two years blowing cheap money on as many people as they could, realizing that they got a lot of low-tier talent, managing all that growth is HARD, and in some cases there just isn't enough high-impact work to justify some roles. This recession legitimately isn't leading to layoffs which are just about cost-cutting; its as much if not more about reorganization, refocusing managerial resources on high-impact projects, cutting bloat, cutting moonshots, etc. That changes the firing/hiring dynamic; its not necessarily about saving money on hires, its about reindexing on what makes a Good Hire.

That makes being a junior engineer very hard; after all, the best way to convince a hiring manager that you're a great hire is to say "Yeah I've worked on something similar to this problem before, let me tell you about it." Junior engineers don't have that.

> you're going to tap your connections and have a job lined up relatively quickly.

But this is absolutely, undeniably true. Its universally, physically, fundamentally impossible to overstate how much impact connections have in getting jobs during a flat or declining job market.

To the point of the original post, and to junior engineers: Stop worrying so much about actual technical skills. Obviously, be competent. But: Your #1 priority needs to be networking and socialization. Go to tech meetups. Offer to give presentations. Join local young professionals associations. Make friends and get drinks with them.

Say a company averages a $1M ROI per engineer, but a senior is 3-5x more likely to actually produce that ROI within a year. They’re not gonna bat an eye towards paying them 200k vs a junior at 100k

I‘d recommend trying to lobotomize yourself with a few psychopharmaca prescribed by a psychiatrist first. What‘s the worst that could happen?

You probably haven‘t tried everything yet and you can always try to stop trying to stay alive at a later point.

You should probably call your countries crisis hotline. You can ask google how to commit suicide to get the number.

There's this conveyer-belt view of life: we are supposed to go directly from birth to school to job to kids to bigger job to death. Some people really do live that. Most people don't.

But we're expected to fit that mold, so anyone who's stepped off the belt will usually keep quiet about it. So it's easy to start believing that the only valid life is some linear path.

Still. Unemployment is stress and uncertainty. But bad job markets aren't forever. Good luck with finding a job, or managing to enjoy the interim.

Nyanpasu.

The one saving grace for me is I do have enough savings to get me through a depression. I know that's not a luxury for everyone, though.

One of the saddest memories not related to the usual stuff like funerals and such is the job fair at the university after graduation. I bought a suit. I shouldn't have bothered. (Only worn it once more since then!) When I first walked up it looked OK; had like 15 booths. But EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. was just collecting resumes and telling you they didn't have any openings. Would have preferred to just attend an empty job fair or have been told it was cancelled. That was a truly crushing half an hour.

Took a relatively crap job after that. It actually wasn't bad on a personal level, it wasn't like I hated it, but, no future. Obviously a dead end. Crap job. Went to work for a similar crap job at a startup after that, which was pretty lucky itself. The out-of-work-hours noodling I did led to a real job, a few years later.

Do what you need to do. May not even be a programmer job. My personal opinion, which shouldn't be taken as anything more than that, is that A: the next few years are going to be rough, possibly rougher than the dotcom crash but B: in the end, programmer is still a good career choice. Companies simply can not compete without automation any more. Software will continue to eat the world for the forseeable future. I don't expect AI or low-code to do much more than peck at the opportunities available. (Maybe I'm wrong, but if we do get to the point that AI really does successfully replace programmers we have essentially hit the singularity and all bets are off.)

Programmers also have had and will continue to have the unusual ability that many other disciplines do not have where you can continue to learn skills even if you are underemployed. It's hard to practice industrial-scale chemical engineering at home while you're unemployed, but you can learn Rust, or Terraform, or AWS, or source control, or whatever, and even into the teeth of an underemployment period you can still be developing. That helped me and I recommend putting at least some effort into that.

Just don't forget that while learning Rust is more fun, it's not putting resumes out there, hitting trade shows, networking, etc. That is way less fun and much more emotionally expensive, but more likely to lead to even that job that puts food on the table.

I know a fair number of people who dropped off the map and I assume the careers of many never got back on track.

So, while I'd be even more emphatic if the OP were a newly minted undergrad, I'd definitely recommend either extending academia a bit if practical or just trying to find something.

I'm curious what your discipline is in?

In an extended bear market / downturn, throw that ratio out the window. Unless you're literally John Carmack or Ken Thompson, you're not going to just have headhunters begging you to work at their companies. In fact, even fishing expeditions from recruiters are going to quickly die out. You'll have to apply--a lot! You'll have to struggle to stay on your recruiters' radars. You'll have to follow-up, pinging for updates, "let me know how I can help move this forward" and so on. Things aren't just going to fall into your lap. This will be the case until we flip back to a bull market and hiring returns to "normal."

BTW my discipline is embedded / mobile development and then project management. Not that I think it matters--macroeconomic effects tend to hit uniformly across engineering disciplines.

Dot com bust was 1999; I came in around 2009, right after the Great Recession, one of the worst economic periods in recorded history. That’s the data. All of it. I’m not sure who the person I replied to got their data, but we’re talking about approximately 24 years of it, and most of those years were pretty damn good. So unless that person hasn’t moved jobs in the last decade and a half, they would certainly not be warning people, in general terms, about the impacts of a downturn economy. Either that, or their experience is rather singular. Looking at posts across Reddit and Hacker News, and the general consensus of people in this industry, it seems like this person is far outside the norm of employment viability.

Tech as a developer is still, far and away, the best job market to enter.

I assumed the UK had it worse than the USA, but maybe not?

Ditto. I got my undergrad after the dot-com crash and finished grad school before 2008. You've reminded me the bad old days. I was considering seriously to go back to my old profession established during my teenage years.

I got lucky to get my first real adult job from my grad school's industrial partner, which paid with peanuts. At least I kept a great credit score. My undergrad education was paid partly by my old profession's gigs. Grad school was tuition-free with a stipend.

Those years created such trauma for me and set me back so far financially that I didn't recover or pay off my student loans (meaning I had no disposable income whatsoever) until I was 40. I can say with confidence that those experiences all but ruined my career, and many others in Gen X. We didn't get promoted, or trusted to manage others, or even have children. It's like we never existed, especially the tail end, the "Elder" Millennials like me. All we hear about now is the success of billionaires - the Tony Starks of the world, but I'm with the losers - I'm Ivan Vanko.

Thankfully the situation today is nothing like the Dot Bomb or the Housing Bubble collapsing in 2008. Nobody can find employees right now. And with the arrival of AI, even the most prescient geeks have absolutely no idea what's going to happen in the next decade. The years effectively go 1999,2000...2023 with 2 lost decades in between. The only innovation has been in GPUs, Moore's law effectively halted in 2007 when R&D started going to reducing cost and power consumption. That may change with RISC-V and the open sourcing/democratization of hardware. So for the first time in a _very_ long time, I'm actually cautiously optimistic about the future.

To get to the point: I'd recommend rejecting most job hunting advice. Stop thinking about what you need to do, or what others expect you to do. Remember that being alive and kicking is what matters. You can survive on next to nothing. The world doesn't come to an end just because you lose your job or run out of money.

Instead, picture a business owner's goals. They just want you to solve their problem, and hopefully be able to pay you. So start with the fundamentals: shows like Mad Men. Learn how to listen and communicate. Don't assume that the person you're talking with has any more of a clue than you do. They may be interviewing 100 people because none of them emphasize how much they are there for their employer. If you're solid, and dedicated, and show up, that can do more for your career than credentials. Just be on the level, is what I'm saying.

One pitfall to watch for is settling. I made the mistake of moving furniture for the first 3 years out of school to support my struggling shareware business. I came out of that job a different person than when I went in. It built my intestinal fortitude but destroyed my psyche. But I've fallen back on it when I needed money. Donating plasma works too. And stuff like Bacon is the Uber of handyman work. It's important to know you can do that stuff to subsist, so that you aren't desperate when you go to an interview. It's all dating, basically.

I don't have data to back this up though, just my general feeling and seems like what happened in the past

app:phone_screen:interview:offer

In general divide the first number by 10 if you have at least 12 months post grad professional experience. If you have a shiny high GPA diploma from a top school but no intern or any experience whatsoever change last two numbers to zero.

Today, I'm simply grateful to have a fantastic job, and strive to live below my means assuming that things can go back at the snap of someone's finger.

In terms of practical advise for a new grad, there are tons of startups and enterpreneurs doing really interesting work. They need good programmers but can't afford to pay as much. This sort of place can be a great place to kickstart your career, at least for a few years, till the broader picture gets better.

The biggest thing that helped me was having some Android apps. Another was that I had some COBOL knowledge. I also lowballed my salary request, which might have helped me get the job , but I'm still paying for that today.

Also I'll never forget just how rude and pretentious recruiters were during that time with their new found power. You see the true colors in such times.

I've felt this way for a few years now.

From my experience, it's just a bullshit step with a recruiter just to check you're not totally dumb.

20:5:3:1

Reaching out to managers at big cos won't get you much. They are getting a ton of twitter/etc candidates and have stricter hiring policies and rubrics to prevent nepotism and favoritism. If you can network and ask for referrals through your friends / professors that can work better. Or reaching out to early stage startup cofounders can work really well.

ML/AI is less frozen then some other areas so that is good. Most really competitive new PHDs will have either a couple of internships, strong academic contributions or previous engineering experience demonstrating strong coding ability.

You should also consider post docs or academic engineer postings. The grant cycle insulates these a bit from the economic cycle and they can be a good place to gather some experience while you ride out the cycle.

And definitely consider very early stage start ups. A startup that just raised and has 2 years of runway is probably one of the safest places to be at the moment as they are still focused on growth. A lot of great companies proved themselves as startups during the 2008 cycle and grew rapidly after. Networking can mean a lot more here as early stage founders often literally just hire their friends or people they get along with without a ton of process.

Those candidates tend to be great as they are up on industry practices/technology like source control and databases where as some phds can have only academic coding experience. And they tend to have studied something they really knew they were interested in and really been the driver on their thesis project vs just contributing to their advisors research.

You also see great phds who didn't wait but really took ownership of their project, used source control, figured out distributed computing, contributed to open source, scraped/built their own datasets, understood the real world implications and hacked on side projects to develop coding skills.

And you see some who just completed a theoretical + computational project their advisor suggested on an existing dataset with the minimal amount of coding needed and little thought to implications/applications.

For BS CS/EE (or any engineering field): do not overthink the "recession is coming" news. US employers always want young engineers, as they consider them energetic, willing to learn and work for less salary than late career staff. Look up and polish the in demand skills. Brush up on the basics (Python, databases, git) at least to the extent of being able to solve "one step up from fizzbuzz" problems. And apply. You might get less generous terms and no sign-up bonus, but you are almost certain to still land something that you can use as a springboard 2-3 years later.

For PhD in AI: I would apply to good companies only and consider deferring graduation for a year if your fishing turns up nothing. This requires both your mental readiness and your advisor's physical/financial one, but in general your advisor should be thrilled to have you work for him another year for a relative pittance of a graduate stipend. It should not come to this (the market is not dead), but I would personally take it easy and focus on the job search for another year in grad school over taking some soul-sucking job at a company no one has heard of.

My 2c. And good luck!

... So my advice is to look at non-tech companies. Reality is that most companies really have become "tech companies", they don't make software or hardware, but have physical products and services -- and often are very technology dependent for operatiions.

Late 2020 to earlier 2021 was nuts for tech jobs. Companies were hiring people who were massively unqualified just because they needed someone. During that time I was getting calls from recruiters weekly practically begging me to quit my job for some new opportunity they were recruiting for and unable to fill. Imo there are a lot of devs out there right now who only got hired because the market during 2020-2021. I worry a little for those guys because they were punching way above their weight to begin with and I think they'll probably struggle to find something as good should they get laid off.

The other people who might struggle are those looking for jobs specifically in the tech industry or tech startups. As someone looking for work right now I have noticed there are fewer jobs from tech companies out there, but there's still plenty of tech jobs in industries like travel, finance, and retail. Everyone needs tech workers these days so a tech industry slow down isn't necessarily the end of the world for someone with tech skills.

OP is, nearest I can tell, getting a BS from Big State U, and that's a wayyyyy harder game than someone with a Ph.D and pedigree.

I recently came across this quote from PG in one of his earlier essays [0] describing the early days of the dotcom bust regarding yahoo. Sounds very similar to the situation we're in now:

> It was not just our price to earnings ratio that was bogus. Half our earnings were too. Not in the Enron way, of course. The finance guys seemed scrupulous about reporting earnings. What made our earnings bogus was that Yahoo was, in effect, the center of a Ponzi scheme. Investors looked at Yahoo's earnings and said to themselves, here is proof that Internet companies can make money. So they invested in new startups that promised to be the next Yahoo. And as soon as these startups got the money, what did they do with it? Buy millions of dollars worth of advertising on Yahoo to promote their brand. Result: a capital investment in a startup this quarter shows up as Yahoo earnings next quarter—stimulating another round of investments in startups.

0. http://paulgraham.com/bubble.html

Today we have an ecosystem that is far more diverse and what I'd call "real". Yes, there's probably quite a few over valued dogs out there but there are a lot of businesses that are legit creating revenue streams and growing well past 20%, 30%, etc. This is why I believe the parent is right in that we are in a harsh correction and not a meltdown.

Agreed because this time the asset bubble extends well beyond tech. This is a much larger problem and will take much longer to unwind, cutting much deeper than that.

1) The secular trend in falling interest rates and "low" interest rates will continue longer term. Raising rates rapidly has been disruptive but it also gives some breathing room and the ability to slowly lower rates again, which will be needed to stimulate demand again. Lower interest rates obviously impact asset prices as borrowing becomes cheaper so you can borrow more.

2) 40-year fixed rate mortgages will be a think soon. This will increase many asset prices and allow people to continue to participate in buying real estate and generating wealth over time. This is a massive priority to the government because home owners are one of the most valuable things a government can have as they generate property taxes and give people skin in the game which means continued support of the regime. This impacts real estate assets because the monthly payment is lower which means you can pay more for things using cheaper money.

3) The rapid inflation we saw had nothing to do with low interest rates, at least not on their own. It was 100% because of the pandemic and how we reacted to it. Lots of liquid money was pumped into the system and this is the important part - it was liquid. Also, our entire supply line and logistics structure was optimized for a certain existence and the pandemic disrupted all of that. Suddenly money was being spent on different things and it has created all sort of supply and demand problems. This is beginning to smooth out and by 2025 I expect the effects of the pandemic on inflation will be gone. This means we can resume the secular trend of generally lowering interest rates long term.

Given that you include it in your predictions, I would not put much stock in them. You're confusing domestic propaganda and saber-rattling with actual assessments of geopolitics. It's up there with feeling threatened by a communist Grenada.

As for Russia, it's been a year, and it's still having quite a time in failing to invade the poorest country in Europe. There's a colossal gap between how you think the world stands, and how it actually stands. Russia's a failing Potemkin village, whose only asset of note is 10,000 nuclear weapons.

There are only three kinds wars that will ever be waged between the US and Russia.

1. A proxy conflict which one or both of the sides aren't actually deeply invested in. (<---- As of 2023, we are here.)

2. None at all.

3. End-the-world Armageddon.

None of these are a good fit for the rest of your narrative. It's just a hodgepodge of political anxieties.

The dot-com collapse was due to a million startups selling $10 bills for $9. None of the major firms doing layoffs now have that as their core line of business.

I can't speak as to what's going on in the startup space.

To get my first position involved applying everywhere no matter the skillset asked. When I finally landed an interview we had to create an application. I created an application an hour after the interview was complete emailed it over and that sold me. They didn't believe I did this myself so quickly I had to provide some of my db scripts. The other candidates were stronger on paper (finished a 4 year computer science degree) but none could finish or finish as completely as I did.

It turned a little rough. One of the other candidates came in for lunch a week after I was hired. The founder and this person became friends during the interview process. She literally brokedown and cried that day because she wanted the job so badly. I'm surprised they didn't hire her just based on culture fit but this was a nonprofit with one 6 month contract available and tons of challenging problems to tackle.

My advice is to grind it out and pry that first job out however you can.

I do empathize with your position and wish you luck :) I'm ever grateful to the first manager who hired me. He changed my life forever and that of my family.

Maybe startups specifically look worse than other companies right now? But I never got the appeal of startups anyway (more likely lower pay, less stability, more likely to have poor work life balance and have to deal with inexperienced management).

Also... I was under 30 and I was just ecstatic to have a position of most of my time was greenfield projects. ( as opposed to maintain legacy code for crappy clients because of the aforementioned gloom and doom )

I can see small structures with a purpose being a ok time to spend a recession.

Beyond that always keep looking at what's out there and network, network, network.

Starting out is hard, but after you put a bit of time in your resume will begin to speak for itself. For what your resume can't do for you that is what your contacts within desired companies are for.

Also, contributing to open source projects is great material for the resume!

* It's easier to get a job if you already have a job. It's okay to take a shitty job as long as you don't get complacent about it.

* Gaps get stressed by job seekers in advice requests because it is a question that can make you look bad. However, if you are actually at an interview, they are fishing for bad dealbreakers not minor imperfections. Don't worry to much about it.

* If you get hired via a staffing agency, you could be cut at any time arbitrarily. I once got laid off 24 hours after signing a contract renewal. Keep as good an emergency fund as you can manage.

* Unemployment benefits are not charity, it is insurance that you pay for out of your wage. Dont let pride or shame convince you not to use it.

* Network aggressively and be likeable. You never know when that linkedin connection from a shit job 3 years ago will throw you a bone. I know everybody on HN really likes their leetcode but if you have an inside reference, the interview is reduced to just a vibe check.

* There are grades of recruiters and higher grade jobs tend to be assigned to higher grade recruiters. The guys sending you irrelevant callcenter gigs on the other side of the country can be ignored as they are just playing the numbers game too, but if a recruiter advertises something decent to you the least you should do is reply with a "not right now but thanks". This results in a higher quality recruiter keeping you in their rolodex for later.

* Hire a professional resume writer for you. This goes not just for noobs, but also people who have been at the same gig for awhile and have not been through the hiring game recently.

* Cold applications are just a numbers game. Managers get 1000 applications for 1 seat. Yes, tune your resume/letter for the job, but don't spend too much time on it.

* If you are offboarding, just plagiarize Nixon's resignation letter if you can't write anything nice at all. In a fiery departure, your best case scenario is that nothing happens and your worst case is that somebody who likes you will no longer want to be your reference or whatever. Your first one will always feel bad, but people coming and going is just part of life and doesnt have to be a big deal.

https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/?dod-dat...

++1 this. Couldn't have said better myself. I went more than 10 years not having to apply anywhere, switching jobs just by referral - interviews felt like friendly meetings. Only broke that streak when interviewing for a job in another country.

The best I've ever got out of networking was, "Thanks for re-connecting! You should apply for job #41190, since I particularly know that hiring manager is really motivated to hire! Prepare for questions A, B, and maybe C. Happy to do a mock interview. Good luck!" And I got the job, so that's great! But, have realistic expectations. You're not going to bypass the queue and get an offer letter just because you're good friends with one of that company's Senior Software Engineers.

EDIT: Maybe it's different at the ultra-high level, like "VP of Engineering." I have no idea, never been up to that level and don't have peers there. But I can't imagine that a "VP of Engineering" candidate has to do phone screens, and grind at the whiteboard, and have to deal with recruiters and ghosting. Maybe they don't even have to apply and get traditionally interviewed like us commoners. Who knows? Any VPs of Engineering on HN care to chime in and describe how hiring works at your level?

I've been going to events in the SF Bay area. Maybe you meant something different by "professional events," or maybe you're in an area with a higher concentration of tech than San Francisco.

It could be that SF is just an outlier due to the competition and that so many are transient.

> If you get hired via a staffing agency, you could be cut at any time arbitrarily. I once got laid off 24 hours after signing a contract renewal. Keep as good an emergency fund as you can manage.

Assuming you are a useful employee, being a temp or a contractor can save you from being laid off because you are paid less, don't have the same benefits package, and are usually paid from a separate, more liquid general fund. If you believe in the power of personal anecdote, this saved my job once.

> Cold applications are just a numbers game. Managers get 1000 applications for 1 seat. Yes, tune your resume/letter for the job, but don't spend too much time on it.

I don't think this advice applies to everyone. If you apply for jobs that are a good match for your skills, or you are simply exceptional, your base success rate will be higher in the first place, and you will get more ROI from a tuned resume and a serious cover letter. Just be mindful of where you are putting your effort, and don't be afraid to change up your strategy if it's not working.

Not only the amount of your starting salary (it was about a 30-50% decrease for those of us in Class of 2002 vs our friends in Class of 2000), but also the coolness of the job (Them: web startups. Us: government contracting.)

I also watched some of those slightly older friends struggle with car and/or condo payments taken on the presumption of salary and stock options going nowhere but up. Ouch.

If you get a job offer you can stand in a place you wouldn’t mind living even if the job went away, you should probably take it. As others have said, it’s a lot easier to get a job if you have one. You’re a lot less likely to become desperate and have to accept something awful if you’re already in an ok job.

As for pay expectations, look at what similarly-educated mechanical engineers in your region make.

Since you are a high achiever in an in-demand field, you should still have good leverage during the job search. I would hold out for a role or company which you believe will suit your skill set.

I would not, under any circumstances, hold out for a "perfect" fit. It is unlikely to exist and if the company/recruiter is making it seem perfect they are almost certainly lying to you. A former colleague of mine was burned by this not long ago.

2 reasons: 1. Less competition. 2. (More important one IMO) For people starting their career, in person interactions are extremely valuable. You’ll learn a ton from hallway/lunch conversations. In your first few years, likely even more than from your job. YMMV, of course, but all those chats shaped me as an engineer.

If you choose to graduate, remember, you're going to work for the rest of your career. Don't feel bad about taking some time for yourself! (Assuming this is the US,) it's going to be nearly impossible to take consecutive 2-4 weeks off, or longer, while you're employed. Do it now.

Looking for a job also doesn't have to be a grind. Even if you're playing the numbers game, you don't need to grind all day spamming out applications. Self-education in areas that you think you'll need are just as important. Don't feel bad about making every weekend a 3 or 4 day weekend.

Also, many people warn against being too selective. This is true. It's also important to have standards. When I really needed a job, over the past 20 years, I've turned down: A contracting gig where the contract came out of a nolo book (for hiring a contractor to do work in your home,) a (cough) job that came with a "stipend" that would hardly cover rent, a cryptocurrency gig run by a lucky hacker who had a few million dollars in the bank, but not enough common sense to have product-market fit... People talk about being "entitled." A lot of businesses believe they are "entitled" to your labor. Walking away from situations like this isn't being "too selective." It's having standards and looking out for yourself.

Build a raft instead of constantly treading water, and pursue FI.

If you like swimming, great! Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a raft right next to you. Swim for pleasure, not survival.

I would advise shifting expectations a bit, it’s likely offers will still be good but not quite as lucrative as last year.

As for accepting any job- just because you’ve accepted a job does not mean you can’t keep interviewing (in the US at least). Even starting at a company doesn’t mean you can’t keep interviewing. I ran a college hire onboarding program a few years back. Of the 20 people we had , 3 had new jobs within 3 months of hire. We weren’t happy about it, but they got legitimately better offers and we couldn’t match.

So, maybe say yes to a “safety job.”

Once you start, keep your expenses low, although you don’t need to live like a pauper. Living with a roommate (or SO), picking less expensive housing, limiting bar/club attendance, and driving a less expensive car really adds up.

That all being said, my impression is that the AI market remains one of the strongest in the tech sector for “real” practitioners. I think you’ll be ok.

I am coming up on month 3 of my new job and not liking the team and leadership. I can tell it will only get worse.

I really want to leave and luckily have the opportunity to close the loop on all my current projects.

Should I just make it quick and send an email to manager tomorrow that I feel it's not a good fit and Friday is my last day? Make it quick and easy before I get more assignments and waste more time.

I have no job lined up but 9 years of experience and at least a year in savings.

Like another responder, I left my job in Feb 2020 without something lined up. There were bumps, one company I was in the hiring pipeline with laid off their whole recruiting dept. It took a few months more than I was expecting but I had a better paying job by summer.

My current company had steep layoffs late last year but has some openings already. I suspect many companies will be the same, with positions opening up again.

My brother quit his (admittedly bad) job in February of 2020. He didn’t find work beyond Amazon warehouse temp till 2021. He blew through a ton of savings and is still recovering. While don’t believe and sincerely hope we are looking at anything like 2020 again, it is impossible to know and it’s way better to pay it safe.

Your job search will be easier while still employed and less stressful.

Don’t worry about getting assigned more assignments. You can leave those behind when you take a new job. Seriously, after a few years you’ll have seen plenty of people come and go, sometimes suddenly. Organizations will find a way to fill the gap (or try aren’t a very good organization).

Line up a new job first. Might not be as easy as you think.

If you want a break in between tell your new job you can't start for a couple of months.

Most jobs are found through personal connections. Getting referrals from those people is a lot better than submitting your resume into hundreds of web forms, along with all the other applicants.

New grads have fewer connections than people who are established in their careers, but they may have contacts from prior work experience, internships, classmates, and friends.

Really the most useful advice would be to people who have not yet graduated: make sure you do some internships and build those connections while you are in school!

Yeah most companies are still under hiring freezes, but backfills usually aren't frozen.

> Is it better to get any job than keep searching for the job I'd be most suited for?

Try and get a job remotely where you want to land eventually. Having some experience that's related to what you want to do will bode better than having nothing.

> Should I reach directly to managers in different teams?

If you know them, sure. Networking can be an incredible asset, go to meetups or other professional groups and get to know people in the industry, even if a manger isn't there employees typically are motivated to help you get a job because they may get a referral bonus.

> Who are the best people/kinds of firms to reach out to when the industry is slowing hiring?

In reality when you hear about large layoffs much of those layoffs are companies shedding full time employees and then outsourcing any work they needed from them via consulting or contract positions. So it stands to reason that perhaps contract companies / agencies may be a great place to get some experience. Some industries are somewhat immune to recessions like healthcare, utilities, government and a small subset of financial institutions.

I don't have a PhD in AI/ML, but I have delivered ML models into production. Doing so taught me that you must go about your modeling and science work with a practical urgency for results compared to the pace of academic research. Business applications don't require you to prove how smart you are (people just assume it), but they do require compromise to meet requirements and exceed stakeholder expectations. Where a lot of ML people lose the plot (and financial reward) is that they don't make enough tradeoffs for the operational or end user concerns for the model in its entire relevant context. I've seen this manifest a few ways, but a common one is getting fixated on the data you have, but never realizing you need to "close the loop" and make something actually useful for an end user in a measurable way.

Those are the practical, "productionize AI" jobs and there is huge interest in those now given the huge interest in LLMs. Who cares about the downturn, LLM start ups are the hot thing.

There are also industry research jobs, definitely worth applying for, but from my understanding they are very difficult to get.

When you're first starting out? Yes, absolutely. The job for which you'd be most suited (however that's defined) will in all likelihood toss your resume into the nearest trash can without some actual work experience on it.

> Who are the best people/kinds of firms to reach out to when the industry is slowing hiring?

The more boring-looking, the better. You say you're about to be a PhD in AI? Find some small/medium business with leadership whose eyes gloss over at the mere mention of "neural nets" or "deep learning" or what have you, get into some boring technician or analyst role, and start using those fancy AI chops to blow their expectations for the role out of the water. If they don't rapidly promote you with the newfound success they're seeing, then you're in a much better position to pursue something that actually corresponds to your degree, with a resume item along the lines of "used machine learning to classify inventory by predicted velocity and rearrange inventory locations, improving warehouse picking throughput by 115%" or somesuch.

1. Applying

- Reach out to a recruiter — or CTO if it's a startup — but do it only for the companies you're the most interested into as it's time consuming

- Write a good application message mentioning the technologies required in the job description

- Personal Branding is key: polish your Github, have a nice website — esp for front-end/full-stack devs — and update your Linkedin

2. Resume screening

- Make sure to have a clean, easy to read and updated resume

- Complete your skillset with high-demand skills (ex: AWS if you're back-end, React Native if you're front-end)

- Ask other for reviews

3. Phone screen

- Learn a bit about the company, their recent achievements

- Learn how to sell yourself, have your storytelling ready

- Ask questions (culture, role, product, etc)

- Prepare answers for common itwer questions

- Smile :) show you'd be the ideal coworker and not just a nerd who can code

4. Tech interview

- Most tech itws are bullshit and not even related to the skills needed but that's how the game is made so just accept it and practice LC

5. Final itw / Offer

- Learn how to negociate your salary

- Remember: Equity is cool but cash is king

- Congrats!

1. Minimise your costs. If you can live with your relatives, do so.

2. If you cannot find a job, work on an open source project that is close to a field that you are interested in. Make sure that you do not have gaps in your resume that you cannot explain. This also allows you to keep your skills fresh and purpose to your day.

3. Invest in finishing the blind 75. These are set of interview questions that if you can understand, and master, you will be able to ace pretty much any technical interview.

4. Make sure you also are prepared for system design questions. There are many books on the matter. Although SDIs can be quite subjective, it is good to have an understanding of what you can do.

5. Do not limit yourself to your town/city/area. Apply for any and all remote jobs that apply to you.

1. Take whatever you can get that’s closest to where you want to be. I worked as a sysadmin in a large financial firm as they were close to Linux distributed systems during the Great Recession. I’d advise sticking to something with a swe title, but taking a job as MLE for a year - or SWE - instead of a research position isn’t a bad strategy.

2. If you have lots of runway, start your own business! If it pans out, then you’ll be better off than your dream job. If it isn’t successful, you will have something to talk about in a year.

3. Stick to academia/research for a year. If you can hold off your graduation for a year, the market may be more favorable. Bear markets tend to be short.

4. Hike the AT/PCT/other bucket list activity. It can burn up the better part of a year, and will explain a resume gap well. Be mindful that employers will be concerned if they see an unexplained resume gap/and may not care about your fitness.

I was sending out a lot of CVs treating it more or less as a full time job. In the UK at the time the job center would pay for postage for applications, though these days paper applications are a lot less common.

Places that accepted CVs got a lot lower responses than big corporations with their long winded online forms that took a couple of hours or more to fill out, with the usual crappy questions of "give an example e of when you displayed leadership qualities" and the likes. Keep a note of your responses, as after a few, it becomes a lot less effort, as you have probably answered a similar question in a previous one, and can just copy paste with a little adjustment.

Get some interview practice and get good at that. Looking back I was pretty down after a while saying things like "I'll take anything at this point" when I asked why I wanted the job. True, but not what potential employers want to hear. Think of it from the employers point of view and what they want to hear. Again, practice helps and you get better with time.

I got a couple of temporary jobs one for pretty minimal wage but that made a huge difference actually having some real world experience on my CV in terms of getting invited for interviews.

Have some code that you can show people. Build some example projects. I would advise spending some time building a more comprehensive project one time to show that rather than doing a crappy throwaway project from scratch for each interview - something I still seem expected to do after 20 years of experience. The hiring process in this industry sucks and is very exploitative in this way, happy to waste candidates time like this.

Connect with recruiters, lots of them. They can mean the difference between never hearing back after a cold application, and getting your resume in front of the hiring manager.

Message hiring managers and recruiters on LinkedIn that say "hiring" in their bio. This should get the ball rolling a little bit faster.

Good luck and cheers!

So, go out and grab the best job you can. Just be prepared for the life at the bottom of the hill.

Business people run companies according to business principles. The board and shareholders will focus on the short term and the stock price. Also, are these layoffs really about keeping companies afloat, or are they about maximizing shareholder value?

If Google laid off all of their engineers that were working on money losing projects that they are going to probably cancel in a year anyway, no one would see a decrease in service and their net income would increase.

As far as tech startups, they are mostly Ponzi schemes anyway where the investors were planning to pawn off their companies via either acquisition or an IPO.

Can you name one major tech company that has IPOd and created a profitable sustainable business in the last decade besides AirBnB?

- on the one hand, I was in no position to negotiate the offers I received

- on the other hand, the modest (commensurate with my lack of experience) equity component in my compensation package was calculated based on current (low) prices. It didn't seem important at the time, but when the market picked back up, this seemed really fortunate.

- I joined a team of people who, having seen their unvested equity take recent hit, were less than exuberant in their outlook about the near term. I did not realize: their problems were not my problems.

If you do land a job at a company which can survive and even grow, now could be an great time to start your career.

Anyway, I was completely out of the machine learning field for nearly 15 years until the late 2000s when interest in the field started to pick up again. The main advice I can offer is to be flexible and bide your time.

In general I'd say no although I'm not sure it applies to you. I know some people who graduated into the Internet apocalypse of 2002. They picked up crappy jobs and then got pigeon-holed into that crappy job for a very long time. It's a lot easier to get a job in a cool field as a new grad than it is as someone with experience doing manual testing or another crappy field.

Normally I'd recommend someone in your position to go for their Master's or Ph.D rather than getting a crappy job, but you already have your PhD so I'm not sure how much of my advice applies to you. PhD signals a deep specialization which may overcome the stigma of a crappy job.

It’s almost always better to take any job you can get and keep looking. Every month that you aren’t working, you have to make more to make up for the time of unemployment.

I would rather be “pigeonholed” (won’t happen) than be unemployed. The hardest thing is breaking the can’t get a job <-> don’t have experience cycle.

I’ve transitioned between many technologies since I started working in 1996.

And you have a hole in your resume you have to explain.

"Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers"

Job Outlook, 2021-31 25% (Much faster than average)

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

"Information Security Analysts"

Job Outlook, 2021-31 35% (Much faster than average)

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

So one way to avoid being hired into a team like this is to ask a many questions centered around the impact of the team.

For example, - “what are some of the main accomplishments this team has had in the past?” - “what is the mission & vision of the team, and how is it aligned to the business operational plan?” - “what will happen to the company if this team fails on its biggest bets?”

This is naturally aimed towards bigger companies.

The one thing I'd add is look beyond "tech sector" companies. Your skill set can be translated and refocused for any number of industries that will thrive in the coming years (e.g. food producers, energy, natural resources, healthcare, etc).

One way to do this is if your institute has a co-op program, reach out to the head and express interest in industries that could be interesting to get into. They'll likely be happy to help and connect a Top AI Expert with companies the university already works with. Of course you'll be doing more applicative work than theoretical

During and after the recession unemployment rate soared past 25%. 2/3 of my company got laid off during that period. At some point more than half of my friends were unemployed. Having a stable job you can count for years to come was an incredible perk.

However this security bred both complacency and toxicity. My boss started saying things like "you are lucky you got a job", "we are doing you a favour letting you work here" or "there are no jobs out there" (BTW I'm seeing echoes of this in some managers these days). Although the job was terrible, I was conditioned to have extremely low expectations.

At the end I spent the first 7 years of my career in a low performing and toxic organization. I was so severely underpaid that when I finally changed jobs, I 4x my pay without trying too hard. The rest is history.

So if I had to capture my lessons in a tip is: do whatever you need to "survive" the recession, but keep an eye on the market and be quick to jump when the tide turns.

I'll never know how much I would have turbocharged my career if I had jumped at the beginning of the longest bull market in history rather than languishing in a career dead end.

I had a college job that paid the bills but wasn't anything related to tech. I looked for jobs but the job market in Portland, Oregon was the Sahara desert. There wasn't an entry level job in sight, and if you didn't have a decade of experience you could forget about getting a foot in the door.

Eventually I took a customer service job at a call center that did work for Adobe, and after a year there I switched to one of their other contract customers, Disney. I did tech support for Disney's Toontown, one thing led to another, and Disney ended up hiring me direct and moving me down to LA.

I stayed at Disney far too long in a junior position because I had no confidence in my ability to get a better job, the experience of being shut out of the market for years after graduating broke me. Eventually I got laid off from Disney, and what followed was all the best years of my career because it forced me to shop my skills around more.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have immediately taken that tech support job, and when I made it to my first real engineer job I would have jumped after two years if I wasn't promoted. I would've kept jumping every 2-3 years. Like a lot of people there I felt a loyalty to the company that was 100% one-sided.

tl;dr get something, anything in your field as soon as you can, and promote yourself to another position as soon as you can and keep doing it. Only stay in a place if you have immediate and ongoing career growth.

2. Get as much professional experience as possible. There's an entire world outside of the startup/HN crowd where you can thrive in a great career at an enterprise company doing .NET/Java. These are your name brand mega insurance companies or health care organizations that are just trying to get line-of-business apps created for internal use. It's not the brand name cachet as a popular SaaS. These mega corps often don't go out of their way to advertise for new positions, so just checkout linkedin or look at their job boards on their corporate website. These companies often have the large internal development team to pair you with a senior developer and train you up.

3. Bide your time until the market "re-opens". The market will come back, but in the meantime now is the time to build up your CV. If you still are having problems getting a foot in the door, then take on open source projects. Create a side-project. There's nothing worse as a hiring manager seeing a new grad with zero experience asking for $150,000.

Yeah, it'll be tough. Your first "real" job will likely be the most difficult job search of your life.

Feel free to try your luck at the same company multiple times. Now, don't be annoying - don't spam them with your resume every day. But the first job I ended up getting was with a company I contacted again a few months after hearing they didn't have anything for me.

I think the issue of take any job vs keep looking for the right job depends on your circumstances. After college I moved back home with my parents, took the summer off and slowly job searched, rent-free, while also enjoying my last summer of freedom. Some folks won't have that luxury.

I'd also recommend considering being flexible with your location. Sure, maybe you want to live in City A, and maybe you can one day, but if there are more jobs in City B (or remote work that will pay the bills in some places, but not City A), it won't kill you to live somewhere else for a couple of years and then try to make the move to where you really want to be.

That said, a lot of the big companies have frozen hiring in AI along with a lot of unicorns who focused on AI but haven't been profitable. Some of my own PhD students who are graduating soon are worried, but they have been able to get interviews at non-FAANG companies for doing AI research.

There are a lot of faculty openings for AI, and while they are competitive, it isn't nearly as competitive in the past if you have been productive during your PhD. You would have to wait until Fall 2023 to apply for them, so you would have to do a postdoc or something like that for a year.

I think money is going to flow into AI start-ups doing foundation models and generative AI, so if your AI-related work is in that space, you could be well positioned. It would be potentially risky if you are not a US citizen due to visa issues.

Will depend a lot on the individual situation, but as a broad blanket advice I'd generally say, yes. Especially if you come from an undergrad/master's. There are very few of those really big tectonic shifts in life like fully entering the workforce for the first time, and a lot of it has more to do with having some job (at least somewhat relevant to what you learnt) than having the perfect job (which, frankly, you can't really know what that would be for you at that stage anyway). I don't see much good coming from delaying this just for the sake of waiting for the perfect match.

That being said, if you have other reasons for delaying, like wanting to try a startup, that might indeed be a good reason to not start in a job. Or if you're a PhD graduate, you've had sort of a semi-job experience already, and you might have ways to stay a bit longer in academia doing meaningful things (post-doc,...), while looking for something that really fits with the highly specialized profile you've already built at that point.

1. Build a portfolio of projects. Companies like to see that you're hands-on and problem-solving oriented. 2. Invest on your personal brand (via a website, LinkedIn or other social media). This helps put your name and what you do out there, so hiring managers can find you.

With those things at hand, you can make compelling applications and get noticed. I don't see a problem with reaching to managers directly, especially if you make clear how you can provide value.

About getting any job, it depends how much different it is from where you want to be in 5 or 10 years and what your immediate needs are. If you need the money, then you can go for it - any job will provide you learnings. But don't deviate too much from the future you want.

Focus on being the best version of yourself. Be passionate. Stand out not by being what they're looking for, stand out by being what they didn't even know they were looking for until they found you.

Focus on solving problems, not just being a warm body in a seat. Companies need problems solved, not seats filled. Identify the issue they are trying to solve before you even show up, and then make it clear you're the person to solve it.

Focus on being human. If you're not the most personable person (not everyone is, and that's fine) then spend time to make sure they know that you aren't their average applicant.

And if your prospective employer says "In 100 words or less, tell us what makes you different from the rest!" for the love of all that is recruiting, do not just paste in your cover letter. I've disqualified SO many applicants without even looking at their resume or cover letter because they couldn't bother to follow the most basic direction.

Entering the work force now or in the next few years, a new grad will very likely have an easier time navigating the job market than people who have spent nearly a decade working for bubble-frenzied, VC backed companies.

In the years following the dotcom bust I new tons of software folks desperately trying to reconfigure their careers. It's not hard for a fresh grad to change course, most people don't end up working in a career that is directly related to their major.

Entering the work force will be harder and harder but new grads will have less expectations and bad habits they have to overcome to find an occupation that works for them (they also won't have no-longer-reasonable comp expectations).

This will help keep cost of living way down so you don't have to give a shit of you're tossed on your ass without any notice or severance. Stop pretending the business landscape was made with your wellbeing in mind; if that were the case, your onboarding package (or interview?) would involve making sure you're aware of your needs and how to meet them. Any business unable to produce such a document is not designed with your wellbeing in mind.

My research supervisor had funding for someone who can work on ITAR-restricted projects, and I was the perfect fit for that. I made money earning my graduate degree. Afterwards, I used my research experience and connections to land a full-time job at an FFRDC [1], which only hires US citizens. I learned a lot from my group there, and it set me up for even more future opportunities. Those "unfair advantages" made life much easier for me during a tough market.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federally_funded_research_and_...

To survive bad job market is not to enter a bad job market.

If you have to, then, due to supply and demand, you will have to adjust to

1. lower your expectation 2. work on area that is not your supposed expertise domain 3. other unfavorable conditions

If the experience is positive, then great, stick around. If not, the name of a large company on your resume (ideally at least two years), will make it much easier to find your next gig, as large companies are easily recognizable for their products and branding.

Look for something new and different that could change everything (https://scroll.pub/ https://breckyunits.com/oneTextarea.html https://longbets.org/793/)

1) Apply everywhere, literally in the hundreds. Different cities, different states, etc.

2) Make sure you are prepared. Do hundreds of Leetcode questions at least to the medium level. Do lots of systems design questions as well. The fact of life is that you need to show you can do coding questions and your competitors will all be at the top of their game here. If you don't match them, why exactly would you be a better candidate than them?

My advice is learn to interview. What I mean by that is if you don't know something don't just say. No sure. Ask if you can try to walk your way through it with the person and if you get stuck or don't know something ask the interviewer for help. What that shows is you want to learn

I haven't seen any reduction in demand for devs in my region, but that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't coming.

I would say directly reaching out to hiring managers and recruiters is your path forward, but they get a lot of inbound, so the odds of a cold outreach getting read is low unless you have an intro.

Does this line up with anyone's real world experience?

Not an option for everyone (college is more expensive now for sure!) but it worked.

Pay for something that helps you mass apply - I think there are tools out there. Unfortunately I've forgotten their names.

Put yourself in a strong situation - i.e. move back to your parents etc so money isn't a worry.

I never went to Grad School but a lot of my friends went to Grad school.

If there is limited time to review or interview candidates resulting in some not getting moved further along, one of the easy early filters is to not consider the ones that came in from a third party easy apply and don't match the format expected by the ATS (if they even got that far).

It is fine to use linked in, dice, Glassdoor and whatever else to discover companies that may have jobs listed. However preference should always be given to applying on the company page itself with a resume that indicates that you read the position requirements.

I would do what you can to kill a year, sign up for post-doc work, spend a year teaching, go travel etc.

Try not living in an high-cost area or above your means, you can coast for a couple of years in some random corporate environment, then you could apply for some FAANG when positions reopen.

But they may not be closed for your role.

Agreed AI will be the “hot” area going forward, but how are labor dynamics? e.g. supply of talent vs number of openings

They likely fired people not performing, they'll rehire "cheap" new grads. Make sure you get what you feel your worth.

but OP has a PHD. if you connect with other PHD's from other departments not in tech, you can easily have a job or start a company.

Below is additional notes that helps me through the game of hiring and looking for jobs. Take time to reflect and think about the pre-existing advantages you have. Then again reflect and think about the UNFAIR advantages you have. Unfair advantages are the very things you may take for granted that others would consider unfair. These things may, can and will be things that you will completely overlook so here's some examples:

- US Citizen, you should know this but if you don't there people going through laborous and painful undertakings just to have the same priviliges that you have as a US Citizen. Visas are dime a dozen and getting to a position to be given/apply for a visa is getting harder and harder.

- Alumni of university/college/high school that has any notoriety in tech, engineering, finance (or even any form of notoriety as long as its positive!)

- Network from university/college/high school/church/weekend rec league/hometown/current residence. Believe it or not a familiar face and name can lead into an interview and/or a job. There's probably people who like you for no other reason than the fact that they associate with you and remember you (vice versa applies too but we're talking positives here)

- Skill in highly specific niche that not entirely popular or "mainstream". If you have a skill and/or experience doing something in a niche this is beneficial for your chances as you can land an interview and form connections that can lead to more (network, interview, job, association, business)

- If you can and are willing to pack your bags and move across city/county/state/even country lines, you can increase your chances in landing an interview/job. If not disregard this

- There's a higher chance because you're a new grad, you'll be given leeway and are seen as a "cheaper" resource for the business. Understand this and use it. Shop your offers when you have them and if not say you do. Just cause its a downturn economically does not mean you need to experience a downturn in your personal economics

- Contact anyone and everyone you know and let them know you are looking for work. Mention it indirectly in communication for better effectivity

- Position yourself to be seen as high value.

Use every advantage you have.

1. Not all of the economy declines at once. Someone is hiring for something.

2. There is always a new trend spinning up. The trend may originate from the research sector, a government policy shift, or a large firm that has deployed a new business strategy. Those things result in new possibilities in the global supply chain, and therefore business formation and expansion.

3. When the trend is in its early stages - before it enters any hype cycle - you have to be on it and present yourself in a way that makes you "the person to seek out for x". If you get on and stay on, you get swept up in the resulting demand for skilled work.

4. Everything else is a continuation of that. Being a later hire means you're less central, and therefore less rewarded. When the trend ends you have to exit to a new one to have a continuation, otherwise the career is most likely going to have a gradual fade into obscurity.

All the more cosmetic stuff about whom to contact and how to contact them ranks beneath the macro trend positioning that makes you be near where the money is currently flowing, and part of the story of this recession is that the world's nations are all making big, strategic policy changes that redefine their economies.

What is probably going away: The leadership of the FAANG framework. The companies themselves will mostly stay around, but their scaling is done, and now it is about time for many of their products to be chipped away at by a swarm of new approaches, as has happened in past eras of software.

What is going to be interesting: AI, but not the nuts-and-bolts of machine learning. Those careers are made already, and you're way more likely to be acting as a consumer/integrator of their output. AI products and services in the larger view are still finding their way - approaches to integration, UX and so on.

Anything that deals with energy infrastructure and transport problems may be interesting. "ESG" is being pursued top down from Davos, and will change policies in many local governments. Software will be part of it, but it might be hard to find a niche that isn't occupied already. See Tony Seba's lectures for a sense of what might be opening up soon.

Crypto tokens have just hit another winter cycle. They are not dead at all; what the last cycle did is test the outer limits of schemes that misapply the tech, and a lot of "blockchain" companies were just that. The tech itself never broke in some fundamental way. It is ultimately another form of information system, one that indexes trades and valuations. The specifics of what is tracked in the system, the scale it should reach, and how secure it needs to be are still uncharted. It takes a creative mind to come up with experiments that reach beyond mimicry of traditional finance, but we're right around that point now. I'm following along with it; it could be interesting. Not one for finding a traditional job though, I think.

If you're a grad student, maybe try to get a post-doc?

But assuming more academia is not for you, look for jobs outside of tech companies. Like apply for a job building the McDonalds app or writing software for John Deere tractors. The job probably won't be great, but you might get lucky and find a company that has realized that tech is the future and are investing in it (I recently met some guys from Ford who were doing some crazy cool stuff).

If you want to try to find which non-tech companies are embracing and investing in tech, look for old companies that have been featured in keynotes at re:invent or Google Cloud Next.

And of course use your network. Find friends who did get jobs and ask them if there are any more. While there are general hiring freezes, some companies will open up a few jobs to counteract attrition, and some will exempt new college grads from their freezes (because you guys are cheap and eager to learn their way of doing things without preconceived notions).

Good luck, and try not to get too down if you get ignored or rejected a lot -- it will happen to the best of people!

What sort of work is interesting to you, and why?

Going to grad school is only a good idea if there's something specific you're trying to learn. It's a means not an ends.

For someone who doesn't have real life work experience in their field, I don't think it's the best idea.

I think working in the industry for a few years (at least) and seeing the types of jobs and work that are available is a better approach.

After you have some experience and want to specialize in a specific thing (AI/ML, etc...) going to grad school might make sense, depending.

When I'm hiring, it's actually a bit of a red flag for me to see a resume with a graduate degree and no work experience - but the positions I hire for tend to be very practical business development types things, not really that appropriate for graduate level.

Unfortunately, that's 90%+ of the market.

Many hiring managers will be hesitant to hire you in that situation, because the assumption is that you're overqualified, under experienced, and will leave for a more senior opportunity as soon as you get the chance.

I was given the advice to avoid going to grad school early in my career, and I'm glad I followed it.

You're right that grad school is more effective after working a few years, but its still a better option that starvation if you can get into grad school with a stipend.

And if you throw away the resumes of someone who went straight to grad school, you're just missing out on a lot of good candidates.