this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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I'm a fullstack web dev with 7 years of experience, and been casually searching for the past year or so, but most applications don't go anywhere, when I've had no problems with resumes in the past.

How have your experiences been, anyone having any better luck?

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Netherlands. It's awful. The American "copy your resume in tiny fragments into our web form" has arrived here and I hate it

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Better than AI immediately discarding your resume for not hitting keyword density set by uninformed HR drones.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Can we agree those both suck?

[–] kersplomp 21 points 4 months ago (2 children)

10+ YoE here.

Companies' hiring processes have become very slow. I applied and got interviews with 4 companies. I only got offers from 2 of them because the others were so slow. Meta was the slowest, 6 months to first interview.

That said, the offers were $800k/yr and $500k/yr total comp so I can't complain. The catch was mandatory in-office in downtown SF. I'd have to move. It was a hard decision if I'm being honest.

[–] FizzyOrange 14 points 4 months ago

Jesus SF salaries are insane.

[–] ExperimentalGuy 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] nik9000 10 points 4 months ago

Years of experience

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

My experience in the past year (I was laid off earlier) is that more jobs come from networking than from submitting applications. My best experiences have come from asking people I worked with, and them referring me directly to a hiring manager.

The best thing you can do for your career is get to know people and give them a good experience working with you. It may not help you today, but it will make a big difference in the future.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Funny, that was true when I graduated in 1985. I saw all my classmates making hundreds of copies of their resume to mail out to every company they could think of and, though my grades were good, I didn't think mine would look that different from a lot of the others. Instead I spent the time asking everyone I knew if they knew someone who worked at a place that hired software people, getting names and addresses, and sending it to targeted people.

I think I sent my resume to a dozen people, got seven responses, three interviews, and two job offers. That was as many interviews as a lot of my friends who sent out giant numbers of resumes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

@AFKBRBChocolate The way I think about it is the currency of business is trust, not aptitude.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, that's part of it. I've been a hiring manager for a bunch of years now, and I think we're mostly looking for a differentiator. If I have a pile of college hire applications that all look roughly the same, but one comes with a recommendation from someone I know, I'm probably going to at least interview that one. Of course, if a different one has a technical differentiator, like relevant work experience, that's even better.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

@AFKBRBChocolate Interesting, thanks for the reply. I don't mean that trust is a bad thing. When I was younger I could never get my head around how decisions were made. It just never occurred to me that there could be other factors in how decisions were made - both at a personal and commercial level - other than finding the cheapest/best stuff.

[–] FizzyOrange 1 points 4 months ago

I think it depends on your field and level of experience. I work in silicon verification and most jobs seem to be from recruiters. There's a domain specific recruitment company in the UK that has all the market.

But previously I've mostly got jobs from sending CVs.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It was fairly quiet for a long time, one or two years at least, but as of a few weeks ago it seems that hordes of recruiters are at large again. That's in Western Europe as a senior SRE, so YMMV.

[–] pkill 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Similar observation here, after 7 months of absolute hell of financial difficulties and humiliation forcing me to move back in with my folks I literally went to having a possibility of overemployment or being picky again literally over a couple of weeks which also gives me hope that compensation will finally start to catch up to the inflation.
Wonder why is that, but I would guess it might be that overzealous layoffs motivated by short-term bump in stock price started backfiring, especially considering the maintainability of so many, many commercial projects where turnover absolutely does not help.

Though I wouldn't count my chickens before they hatch, the system is abso-fucking-lutely not rational and the global economy is on a path of going from crisis to crisis.

[–] MagicShel 16 points 4 months ago

Tech lead with 25+ years experience here. Going on 4 months without work. Last couple of weeks have been better as far as getting callbacks and first interviews. Will see what happens.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

9 year full stack/mobile dev here. Got caugt up in the layoffs last year and it took nearly 10 months to find work thos past January. At one point, I went 6 months without even a response. It's anecdotal, but multiple recruiters have told me that companies are utilizing AI to auto-reject all but the unicorn resumes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

The job market for IT specialists is the whole world, isn't it? Stacks are globally the same, and English is the common language in IT.

[–] 0x0 9 points 4 months ago

If the position is full-remote, yes.

[–] FizzyOrange 6 points 4 months ago

Depends on your specialisation. Also immigration laws. But yeah I think in general the job market for programmers is very easy (as long as you are decent).

[–] jeremyparker 2 points 1 month ago

THREADNECRO. In my experience, middle managers and direct managers prefer employees they can keep an eye on, so "global" employees are difficult for them -- and they're closer to the hiring than the higher ups who only want to reduce costs.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

10 years of sys admin/dev ops, got a full redundancy package September last year. Market was really hot at the time, but I wanted some time off due to health stuff. Since the start of the year it's been pretty dead, there are some positions here and there but the interest is way way less than it was even at the start of my career.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

2+ years of experience full stack web dev here. It has been hell. The entry level for IT is so saturated that I think they don't even bother checking resumes anymore. It sucks.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

I started a contract role 3 months ago after 8 months off with 3.5 YoE. It was my third hunt and by far the hardest. With my other searches lasting 4 weeks and 4 months respectively.

Honestly pretty done with layoffs at this point.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Just lost my job the other day. Was hoping for some good news in the responses. Sigh…

[–] JackbyDev 3 points 4 months ago

Stay strong. Apply for unemployment. Budget. Don't be afraid to take a break day every now and then either.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I'm at a large tech company. We are hiring, and I feel the bar is much higher this year. From my perspective, it feels like a lot of really well qualified people are applying, and that has made the interview panels more picky and slow. I feel that in the past we were very quick to decide and extend offers to people who are likely to do well in the role. But that urgency feels gone, and there's a larger pool of candidates, so the panel is much more likely to pass or ask the candidate to wait while they interview more people.

[–] SatouKazuma 1 points 1 month ago

3 YoE here as a full-stack dev. I'm not getting shit. Apps are in the multiple hundreds, and not one interview anywhere.