I work remotely as a front-end developer at a VC-funded, series B startup. Funding has dried up as investors with financial exposure to anything retail or entertainment-related are hemorrhaging cash. The company leadership told us that starting immediately, all employees (including the fully-remote workers like myself) are on mandatory unpaid leave.
Job cuts in 2019 were already up a whopping 351% from the previous year[1]. Considering the COVID-19 outbreak, I'm concerned that many other tech workers like me might be updating their resumes and entering a stagnant job market. Alternatively, organizations may view this as a great time to gain additional market share. What do you think?
If you're a tech worker, have you been laid off or do you expect to be laid off soon? If you are a hiring manager, what is the current hiring status at your company?
[1] https://www.challengergray.com/press/press-releases/2019-year-end-job-cuts-report-fewest-monthly-cuts-july-2018-yoy-10
I accept a job offer, put in my two weeks notice, and my last day at was last Friday. Hardly anyone was seriously concerned about COVID-19 when I gave notice. A week later, business travel was suspended and WFH policies implemented. My last day, schools were closing, and the economy tanked. This week, we're sheltering in place.
I gave myself 3 weeks in between the old and the new job, you know for relaxation and travel. Instead, I'm sequestered to my house for 3 weeks.
Everyday, the news got worse and worse and continues to get worse and worse. Now, I'm in between jobs, and am a little worried my new employer will revoke my job offer. To add insult to injury, one reason I didn't leave my previous job was job security. But in February, there wasn't any sign of an economic downturn. Everyone was enjoying the bull market.
For a long time, many people have said that my years of experience make me valuable so that I should have gotten offers very quickly, but the reality hasn't shown that. Heck, even the founder of the startup company has told me, when I asked for his reference, that he was "very confused" that I haven't found any work for so long. And that was only a year in.
He unfortunately can't give me work anymore as he's tied up with his business. He did consider me for a follow-up freelance job before, but that was more due to a technicality that they needed a US developer for a particular job.
After being evaluated on mock interviews, turns out I'm in the peculiar situation where I am too underqualified for my years. But at least I have some experience working remote that should make me more appealing to employers.
I just can't call it impostor syndrome anymore if I consistently fail at getting full-time offers even when the economic climate was good.
1) Decide which software engineering related role you want to work on (e.g. web frontends)
2) Enumerate the top skills that are relevant to that role by visiting job postings in companies you would like to work for. e.g.: React.
3) Enumerate the subset of those skills that you have. Those are your strenghts. Work in acquiring the skills you do not yet have. Those are your weaknesses (for now).
4) Visit Linkedin profiles for random employed people in such roles in various companies you would like to work for. Compare that to your own Linkedin profile.
5) In your profile, emphasize your strengths, deemphasize your weaknesses, while working on them in your spare time. And most importantly, list your skills using the skills feature. Recruiters use that to find people.
Personally I think you should leave out all mentions to "looking for a job" and such. That is a red flag. You do not want to tell recruiters that your skills are in low demand.
Also try to keep your job descriptions consistent and relevant to your target role. Rather than "role 1/role 2/role 3", just pick the most favorable/relevant description for role and stick with that.
It usually takes me 1 month to find a job.
I wrote "job" because working as a salaried employee is not the only way to make a living, or have a successful career. Consider that the freelance/contractor career you're currently having is 1) a career and 2) might be a better fit for you. Furthermore, some contractors I know make a lot more money than most of my salaried friends. The tradeoff being, of course, that you have no guarantees wrt to steadiness of your income (protip: salaried jobs come with no guarantees either, you could be out the next day, any day) and sometimes you have to chase down projects and deal with bad customers.
Sorry if something came out wrong, English isn't my first language.
I would learn (or highlight it if you already know) React.js and Node.js immediately, along with Postgres and MongoDB. That should get a good boost to the resume.
If you are going full stack, you would definitely need to put in AWS, especially micro services and serverless experience along with golang if possible. You can also learn Python if you want to try your hands on Machine learning as well, but I would recommend just focussing on React and Node.js as they are low hanging fruits and there are good enough openings for those two alone..
I have been in your shoes before and I know it could be overwhelming but you can do it.
https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap
I am not sure what your core skills are, but in my case if I want to go work for a bank, via referral I get an immediate response (and even one other bank intercepts the referral).
Without a referral I don't even get a response.
I’m looking for remote roles exclusively. Now I’m not sure if the timing is perfect or just plain terrible:)
Also, I stopped reading the news. I just don’t think refreshing Twitter every 10 min whilst self isolating can be good to your mental health.
(email in profile)
And yes, don't check the news too often. The real world doesn't move as fast as the refresh button.
Had some time set aside for travel before I started, but then this all happened.
Could not have picked a less convenient time to try and travel and make money off SaaS / AppStore.
I remain optimistic and am expecting to learn so much more than I would have in the more comfortable market we are now leaving behind.
To health and family first though.
During these times when people are getting RIF'd (Reduction in Force), they're understandably panicked, nervous, in shock, etc. Most employees are not thinking of what service or product they can cobble together and bring to market, but how to swiftly rejoin the job market.
This leads to a shortage of new startups spinning up as well, because the economy has gone to the dumpster. Good times, bull markets and strong economies make everyone feel more confident. Who wants to gamble when the world is going to hades in a handbasket? Not a lot of people.
Then there's the cost factor. My experience during past financial implosions, demand for everything plummets. I get the idea we're living in more of a robber-baron era than even just 5 years ago, but still, you'll be able to negotiate everything from office rents to infrastructure, salaries of new hires, hotels and airfares for business travel.
Obviously, I am going to throw my hat into this ring for these very reasons. Good luck and good day!
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First: I’m super sorry about what you’re going through and I hope things work out with your new employer.
Second: I worry that “nobody could have known” will be the narrative. A very large portion of my circles was aware that COVID was about to explode and that the prevention measures would either drastically slow the economy or not be taken and the impact would be worse. Super uncontroversial. And like, I’m just a guy.
On an individual level, that excuse is unfortunate, but the individual level doesn’t matter much (except for the individual, of course). On an institutional and a governance level, we’re likely to excuse the failures of our leaders because we ourselves weren’t paying attention.
Big same. I'm just another software engineer, albeit one with a taste for international news and a few China-focused specialists & one or two PRCs citizens that I follow on Twitter.
This was predictable in early-mid Jan. Once the pics and discussion of the overloaded Wuhan hospitals and the measures the PRC had to take hit the English language world, it was pretty bloody obvious. The news had hit the popular English language papers by Jan 27[1], although I was reading about it somewhat earlier - Jan 12 at the latest[2]. A timeline can be found in [3]. Anyway, by Feb 1, institutions with a specialty in disease control should have been going full bore to address the incoming wave.
Our public health officials, the officials they advise, and other health institutions should be held up to scrutiny and not covered with glory dust just because they had to act by the pace of events.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7933719/Incredible-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/11/china-mystery-... [3] https://www.who.int/csr/don/12-january-2020-novel-coronaviru...
Your circles seem to be the exception then. There are a lot of factors that affect personal perception of such matters, like proximity to inflicted areas, professional background (ex: medical), experiencing similar events in the past, etc.
In hindsight it seems obvious that the world wasn't paying attention. But it took until February for western countries to realize the epidemic was already out of control, and the markets reacted.
> prevention measures would either drastically slow the economy or not be taken and the impact would be worse
Anyone that knew this last month without a doubt could've made tons of money shorting positions in the stock market.
I don't think we should excuse the many failures of our leaders, but I also don't think the now-obvious economic impact of this crisis was that clearcut even a month ago.
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The United States government was thoroughly informed of this risk via Operation Dark Winter but never geared up for it - perhaps this is best managed by states once the infection crosses the border, but preparations on those levels weren’t completed either.
There is a real chance that our lockdown will kill more people through stress-induced heart attacks, suicides, and general fallout from food and income insecurity than the virus would have.
My only takeaway from all of this is that our hospital system is really, really bad at handling any kind of temporary spike in disease or death. And I'm upset with our governor for panicking and putting the entire service industry out of a job, which may actually cause harm to them in great numbers beyond a probably sub-1% chance of dying from a flu-like illness.
Which is brilliant... :/
Fortunately they're rather a hitech company so I hope we can just work remotely.
Still have to go and collect laptop and rsa certs and such though...
I've been a data entry clerk for the past twenty years, working for a major bookmaker in Northern Ireland. With the coronavirus pandemic hitting recently, many businesses have decided to lay off large numbers of staff. I've just become one of the unfortunate victims of one of these layoffs today, with a mortgage to pay, a wife and two young children to support.
I've also been programming, in my own time, over the past seven years or so, in Python 3, Javascript and PHP mainly. Over that time I've developed a number of tools that were used in my former place of employ, to scrape data from websites and automate the process of data entry. I've also built some online tools in Javascript and PHP for scraping/munging data. Most recently, until the coronavirus hit and unemployment loomed, I was working on a Mario/NES style level editor in HTML5 and a random tile generator for building platformer levels, while I learned C++ and wrote a platforming engine to develop a platform game for release on Steam.
I've placed a number of these tool in public repos on github. You can check them out at:
https://github.com/Zleet
I've also got a resume ready to go for anyone that's interested. What I'm looking for is any remote programming job that fits my skillset and will enable me to keep a roof over my family's head and food in the cupboard for the next few months.
I apologise for posting something like this here. I've been reading hacker news for years now. It's my favourite website. But, along with many other people right now, I'm in a pretty bad place and I've got several little people relying on me to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. Be assured that any job offer right now would be gratefully accepted.
Cheers,
Miktor
It was quite a while ago now, but I got into software from almost the exact same place you're in now: I'd been laid off in my previous career, and I needed a job really bad. I'd been hacking stuff on the side, and I used that as my resume. I found that Stack Overflow Jobs had a lot of remote options, as well as sites like We Work Remotely. It's worth applying to a handful of companies and writing a good cover letter just telling them your story and how excited you are to move into software. I think you'll be successful.
Best of luck!
https://stripe.com/jobs/search?t=engineering%2Cproduct-and-t...
Disclaimer: Just started at Stripe.
I'm really sorry to hear about your situation! I'm in Northern Ireland too and I'm lucky to be employed (for now) and WFH. All I can do is ask around for you if you drop me an e-mail!
Cheers,
Martijn
Fellow NI resident here
I can recommend joining the NI tech slack if you want, there's a jobs channel and plenty of other people who'd be willing to give you advice. https://nitech.herokuapp.com
all the best in the coming weeks and months for both you and your family
Already on it, thanks. Posted something in freelance and jobs channels yesterday, going to try again today.
If any of you have suggestions for how to make this most helpful under current conditions, please share them. I'll check this thread later tonight.
- Remote work (even across the country, with no expectation of travel)
- Short-term work (like a few months, no expectation of staying for > 1 year)
- How long the employer roughly expects to be able to provide the job in their projection of the current economic conditions
- Rough company size, given the US Congress just passed a bill concerning sick leave that might not apply to companies with under 50 or 500 employees [1]
Also, less certain about the following, but:
- Maybe highlighting contractor possibilities would be good too? In case the additional flexibility in e.g. work hours is better for workers, or in case it's easier for companies not to have to worry about insurance, etc.
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/paulmcleod/coronavirus-...
We're going headlong into a recession and I imagine an overwhelming number of firms are going to take the same stance.
Those places might realize that they can get react devs for a dime a dozen out of bootcamps all over the country for a third of that in a few months once they have let people do fully remote work for a while.
The smart thing would seem to be to hire them now before the companies with bigger pockets start driving remote salaries up in the other 45 states.
What is it that owners do that is worth billions exactly, when developers should be happy with less than the numbers you presented?
That being said, if history repeats itself, there is a decent chance some of these jobs will be short-lived, then move on to the next, which also will not last, and a cooling off period.
I am not trying to be negative, I just think it is wise to consider not just the job, but the industry, its customers, and how it handles its cashflow, and how that relates to limited physical contact for the foreseeable future.
There is an issue in my repo with a really good spreadsheet contaning a lot of companies. I was planning to import that but havent got time and now im stuck in Japan with just my phone.
Edit: if anybody has an idea about how to let more people know about those, as well as the "Who Wants To Be Hired" threads, I'd like to hear it. The problem is that frontpage space is the scarcest resource on HN, and it's hard to justify using 3 of those slots for whoishiring posts.
- just a simple google form and spreadsheet?
Sadly, I wholeheartedly believe that the owners are using the coronavirus as an excuse to close their already-failing company. The company has been in slow-motion dissolution for the better part of a year, and now they're blaming the entire thing on the virus outbreak so that they have a narrative to tell that covers up some of the mismanagement that makes the closure of their company look bad. Now they have an effective smokescreen that shows that the closure was "outside of their control".
I have no doubt that many other companies will take advantage of this opportunity to close without the shame or stigma of having closed a failing company. There is almost no downside to using this as a guilt-free chance to rapidly shut down at a time where employees need stability more than ever.
All of that said, the company was conscientious enough to give us all two weeks' notice, pay out our PTO plans (that might just be required by law, though), and additionally pay out any pending bonuses to employees that had been agreed upon. They certainly didn't have to do all of that (even if some parts are just them following the law), and I appreciate them for taking those particular steps to help all of us transition to new positions.
Luckily, I started looking for jobs nearly a month ago and had begun preparing my resume and materials back in December, so I've already had a good number of interviews and am waiting to hear back about two positions in particular.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed and doing a lot of email refreshing, but if I'm being really honest it seems grim. I've already heard that many other companies are implementing a hiring freeze with the virus outbreak, etc. I can't help but shake the feeling that I should have started applying about a month earlier.
If you feel the company has been failing, then I doubt this is an excuse. It's just the straw that is breaking the proverbial camel's back.
In how they rationalize their failure, that is something people just do I guess.
I heard from more than a few people that during the 2008 financial crisis, some strong companies laid off low-performers. They used the financial crisis as an excuse, to protect the company from potential lawsuits.
https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/pto-payout-laws-by-st...
Right now there is not much fundamentally wrong with the economy, there is just a temporary setback because of the Corona lockdown. Things will go back to normal after the epidemic is over, provided that it doesn't last too long and except for some companies who were not doing too well beforehand already.
A very bold claim there. There are a lot of things 'wrong' with the economy, starting with negative-yielding sovereign debt, corporate debt, repo markets, politics interfering with Central bank decisions, PE levels and ending with 30% stock market gains in 2019.
Raising money a year ago was so ridiculously easy, every company I had any visibility in to just threw money at every problem they encountered. Hired like crazy, to satisfy their egos, and to keep up with their peers. Growth over profitability.
I'm being hyperbolic to some degree, every company is different. And certainly no one is adding a dotcom to their name in hopes of raising more cash with less revenue. Or maybe that's exactly what Casper and WeWork and the like were doing.
I think once we get a bit more perspective (10 years from now) it'll be a lot easier to answer these questions.
How are you confident that this isn't exactly what's happening now, and the virus was a catalyst?
People have been talking about the froth, seriously, for a couple years. Theranos, WeWork, SoftBank, the recent IPO busts...
Stressed out, changed careers, became bus drivers and _love_ it. Mostly related to meeting people and not having goals but a proper timetable to relate too.
"Imagine, too, if you were a bus driver. Bus driver is ordinarily, ordinarily considered an absolutely harassed person. You've got to watch out for all the laws, all the competing traffic. The cops, the people coming on board giving their fares and he has to give them change and if he has it in his head that this is work, it will be hell. But let's suppose he has a different thing in his head.
Supposing that he has the idea that moving this enormous conveyance through complicated traffic. It is a very, very subtle game, and he has the same feeling about it that you might have if you were playing the guitar or dancing. And so he goes through that traffic avoiding this, and avoiding that and taking the affairs like this and he makes a music of the whole thing. Well he's not going to be tired out at the end of the day. He's going to be full of energy when he gets through his job."
Getting over your ego is always good advice :).
I also would suggest contracting if you are interested in that. It's a different experience than just coding, but you can learn a lot about the business side of this (marketing and getting paid). That's what I did around 2002.
https://github.com/sourcegraph/careers/blob/master/job-descr...
https://github.com/sourcegraph/careers/blob/master/job-descr...
and https://github.com/sourcegraph/careers#readme for a full list of roles.
We are growing quickly and have not slowed down hiring pace (and don't plan to do so based on the Covid-19 crisis). The limiting factor for us is just ensuring we're adding engineers, PMs, designers, and managers in the right ratios.
If you are interested in joining our team, we would love to hear from you. Understanding the financial stability of the company you'll join is crucial, and as CEO I always walk all late-stage candidates through our internal metrics, burn, cash on hand, etc. We are doing very well and just announced a $23M Series B 2 weeks ago (https://medium.com/craft-ventures/why-we-invested-in-sourceg...).
DISCLAIMER: I'm not a expert wrt. any of this. Don't listen to me ;=). It's all just speculation.
Companies which plan to downsize since a will will do it now, using COVID19 as a excuse.
Companies who have shifted some "bad consequences" into the future might now book them using COVID19 as a excuse for why they exist.
Companies who are already on the last straw will end now, (Such which without COVID19 might have survived a view more month up to a year but didn't see a chance for long term survival without a wonder).
A bunch of companies will go insolvent because COVID19 or following marked situation.
Because of this investors will be a bit more careful then normal, for most kinds of "fresh"/"new" startups it likely will not be a good time.
A small number of startups will have massive opportunities.
Marked will recover after at most 5 Years more likely 3.5 Years. At least if no further crisis happens (like WW3 or one of the massive Vulcan's going off).
Unrelated tip: Be a software engineer not "just" a programmer.
We’re a platform for designing and managing digital government processes for permitting and licensing.
After for years of pain, struggle, and doubt, we’ve had more inbound interest this week than ever before, and I feel incredibly lucky to have landed in that small number of startups.
This can be a problem when you want to sell yourself as a proper SWE, when the people in charge of the hiring pipeline only understand simple pattern-matching for "React Wizard with 5 years experience". And you can't be too picky about where you want to work, even though they might continue to be picky for employees. It unfortunately makes it so you either already have to already be a very good match for their specific needs, or you are compelled to lie on your resume.
- Be generalist to cover all general concepts as you outlined
- Be a "programmer". That is knowledgeable in specific frameworks and languages
- Be data structure and algorithms guy. Most technical interviews involve them even if they are not needed in job.
My parents run a cafe/restaurant in rural Australia that was already not doing too great, and they were looking to sell. Now, they’re truly fucked.
Programmer moreso implies just making things work, like a carpenter, by putting together something good enough using existing tools, possibly constrained by the tools available to you, in my opinion.
That said, everyone's understanding breaks down at some level of abstraction, so it's a spectrum, and you can be plenty productive and useful operating at a high level of abstraction.
But in practice, as you'll see in this thread, some people have very strong (and totally arbitrary) opinions about those words, for reasons I cannot fathom. Knowing this exists is important, I guess, because some people will (maybe silently) judge you for using the wrong one in the wrong context, and you should at least be aware that can happen.
I kind of doubt employers read it as such a technical term that it would factor into the hiring process.
E.g. it looks very bad for professional flea-marked trader or the small shop around the corner.
If anybody needs some contract web dev done, check out my info at https://albright.pro/ and reach out ASAP. I will cut you one hell of a deal if you can at least help keep a roof over my head.
They got me a really good long-term contract at my dream Drupal job a few months ago. Good luck!
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> Your online presence is dreadfully low for a web developer.
Just dropping "Sorry to say" makes it sound less condescending.
> Your online presence is really low for a web developer.
Dreadfully -> really. Could argue that this changes the meaning somewhat, but I think the change is more in tone (again, less pretentious/condescending sounding) than in actual meaning.
> Your online presence is really low for a web developer, you should consider expanding it to increase your exposure/get more interviews
Explicitly making a suggestion is more constructive and makes the tone more friendly.
Garret, just emailed you.