Here's the flip side: I was hiring (at a stealth vc-funded startup).
I reached out to every designer and coder laid off from Twitter and Amazon (one of my investors sent me a spreadsheet that those laid off folks added their contact info to).
I didn't receive a single interested response to my reach outs. Now granted, I'm sure they were bombarded with lots of startup offers and being picky what company/stage they were responding to, or were still in grief mode and not ready to start looking, or maybe (probably!) my reach-out finesse was lacking.
But I'm just pointing out that their are definitely companies like mine who are hiring and it's not all doom and gloom for laid off folks.
I ended up hiring via ads on LinkedIn and job posts on eng message boards.
Being real for a minute: There is definitely a perspective among hiring companies that regular lay offs are sometimes packaged alongside bottom performers, but I think that is something they would just do diligence on during an interview process.
My observation is that recent layoffs affect engineers with different seniority very differently.
Senior devs I know who got laid off are just enjoying their time off (with pay! if you consider the severance) after the rocketing market in 2021 (and maybe even H1 22) made them whole and financially secure. And they won't be entertaining a startup unless significant equity or big leveling up (eg Principal or Director).
On the other hand, fresh grads who got laid off are in such a panic mode (esp those on visa) they'd be willing to take anything.
Furthermore, some very senior employees are in this boat: They kinda have enough savings to just retire, but were hanging on to their jobs to save maybe 10% more or whatever. Now that they're out of a job they are simply saying "Whelllp, I guess I'm now retired." and not really feeling the need to look anymore. I know someone who refused a forced return to office, and when his company tried to call his bluff, he just said "I guess I'm retired now!"
The people going after "wealth" are a minority. The majority of us are salaried people who go to work in order to have a roof over our heads, to pay the bills and put food on the table and maybe to have enough money to have some kids.
The majority of us don't actually know what we "have", because it isn't that much anyway. We do know though what we need to pay in the next 10 to 15 days(and if we somehow forget there's where anxious dreams come into play to help us out with that).
Given that the average mid level developer makes a salary and stock grant putting them well into the 1% (in USA) I find it questionable that the majority of people are "just" trying to keep a roof over their heads.
A 1% wage with a 0.1% cost of living is still poor! Its all relative. Stocks dont mean nothing to me. Watch the stock price plummet when founders sell their stock.
There are jobs out there, I've turned down 3 (2xUS, 1xUK/CH) last year I enquired about just to keep in touch with whats on offer and gain insight into projects underway or commencing. Paying 6 figures, US onsite, UK/CH offered remote, working as many hours as I wanted. Turned them down. I think US/Canada remote is rare because of the poor internet infrastructure once you get outside of the cities, Europe has better internet infrastructure so can offer more remote work. Management styles are generally different in the US compared to Europe, with the UK somewhere in between the two regions as usual.
I think people need to understand the different parts of a global economy and realise some sectors some countries wont be or will hardly be affected by the social media downturn especially if they are prepared to work abroad and broaden their horizons.
Perhaps your assumption that all "mid level developers" make FAANG income is a bit inaccurate? There are tens of thousands of developers across the US not making big bucks. And to be in the 1%, you need to be making north of $800K. The company I work for employees roughly 100 developers, and not one of them makes more than $150K (we don't award RSUs either).
The median income in king county WA is 100k, we can deduce that Amazon devs make quite a bit more than that from levels.
I was more inaccurate or perhaps outdated with the 1% figure, turns out it's 600k.
But in every possible universe, the devs at your "small shop" not making "the big bucks" are making two to three times the median income in the country with the most disposable income per person - which means your counterexample is very weak to the argument that you and your team are making more than enough to be doing more with your finances than "just" keeping the lights on, and to compare that to people in the US who make regular wages for sympathy is kind of egregious.
Looked to me like the OP was talking more generally, about all people.
And back to developers (I am one, but not living in the US), I don't think most of them own their place of living. I know I don't, so, yes, I have to work in order to have a roof over my head.
Quite a broad generalization. Sounds like people who don't have an actual plan for their money other than to have more of it. The kind of person who retires and realizes they don't even know what to do now that they aren't striving for that $$$.
Sure, there are all kinds of people with all sorts of ideas about what retirement will be like. And from my observations, more often than not, two people with different ideas about retirement will get married to each other.
Different ideas about retirement—such as retiring with different amounts of security, different standards of living, different amounts of money donated to charity, different locations, downsizing or not downsizing the house, living in the countryside or the city, traveling a lot or a little, etc.
My impression as someone who’s not retired is that you are signing up for a new relationship with your partner once you retire, and it’s hard to know what that new relationship will be like.
Lifestyle creep is a thing. You may think you have a plan, but then get a slightly nicer house and slightly nicer cars and slightly nicer vacations…and suddenly now you need 1.5x the money you planned for.
I don't know. It's a big and somewhat irreversible decision from a pay and career perspective. I can certainly see people hesitate to make the plunge and maybe stretch things out a bit further even though they're pretty sure they're fine finacially.
I think it sort of is unless someone is a real name that lots of companies would fall over themselves to hire. For most tech workers--not limited to developers--if you decide to hang up your cleats in your late 50s or 60s, it's probably going to be difficult to change your mind a couple of years later. Part-time consulting is probably easier though. (Probably less so at the moment.)
Sounds like my grandpa. He retired from the US Air Force when he got passed up for a colonel->general promotion... only to eventually become a high school teacher. He's since retired again, though with the multiple volunteer jobs he's doing it doesn't really feel like it lol
That would apply to me too. I have 10 years in the industry but have been underpaid and have a family. My current plan if I get fired is to work at Walmart or Lowes until I can find another job.
The company I worked for the last 7 years closed year end, and I'm a single dad with a weird schedule and self-taught (no college). I thought my prospects were bad but I got a better job for better pay at a better company, and I was totally honest with them about my skills, experience, etc during the hiring process so there were no surprises.
If you feel like you could lose your current, underpaid job I encourage you to start looking around. I wish I would have before waiting til the bitter end.
This is very similar to where I'm at. I feel like I do have skills that could be used somewhere, but i don't look great on paper, and I'm not very good at selling myself.
I was underpaid. Now my skills have atrophied to match my low pay. Only about 17 years until I can "retire". I'll probably end up working at Walmart in retirement anyways.
Hard to say. Unemployment has some weird rules which vary from state to state. I got laid off a few months after starting a new job, and since I hadn't been working there long my total pay wasn't very high, WalMart would have been as good. Fortunately I got a new job quick that time, but when you are out of work and don't have a lot of savings compared to your bills... Even if you have 6 months savings, seeing savings fall month by month while you just pay bills is demoralizing.
I wasn't trying to be cheeky with this. I was saying sometimes the ~40% that unemployment pays would be much better than walmart. and working there could stop your benefits.
Also, you can focus on a finding a job in your field. If for some reason you didn't want to get unemployment while you look for a job I would try to find any type of contracting job even upwork or fiverr so you can at least put Self-Employed Consulting on resume.
This isn’t true in California, and I don’t think it’s generally true in other states either.
A fired employee is still eligible for unemployment as long as they were not fired because of specific misconduct. Poor performance does not constitute misconduct. Misconduct must be “willful and wanton.” (Regularly missing work or being late, stealing, fighting with coworkers, etc.)
Good point. My company generally finds "misconduct" reasons to let someone go, like long lunch breaks, being late, computer use like logging into personal accounts etc. They are very lenient about a lot of stuff in practice, but the official policies are much stricter. They basically have enough policies that they can get almost anyone for violations. It's all about having many rules and unequal enforcemnt - it's much like the regular legal system that way.
You can still fight misconduct claims to UI by asserting problems with the work environment. Specific advice would vary by state. There is no reason an employee shouldn’t try.
If how the company acts in practice is different from their written rules, then anyone fired can sue the company for wrongful dismissal. Check with a lawyer.
A fired employee can sue for wrongful dismissal. If this happened to your check with a lawyer, if you can show that the company had a pattern of overlooking such things, then you can get big bucks in court.
I know of people who should have been fired who were talked into quitting instead just because quitting means they can't sue. In turn the company gives the official answer "X worked here between these dates and left in good standing". Since the company always said the same thing when asked if someone worked there it wasn't a negative to the next employer, while if they fired they would have to say left in bad standing.
Of course since getting fired is a sensitive issue I won't say who. Reading between the lines in conversations and how the company acted though I'm sure that is how it worked.
Any company that states that an employee left "in bad standing" either has an idiot for counsel, or poor HR practices. Providing any information other than employment dates opens you up for lawsuits.
Which is why the company works hard to convince someone who should be fired to quit. If they fire someone and don't mention that fact they can be sued for withholding information, but if the person quit on their own terms.
Note that there is a difference between being sued and losing in court. Even if you win you still need to pay your lawyers. I've had one lawyer tell me about spending nearly a million dollars in court for a case that was about $100,000 in asked damages that the lawyer knew based on facts they would lose - but [I can't talk about this part] made it impossible to figure out how to settle out of court.
I guess if you are used to the security (or lack thereof) and coast-ability of large tech companies, you might be inclined to stick to the big names. However, I've recently discovered how fulfilling startup work is. Ironically, I feel more secure in my current role at a startup than I ever did at big tech. That's thanks a lot to the industry I'm in, but regardless senior devs are missing a lot if they completely discount startup roles.
Is this really broadly true? I worked for a FAANG for a ~year and half and was constantly over-burdened (rarely with enjoyable or challenging technical work).
I assumed outside of the TikTok "Day in the Life" PMs most folks were grinding away on build issues 50hours a week.
Happy for you. Unfortunately, with VC money currently drying off, I know of many startups that are laying off. And I'm not talking about 10% of workforce layoffs, but more around 30%.
Just a word of advice for readers who are working at a startup: you will never be wrong by getting as close to the money as possible.
If you are at a startup and working on support tools or platform infrastructure or whatever, maybe you're indispensable. But you'd still be better off if you were doing support tools or platform infrastructure that involves revenue.
(The obvious corollary is that if you work at a startup that doesn't make money, you should find a way to make money, or move to a startup that does make money. I feel like a lot of engineers don't know this.)
I've definitely seen some "strategic" people being shown the door over the past few rounds of layoffs, and at least two boomerangs (laid off, then rehired).
You can always be laid off. The chances are much higher if you work on things unrelated to the core business at a startup that is losing money (or worse, not making money).
Obviously, if you're the junior hire on a team of 1,000 people doing third-derivative things that relate to revenue, YMMV.
It's also the case that things change to the point where "strategic" people become less strategic for any number of reasons (the company changes, they're "rich and tired" to use a marvelous phrase from a colleague, etc.). Under what's been normal circumstances at Big Tech until recently companies often keep such people around anyway because they're probably the sort of people who can be pretty effective fixers with a half-day of work and such people may be happy to keep collecting a bunch of money. But a lot of companies are scrutinizing more today.
The best move is startups that are profitable while being small. I went to a 13 person company out of college that was profitable when I joined. Rode that train till we got bought by a company that isn't profitable and is now doing layoffs to try and fix that. Now even so I'm still in the division that brings in more profit per programmer than almost any part of the company, but I still don't feel as safe as when we were a 50 person company that was still profitable after almost quadrupling in size.
Yep, you should definitely be wary about joining a startup in a drying industry, like B2B. Ask yourself if the customers/clients of said startup are still able to afford spending money on the product. If the customers themselves are another tech company that is struggling due to their VC money going away, probably not the best choice.
Not dying, just drying up and I'm sure there will be a resurgence. If you look at the companies doing layoffs, the majority of them cater to other tech companies who all seem to be pulling the purse strings tighter.
I’m a low-senior engineer recently laid off. I got lots of emails like that and politely declined. I have a bit over four months of severance pay. For the moment, I’m enjoying other fulfilling activities as well as spending some time upgrading my tech skills through independent study.
I’ve considered some startups, but it seems like it’s often difficult to enforce boundaries on work… I benefit a lot from being able to go offline completely on evenings and weekends. That was always possible in my last job except during the occasional oncall and maybe one or two major launches per year. Also, the pay offered is usually half of what I made in my last job, or less. If the current market situation persists for another six months I’ll probably relax my standards. Or if I get contacted by a startup that’s especially impressive or interesting, or someone I trust tells me it’s a great place to work.
Pay isn’t the most important factor, but I don’t want to get locked in at low comp and have to change again in six months. Also, I have a hard time getting objective information about the work culture at startups. With Google or whatever I can always find contacts who work there and ask them how they feel about their job; with startups every person I talk to is trying to convince me to join and is incentivized to downplay the problems.
> Also, I have a hard time getting objective information about the work culture at startups.
Yes this is a big problem as you have no idea what you're signing up with startups. Maybe the founder expects you to work 12 hours/day and constantly be available, maybe they will fire you a month before your equity vesting, or just randomly fire you one day despite having never given any negative feedback. I've seen all of this at startups, and there is zero accountability. Last time it happened to me I wasn't even offered any severance.
If anyone is considering working for a startup, please do your due diligence. Do not be naive and think that because the founders are very friendly and their startup is backed by YC that they are a good place to work and won't fire you the second they have any doubts about you (personally I'll never work as a full-time employee for a startup going through YC ever again, but that's a story for another day).
Going forward if I'm ever thinking about working for a startup, I will reach out to employees, and ideally ex-employees, to get the inside scoop on what the founders are really like behind the smoke & mirrors.
I know a friend who led product at a startup (YC). One fine day he shared concerns on how company is narrowly focusing on just one parameter. 10 mins later, he got employment termination letter.
Not just startups - even established non-tech companies reaching out can be _very_ opaque, since their tech staff essentially exists in a parallel dimension…
If you're interviewing with an early stage (read: pre-series B) startup, the founders believe you're a good fit, and they have seeded a good culture, they will be happy to let you interview every person they've hired so far.
I like to ask these people "Why did you choose this company versus any of the other ones?" and "What were your expectations about [thing I'm uncertain about], and how did your experience differ from that?"
Startups actually have more signal to offer than most big tech companies. However, the onus is on you to scuttlebut, and it's true that the risks of not doing it well are more severe.
Re: compensation, if you are able to demonstrate competence and efficacy, early stage startups will offer you a cash basis comparable to that of big tech. Of course, if your expenses have inflated to the expectation of selling big tech RSUs every year, you should expect a pretty significant "real" cut in annual income unless you walk in to another public company.
You're right that the cash compensation is often similar. But estimating the value of options is really hard! One of the better (seed) companies I considered working at was able to tell me what my options would be worth given various exit scenarios. In that particular case the company would have had to exit with a $5B valuation in order to match my FAANG compensation. The company was worth $100M at the time. When I pointed this out, the founders reassured me that they were very confident that their company would exceed that valuation :)
Curious if there could be repercussions are of joining a startup, enforcing your boundaries, and if they don't respect them, quitting early (just leaving them off your resume).
You get a bit more cash, and I can't see it impacting your career negatively (though you do end up trading some of the time you could be resting and collecting severance to see if the company might be a good long-term fit)
Wild guess says you're not paying Amazon/Twitter compensation. And thats fine, they shouldn't be your target
It would not be smart of them to accept a lower paying job immediately. A lot of them have life expenses directly tied to the amount of money they're making. Maybe those who haven't found anything for 3 months can join your company, move to a new place, change their childrens' daycare, and do a lot of life changing decisions based on their new income
I get a ton of emails from random startups in stealth mode, early funding, whatever.
You know where they all go? Spam folder. As far as I’m concerned, they pay the equivalent of dog shit and are mostly full of extremely entitled founders. They rarely offer equity that’s even remotely worth the risk. I’m way better off joining a company at Series B/C. I can often get a very similar amount of stock that even seed or series A folks have with having avoided a huge amount of risk. Tbh - I find joining pre-IPO probably has close to the best reward+risk for non-public entities.
There’s just no benefit to joining early startups as a non-founder. Maybe when founders start offering serious percentages of stock that isn’t going to be diluted into nothing - I’ll be more inclined. Until then - no way!
It depends a lot on the company. Pre-funding/pre-pmf is hard to judge. But there are plenty of companies with arguable PMF at the seed stage, for whom raising an A vs going alone is an actual choice.
If you're filtering for B/C, you're filtering for companies that need investor money post-supposed-PMF (A is generally considered the anointing of PMF).
That behavior was fine pre-2021, but it's a bit more suspect in 2022. Joining the median pre-IPO tech company within the last year or two would have left your initial option grant completely in the red, today.
In short, there's a continuum between "stealth mode" and Series B that's more lucrative than you're giving credit for, provided one chooses them wisely. The problem is it's hard to choose. There aren't good incentives for educating people on how to choose well.
The issue with ones that are "profitable" at seed or Series A and don't pursue more funding is that I don't think they ever go public. The founders will find a way to get their payday but as an employee - you're SOL.
If I was laid off I would, unfortunately, avoid startups at all costs.
It's not just the comp difference (though I do expect most people with severance are hoping to get something close to their old TC), but startups are notoriously fragile and at the same time wildly over optimistic about their futures in down markets.
I've talked to a few startups about interesting roles over the past few months and no matter how obviously in trouble they are if the market continues the way it is, they all deeply believe that they have an infinitely bright future.
A shocking number of post-seed but still awaiting series A startups have started reaching out to me and none of them have sane business models. On top of that it looks like VC funding is way down.
Any senior engineers who just got the shock of being let go from what they thought was a very stable job with great comp simply aren't going to be excited to jump onto a high risk startup just to relive the whole experience again only this time with less severance.
I saw this as well for most of 2022. Our company was hiring, and my founder friends would pass me the layoff lists, but I'd never hear back from the people I pinged.
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.
VC money is still there but pumping into Seed/Series A companies with more upside now rather than insane B, C, D companies that have no profitability in sight.
email me at j{at}markovmanagement.com if interested :)
> Being real for a minute: There is definitely a perspective among hiring companies that regular lay offs are sometimes packaged alongside bottom performers, but I think that is something they would just do diligence on during an interview process.
Not sure what you mean here. I know of companies that lay off entire teams, irrespective of performance. I suspect that it's the same everywhere.
I know many companies that do select whole teams, but it's also cleaning house time and the lowest performer from a previously non-impacted team will be included as laying off is easier than firing depending on where in the world you are.
Regardless, in absence of information, you cannot conclude that someone who was laid off was an underperformer. It can just as well be a member of a team who was considered lower-priority and disbanded.
If you're laying off people, you're going to also get rid of the low performers. Maybe you don't have enough low performers (or just don't know who they are) to make up the quota and you have to remove whole teams or use arbitrary metrics, but there will be an overrepresentation of below-average workers compared to the survivors. Source: wife is a manager at a company that had single-digit percent layoffs.
One note from personal experience -- it'll likely take about 12 weeks or so for a laid off dev to come back up to speed with interview prep to feel confident to start the interview grind again. One thing that can likely help is being upfront with the evaluation process.
Not everyone lives from hand to mouth and need a job ASAP. Additionally, most people I know in (US) big tech do not take adequate time off from work - it appears the unspoken rule is to take substantive breaks between jobs, rather than annually like they do in Europe.
I've found this to be true, looking at the course of my own career. Just told a German tourist over breakfast that some US workers get as little as two weeks' vacation when starting a job. You should have seen his reaction— his eyes bugged out and he almost choked on his eggs and sausage.
It's an estimate based on both the average severances coupled with how long it takes to work through the Blind 100 LC grind with a bit of reset time thrown in. If you're in a position where you can handle 2 LC-hard questions in about an hour with near perfect execution, good for you! But most folks need to prepare for that.
How much are you paying? I might have been in that group, most of these companies I find don't have an interesting problem or aren't paying enough. Maybe don't allow for remote work.
Or they are looking at those juicy severance checks and deciding to take a 6 month vacation before applying anywhere again, using state of the economy as an excuse.
I just want to point out that it’s quite horrible that this sort of lists are floating around.
EDIT: As other commenters are pointing out, this appears to be a list of voluntarily added people. In such case the lack of replies is indeed puzzling.
> that those laid off folks added their contact info to
Hopefully that's actually true but, regardless, it seems to be what's believed. If it is true, it's reasonable to assume they knew what the list would be.
Be careful because a lot of smart people from FAANG may not be a good fit for startups.they are more corporate types nowadays and are probably used to easy money with not much pressure. Startups on the other hand are nothing like that
Senior SWE, 20+ years of experience, based in the bay area, laid off from Meta in November. I reached out to my network and had a couple applications in same-day. One of those panned out and I just started this week.
I also did a bunch of cold job applications, but didn't get a callback from any of them. The whole process led to a ton of anxiety and was really nerve-wracking, especially reading about layoffs from other tech firms in the same time period. I kept worrying that my new company was going to hit layoffs and that my offer would be rescinded, especially when the recruiter told me they were reducing hiring. Having it take about 3 months just drug that anxiety out.
I still have a bit of anxiety about getting laid off, but no more than I'd have anywhere else.
Man, there's definitely something broken with the cold application process. I'd estimate my success rate of getting an interview from a cold application is something like 1-5%. I almost always resort to referrals or getting lucky networking with recruiters.
I think it's a lot of luck and being one of the first people to apply. Once the flood comes in then people start filtering on metrics that don't really matter. "Oh, you only have 10 years of Java? This candidate over here has 11."
I also think there's a weird game going on with remote roles. On my new team everyone is "remote", but of the 10 people 3 are in the bay area and the other 7 are in 6 different cities, but each city has an office. The company has ~8 offices in North America, so the statistics are bothering. This matches with my circle of friends' experience; the only callbacks people get for remote roles are ones where they're already in the same city.
I suspect "remote" really means "remote, but in a city that we have a presence in, just in case we decide to force you to come into an office."
I've hired a bunch of people (well my boss, but I'm on the interview panel so I have a real say though I'm not hiring). We generally agree that living near an office is an advantage. We have hired people from all over, but those closer to an office are more valuable just because sometimes we need someone to go physically look at a failing test setup.
It can for sure. I felt that way interviewing with Google and Facebook. I typically go for "remote first" companies that either don't have an office presence at all, or companies with a significant number of engineers across the nation/world. It's one of the primary questions I tend to ask during the initial interview phases.
It's ironic because you would think companies would want engineers who actually are eager to work there.
When connecting to companies through recruiters, you're expected to still come up with some semi-BS about why you're so excited to work there. But you need to go through the motions because the places you are actually excited to work won't even interview you.
Most companies are boring. Why is anyone excited about a company that makes sewage systems, but it must be done. Or accounting software, or any of the millions of other jobs. Even if you are building exciting games, most of the work is boring (if you get to play that game it is spending hours running in walls on the starting level), likewise tracking down a bug is just as tedious in a game as any other software.
I'm definitely seeing a pattern in the posts here.
Referrals and recruiters = success.
Apply to a position = failure.
I've had in the past a few recruiters on the lazier side ask me to "please apply directly at the company portal" and that had a perfectly round 0% success rate.
I have had 4 jobs in my software engineering career so far -- I have gotten none of them from applying (despite applying to many, many listings and even having gotten interviews through those applications).
1 personal connection,
2 recruiters employed by the hiring company,
1 third party recruiter on contract through the hiring company.
It just seems to me like a company having put out an application just doesn't mean they are all that motivated to hire. Having hired recruiters on the other hand...
Referrals directly or indirectly will always triumph the manual application. Whenever a recruiter/lead suggests "please apply directly" I know it's not worth the time. Something you have to learn through experience.
I've heard for my entire life that referrals are way, way more successful than cold applications, in any industry. It's part of the reason I work hard to cultivate relationships at work! It could be that things are "broken" and have been for a very long time, but rather I think a referral is just truly a much better indicator than anything that could be learned from a cold application.
It really shows that recruiters do next to nothing. It was a cushy job that was easy in the tech boom when everyone was being hired for anything. Now that more filtering needs to happen, the process breaks down.
As it stands today, a "warm" candidate is brought into the system by someone else. Recruiters just give them information, match them with the processors (interviewers), and tell the candidate results. MAYBE, some advocacy. MAYBE.
Yup, and these same companies that don't reply to their application process or require extra leg work (cover letter, etc) just to apply, are the same companies complaining that recruiter fees are too high. As a dev, I've had far, far, far better luck working with external recruiters than attempting internal channels.
> Man, there's definitely something broken with the cold application process.
A couple years ago I did an experiment and sent out 25 applications through linkedin for job postings I was very qualified for. Never heard a peep back from any of them. Good thing I wasn't actively looking! Based on that I'm fairly convinced none of those ever went anywhere or were seen by anyone.
My cold application process works pretty well historically. I can’t speak for the current conditions though.
I’ve gotten all my jobs through non-referrals in the past. It does work. Can’t speak for now though - could be most places just aren’t hiring even though they make it seem like they are.
Folks here need to spend more time on the hiring side and see how the meat is made.
Same experience with cold applications, despite similarly “prestigious” CV. Did the same thing two years ago and had about 80% hit rate, this time it was close to 0%. My only hits have been through network and responding to recruiters on LinkedIn.
I think part of it is that I was applying to a lot of larger companies with efficient hiring pipelines, none of which are currently hiring.
> I reached out to my network and had a couple applications in same-day.
> I also did a bunch of cold job applications, but didn't get a callback from any of them.
This was my experience when I was let go in Mar 2020 (not from any place as prominent as Meta, however). The network of people you have worked with and know has been by far the best way I've found to get a job. Even when you're senior, cold applications are a low-chance bet.
I was laid off in June. This coincided with my mom being diagnosed with cancer, and because I had a fair amount of saving, I took some time to support family and work on some personal projects.
I started looking again at the start of this year, and it's been rough, at least compared to my last job search where I had multiple offers in under two weeks. I've submitted ~50 applications so far, most with a non-generic cover letter. Most haven't responded, several declined to interview, and just one scheduled an interview.
Using my referral network hasn't been that effective. Most of my former colleagues are working at large companies that either aren't hiring or are in midst of layoffs themself. I was able to get 4 references at hiring companies through my network, but of those, 3 haven't responded and 1 declined to interview.
I have had a decent amount of interviews through 3rd-party recruiting agencies. I've gotten to final interview stages with a few companies, but no offers. Most of these places were very early seed-stage companies. I'm actively interviewing with a handful now.
When companies decline to even interview, it's discouraging and stressful for sure. It's easy for imposter syndrome to creep in. But overall, I'm still relatively optimistic that I will find something soon-ish.
I can see how hiring companies must be inundated now, but it also seems a bit strange that nearly every company I connect with through a recruiter wants to interview, but my success rate submitting applications myself is basically 0%.
I had that same exp about 5 years ago. I have heard tailoring your resume for each one helps.
The funny one was one that came back 2 years after I had another job and rejected me. I had to go dig up my notes and see what I had applied for!
My internal network was the same as yours with lots of 'nothing here'.
Most of my luck has been like you, with 3rd party recruiters. Unless I reach out to them directly. Then they suddenly have nothing. One of them just for fun I called them every week but 'we currently do not have anything' which I knew was rubbish and I would pull items off their own site and show them. But if they have something that tweaked their buzzword bingo they blow up your phone. Getting a recruiter who likes to hustle is the key.
Only thing I regret for the 'time off' was not starting to look sooner. I figured it was a 1-2 month tops thing. Turned into 8 months of looking. What is really annoying is if you do not have a job they do not want you. But have a job and suddenly 2-3 calls a day.
Hiring is broken in a very weird way. But nothing really clear how to fix it. Adding more fizz-buzz testing is not going to fix it.
Tailoring your resume is most important when you are trying to get a job different. If you have been doing webapps for 10 years I'm going to reject you for my embedded position - but if you want to switch roles a little tailoring can make me see you want something new and I'll take a chance.
Laid off from a US remote backend/data role in a large, FAANG-adjacent tech company in early January. I have always had a high callback rate with 20+ years of experience and a CS degree from a tier 1 university. This time, my only callbacks were through internal referrals from my network or introductions made through recruiters. I ended up with two offers by the end of January, one from a growing startup and the other from a mid-market company with a conservative business model. Given the slowdown in the market, I'm thankful to have found something so quickly.
My take is that this is not nearly as bad as the dotcom crash in the early 2000s, but the red hot tech market of 2021 where companies were hiring as fast as they could with incredible comp packages is gone. There are still a good number of roles out there, but companies are being more careful in their hiring and they are not trying to compete with (the no longer hiring) FAANGs when it comes to compensation.
Similar situation, although I’ve been focusing on other things since I don’t desperately need a job yet. I think my interview skills are fine but I’ve had a hard time getting interviews. I’ve been able to mostly enjoy the time off but there have been periods of stress as well.
It’s helpful to read stories like yours and feel less isolated. Good luck.
> I ended up with two offers by the end of January, one from a growing startup and the other from a mid-market company with a conservative business model. Given the slowdown in the market, I'm thankful to have found something so quickly.
Call me crazy, but I went with the startup. It's been a while since I felt like my work had any real impact on the business and I thought it could at this startup, so I'm taking the risk.
I was a senior dev at a big tech and got laid off in November. I have applied to hundreds of places. Not a lot of responses. I have been doing interview preps the whole time. It has been very demoralizing and I am thinking of switching careers to something else. I have been considering skilled trades. I like carpentry in particular.
"Sorry I missed your comment of many months ago. I no longer build software; I now make furniture out of wood. The hours are long, the pay sucks, and there's always the opportunity to remove my finger with a table saw, but nobody asks me if I can add an RSS feed to a DBMS, so there's that :-)"
I had a colleague leave to become a carpenter, then return after a few years when they realised that it's hard physical work that can be bad for your lungs.
I mean, I have a collection of very old engineering books, including one on Petroleum Refinery Engineering and a Reinforced Concrete Design Handbook printed when text books where $2. But I had no idea this was a "thing" among developers.
Apparently. I went into the Last Bookstore in Los Angeles, found that manual, and... had to have it. Didn't understand why. Mentioned that to the clerk, who said: "You're a software developer, aren't you? A lot of you have that reaction."
I enjoy woodworking because it's something I can do with my hands that has a definite beginning and end, unlike most software which is often never really done. I find the completion of these whole projects very cathartic.
I like the fact that it produces something tangible and (hopefully) long lasting. None of the systems I've set up between 2000-2015 are still alive; so much time and effort lost.
From what I heard back during the dot com bust bartending was somewhat similar. Perhaps these days it'd be mixology, or attempting to become a sommelier.
Might be an age thing. I started doing it in my 30s, and we have a diy channel in slack that's pretty active with wood workers. And I know of at least one famous YT wood worker that used to be a developer.
It intersects well with 3d printing and CNC stuff.
Funny story - a good friend who was doing high-end cabinetry lost a finger to a table saw, so he boned up on his coding skills and got a great job in the film FX business.
I worked with one developer who became a master electrician. He was experienced and intelligent but obviously burnt out on software. And he sure seemed happier when I ran into him a couple years after making that career transition.
My uncle who had a nice very senior eng job ago dipped out and walked into a plumber shop saw the help wanted sign in the window and they hired him on the spot. He then did that for 25 years until he retired. He said it was nice that the jobs were short and the outcome was usually very predictable but gross on many occasions.
If you aren't a homeowner the facilities are the hard part. Need a large space where you can have a glass furnace and concrete floors that won't get damaged by molten glass. Lampworking is easier to get started in, but still need a place to run a torch (ideally with a vent hood) and store oxygen/propane cylinders.
Definitely go to a glassblowing camp if you are interested. If you have prior experience trying to control a fluid medium, like pottery for example, then that may help. In order to set up your own shop you'll want to be somewhere with low fuel costs.
As a hobbyist? Not hard at all! If you're in a medium/large city, there's almost certainly one or two glassblowing studios around that have classes. As a career? That's a whole lot harder.
I moved to France at 60. For more than 20 years, I have developed software in vb and SQL, don't laugh. Two years ago, I found a job as a freelancer. It seems that my client is happy, month after month the contract is renewed. The daily rate is not among the highest but let me have a good life in France. I don't know how long this will last. The only problem is that I don't have time for my passion, woodworking with manual tools. Conclusion, there, there must be a solution for you as well.
Bear in mind that if you are declaring yourself as an independent contractor but working full time for a single customer for a long time, the tax authorities may consider you are in effect an employee and ask both you and the customer to reimburse employment contributions
As someone with more carpentry experience (paid) than dev experience, but strong interests in both worlds, I’m curious how you would reconcile taking an approximate 50% reduction in comp. Don’t know the numbers for your area but knowing Bay Area salaries, senior devs make 2-2.5x journeyman carpenters.
As someone who has no carpentry experience but has spent a lot of time on woodworking as a hobby, I absolutely don't look forward to a carpentry job, even if the tech job market goes further south. Jobs take the fun out of your hobby sooner or later, and I have learned that lesson with software development.
I had that early in my software career. I've enjoyed programming since I was a kid, but after getting my first fulltime job I started questioning if I even enjoyed it.
Turned out I was just getting burned out from the feature factory work I was doing. I took a little break and did some fun hobby projects, and I instantly fell in love with programming again. I think making a programming career sustainable requires that we do work we actually enjoy.
A few decades later, I know what I do and don't want in a workplace. For me that means: No corporate gigs, no java, no barnacle coworkers and no jira. Yes to smart coworkers, projects I care about, technically interesting work, small teams, and a culture of responsibility taking and ownership.
I did that to work for a non-profit in a field I was a bit interested in. It's okay in the beginning but I soon started to regret the huge paycut. Wouldn't recommend.
Save 50% of your software income and get to a point where you’ll be set for retirement without saving another penny and then you can do what you want as long as you cover your expenses.
Is the implication “if you did, and you’re having problems passing those tests now, that’s karmic retribution”?
If so, please keep in mind that interviewers at big tech generally have to follow the HR script for interviewing. I have very little leeway as an interviewer in how to conduct the interview. I can select from a narrow group of problems, and I ask each candidate a couple of “soft skills” questions to gauge their level of experience, but the bulk of the interview still relies on their performance on the technical assessment.
I've been doing this stuff for decades. It has become an unbearable career. It's too late for me in life to change it as there are other circumstances that have made certain paths impossible for me to do. I'm screwed. Meanwhile, the uppers keep getting paid more and more while I get tossed. I honestly believe this is my final year on this planet.
>> I honestly believe this is my final year on this planet.
You are obviously an intelligent person who is entertaining some unhealthy thoughts. Many people have felt the way you feel-- it happens. But you need to seek therapy or the council of someone you trust to put your problems in perspective. Your life is precious even if it doesn't feel that way right now.
I don't think you need "therapy", as in professional mental health sessions.
Do share what's up, though. Unhappiness isn't that uncommon. I am not very happy and have been oscillating between "I should quit first thing tomorrow" and "but I have to do the grind while I still can"
I've been slowly remodeling my tiny condo. Drywall, plumbing, simple electrical, windows, painting, flooring, etc. Teaching myself most of the stuff just off YouTube. It is a lot of manual labor work which is exhausting and gives me a lot of respect for the trade crafts, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit and slowly accumulating all the tools as well. None of this is rocket science.
In the back of my mind, I think of flipping houses as something to do if I ever get laid off from my tech job. I look at places coming up for sale on Zillow that were obvious flips and they all look like the parts all came straight out of Ikea / HomeDepot (and usually the most ugly stuff to choose from).
Flipping can work but it can be much harder to be reasonably profitable without insane appreciation.
Your best bet is fixers - houses with obvious major issues that everyone is scared of but you know you can fix reasonably cheaply. This can mean buying a $500k house with major foundation damage for $100k because everyone is scared - but you know a whole foundation replacement will only run you $200k.
Well your own link states how fixers are not really a good idea, but you want "disasters" and trasform them in "fixers".
And it is not like you can find such disasters easily, nor that you can easily be able to make them into fixers, without years of previous experience.
The whole approach, "everyone is scared but you know ..." is based on the assumption that you know more than anyone else (possibly including many people dealing with this kind of stuff for decades), I doubt that anyone can learn what is needed in this field overnight, by reading a book, and should it be possible, everyone would do it, not just you.
Yeah, that's the whole problem with "make money in real estate" - either it requires (somewhat specialized) knowledge and risk-taking, or you're just gambling on insane appreciation and leveraging that.
Anything that "anyone can do" is going to explode at some point.
Let's put aside for the moment the risk-taking aspect.
The "somewhat specialized" knowledge can be explicited as four main things:
1) years (and I mean years) of experience in the field (to be able to quickly assess the non-evident potentialities of a building)
2) knowing a few good, tested, reliable technicians such as architects/engineers (to be able to get a valid project leveraging on these potentialities)
3) knowing (more than) a few good tested, reliable, capable firms (masons/carpenters/plumbers/electricians/painters/etc.) to actually execute the restoration
4) time to be dedicated to managing the project
If you think that - even if you actually happen to find a "gem" - that you can make money hiring people you find on the internet or on the yellow pages, or that the people involved will manage to do a good work at a fair price by themselves, you won't go very far.
The problem I see is that you need to find the fixer gem, but location matters. Certainly, you can buy a fixer in the middle of Ohio, but who wants to live there? There is just too much surrounding inventory with low desirability.
The thing that works in my eyes is to buy in areas that are extremely desirable, even pay a bit more for it, but very low inventory. That's where the insane appreciation comes in. Popular beach towns are a good example because they are land locked and can also be turned into short term rental properties relatively easy, which increases their perceived value.
It isn't easy to find such places and often requires paying in cash, but it is possible.
Yeah, no. Lived in Cleveland for several years, moved overseas to Taiwan and never looked back. I could do a quick canvassing of a dozen of my friends on the top 10 desirable states to live in and Ohio wouldn't even appear a single time.
And? You're taking something personally and proving my point with that statement.
The millions of people who live there, already live there. That doesn't increase demand. It is a large state, so there is plenty of space to build. Density is centered around three locations and the largeness of the state means that people can expand out to the suburbs.
What you want is somewhere with a high density, inability to add more property and desirable for vacations (like a beach with views). San Francisco was kind of a good example of this for a very long time, until it wasn't. There are other cities on coastlines that fit this model though.
Buy a condo that has dual use (STR), refurb it, flip it.
If it's that bad you need a construction loan, and that is a wholly different line of business, the bank will want to see proof that you have experience and a financial buffer to pull off the project. But if you have both, good on you!
Keep your head up; as you can imagine places that are actively recruiting are being inundated with resumes, many of which have Amazon, MSFT, Google, etc on them.
There's plenty of code already written today that will still be in use long after we're dead. (Well, assuming gpt10 doesn't rewrite it all).
If ephemeral codebases bother you, work on projects that will last longer. Things I expect will outlive us: Chrome, PostgreSQL, SQLite, LLVM, Linux/Windows/MacOS, Unity, Nodejs, Nginx.
I have a few small contributions in chromium and nodejs. There's something really delightful about looking at a strangers' laptop and knowing some of my code is in their machine.
I majored in classical music, released 40 records, played to hundreds of thousands of people, produced national US radio shows, recorded bands, tended bars, washed cars, been a cook, built generative music systems and much more.
It is precisely due to my varied experience that I can point this out: the vast majority of startups and tech is dust in the wind.
Have you considered working with any third-party recruiters? It seems that going through one is the only way to get the attention of most companies, these days. I would advise not taking the lack of responses personally, because cold applications are, generally coldly, disposed of (a human never passes judgement on them).
FWIW, I found my last two jobs through third party recruiters, and still count them as friends. It's an industry with an oddly-poor reputation, but there are some real gems of people to be found in it.
March it heats up. Check your resume over. If I can get a job without any big tech you will be fine. Make your resume focus on numbers and maybe have someone review it for free.
- Wrote feature that saved the company $X millions of dollars.
- Automated manual process that saved the company X hours each time they do this process.
- Built a website that served X00,000 customers over the span of Y months.
- Managed X number of people on this project.
Instead of:
- Was responsible for making this software, filling out forms, talking to client, etc.
- I built a website with a database.
- I used X, Y, and Z technologies on this project.
Focus on bullets that show real numbers in metrics that companies care about (saving time, money, gaining customers, number of reports), wherever possible.
The others can be useful too, but shouldn't be what you highlight (list of tech doesn't hurt for hitting buzzwords, though).
I am getting all sorts of confused by some of the responses here. Does woodworking mean building pretty furniture? Whereas carpentry means building big sturdy structures?
Honestly it's not a bad option if you except the work will suck. I did it for a while after getting severance from a tech job. I did a first year carpentry program. We built a house from the ground up for Habitat for Humanity.
After the program I worked in the industry for a while. When you are starting in carpentry it's a lot of grunt work. People won't care if you have any training. After a full day of vacuuming drywall dust I had enough. Quit and landed a programming job.
I still think it was a valuable experience. It shows you value of hard work. If there is time to lean there is time to clean is a very real thing. I was in the best shape of my life. I now have the skills to do most of my own Renos.
I was laid off in November. I've applied to dozens, probably hundreds of jobs. I've had two interviews (one bigtechco) and a YC startup. Both did not work out as they went with more senior candidates. I decided to take a different approach and tailor my resume to each job and narrow the types of jobs I applied too. This has led to an increase in recruiter calls and I'm setting up interviews now.
However it does seem there is still a lot of flux, especially with larger companies who are still trying to allocate headcount. I've had calls with Google that were basically like: "we're interested, but we don't know HC yet, let's circle back in 3 weeks".
Gotten fooled by this at least twice now, beware - companies with these “roles” will take you through their entire 5 week interview funnel and drop you at the very last stage if you’re not 10x enough to be worth pulling head count out of thin air. What a waste of time.
Always try and find out if the role they’re hiring for is an actual role they have a vested interest in filling and not just a generic “statement of interest”.
US, looking for remote. 15+ years experience been looking since early January, and I still don't feel like I have traction. Worst job market for engineers I've seen in a long time. I have hope it'll improve in March when budgets are finalized, but at the same time I'm preparing for it to be a long one. First unemployment in my career, up until now I had employers coming to me.
I suspect the remote aspect is the biggest thing slowing you down. I go in once a month, which is practically a remote job, but those who moved during the pandemic and wouldn't fly in and take a hotel on their expense once a month had to leave
There are 1000 different flavors of mixed home-office working right now, but not that much fully remote
I'm not so sure, at least I know plenty of people in tech hubs that are in a similar position. Certainly anything that reduces the number of jobs you can accept will limit your opportunities, but I'm not sure being open to in-office would immediately solve the problem.
In the end it doesn't matter. Due to family concerns relocation is not an option, and anything local would be a huge pay cut. I'll go that route if I reach the point where I need to, but I'm holding off for now.
You might have to take a paycut even working remotely. A lot of companies now pay what you'd expect locally rather than in a tech hub. So, if you worked remotely from San Francisco you'd earn more than if you worked remotely from somewhere rural.
True. I work remotely in a different state from my company's HQ, but I travel to the office for about a week once a quarter. I actually feel safer with this arrangement than if my HQ were local, because everyone around me is slowly getting forced back into the office. First on an as-needed basis, then one mandatory day per week, then three days a week. Most big companies will be back to five mandatory days a week soon enough, it seems.
> but those who moved during the pandemic and wouldn't fly in and take a hotel on their expense once a month had to leave
...did anybody actually agree to that?
Maybe I'm off base, but requiring employees to pay for mandatory business trips out of pocket seems insane to me. Is that even legal? It's a camouflaged pay cut, from one point of view (probably actually worse when you consider taxes).
That isn't what the OP was saying. These are people who /were/ local office employees, moved away during the pandemic and aren't coming back into the office from time to time to make an appearance on their own dime.
AWS, yes Python no. One of the few programming languages I haven't had cause to learn. I can learn in no time but I have to assume at the moment you've got plenty of applicants who hit that bar. If you do want to talk my e-mail is in my profile.
A better answer might be to try to set up a phone call/email/etc with the other person and then you can back up your claim of 'no time' with real data, like "I have all this other background in networking and operating systems or whatever, and I also already know how to program in languages X,Y, and Z, and wrote these pieces of code at companies A,B, and C, so Python should be much easier for me than someone who just left university and meanwhile I bring all these other things to the table."
Remember: people don't (always) hire resumes. People hire people.
We're hiring at our company. We've had a lot of people come through from the recent waves of layoffs, and usually so far there has been a mix of too high expectations, remote work mismatches as well as just lots of people not making the bar (we are a small company).
Still on the lookout for senior rust engineers who want to work at a company that's remote-first with a minimal-meetings culture.
In general, I'm curious if people replying to this thread have had success with applying to HN "Who's Hiring?" listings. At my previous job, at a small company (~50 total employees), posting in those threads was by far our best recruiting tool. While we filtered out a lot of uninspiring resumes, we also responded quickly to people who seemed like a reasonable match.
If I were looking, after exhausting personal contacts from previous employment, that's where I would head next.
I've had the best response rate from the Who's Hiring thread, had about seven phone screens and two or three full interview courses (from contacting in regards to ~10 positions from 2018 to 2020). I haven't applied anywhere since Covid began though so not sure if recent trends are different.
Interesting how companies have trouble hiring for hyper specific tech that they might abandon in a few years. Then what happens to these "rust engineers", do they get laidoff for the next hiring of "X engineers".
As someone who did this for "low-latency min-allocation Java", the answer is that I have the need for this X now but I'm confident they can adapt to whatever comes later. The truth is that anyone on my team can become proficient in this given time, but I'd rather get someone who can juice the machine by showing up with existing knowledge and we'll all get ahead faster with them. I wouldn't fire someone in order to get this person for various reasons (some obvious, some not).
> rather get someone who can juice the machine by showing up with existing knowledge
This doesn't feel like a sustainable way to build engineering org. You only get N chances for such 'juicing', what do you do when you need to juice but don't have open headcount. You have to come up with a strategy for that anyways, so why not implement ' want juice but no headcount' strategy and expand your hiring pool.
I've also found that people who sell themselves as "Rust/SAP/Java engineer" seem to have a huge bias against anything else which makes sense since they've built their careers selling themselves as experts in a particular niche.
We're a small prop shop. I don't need to do sustainable in the way you're thinking. And I think we might be speaking at cross purposes. I want someone with a skillset. I'm going to hire them for that skillset. That doesn't mean they only have that skillset but that's the thing that provides utility.
Some part of the answer here is that we aren't a company that only works on our own products or research - we have a bunch of client work as well. But yes, "low-level" language could be used here as well.
This is the impression that I'm getting from a lot of these posts and what I've heard and experienced on my job hunt. I'm seeing plenty of "I was laid off from Meta/Google..." etc posts and can't help but wonder what the comp was. Maybe the big names on resumes look like high price tags these days?
If you have another way to get in contact other than telegram let me know. I’m not looking, but I’m a senior rust engineer and have others in my network who may be interested.
I reached out to every designer and coder laid off from Twitter and Amazon (one of my investors sent me a spreadsheet that those laid off folks added their contact info to).
I didn't receive a single interested response to my reach outs. Now granted, I'm sure they were bombarded with lots of startup offers and being picky what company/stage they were responding to, or were still in grief mode and not ready to start looking, or maybe (probably!) my reach-out finesse was lacking.
But I'm just pointing out that their are definitely companies like mine who are hiring and it's not all doom and gloom for laid off folks.
I ended up hiring via ads on LinkedIn and job posts on eng message boards.
Being real for a minute: There is definitely a perspective among hiring companies that regular lay offs are sometimes packaged alongside bottom performers, but I think that is something they would just do diligence on during an interview process.