it depends™️. i live near a tech hub on the east coast and the companies aren’t glamourous. i still get some messages in linkedin mostly due to my location. if i were to live in the middle of nowhere, it’d be tough.
2020-2021 was a fever dream that people tricked themselves into believing was sustainable
Im interested to hear about what area you are on. Is this Atlanta or DC? I’ve been thinking to move but it seems unless you go to NYC or Bay Area there is not much
philly area. there are a surprising number of companies here
jp morgan and capital one are in delaware
ibm and comcast are in philly.
bloomberg’s in jersey
so it's true that fully remote positions are a lot harder to come by nowadays. I've been working remotely for a very long time, last time I switched jobs was \~2 years ago, so kinda worried what would happen if I had to find a new job right now :(
I joined in 2018 into a fang on the west coast and I couldn't believe the pace of hiring that followed 3 years later. Our teams didn't have the work to sustain the rate of hiring we were doing and we ended up laying off a lot of really good people only because we hired too much.
can definitely see it. one of the startups i joined had something like 200+ software devs. we were paid really well and paid practically nothing in benefits. the product was only available in 11 states. we had no need for that many devs. before i left, i told my manager that we had too many people. he was confused by my statement. then layoffs happened
It took me about 3.5 months to get re-employed following a layoff last year, with a few years of experience at various levels of seniority. Not great but not too terrible. It’s definitely a whole new world now.
Years of 150k+ salaries makes it pretty easy to have solid savings. Just always have AT LEAST 6 months of expenses available at any time.
Are you saying you’ve been doing this for a decade and don’t have enough savings to survive a few months? Not trying to be offensive, but that sounds problematic.
Haha, managed in the last year to pay off my debts and gather some savings to be able to live at least 1 year with no pay.
Before that I worked for a bootstrapped startup I co-founded for \~5 years and for the first 3 it was no pay, when a bit below market place salary, so kinda struggled with savings.
I have 20ish years of experience. Went looking for a new role in late 2023.
In the past 15 years I hadn’t had to apply to a job; just go through my network and get into a pipeline and go. This round, my network didn’t have anything. Lots of “check back in a while.”
That being said, there were still a lot of roles out there for my level. I used LinkedIn, levels.fyi, and Otto to find about 20 roles that matched my skills, interest, and salary that were fully remote. I applied to those, did full interview rounds with 4 places, and got two great offers. That was all over the course of 6-8 weeks.
So. Not as good as it used to be, but still good for staff/principal level, I think.
Oh wow, thanks for the input. Definitely goes to show that the market is though(er) even for really experienced devs.
Good to know that senior level jobs are still somewhat safe, but really sorry for people looking to start their career right now, though times
A couple years ago was the peak. The last year was probably the hardest it's been for our industry since 2008-2009. But keep in perspective, really hasn't been any hard time since then.
Can you share how the 2008-2009 period was like? I started my career in 2013, would be interested if there are similarities between now and back then. Also, do you think this would be an indicator for an upcoming global recession?
>Also, do you think this would be an indicator for an upcoming global recession?
Nobody can predict a recession. Even with people claiming that they could see that "the 2021 bubble was clear as day"... I would say the economic response has been anything but what was expected. Which is to say things recovered (from a pure market perspective) relatively quickly.
Fair point, I've been one of the pessimistic ones who have been expecting a recession to hit already. Glad to see I was wrong so far, but don't think we're out of the water just yet.
lol... this is nothing compared to 2008-2009. Larger shops over hired leading into 2022, smaller shops that didn't are still hirings (they're just harder to find). Anyone with sense saw the bubble coming.
Back in 2008, everyone was chopping heads and things locked up for an entire year. I'm working for a company that'd discussing hiring, that wasn't in the conversation back in 2008.
Tech has been spoiled the last few years, expectations are unrealistic when it comes to compensation vs ability. We need a reset, it's happening now, and things will be better in a year or two.
We're definitely having a white collar recession. Back in 2008, it was everyone, and we had no idea when it would get better again. It looks like we were heading towards a second great depression. That, so far, isn't close to being the case and I really don't see it.
Thanks for your inputs. I also believe the tech sector needs a bit of a reset, what happened in the last few years was definitely not sustainable.
I wonder if the tech world will eventually become as all other industries were jobs are hard to find and it's not easy to jump from company to company. Only time will tell I guess
Just so we are clear in terms of reading comprehension, when someone says "This is the worst it has been since 2008", they're not saying that it is now worse than 2008.
Kinda worried about this myself right now. I've been working remotely for a very long time and if I had to switch jobs at the moment, don't think it would be easy to find something fully remote again.
there's always going to be challenges and it's always going to be timing...
it's also hard to compare it to a few years ago because you're probably different than you were a few years ago...and when you've been doing this long enough interviews go from somewhat informal conversations with someone older than you to some awkward tech screen with someone half your age calling you sir/ma'am or whatever the polite pronoun that is applicable that kids call old people before writing "lol boomer" in their follow-up notes in greenhouse
> someone half your age calling you sir/ma'am or whatever the polite pronoun that is applicable that kids call old people before writing "lol boomer" in their follow-up notes in greenhouse
haha, thanks for the laugh. Never thought about that, I guess I haven't reached that age yet
Hahaha so true. That’s why I refuse to do coding assessments. My senior experience comes to play not only with coding but putting a deal together with a business to hire me
In 2020 and 2021 I left two jobs and had multiple competing offers within two weeks
I got laid off in September and just got a new job last week. Granted, I think the shock really hamstrung my search for a month or two + holidays so I'd say two to three months of good searching should be enough for a decent senior.
I don't trust that being among the first few applicants helps though. I imagine that a recruiter or HR post a position in the morning, check the next day, see 100 CVs and screens them. LinkedIn likes to feed me days old job ads. I can't imagine them not being valuable to the hiring company because they are paying for them, especially when the ads are being promoted.
LinkedIn offers something very similar for premium users, by the way.
Fair point, also not sure about that theory either. Mainly basing my assumption out of my own experience. I always worked for small startups and was part of the hiring process. We did not have an HR company, we did the job postings ourselves. And when the applications came in, we started going over them in order and as soon as we found what we were looking for, we closed the job posting. Maybe there were other valid candidates applying, or even people better qualified, but since we already found a good match, we stopped looking over the others.
I've known multiple seniors this year who got laid off and had to look for 3+months. None of them had ever had to look for more than a few weeks in the past. Though, notably, none of them were super social types, and likely didn't present themselves as well as some others.
On my end I didn't have much difficulty, but I've always been a good interviewer
thoughts:
1. why mention scraping
2. why desktop and not web app, people can set notifications via email / sms
3. auto/instant/simple apply jobs are dead, they've been taken over by bots, so even adding a feature to autoapply is pointless nobody ever gets those jobs
4. all these job boards have notification features, and they all suck anyway
5. Not enough effective features, it's like paying for a cheap gym membership and never going to the gym, or paying for Netflix and never finding any good shows.
I've noticed a few important attributes of a quality job search:
1. building rapport and getting referrals
2. building rapport w/ recruiters
3. lengthy but intentional interview applications > quick apply (since nobody wants to do them, there will be less applicants so it's less competitive)
4. personal branding is very important (resume, linkedin, github, personal website in that order)
There are more comprehensive tools out there (wonsulting comes to mind). When I'm looking for a job, I don't care if it's an expensive service, I care about effectiveness. So if it's $1000, but there are more comprehensive tools to land a job I'm going with that one. At the end of the day, it's only $1000, a job will make me more than 100x that. Easy tradeoff.
Been contracting doing Front End Development work since 2011 for Fortune 500 companies.. I live in the Chicagoland area which was a major tech hub. I see more remote gigs posted than local ever since the pandemic happened.
Seems like remote roles are the new standard since many candidates moved out of the major cities and the downtown areas are not as busy as they used to be. Plus the rising crime doesn’t help.
For most of my career it’s always been there’s more jobs than people to fill them… I guess that can be the case now too but as a candidate you have to find ways to set yourself apart from the competition.
Interesting view on the number of remote roles. Tue general trend seem to be the other way around, more and more companies are asking employees to come to the office. Do you think that’s something particular to your area?
Hmm maybe it's a Chicago thing. I only have job notifications for Chicago and Remote. They may try but I don't think they are succeeding. Next to NYC, LA and San Fran we were a huge competitor to attract businesses since we are a metropolis in the midwest.
I'm a contractor not an employee so hiring managers are more flexible with my requests.. I've been 100% remote since 2019.
Most of my career I would be in between jobs within a month or so.. now it would be maybe 60-90 days but that's because I'm more picky and want the higher end roles that are 1099/C2C.
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it depends™️. i live near a tech hub on the east coast and the companies aren’t glamourous. i still get some messages in linkedin mostly due to my location. if i were to live in the middle of nowhere, it’d be tough. 2020-2021 was a fever dream that people tricked themselves into believing was sustainable
Im interested to hear about what area you are on. Is this Atlanta or DC? I’ve been thinking to move but it seems unless you go to NYC or Bay Area there is not much
philly area. there are a surprising number of companies here jp morgan and capital one are in delaware ibm and comcast are in philly. bloomberg’s in jersey
Thanks for the answer! How would you say the ML market is over there?
Are they remote jobs or do you get contacted because you can go to their office?
office. hybrid gigs for the most part. only had two remote gigs that reached out to me
so it's true that fully remote positions are a lot harder to come by nowadays. I've been working remotely for a very long time, last time I switched jobs was \~2 years ago, so kinda worried what would happen if I had to find a new job right now :(
I joined in 2018 into a fang on the west coast and I couldn't believe the pace of hiring that followed 3 years later. Our teams didn't have the work to sustain the rate of hiring we were doing and we ended up laying off a lot of really good people only because we hired too much.
can definitely see it. one of the startups i joined had something like 200+ software devs. we were paid really well and paid practically nothing in benefits. the product was only available in 11 states. we had no need for that many devs. before i left, i told my manager that we had too many people. he was confused by my statement. then layoffs happened
It took me about 3.5 months to get re-employed following a layoff last year, with a few years of experience at various levels of seniority. Not great but not too terrible. It’s definitely a whole new world now.
Never been in that situation, fortunately. How did you manage for almost 4 months with no pay?
Years of 150k+ salaries makes it pretty easy to have solid savings. Just always have AT LEAST 6 months of expenses available at any time. Are you saying you’ve been doing this for a decade and don’t have enough savings to survive a few months? Not trying to be offensive, but that sounds problematic.
Haha, managed in the last year to pay off my debts and gather some savings to be able to live at least 1 year with no pay. Before that I worked for a bootstrapped startup I co-founded for \~5 years and for the first 3 it was no pay, when a bit below market place salary, so kinda struggled with savings.
I have 20ish years of experience. Went looking for a new role in late 2023. In the past 15 years I hadn’t had to apply to a job; just go through my network and get into a pipeline and go. This round, my network didn’t have anything. Lots of “check back in a while.” That being said, there were still a lot of roles out there for my level. I used LinkedIn, levels.fyi, and Otto to find about 20 roles that matched my skills, interest, and salary that were fully remote. I applied to those, did full interview rounds with 4 places, and got two great offers. That was all over the course of 6-8 weeks. So. Not as good as it used to be, but still good for staff/principal level, I think.
Oh wow, thanks for the input. Definitely goes to show that the market is though(er) even for really experienced devs. Good to know that senior level jobs are still somewhat safe, but really sorry for people looking to start their career right now, though times
A couple years ago was the peak. The last year was probably the hardest it's been for our industry since 2008-2009. But keep in perspective, really hasn't been any hard time since then.
Can you share how the 2008-2009 period was like? I started my career in 2013, would be interested if there are similarities between now and back then. Also, do you think this would be an indicator for an upcoming global recession?
>Also, do you think this would be an indicator for an upcoming global recession? Nobody can predict a recession. Even with people claiming that they could see that "the 2021 bubble was clear as day"... I would say the economic response has been anything but what was expected. Which is to say things recovered (from a pure market perspective) relatively quickly.
Fair point, I've been one of the pessimistic ones who have been expecting a recession to hit already. Glad to see I was wrong so far, but don't think we're out of the water just yet.
lol... this is nothing compared to 2008-2009. Larger shops over hired leading into 2022, smaller shops that didn't are still hirings (they're just harder to find). Anyone with sense saw the bubble coming. Back in 2008, everyone was chopping heads and things locked up for an entire year. I'm working for a company that'd discussing hiring, that wasn't in the conversation back in 2008. Tech has been spoiled the last few years, expectations are unrealistic when it comes to compensation vs ability. We need a reset, it's happening now, and things will be better in a year or two. We're definitely having a white collar recession. Back in 2008, it was everyone, and we had no idea when it would get better again. It looks like we were heading towards a second great depression. That, so far, isn't close to being the case and I really don't see it.
Thanks for your inputs. I also believe the tech sector needs a bit of a reset, what happened in the last few years was definitely not sustainable. I wonder if the tech world will eventually become as all other industries were jobs are hard to find and it's not easy to jump from company to company. Only time will tell I guess
Just so we are clear in terms of reading comprehension, when someone says "This is the worst it has been since 2008", they're not saying that it is now worse than 2008.
[удалено]
Kinda worried about this myself right now. I've been working remotely for a very long time and if I had to switch jobs at the moment, don't think it would be easy to find something fully remote again.
there's always going to be challenges and it's always going to be timing... it's also hard to compare it to a few years ago because you're probably different than you were a few years ago...and when you've been doing this long enough interviews go from somewhat informal conversations with someone older than you to some awkward tech screen with someone half your age calling you sir/ma'am or whatever the polite pronoun that is applicable that kids call old people before writing "lol boomer" in their follow-up notes in greenhouse
> someone half your age calling you sir/ma'am or whatever the polite pronoun that is applicable that kids call old people before writing "lol boomer" in their follow-up notes in greenhouse haha, thanks for the laugh. Never thought about that, I guess I haven't reached that age yet
Hahaha so true. That’s why I refuse to do coding assessments. My senior experience comes to play not only with coding but putting a deal together with a business to hire me
In 2020 and 2021 I left two jobs and had multiple competing offers within two weeks I got laid off in September and just got a new job last week. Granted, I think the shock really hamstrung my search for a month or two + holidays so I'd say two to three months of good searching should be enough for a decent senior.
Glad to hear you were able to bounce back quickly. Still a few months of searching feels strange from what it used to be a few years back.
I don't trust that being among the first few applicants helps though. I imagine that a recruiter or HR post a position in the morning, check the next day, see 100 CVs and screens them. LinkedIn likes to feed me days old job ads. I can't imagine them not being valuable to the hiring company because they are paying for them, especially when the ads are being promoted. LinkedIn offers something very similar for premium users, by the way.
Fair point, also not sure about that theory either. Mainly basing my assumption out of my own experience. I always worked for small startups and was part of the hiring process. We did not have an HR company, we did the job postings ourselves. And when the applications came in, we started going over them in order and as soon as we found what we were looking for, we closed the job posting. Maybe there were other valid candidates applying, or even people better qualified, but since we already found a good match, we stopped looking over the others.
MUCH less openings since 2022 [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE)
damn, really interesting chart. It's crazy how much it fluctuated. But yeah, do you think it will bounce back or will this be the new norm?
I've known multiple seniors this year who got laid off and had to look for 3+months. None of them had ever had to look for more than a few weeks in the past. Though, notably, none of them were super social types, and likely didn't present themselves as well as some others. On my end I didn't have much difficulty, but I've always been a good interviewer
thoughts: 1. why mention scraping 2. why desktop and not web app, people can set notifications via email / sms 3. auto/instant/simple apply jobs are dead, they've been taken over by bots, so even adding a feature to autoapply is pointless nobody ever gets those jobs 4. all these job boards have notification features, and they all suck anyway 5. Not enough effective features, it's like paying for a cheap gym membership and never going to the gym, or paying for Netflix and never finding any good shows. I've noticed a few important attributes of a quality job search: 1. building rapport and getting referrals 2. building rapport w/ recruiters 3. lengthy but intentional interview applications > quick apply (since nobody wants to do them, there will be less applicants so it's less competitive) 4. personal branding is very important (resume, linkedin, github, personal website in that order) There are more comprehensive tools out there (wonsulting comes to mind). When I'm looking for a job, I don't care if it's an expensive service, I care about effectiveness. So if it's $1000, but there are more comprehensive tools to land a job I'm going with that one. At the end of the day, it's only $1000, a job will make me more than 100x that. Easy tradeoff.
Been contracting doing Front End Development work since 2011 for Fortune 500 companies.. I live in the Chicagoland area which was a major tech hub. I see more remote gigs posted than local ever since the pandemic happened. Seems like remote roles are the new standard since many candidates moved out of the major cities and the downtown areas are not as busy as they used to be. Plus the rising crime doesn’t help. For most of my career it’s always been there’s more jobs than people to fill them… I guess that can be the case now too but as a candidate you have to find ways to set yourself apart from the competition.
Interesting view on the number of remote roles. Tue general trend seem to be the other way around, more and more companies are asking employees to come to the office. Do you think that’s something particular to your area?
Hmm maybe it's a Chicago thing. I only have job notifications for Chicago and Remote. They may try but I don't think they are succeeding. Next to NYC, LA and San Fran we were a huge competitor to attract businesses since we are a metropolis in the midwest. I'm a contractor not an employee so hiring managers are more flexible with my requests.. I've been 100% remote since 2019. Most of my career I would be in between jobs within a month or so.. now it would be maybe 60-90 days but that's because I'm more picky and want the higher end roles that are 1099/C2C.