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!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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."
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.
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'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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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).
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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)
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'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.
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 :)
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.
If I just got laid off, I might not want to take another huge gamble like this.
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.
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.
> that those laid off folks added their contact info to
They seem to have added their info to the list for it to be floated around.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Then they ignore "cold" candidates.
Recruiters are really the bottleneck here, imo.
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.
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.
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 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 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%.
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.
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.
It’s helpful to read stories like yours and feel less isolated. Good luck.
Which one offer did you take?
(mmmm 1910 manual on steel production.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541964
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.
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.
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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"
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).
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.
https://johntreed.com/products/fixers
Has your network been helpful?
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.
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.
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.
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".
It's always been like this. Most businesses have permanently listed "openings" that don't necessarily mean they're hiring.
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”.
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There are 1000 different flavors of mixed home-office working right now, but not that much fully remote
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.
(Asking for a friend)
...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).
I'm curious how others feel.
Still on the lookout for senior rust engineers who want to work at a company that's remote-first with a minimal-meetings culture.
You can message me on telegram @jommi for info
If I were looking, after exhausting personal contacts from previous employment, that's where I would head next.
I've been on both sides of using HN to find work. It's just sooo good.
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".
A rust engineer that knows why the borrow checker exists and can safely do unsafe operations likely will do fine in C,C++, Go, Java and many others.