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Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession
618 points by neoxone on May 24, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 551 comments
I’ve been job hunting and I was going to get interviewed on Friday for a SWE role at a small startup and today I received an email from the PM canceling the interview and letting me know the company has decided to stop the recruitment process for all roles due to the markets situation. She also attached a tweet about a YC email to all their founders, here’s the link: https://twitter.com/refsrc/status/1527238287471292417. I checked the company webpage and in fact they have closed all the open positions, there were like 6.

From all the rejections I’ve got so far this is the first time the reason is markets turmoil / recession threat. To be honest is my first time job hunting since I graduated in 2019.

Screen shots: https://t.co/wSx5IR44nK

Will be this the situation for most tech companies or just start ups? I know the unprofitable over valuated ones will most likely get rekt first but I wanna know if during recessions recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies.

What companies or roles will be more resilient?

And how as a SWE / tech industry professional, specially the ones starting their careers like me, can prepare?

I hope some experienced people in the industry can give some hope and advice. Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market. First pandemic, then recession? F...




> I hope some experienced people in the industry can give some hope and advice. Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market. First pandemic, then recession? F...

Overall, I'd say relax a bit. You're still in a good situation. Recessions are hard for many, but software engineers were among the best off during the last one and I expect will be this time also.

> I wanna know if during recessions recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies.

I remember Google's recruiting slowed down in ~2008. [edit: 2009? Maybe not right at the start of the recession.] [1] So sometimes yes. On the bright side, it's rare for profitable large tech companies to lay off software engineers, so if you get in, you're pretty safe.

Even at startups, I don't expect a universal freeze. I asked an external recruiter (that is, someone who recruits for a variety of startups) a couple days ago about the present situation. She told me some companies she works with have done hiring freezes, others are still desperate to hire. There are opportunities. I'm not a good enough business person to give you solid general advice about which startups will be most resilient, though.

If you are good enough and/or persistent enough, my feeling is there will be a place for you in tech. (Even if, for example, you freeze up during coding interviews. Some companies do these, others don't. There's enough variety that you can still be okay if you don't have your sights set on a particular company.)

If you are not, there's almost certainly still a place for you as a software engineer in a stable, non-tech company or government position. Non-tech typically isn't as lucrative, but you can be comfortable. My feeling is many of these places have a tremendous need for just basic automation. Arguably more so during a recession, although they may not all realize this.

I started my career not long before the last recession. I didn't have any real existing savings to lose. Then I was earning far in excess of my needs and investing much of the rest in index funds (e.g. VTI) when stock prices were low. The recession ended and stock prices soared. I feel scummy saying this about many people's suffering, but the recession worked out well for me.

[1] Personally I think this was a mistake. They could have hired a lot of great people during this time. "Be bold when others are fearful." They had solid financial footing for hiring, and if nothing else, they could have put a fair number of folks on efficiency projects that would have more than paid their way in machine costs.


> Overall, I'd say relax a bit. You're still in a good situation. Recessions are hard for many, but software engineers were among the best off during the last one and I expect will be this time also.

The demand for software engineers was driven partly by zombie app and saas companies all competing for "top talent", dependent entirely on free cash but without sustainable business models.

On top of that, the "demand" narrative led to an influx of new software engineers that will mature over the next 1-3 years.

These two factors I believe put our industry at risk if there's a recession.


At risk? We’ll just stop having overinflated salaries. The current situation is insane for employers:

- Employees are not willing to put a little extra (paid extra, I mean - and we’re at the 35hrs week here),

- Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,

- Not willing to work on legacy products where we pay them 40% more.

- In the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -> 50 -> +10k bonus, and they’ll leave for a job at 65 going 75 with a tech stack that ticks all boxes.

- You can teach them React + SpringBoot + Kubernetes, and they’ll still leave because company XYZ does AWS + Neo4j + AI… while still not fixing spelling mistakes in the UI and still in the habit of downloading and entire DB tables and filter them in the Java side, and seeing no problem asking for a microservices architecture.

This developer market is batshit crazy and isn’t tight enough to make people want to serve the needs of customers. “Do something hard and get a house in exchange” isn’t a persuasive argument today, they’ll get rich anyway. Instead, they serve their resume, which I perfectly respect and understand, it needs to be done too, but at one point, it’s a disconnect between customers, employers and developers.

A crisis is unfortunate but I can’t wait for it.


Where are you located that you have a 35h week while enjoying such great benefits like employer investing in your training?

I'd like to move there.

In my EU country the working hours are 38.5 which isn't as good as 35h, but it isn't that bad, but no employer hires you to invest in your training. Every company wants only seniors, preferably for junior wages, and scream there's a shortage while offering no WFH because "management doesn't believe in WFH" and "the culture of working in the office is better".


I'm in UK, working at a video games studio and while we work 37.5h a week indeed all training is done during work hours, we hire people from junior and bring them up to senior/expert levels, with our average seniority being something stupid like 12 years+(longest one atm is 29 years). And yes, we only have to be in the office 1 day a week, personally I work 4 days from home 1 from the office, but it's up to everyone how they want to do it.


Probably France


that does look like french salary ranges for juniors


I am also interested in the geography here, especially wrt to the currency/units in "35 -> 50 -> +10k"

Are those numbers maybe denominated in Kuwaiti or Bahraini dinars? Or in some country-specific unspoken convenience unit such as tens-of-thousands of Japanese yen, or hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese Dong, or something like that?


I think your reply sort of proves his point, if 38.5 -> 35 hour workweek is enough to move, well, employers are not getting the best deal.


> - Employees are not willing to put a little extra (and we’re at the 35hrs week here),

> - Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,

Some of your points make sense but these two…


Indeed, they should study at work.


Heresy!


Home time is personal time. Here I deal with family, chores and self-connection. If you want me to learn stuff and be better and my job you will have to give me time, company time, for that. We are not machine.

In France it is mandatory for the company to give time for training. Thanks unions.

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/id/LEGISCTA000006189881...


> We are not machine.

Counterpoint: if you want to stay relevant in technology and be above regular level, you gotta have the passion for it and that implies doing your homework.

Look at it from another perspective. If you want to play a guitar in a band for money, you don’t require the band to give you “time to learn”. You learn on your own time.

If you don’t want to learn, you become irrelevant and get replaced.


You think doctors/nurses do homework? They go to paid courses/conferences all the time to stay up-to-date on the latest medical techniques. Hospitals have entire teaching departments for that kinda stuff. Why should it be different for engineers?


My late father was a physician and he absolutely stayed up late doing homework. He'd study for hours before an usual case.

I remember as a kid helping him swap out the latest updates to these massive binders of the latest and greatest info in medicine, which were expensive subscriptions he paid for. They'd send sections of text and instructions on what pages to remove and replace with the update so you'd always have the most current information.

Now we have web-based solutions that do the same thing, and they're often not free, either.


Pretty difficult to do guerilla surgeries. Those are regulated jobs and you need to study/finish education to have a license.

Also, let us distinguish “engineers” and say, I’m not picking a fight, “java spring boot developer with 2 years of experience”.


I work closely with a doctor who does indeed do a lot of homework.


I thought we're already over with the "every minute of your life is monetizable" mindset ?


I am. But I also learn stuff I can apply on my job. I find it nothing out of order. I’m doing this job for 22 years.


I think there are are 2 situations here:

- I like [thing I do at my job] and I don't mind doing it outside of working hours. An incidental side benefit of this is I learn skills that enhance my career.

- A company I work for or am interviewing at is unhappy I don't like doing [thing I do there] outside of working hours, and either will fire me or not hire me unless I change.

The difference is "do companies use this as a metric", and I think it's pretty clear they shouldn't. If they do, they run into all kinds of other biases, mostly that you select out people who have family obligations (you're a parent, your partner also works, you have a sick family member, etc.).

Further, it creates a race to the bottom dynamic where a super important part of your life--your career--asks more and more from the other parts of your life. You shouldn't be able to get ahead of other people in your career by telling your kid to figure out algebra on their own, and if you can, people who advance in their careers (who will have more power in the workplace and thus society) will be the kinds of people who either had the resources to otherwise meet their other obligations (hire a tutor, nurse, etc.), or the kinds of people who didn't care about shirking them.

That's why maintaining this line is so important. It avoids an incentive structure that would empower the already privileged or the irresponsible.


then i would consider it working hours, so the premise here seems to reduce to how much overtime i'm willing to spend.


Then you also don't have any problem if better candidate appears and challenges your position, right?


How is that related? That can already happen if a company decide to have this approach. See also companies that have PIP targets.

Presumably companies have a good idea of employees' skill sets when they hire them, or they terminate the contract by the end of the probation period, so they can also plan for this necessary learning.


> How is that related?

It’s related in the sense that if your set of skills becomes irrelevant, you get replaced. Want to keep your job then learn the things reqiured to keep your job.

Say you’re a truck driver. You have your license to drive a truck and every year you need to do your vision test to keep your license. If one day you have to buy glasses, well, tough luck - they come out of your pocket. Otherwise you can’t drive and your employer cannot put you on a truck.

Here, your skills are your glasses.


Where the hell are you working where someone can come in and challenge you for your job?

I’ve been working for over 30 years and this has literally never happened.


Where do you work exactly and what do you do for a living?

Because new hires vying for more influence in the office has been a staple of the modern workplace and organizational politics for a long time now.


Of course there are always people who are trying to one-up or push ahead up the career-advancement ladder... but I've never ever seen a better candidate appear and challenge someone's position directly. If someone started a new job and starting calling someone out for not doing their job as well, they'd be fired pretty quickly. That's just outright hostile behavior.

Granted I've always worked outside of the valley, I guess FAANG positions can be more hostile.


Indeed, I was being sarcastic.


thanks unions for the millions of unemployed people too


What's wrong with those two? I'm genuinely interested, software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about and you're upset about not being able to put extra 5 hours of time a week to improve your skills related to something that's your career?

And we wonder why quality of everything is awful and why people are unreliable and entitled.


> software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about

Then why do companies keep on paying these salaries? Besides, that doesn’t really apply outside of unicorns and SV. I’ve been doing this for a while and have never had catered lunches or dry cleaning etc provided by my employers.

Also, what are you comparing to? Professional athletes or traders are overpaid compared to SE. if you compare to burger flippers then it doesn’t make sense either.

Accountants are paid quite well for instance. Their employers pay for their time and expenses when they go to a seminar and keep their skills up to date. Why should it be any different for SE?


It's easy: if you want your employee to do something, all you have to do is pay them for their time.

Not willing to? Then I guess it's not important to you.


It takes two to tango. If you want to get paid, become someone who's useful.

This attitude where employees sit like bags of potatoes waiting for knowledge to permeate their brains via osmosis is awful.


You’re missing the point. It’s that companies shouldn’t expect employees to improve themselves for the companies benefit on their own time. Not that employees shouldn’t improve themselves for their own benefit on their own time if they want to. Ergo if companies expect employees to work specifically to get better at their jobs they should provide resources and training in work time as its part of the job itself.


well after education usually salary can be upgraded, so it’s a benefit for employee. if employee does not educate himself, he may stay the same level with no salary bumps. sucks for both parties I guess?


> This attitude where employees sit like bags of potatoes waiting for knowledge to permeate their brains via osmosis is awful.

I think you misunderstand. A person who is getting paid is already useful. That is why they were hired. By studying you want them to be more useful and that is an extra demand over their contract.


But if things changes and you no longer need their services then should you just fire them? Telling the employee that they can keep their job if they update their skills is a nice thing to do, it is much better than just firing them without giving them a chance.


If you need more services than you initially contracted for, then you give them time to learn. Why is this so hard to understand?


If you no longer need the services that you initially contracted for, then you fire them since there is nothing left for them to do. How is that so hard to understand? There is nothing saying that you need to keep people around when you no longer have any need of their services, not even any moral reasons.


You're paying your employee because they are suitable at this moment. Expecting someone to study in their free time is nonsense. If you want that you either need to pay for it or allow study time during the work time.


I want to provide service to clients that we're paid for. I want staff to actually know what they claim they know. I want to deliver so we can all get paid and go home and do whatever else interests us.

That's what I want.

But I'm the proxy between staff, clients and government. So when I stay up late every night in order to reconcile all the warring parties, the comment I get is "pay more if you want to get more".

Or I could not deal with entitled underskilled staff, right? That's also a viable option? Why beg people to sharpen their craft if they don't want to? I might be old fashioned and I might take pride in what I do because I want to do it to the best of my abilities. I might have wrongly assumed that the rest of fellow programmers are similar to that, but it seems not.


I doubt highly skilled modern workers would want to work for someone with the attitude expressed. Those people have options and working for a company that has a one-sided old-fashioned attitude that refuses to train them for the companies chosen development stack would be foolish.


Are you involved in the hiring process? It sounds like you're hiring juniors when you want intermediate/seniors

Juniors are cheaper but you have to factor in training costs if you want them trained lol


This reads as "My work-life balance sucks, but rather than fight for improvement, I'm going to complain about how others have it so good."

You sound like you live to work rather than work to live. It's a sad way to live your life. Years from now, you'll be on your death bed wishing you allowed yourself to relax a bit and have more fun.


It sounds like you're not getting paid enough for the late hours you work.


You can probably find a job where you’re not staying up late every night. What are you doing that’s worth sacrificing your health for?


exactly, you are paying for current skills. If employer is fine with current skills, and employee wants a better salary, which would require new skills, who should make effort?


Overpaid? https://www.harveynash.co.uk/jobs


>software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about

Maybe in some parts of America. Even highly paid developers generally do work that not many people outside of the industry can't do (though I encourage everyone I know to try programming).

In my mind software developers and other tech workers are one of the driving forces of human development, though not quite so much as those working on the forefront of technology (ie proper engineering/research and development). The industry I hold in the highest regard is the medical industry; doctors are just amazing and I appreciate what they do and their importance (fair warning that this is a non-American/public healthcare perspective).


The salaries are only high in the US though, but the recession is global.


> the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -> 50 -> +10k bonus

You pay them such terrible wages and you’re surprised they leave? You can make $35k at in-n-out shilling beef on a bun.


Maybe they're in an European country where that would be a good wage.


In most EU countries that is not a good wage


It may not be, but it's pretty standard what juniors usually make in lots of parts in Europe if you exclude fang, big tech and high rolling unicorns.


Depends on your definition of good. 50k+ is above average (almost?) everywhere and is more than twice the EU average.


I think a lot of HN devs, even in Europe, live in a high earners bubble, especially if they have seniority at a good company in a hot market, and loose perspective of what the average wages really are.


The median wage in the US is like $35k, but that does not mean $70k is a high dev salary..


That apples to oranges comparison is hardly relevant in this context.

For better or worse, Europe has much less income inequality than in the US, so European dev wages are a lot closer to the median wages, than in the US where devs make several times over the national median wage.

If you remove the big tech hubs like London, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc. then median European dev wages plummet, coming to party with the rest of the white collar jobs.


As far as I understand, “not a good wage” and “a high dev salary” are not the opposite of each other.


35k is above the average salary in most EU countries.


In France it's pretty good.


What a terrible person, doesn't have access to infinite money and can't afford to overpay underskilled staff.


Perhaps their business model is not good?

Acting like companies deserve underpaid labor (let's not even get into the combination of that with an expectation of fealty + coming to the office every day to avoid managers being lonely) gets us to situations where people out of college with shitty negotiation skills end up losing 5 years of their life in miserable situations.

Unless you are a business owner, having everyone be paid reasonably is a net win, but it's also the right thing to do, and shows a minimum of respect to people doing work.


If you can’t pay competitively for competent people, then complain that nobody wants to work for you, I think the real problem is that your business is unviable since you can’t cover the costs to operate it


Those are 20% above market rate in France, probably 40% above when you don’t have an engineer’s degree.

The blanket “YOU PAY THEM TOO LITTLE” and its brother “EVEN AT THE BEGINNING OF MY CAREER I NEVER STUDY AT HOME AND I JUST DO WHAT MY EMPLOYER TELLS ME ON A WRITTEN SHEET OF PAPER WITH DEFINITIVE SIGN OFF” mentality needs to go.

You choose:

- Want to work in a factory? €1200 net per month,

- Job that requires that you come with a skillset? €2400 pm.

- Job where you build an unknown product with lots of leeway, innovation, networking and entrepreneurship? 5400€ to 20k€ per month. 20k€ is President Macron’s salary, so it’s not so low.

I’ll give my 200k€ dividends to whoever accepts to perform the odd tasks like maintain the jQuery app AND clean the bathrooms AND notice when they need cleaning AND launch a new product when it needs launching AND close one down and find suitable ways out for customers.

“How do you expect them to work for you if you make them clean the toilets!” well that’s why I’m getting the bonus. To anyone willing to bend for the toilets when needed, there is a job available here.


Don't read what's written the way it suits you in order to come out as a better person, also commenting on someone's business with literally 0 facts means only that you're posting from an image you created in which you're good and me - evil.

Competent people are worth every penny and then some. We're all talking about incompetent ones who throw a huge shadow over the competent ones.

I think you're aware of that but you still posted what you posted. Thank you for the compassion and understanding. Guilty before trial, that's the way we do it, right? :)


I agree competent people are worth every penny. Why are you not paying enough to get them?

The salaries you listed are half what they'd be in Ireland and something like a quarter - maybe less - of what they'd be in California.


> Why are you not paying enough to get them?

Because they’re not competent?

I pay my senior 30% above what he asked, he still doesn’t want to test all edge cases and lets slip many things because he wants us to hire a tester.

Actually competent people are paid surprisingly little, because then they struggle to increase their wage.


I don't think this is true... I've worked with excellent engineers and aside from a couple at the very, very beginning of their career (~2009/2010 no less when the economy was terrible) they were very well paid.


Those wages are atrocious. Perhaps you do not have a viable business model.

Keep in mind that your competition is not just France. Plenty of people (myself included) took note of the terrible wages in Europe and decided that maybe those American companies with 6 figure remote jobs aren't so bad after all.


Can confirm. Went from £55k to $165k by going remote in the US


Lol from this post I can tell you're an employer that nobody will ever want to work for no matter the salary you're paying. The economic situation and developers are not the issue, you are.


My student loan payments will probably be around $1200 a month after I graduate and a studio apartment in my pretty small city is $900 without utilities. I could probably survive on a $35k salary but I'd have to switch to income based repayment on my loans which would suck because I'd like to eventually be able to buy a house


That's one of the big differences: the only thing a normal person in France, Germany or the rest of western Europe* could do that involves a 1200/month repayment is buy property (or an absolutely ridiculous car). A lot of the younger employees I work with got paid while doing their bachelor's degrees because they did dual degree programs, where they're employed by a big industrial company and alternate terms having internships within the company and taking courses at the university the company partners with.

* I say "western Europe" because I know that university fees in the UK are higher, and this is the region I currently know enough to say this about, but I imagine university fees are similarly low in eastern and southern Europe.


The only way you'd be paying back £1200 a month on student loans (plan 2) in the UK is if you were earning £180,180/year or more. And at that income, it's probably not the student loans giving you trouble.


> involves a 1200/month repayment is buy property

Rent?


Rent’s definitely an expense, but isn’t a loan.


Although some valid points and I understand the frustration, this has some major Uncle Tom vibes.


I would say salaries are massively under-inflated


so ungrateful these devs...


> Employees are not willing to put a little extra (paid extra, I mean - and we’re at the 35hrs week here),

Currently working in a company that's short staffed but there's a seemingly endless amount of work.

Things might be so charitable in many companies out there for all I care, but that's definitely not the situation everywhere.

Then again, at least in my current company things are nowhere near as bad as 996, but please don't ignore such problems either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

One might also bring up the fact that people in "outsourcing" countries also don't have such nice WLB.

> Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,

Most of the stuff i've learnt (Docker/OCI, Swarm/Kubernetes/Nomad, CI/CD concepts, monitoring, different architectures and new languages) all were in my free time, because the tech stacks at work were somewhat dated and would pigeonhole me into maintenance roles and similar enterprise messes.

Then again, one can and should make the point: doctors don't practice their craft over the weekends, why should software engineers? Do cashiers have to do unpaid work after hours? Do teachers? And if yes, is that okay? Shouldn't your work be compensated, instead of cutting into your free time?

> Not willing to work on legacy products where we pay them 40% more.

Currently the oldest project that I'm working on is like 8 years old and it's a mess. Recently tried modernizing it, would recommend that NOBODY ever try to do that, since I learnt almost no new skills at the expense of massive amounts of stress and struggling with problem after problem, just to keep this old monolith alive.

40% might seem nice at a glance, but what about the alternative costs of not learning new and relevant technologies and thus getting passed up for new work opportunities? What about suffering daily due to needing to waste your time with some dated mess, since most old code is unwieldy to work with at best and horrible at worst?

> In the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -> 50 -> +10k bonus, and they’ll leave for a job at 65 going 75 with a tech stack that ticks all boxes.

That is largely how the industry is and I doubt that I can blame people for wanting to maximize their own earning potential, especially in the current financial climate.

Of course, once again this doesn't really match up with my own circumstances, given that owning a home might take about 10 more years of saving money for me, given that I'm not as well paid as all these other developers.

> You can teach them React + SpringBoot + Kubernetes, and they’ll still leave because company XYZ does AWS + Neo4j + AI… while still not fixing spelling mistakes in the UI and still in the habit of downloading and entire DB tables and filter them in the Java side, and seeing no problem asking for a microservices architecture.

With this, I can mostly agree. If things like spelling don't matter to people, obviously they aren't going to pay attention to them.

But overall, I still find your points to be too focused on a particular environment. Developers everywhere doesn't have it quite as good to begin with, no matter how much of an echo chamber HN can sometimes be.

Then again, last i checked, a Google employee would bring in around ~20x more profits for their company than I would (with some oversimplified back-of-the-napkin maths): https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings


Do you feel better now ?


There are risks, yes, but fundamentally we are still an industry that has a lot of upside, vs many others. In a recession many businesses will contract, but it's a rare large tech company that will do more than pause some forms of spending. Even when you hear that hiring is paused at the big tech companies, they will usually still be backfilling departures, and they won't be doing significant layoffs. The exceptions are companies with large service-based businesses that may or not qualify as tech companies based on your definition.


>The exceptions are companies with large service-based businesses that may or not qualify as tech companies based on your definition.

Like Amazon and Netflix? And if companies are spending less for online ads, that can hit Google and Facebook, too.


I work at one of those two ad-supported businesses, and would be very surprised if there are large scale layoffs.

And yes, as one of the responders noted, I meant the services companies. An IBM might do a large layoff, but I generally wouldn't put that in the same category as Amazon or Netflix. I've worked through three economic cycles now (at least I think we're seeing the end of the third) and while they haven't been great for everyone in the industry, we've been better off than most others. For instance, just to pick on one profession, I know way more lawyers who've become software engineers than vice versa.


I think they were referring to companies like Accenture, IBM, or PwC. The "Professional Services" industry employs a ton of software developers and is fairly pro-cyclical.


And all companies that focus on selling to other startups. Like Brex. They were the first to pop during the dot com bust.


>The demand for software engineers was driven partly by zombie app and saas companies all competing for "top talent", dependent entirely on free cash but without sustainable business models.

Now that the cash is drying up, Startups which didn't solve any real problem couldn't bruteforce their growth anymore. Perhaps this is good for the entire ecosystem.


There we go. This is the comment I was going to make, but you've done the idea justice.


Software will be fine for people who are in an unknown top X% of developers out there. Depending on how bad this is that might be the top 80%, it might be the top 1%.

The industry is so crazy now because of the last recession. Investors didn't know where to put their money after the real estate collapse and they decided to pour it all into funding startups hoping, at all costs, to catch the next Facebook.

We're starting to see that maybe even Facebook isn't really the next Facebook.

Additionally we never really solved the root of the last crisis: exploding credit/debt.

It's impossible to know how this will all really play out this time (who would have guessed that the pandemic would be immediately followed by a stock boom). However my advice would be to focus on adaptability. Don't chase a dead dream too long. If tech never comes back to the insane period we're in now, I think there will be a lot of former developers that suffer a long time before they realize this.


Most people in 2010 would’ve taken a $500B or even $300B market cap FB as a major tech company right now without any expectation of getting too much bigger than that ever. $300B, $400B, $500B are still top 25, 15, and 10 in the world today.


Cumulative inflation from 2010 to 2022 was 33%. Cumulative inflation over the preceding 12 years (1998-2022) was 34%.

Just because this year’s inflation was high, there’s nothing extraordinary about overall inflation in the post-GFC period.


But would’ve they predicted the that value of those 300B US dollars would be worth so much less?

Many tech companies during COVID gained legitimate value, just like many housing markets, but most the increase in their US dollar price was simply the value of the dollar being less.


> But would’ve they predicted the that value of those 300B US dollars would be worth so much less?

I hope so. It has been the consistent course of action of the federal US government for many, many decades to provide a backstop for broad market asset prices at the expense of the purchasing power of the dollar.

All parties in positions of power benefit from increase in asset prices. The politicians, the business owners, the land owners, the 401K owners, the taxpayers (via defined benefit pension tax liabilities).


I’d think so. Whether they realize it or not. Since inflation for the US isn’t a crazy situation without precedent. 2021, 2022 have been a lot more for inflation, but this century has overall been something that is not unexpected.

Looking at how big FB is vs other companies makes a metric like inflation not as important as all companies and thus all investments are affected by inflation.

So, still, any of the example market caps for FB today would’ve been gladly accepted by almost every one in 2010, regardless of the specific percentage of inflation that has happened. FB would still be a top 25 company in market cap at $300B. Top 20 if looking at US only.


>but most the increase in their US dollar price was simply the value of the dollar being less

And in general, the value of a currency is less because there are more money being invented out from thin air. By central banks printing money, through the fractional reserve system, crypto and stable coins...


> On the bright side, it's rare for profitable large tech companies to lay off software engineers, so if you get in, you're pretty safe.

Many profitable tech companies have small scale, approximately annual layoffs, even in a strong economy. That said, I agree in general.


Ahh, maybe you're right for other big tech companies. It was rare at Google. The only cases I remember involved "remote offices" (i.e. not Mountain View). In a couple cases, they closed whole offices (Atlanta) and folks had to relocate or leave. Similarly, sometimes offices gave up whole projects ("defragging"), so folks had to find a new project or leave.

(btw, it would have been easier to meet diversity goals if they'd kept the Atlanta office open, but that's a whole other thread.)


I've been in the industry for 27 years now. People who entered the tech job market after 2015 are in for a rude awakening IMO. Especially those whose experience is primarily FAANG-MULA and similar. This market very much reminds me of 1997-2000 and 2001-2003 was UGLY.


Launched my career in early 2000. I was taking a bunch of short term contracts to build up experience.

Six months of multiple recruiters every day calling. One day the calls stopped. 3 years before I could get a tech job.

Chilled at RadioShack during that time with other engineers who had way more experience than I did, but couldn't find work.


You just have to ask. "Was the business plan was to keep getting VC money or crypto money for the next 5 years before being profitable." If the answer is yes, you should expect huge layoffs or bankruptcy in most cases.


I managed to work as a contractor during 2003, after that the market became better. I guess that's the tendency - employment opportunities are going to be kind of short lived.

If you didn't manage to get into a job that is business critical, then I wouldn't count on a steady job. they like to get rid of the workforce in layoff rounds. For me that was very depressing, in the end i was laid off in another of these layoff rounds.

But still there is demand for getting stuff done, and places will be more inclined to hire people specifically for a set of tasks, on a contract basis.

I still hope it is not going to get that bad; I didn't have a wife and three kids to feed back then, also I was some twenty years younger. In any event: my advice would be to keep your savings and refrain from taking up any new loans...


I remember Google's recruiting slowed down in ~2008. [edit: 2009? Maybe not right at the start of the recession.] [1] So sometimes yes. On the bright side, it's rare for profitable large tech companies to lay off software engineers, so if you get in, you're pretty safe.

I don't think Google has seen the impact of a recession yet. It was 4 years old in the dot.com era, and insulated from the effects of the recession by a steady stream of VC money. It was 11 years old in 2008, 5 years out of its IPO, and growing insanely fast on the back of an internet boom where every business was struggling to understand how to utilize online advertising to get the best possible results. Businesses believed that online ads would protect them from the 2008 collapse, so Google were in a position to grow despite the downturn.

The same is not true now. If there's a serious long term recession it's very likely to impact companies with advertising derived revenue far more than it has in the past. In Google's case it'll probably mean little more than repatriating the cash reserves it has offshore and spending them to weather the storm. We all know that some of the higher ups will want to use it as an excuse to 'trim some fat' because that's what higher ups do though. No one will be safe.

The same is probably not true of other companies that are less cash-rich though. There's no reason to assume that tech will be fine this time because tech was fine last time.


> It was 4 years old in the dot.com era, and insulated from the effects of the recession by a steady stream of VC money

Google received its last funding round 1999, after that they were profitable every single year. Modern start-ups aren't anything like Google back then. Google survived the dotcom bust since they made money, if they depended on VC funding they would have gone bust then as well.


> Then I was earning far in excess of my needs and investing much of the rest in index funds (e.g. VTI) when stock prices were low. The recession ended and stock prices soared. I feel scummy saying this about many people's suffering, but the recession worked out well for me.

Don't feel too bad about it. You were using what resources you had to give yourself a more stable future. If you still feel bad, use the more-stable future you've made to help others in some way.

Anyone with the money to invest and a long-term view can invest in a dip and come out strong. Buy when there's blood in the streets, etc. I doubled an investment's value (XOP, an oil index) because I bought when oil was in crisis a few years back, and sold for nearly 2x when the war in Ukraine kicked prices up. Technically war profiteering, but it's not like I planned it that way.

If a recession comes during a student loan pause, I'll be putting that would-be loan payment into the market if I don't need it to survive. If my car is paid off by then, even better, as I'll have more available funds to contribute to my portfolio.


At the time, it's very hard for Google to predict how bad things could be. Ads business tends to get hit very hard when the overall market is in a bad shape, no matter how great the search engine is.


Google was profitable and dominant by 2009. I wouldn’t go near a startup that wasn’t profitable and hoping for another round of funding in this environment if I had any alternative.


Their honesty should be applauded. Imagine they hired you and then had to fire you in 6 months. Keep in touch with the PM if you liked them and see how they perform in the next 12 months.


I agree 100%. I feel sorry for OP of course, but this is highly commendable, even if the threat of major recession turns out to be overestimated. This employer is acting in a fashion that shows high levels of social responsibility and moral value. Hats off.


I agree. In a previous recession I had an offer rescinded over a weekend. I’m glad they did because most likely as they had to reduce headcount during the recession Id have been on the chopping block --my then employer having been conservative in hiring didn't have to cut as much. also sometimes in times of expansion some hires are "luxury hires", nice to haves, but not must haves and can be the first to go.

Usually it’s recent hires and people who’ve been there a long stretch who get cut first, of course with lots of exceptions.


> Usually it’s recent hires and people who’ve been there a long stretch who get cut first, of course with lots of exceptions.

This was a bit confusing to me.

Are you saying in your experience that it is both the most senior and most junior employees (in terms of company tenure) that get laid off?


I entered the job market during the 2008 recession. I definitely experienced the "hired... and..now you're laid off" ~ as the saying goes "when times get tough, last to hire = first to fire". As for laying off senior folks -- I've seen this too; I've seen people who are senior by virtue of just having been there the longest (20+ years) and have had the most pay raises... but don't necessarily contribute as much value as someone who's been there 10 years and costs less. If you're senior and your boss knows* that you're contributing more value add than is reflected by your paycheck -- you won't be let go.

* This is one reason why you should be sure to convey your wins to your boss; when you have 1-on-1 conversations, be sure to highlight obstacles that you've overcome. You don't have to brag, but it's okay to be realistic - humble, but proud.


> that you're contributing more value add than is reflected by your paycheck -- you won't be let go

That's a very optimistic take. What usually happens is that there's an obvious bottom line improvement to laying off a few very senior people, but the impact isn't so obvious, so from the business's perspective it looks like a win.

I remember the cognitive dissonance of being an employer's rep at a job fair in 2010 and telling everyone who came up to our booth that I could take resumes, but we weren't hiring! At least I got a free lunch out of it.

Businesses don't always do what makes sense from the outside.


This exception wise might be the case but, the cost to performance is probably just less for some senior folks compared to up and coming new people. For instance if i have 10+ year employee who has received 3% cost of living raises + additional performance raises they likely have a cost/performance ratio worse than the A player with 5 years experience who wants to move up. I can promote them for a bump in salary and have someone who hasn't accumulated as much cost overtime with a similar performance. I reduced capacity, improved moral for an A player and cut cost in one decision. There would also be minimal impact moral wise to the remaining organization by hiring within. That's just my take though and I am no authority in the topic.


Why do people think oldtimers at companies get paid better than new hires?

That is the case for traditional companies, but not for tech. I worked for one company (most of the time as a manager) for almost 27 years, and never made as much as new hires at most tech companies. My company got an insane bargain with me, and my whole team, and they knew it.

I don't think that cost is the reason that companies like firing older folks.


HR only understands years of service sometimes. I've seen business analysts doing entry level work with nearly no responsibilities and making ~$140k. It's insane. No matter how much the rest of the company complains, those people are safe until layoffs come.


Some people just barely do their work but are kept on because they are good for the team/team spirit. I've seen a lot of those people getting axed in 2008.


You are totally right, I really appreciated their honesty. As mc32 stated, if I was hired, in case of recession as a recent hire I would one of the first ones to go. The PM asked me if I would like to get contacted in the future to continue with the process in case things get better, to which I replied yes. I'll keep an eye on them.


How is that a good thing? You can earn good money in 6 months. One time I took a 2-week web development job to stand in for someone who left for a holiday while a project was overdue. It was an interesting experience. I wish the economy was more like this; more unpredictable and more focused on deliverables than hours worked.


> I wish the economy was more like this; more unpredictable and more focused on deliverables than hours worked.

That would be fine for single people or couples without children and enough savings to relocate or live on whilst job hunting, but absolutely devastating for everyone else.

As if there weren’t enough uncertainty already…


As someone who has a dependent spouse and child, I disagree. You can't cancel the laws of nature. Everyone must participate in the free market on equal terms. When the system makes it artificially easier for one set of people, it artificially makes it harder for a different set of people behind the scenes. If someone can't handle the risk of sustaining themselves and their family in the real world, they shouldn't have children. But of course we need a fair monetary system in order to make it feasible.

I can speak from experience that in our pyramid scheme economy propped up by big government and big bank money printing it's extremely difficult to support a child if you're not part of the 'inside crowd' who has access to the easy money (cheap loans, investments and subsidies). It doesn't have to be that way though. But to expect total safety is immoral because it relies on some kind of financial scheme operating behind the scenes. You can't create any real value in this world without taking a risk. If you're not taking any risks, you're not creating any value. Nobody owes it to you to support your children; especially if it means that they themselves can't afford to support their own children by participating in the free market.


Most people would rather spend a little bit longer looking to avoid a job reset. First, the job market could be worse in 6 months. Secondly, any extra work that you put into onboard and ingratiate yourself with colleagues is wasted


In 6 months?? I can remember situations in the past where people were hired and then fired 2 weeks later because a contract was lost. Mostly in aerospace/defense industry.


The startup I was in in the first bust (2001) hired/relocated people 2 weeks before laying everyone off.


In 2001 I had a friend get a job and then get fired with severance before his start date!


That sounds amazing. How do I get in on that ride? :)


Find a company that thinks it's doing well, tell them you can start in three weeks, and then pray for failure?


Unfortunately whenever we test intercessory prayer we find that it doesn't work.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16569567/


Yep. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (when I was in college) I worked for a company that did a round of layoffs and they let one of their new AS400 engineers go on their first day of work. Totally unprofessional.


[flagged]


What's with all the astroturfing for that website?

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...


Definitely looks very suspect.


Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired?


> Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired?

Not great at all.

For anyone reading your resume in the future, it's impossible to know if you were let go due to no fault of your own, or if you were let go for cause after a probationary period expired.

I personally don't hold a single short job against people, but the reality is that having a 6-month job followed by a couple months off on your resume will have a negative impact when some hiring managers read your resume.

It's also 6 months (+ time off) that you can't accomplish much of anything because you were ramping up and then had the rug pulled out from under you. Having a 6-12 month setback in your career isn't a huge deal when you've been working for 20 years, but it can be a huge setback for juniors.


> For anyone reading your resume in the future, it's impossible to know

Just write why on your resume? The dates will check out or not.


Unfortunately, most of the fired-for-cause people also claim that they were just laid off, hence the uncertainty.


Honestly, the sort of hiring managers who rely on heuristics like that might not be the best ones to work for.

Even juniors can structure their resumes as a narrative. Mine has a brief "felt stagnant and decided to try #vanlife for a year" section.

People like a story. The trick is to avoid automated hiring funnels.


Really? Especially in a market like this, I would have assumed more hiring managers would understand.

What do you think about new grads having to switch not long after because of bad work environment, bait-and-switch, etc? I hope such a negative outlook is not that prevalent.


> Really? Especially in a market like this, I would have assumed more hiring managers would understand.

Depends entirely on the job and company.

If someone is hiring average developers for average or below-average pay at a no-name company that gets 1 organic resume submission per week, they're going to overlook it and bring the person in.

If someone is hiring top developers at a hot tech company with high pay that attracts 1000s of impeccable resume submissions per week, they can't interview everyone. They might only screen 10% of resumes because that's all they can handle. At this level, competition is so fierce and the applicants are so strong that you have to look for any reason to drop someone from that 10% who get through. Having a short job followed by a resume gap could be enough of a signal to get you bumped in favor of any number of perfect resumes.

Adjust expectations accordingly for companies between the two extremes.

> What do you think about new grads having to switch not long after because of bad work environment, bait-and-switch, etc? I hope such a negative outlook is not that prevalent.

I think everybody gets a mulligan and I personally wouldn't hold it against a junior. A single data point isn't a trend.

However, I would still question the candidate thoroughly about it. Unfortunately, there are many people who leave otherwise decent jobs because their expectations are too far detached from reality. When someone's definition of a "bad work environment" is being expected to participate in code review (true story), the problem wasn't with their employer. Some basic questioning can usually get to the bottom of this, but it's more common than you might expect.


I've stayed at crappy companies for a couple of years to avoid this on resume.

With how racist and sexist many companies are now, it's getting harder to find a safe one to hire into where I can just do my job and not get involved in political stuff.


> For anyone reading your resume in the future

Then don't list it.


Sounds like an egoist perspective, which is fine if that's your ideology.

I think most people would see this as a loss for the small firm (note that the firms size matters). The cost of an employee is pretty high for small shops and salary is just one of the line items that come with OP's employment. Additionally, severance is rarely offered in positions less than 1 yr, even then it's optional.


No thanks. Spending 6 months getting ramped up and finally productive only to be let go and have to start the search all over again sounds like my nightmare.


Wait, you take it easy for six months when onboarding? That’s an interesting strategy but can’t say I’d recommend it to a junior to mid-level engineer.


>Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired?

Nah that'll torch your resume for years. Unless you're a total rockstar otherwise, I'd be terrified to explain a 6 month stint.


You only need to worry if you have a series of very short stints, especially if there's any gap between them.

But one six month stint is fine, especially if you can explain it away with something pithy about how the economy tanked and the company shed a significant percentage of its workforce.


Depends honestly. If you have a collective experience that affected the industry it’s easy to explain. It’s more of a red flag if it’s a constant even during good times IMO


As a one-off, during a rocky economic time? Not really. And I say that as someone who has mostly (except during dot-com) long employment times.


Then don't put it on your resume!


> Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market.

I know it doesn't make your experience any better, but this is *not* a harsh job market. Yes, some companies are pulling back/slowing down/pausing hiring, but there are still far more software jobs available than people to fill them.

> What companies or roles will be more resilient?

Those that are or can quickly become profitable. Most startups are NOT profitable because they chase growth at all costs. This may change as cheap and easy money dries up.

> And how as a SWE / tech industry professional, specially the ones starting their careers like me, can prepare?

Don't do anything different. You had one company pull out on you. That happens all the time for a multitude of reasons. Don't be discouraged. Apply for jobs at a range of companies, from start-ups to profitable SaaS companies to companies outside the typical "tech" wheelhouse.


> Don't do anything different. You had one company pull out on you. That happens all the time for a multitude of reasons. Don't be discouraged. Apply for jobs at a range of companies, from start-ups to profitable SaaS companies to companies outside the typical "tech" wheelhouse.

This, I think OP is reading too much into a single rejection. Maybe they're right, maybe not, who knows. Individual companies do wacky things all the time. Startups in particular tend to be more volatile and may be risk-adverse depending on where they are in funding cycles. Try looking for jobs with larger stable companies with reliable revenue streams. I work at one and we've been actively hiring the entire time.


2001 was a harsh job market. 2008 was a harsh job market.

I think 2022 is still a better job market than most of the past decade.


So far. We are early in the cycle. Hiring freezes and layoffs are just starting.

If this keeps on for multiple years (like the dot com bust) then it will get very painful.


> but there are still far more software jobs available than people to fill them

As a contractor I was pulled out the second thing started to turn ugly when covid came in. At that time, they were a lot more people looking for work than job offers. Agencies I was in contact confirmed every position they had got filled with > 100 resume received for each in the span of a few days.


This. Basically unless you know good people who can’t find work, not just having a harder time changing jobs to make more, you are not in a hard market.


I dropped out of school in 1999, and got laid off in 2001 at the start of that recession. I couldn't get a job in 2001 or 2002, so I went back to school and got scholarships to live off of, and graduated in 2003. Recession was still ongoing but I got lucky and had a friend from the first job help me get a job, but other than that, I wasn't getting a lot of interviews.

I had friends who were getting hired and then laid off just a few weeks later. One guy lucked out and got hired and fired with severance before his start date.

Job searching during a recession isn't fun. Going back to school with scholarships, if you can get them, is a good stopgap. You'll get money to live as well as extra education to make a stronger application when the recession ends.

Otherwise, work your network. Find friends who were lucky enough to get jobs and ask for referrals. Work on open source projects and try to make friends with the senior people on the project, who might like your work and get you a job.


>had a friend from the first job help me get a job

This is the part of the story that OP needs to key in on.

OP: Network. Network Network Network. I've been at 2 FAANG in 7 years. I don't write code. I make good money. Friends got me jobs both times.

Do whatever you have to do to make friends with people in the industry where you want to work. Go to the bars they hang out in. Go to meet-ups. Go to lectures open to the public. Network on HN.


This can be hit and miss so needs some persistence. For me, not living in SF or even the USA, there is not really a tech culture to the point where the Pizza delivery person wants to talk about Monads (a story I read somewhere...).

However if you are not in a tech city, and don't want to move to one, then online is great. Here is what you can do.

1. Find stuff on Show HN or HN (or Reddit etc.) generally that you are super excited about. Genuinely. For example with me: I probably should be excited about self driving cars, but I am actually way more excited about that self-hosted wiki in a single HTML file, for example.

2. See how to connect to the people. You could send a cold email, but it is a bit sucky and desperate. It is better if you "do" something fun online with them. Maybe help them on the Github, submit or review PRs, join the chat server and talk, build something and let them know about it, use it for free (maybe using their thing, or complementary) etc. This should be effortless because remember you are super excited.

3. That's it. Be a human, see where it goes. You may or may not find out about jobs. You might get bored. But doing 1 and 2 enough a great job or opportunity will be found out.

This is more like: build and connect with people for their coolness, and let the occasional job opportunity present itself. You still need to do interviews, and come across like a good worker and will add a lot of value and all that jazz. But this is about finding stuff that may not even be advertised. And also most advertised jobs are a bit shit. So it acts as a filter.


> However if you are not in a tech city, and don't want to move to one, then online is great. Here is what you can do.

I live 40 miles north of Wichita Kansas USA. There's no tech - there's no city even.

Here's what I did: I got to know a recruiter in Wichita. Turns out she's a rock star - one of the leaders in the region at recruting tech. Met a guy on an flight from Atlanta to Wichita. We got together and talked geek a few times. The three of us started a Meetup in Wichita where we talk geek every other month or so. We generally get 15-50 folks depending on the time of year and topic. Last meeting I got two off handed job offers (I'm not looking). I've gotten a previous position the same way.

Tech is everywhere. The typical attendee to our Meetup is a developer or analyst at a regional bank, an airplane manufacturer, or farm credit agency. Nothing fancy, but great jobs for this area.

I'm not a very social person, but I do like to talk geek. There are lots of folks like me everywhere. Folks want to learn. Get together and teach each other.


You wouldn't happen to live in Stubbville where the people train leaves from?

But seriously, that's awesome what you did. You did the hard work so those other 20 people could benefit.


>This is more like: build and connect with people for their coolness, and let the occasional job opportunity present itself.

This is an excellent summary. I'll add: people like helping people. They like getting people jobs, they like seeing other people succeed, and they like mentoring people, even casually. Use that to your advantage, and don't forget to lend a hand to the next person on your way up the ladder.


All but one of the jobs I've had in my 4+ decades of mucking with computers have been through networking. (Even the gig I had as a dishwasher in high school was a referral through a friend).

That one job that I got at a generic Silly Valley job fair? It was the place where I learned the term "Train Wreck".

Network, network, network. Oh yeah.


It’s hard to say if your experience is isolated to a single job. No?


Unclear what you're asking. Generally I've stayed 5-8 years at any one company (the most so far was 11). My time at a few startups were far shorter than that, for pretty guessable reasons.


Unfortunately this will be a 3-sigma recession. Once every 100 year type of thing. The last one lasted 10 years followed by a major world war.

If you want to look at what happened to advanced economies that got a taste of credit bubbles Japan is a very good example. 40 years later and still have not reached their ATH.

So if that dot com bubble lasted 2 years, this recession will last a lot longer.

In addition the door is closing on entry level junior SWE positions other than FANG. Many businesses do not want fresh grads or bootcamp coders. The tools have gotten so good that they have automated/replaced much of the grunt work. So it is down to experience.

Generation Z is utterly screwed and its sad because they live in the product of the world created by our generation and the previous.

We are witnessing the beginning of the end of small governments. The only path to stability is no longer the markets but a large government that struggles with growing wealth gap, aging population, healthcare.

As in the past, 3-sigma recession was always followed by a global armed conflict. George Soros talk at Davos confirmed this.


And yet everything will return to normal in 8 months time


You are grossly misunderstanding the situation if you actually believe this to be the case.


The market is emotion driven. With rising stock everyone touts they won't sell during the hard times, but when the hard times hit everyone sings the tune of gloom. We literally have zero idea what the market will bring.


Nobody really knows what will happen, but we are at an inflection point. It is very hard to believe that the market will reach new highs in 8 months.


The good thing though is that history is basically meaningless as far as predicting any of this.

The bright side to all this is there isn't much hope to get out of this besides software.

Life doesn't have a low volatility, constant upward drift towards personal nirvana. This is going to be a big bump in the road but things will get better on the other side. We eventually cleared and went way beyond the dot com bubble and we will go way beyond the past 15 years at some point in the future.


Why is that unfortunate? You stand to make millions if you’re correct and willing to put your money where your mouth is.


Some people just don't like risk. Lets say that you believe there is a 25% chance that this is the big one where the American centered world order comes to an end, it will happen sooner or later but this could be it. How much would you be willing to bet on that? The average returns are great, but if you miss it by 5 or 10 years now you lost all of that. That is if the paper you got afterwards have any meaning, a big enough bust will make it hard to cash out any gains.


Do yourself a favor though and don’t get any student loans. You’ll be setting yourself up for a future of pain.


Contrarian advice: This is the best time to take on student loans. We are entering a structural shift in how our global economy fueled by a credit bubble post 08.

It is going to be much much worse than 2008 and 2000, combined.

They are not going to be able to collect student loans for a very long time.


Well, about half a year ago would have been the perfect time to get a loan, before rates went up.


In Sweden the interest on student loans is about as low as it can get. It is pretty much the most favorable loan possible, even in a recession.


That’s really bad advice unless you’re going into a field where you can’t possibly ever pay it back.

My sister wouldn’t be a pharmacist without student loans and she is about as far from living in pain as someone can get.


>That’s really bad advice unless you’re going into a field where you can’t possibly ever pay it back.

This is really bad advice if a degree doesn't increase your salary enough to offset the cost.

>My sister wouldn’t be a pharmacist without student loans

She would if the degree didn't cost out of pocket in the first place.


This is your advice for the first person on my mom’s side of the family to graduate from college, “don’t follow your dreams because education should be free”?

That’s how they keep the dirty okies who moved to California during the dust bowl (aka my grandparents) as second class citizens. My parents sacrificed a lot to send her to college. I mean, a lot.


Just to give you my own experience right now, I literally just accepted a new job yesterday after job hunting for 3-ish weeks. I had multiple job interviews, even more job interview requests.

I don't say this to brag, so I apologize if it comes off that way. I just wanted to give you what could be a cancelling-out anecdata point to your own experience. I wouldn't let it get you down too much. Keep hunting and keep applying, I doubt the recession will get to a point where NOBODY is hiring :)

If you need another job board resource, try out "Hired.com". Here's a referral link from me for it (full disclosure I benefit from you using this!):

[link redacted]

I found it to be an extremely effective tool for finding interviews, or I wouldn't recommend it.

I wish you all the luck possible on your hunt; Sometimes it's just that -- luck. Just keep perservering and don't be too proud to ask for help from anyone and everyone!


You're right. We've only hit "not as good as it has been of late" phase. Also a lot of newer people have probably never experienced a bad job market, so even this is concerning.

It can get a lot worse. We'll see what happens, but there's good reason for people to be concerned about this happening. I think it's fine for people to be asking for advice on how to approach here.


Totally agree with you on that account, I don't fault OP for asking this at all! Just wanted to put my 2¢ in here too. I hope OP gets plenty of luck and assistance with their search!

It's gonna be rough for a bit, but it's like with the market. If you think it's bad right now, just zoom out a bit. Even with things slumping a bit, we're still in a pretty good job market in our industry.


Got my last job thanks to Hired. It was my first time using it, and I had a good experience. I'd use it again.

Main benefit of Hired is I could set my target salary ahead of time and the people contacting me knew and agreed to what I was looking for, instead of having to dig it out of the interview process elsewhere, and I still had about 10 companies reach out to me through there.

In comparison, pretty much every recruiter that contacted me on LinkedIn were giving me ranges at least 20% lower.


Went to sign up on your and sibling (to mine) comment's recommendation; I'm pretty sure this is not compliant:

> You agree to receive subsequent email and third-party communications, which you may opt out of, or unsubscribe from, at any time.

(On trying to proceed without ticking:)

> You must opt in to proceed


@dang If you wouldn't mind helping a guy out, I need to remove this link from my post but I cannot edit the post anymore. I don't believe I was supposed to post the link on HN like this and I need to prevent others from clicking it please...

TO ANYONE ELSE: Please don't click that link anymore!


Sending an email to <hn@ycombinator.com> will give much better odds of dang or another mod noticing this in time.


thanks! done.


I didn't even notice the link until you told me not to click it, and then you bet I noticed it!


I'm not surprised (unfortunately, and I am truly sorry for this).

Don't look to the 2008 recession for an idea of how things may go. Look to the 2000 (Tech Bubble Burst) recession. In that one, the bottom dropped out of the tech market. Web designers were especially hard hit.

I have family that works for Intel, and they say that Intel tends to actually increase hiring in bear markets. I suspect that's because they are getting bargains, and preparing for the inevitable upswing, so they will be in a position to jump on the up elevator when things turn around.

I guess it depends on the company. Companies that are running on fumes (highly leveraged) are likely to have a tough time. Companies with conservative approaches may do better.


Biggest difference between now at 2000 is companies have real customers and revenue. 2000 was a completely different beast and conditions that set that off aren't anywhere close. Doesn't mean it can't get bad but 2000 is not the place to look for a playbook.


Two more key differences:

- In 2000, people were talking about the future being about outsourcing engineering work to lower cost-of-living countries. To some extent that's happened, but companies also see tech as integral to their survival and have realized that their core engineering teams need to be in the same time-zone. - In 2000, tech was for tech companies. Now, every large bank has a huge technology team. Every company in logistics has a large tech team. Every retailer needs good engineers. In 2000, there were a few niche websites online. Now, a strong online presence is essential even for stores like Home Depot.

There's no question that the market was overheated, but it's too early to call doom here. The NASDAQ is still up about 50% from where it was 3 years ago, before COVID, even after the recent drop. That's a 14% yearly average return... still a crazy amount. At it's peak, it was up over 100% from May 24, 2019... a level that just wasn't sustainable.


This is true. The biggest issue imho is people expecting their comp to be unimpacted. A company like DoorDash or Uber has a ton of revenue, for sure, Uber just loses a ton every quarter. They won’t go out of business but they may drop another 90+% in value from here.


Some companies can certainly justify their frothy valuations, and a bunch certainly don't. Many of these companies need the capital infusions to stay afloat, and I can see a bunch folding as capital market risk tolerances start to contract.


I think what's looming feels worse than 2000. 2000 was just a hype bubble of the previous 2-3 years that burst. That actually worked out great for me, as my company just offered unpaid-but-full-benefits sabbaticals.

This feels like the debt bubble that was launched by Reaganomics is now imploding, we're reeling back into the 70s stagflation with lame-duck / impeached leaders, increasing inner-city violence, race riots, cold war. Except this time we will already have trillions in deficit and won't be able to pull any Reaganomics tricks to get out of it.


Is there strong evidence yet that this is a 2010-bubble-pop vs a 2020-bubble-pop? The last few years were particularly nuts in a lot of speculative markets. Big difference between back to normal or even a bit slowed from 2019 and a huge downturn, but I'm not seeing indicators yet that things are gonna fall off a cliff. People are still spending a lot of money and demand for a lot of things is still high - that might not continue, but I don't know what people are basing the "worst in a century!!" type reactions off.

Edit: the worst case certainly might come true, but people are pattern matching on like n=1 scenarios here. That's why people have been predicting collapse as long as I've been alive... but the more people are prone to jump to conclusions and panic immediately, the more it might be self-fulfilling.


Haha yeah I think I've probably predicted collapse annually since like 2010. So either you can safely ignore me, or we're due for a 12x apocalypse.


> People are still spending a lot of money and demand for a lot of things is still high

Yes, that is how you create a gigantic crash. Look at this graph, click 25 years, does this look to go in the right direction? The US economy is shifting more and more towards consumption of imported goods instead of producing things itself, this isn't sustainable. You see how the 2008 crash got the curve back and track, a similar thing should happen this time around as well.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade


I mean, the crash, by definition, is when the demand stops, yeah? "A crash is coming because currently demand is still high" is a bit incomplete as far as theories go. That graph matches my original point about the last two years being very different from 2010-2020 - but it doesn't tell me anything about where to expect things to "correct" to or whether or not such a correction would be good or bad - a lot of people would love to see a US spending shift back to spend on services/experiences rather than manufactured goods. If you look at the 2000 dot com bubble, for instance, that line didn't move as much as in the 2008 crash. Does that tell us that tech valuations popping doesn't affect other things as much as other crashes might? I don't know - but I don't believe you can know for sure either on knowing what'll happen next. We've been defying predictions for years!

Is that crazy luck, or is it that the predictions are extrapolating from small samples against an ever-changing background and so basically just throwing darts? Everything is unprecedented, both good and bad, at this point in human history.


Yeah, it could play out differently. But it could also play out to be the largest crash in American history. We don't know, so don't bet anything important on it not being a crash.

Worst case the graph tells the story of the rest of the world shifting their industries to be less dependent on the American one, ending American dominance, that is how this would lead to the biggest crash in American history. Best case USA just slowly starts to shift back to producing things internally and creating new goods others wants to import and things stabilize.

We will see what happens, but it is very rare for curves to shift without huge consequences.


You're looking an a macro economic indicator that only politicians seem to care about, Most other countries don't even bother to measure it.

Trade deficit is just as much an indicator for foreign sentiment to hold US cash, as it is to import non-US made stuff.

All that indicator says is that consumer behavior changes during a recession.

You can argue the same thing with private debt.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/private-debt-to-g...

https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2017/KleinBoudreaux...


I don't know about your experience, but 2008 was devastating to people just starting out in their careers. So far, the current economic situation feels mild in comparison.


Just before ‘08 fuel prices sharply rose because OPEC was fucking around.

Currently, fuel prices sharply rose because Russia is fucking around which is also causing food prices to rise due to fertilizers and a lot of grain not able to make it to market.

I can tell you from the last time when people couldn’t afford to buy gas to get to work and they were interviewing truckers on national news programs on how they will have to park their trucks if fuel prices go any higher things are definitely heading in the wrong direction.

Add in inflationary pressures eating away at peoples’ reserve savings (those lucky enough not to be living paycheck to paycheck) and things are probably not as mild as they seem if you have some cushy job sitting behind a computer screen — just saying to put it in perspective not trying to insult anyone, the “view from the trenches” is vastly different IMHO.


> for an idea of how things may go. Look to the 2000 (Tech Bubble Burst) recession.

Agree. In aftermath of the .com implosion it took about 4 years for hiring to come back to a more normal pace. It was a good time to go back to school to do a Masters degree.

> I have family that works for Intel, and they say that Intel tends to actually increase hiring in bear markets.

Having worked for Intel and knowing folks still there, it's very much a mixed bag. I hear there are areas where headcount is frozen. But there are other areas where Gelsinger is investing heavily that are very eager to hire - in this case that doesn't have much to do with a looming recession (or not), it's that they find themselves behind in a lot of areas and they're spending to try to catch up.


>It was a good time to go back to school to do a Masters degree.

Why? You mean because people couldn't find a job so they went back to school instead?


Yes, exactly. That's is what I did. I did pick up some contract work while doing my Masters back then, but the pickings were pretty sparse in my non-silicon valley area. Usually 3 to 6 month contracts with breaks between which allowed me to focus on the schooling. There were a couple of years there in the early 2000s where I only worked about 3 months. I was fortunate to have savings built up during the booming 90s to enable me to get by during bad times in the early 2000s.


> Look to the 2000 (Tech Bubble Burst) recession. In that one, the bottom dropped out of the tech market. Web designers were especially hard hit.

I wonder if it's gonna be mobile app designers/devs this time round?


Might be. I don't particularly care, for myself (I'm done with the rat race), but there's a whole ton of folks that have the job description that may have a hard time of it.

It seems that a lot of software, these days, is "full stack" (SaaS) stuff. The app is really just the frontend. If the frontends get clobbered, the backends are just behind. Basic "food chain" stuff.

UPDATED TO ADD:

I took a peek at your HN profile, and it sounds like you have a background after my own heart (monkeying with hardware).

That's a fairly serious skillset, and not for the faint of heart. I'd say that you may have a better chance than many.


How about mobile game devs?


First against the wall i'm afraid.


I've had meta and microsoft cancel on me. I also went all the way through the interview loop at one company, received very positive feedback but was told that they had decided to close the position without filling it. There's definitely a pullback and it started about 2 months ago.

Update: As of now, about half of the companies I've interviewed with at one level or another, have abruptly halted their process due to economic concerns.


I had a similar interview experience with Disney recently. Going so far as them telling me I would have an offer letter in hand within 2 weeks, followed by silence. When I reached back out to them they basically played dumb about it and said some phrase about how "their hiring needs are always changing."


You dodged a bullet. They're notoriously poor employer. Think Amazon's culture without the resume cache.


It’s coming up to June when MSFT does yearly planning and determining headcount so expect to hear nothing back or that they are in a holding pattern.

This happened to me last year and after asking around happens every year.


Not sure about other places but MSFT recruitment just reached out to me today.


Just make sure that it's an internal recruiter seeking to fill an actual position, not someone on contract that's just fishing for applicants.


Every team at MSFT does their own hiring, so experiences there won't be uniform.


Do they literally do the whole hiring process, or do take use a central hiring department to help them. It sounds really inefficient to have every team duplicate hiring personnel? Though of course you need the team to be in control of the process.

Do the teams organise any other company wide functions in that way? Hardware procurement, maybe?


There is a central HR department that creates job postings, employs recruiters and sourcers, and handles standardized onboarding processes, but conducting interview loops and making hiring decisions is handled by each team individually. As opposed to companies like Google, where as I understand it, you get hired and then find a specific position.


It has to be team based. I currently have an active offer with Microsoft, and had multiple conversations with the hiring manager last week.

I have gotten verbal numbers. Nothing in writing though so it could always turn out a dud. Which will suck, but one step at a time.

Satya also announced last week that everyone below ~L67 is getting an adjustment to their salary.


Sorry, I'm not familiar with Microsoft's internal structure, but do they have (I assume over) 67 different salary bands?

Wow...


For software engineers, the numbers start at 59 (as in, a new grad hire is an L59 on their first day): https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Amazon,Microsoft&trac...


This is most likely very team-/location-dependent.


This is not the situation for any startups who have already secured funding with a decent runway for expansion. As a software engineer, you're living in a golden age for your profession. Most tech companies are offering significantly higher salaries and bonuses now than pre-pandemic. There are not nearly enough engineers to fulfill the needs of all the successful tech companies. Best advice I can give you is to make sure your coding skills are up to snuff. Use sites like leetcode or a book like cracking the coding interview to make sure your technical interview skills are top tier and you can get hired by any major tech company with a 120k-300k salary to start depending on the company and your skills. As far as roles, data and machine learning engineers are seeing the biggest jump in salaries upwards of $25k bump in last year or two. Good luck!


This post comes off as dated. What you're describing is how the market was in summer 2021. Not spring 2022.

The paradigm shift occurred in March and the sentiment continues to chill each week. Any signs of a "golden age" are the remnants of decision making that occurred sometime in 2021.


> The paradigm shift occurred in March...

Where can I watch to see updates on this topic? Stock market I guess? Is this due to Ukraine/China (production reliance) or just the aftermath of pandemic?


You can also read the news of tech layoffs and hiring freezes


With a quick google you'll find tons of recent job posts for software engineers and drastic stats for unfilled software engineer positions. Meta, Netflix, and Twitter come to mind as big tech that are struggling, but they are stand outs because pretty much all the other tech like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, etc. are still actively hiring and happily scooping up engineers that are being laid off. The impact on the hiring market for engineers has been negligible so far.


I've been interviewing as well, and plenty of companies have either gone totally silent or cited hiring freezes after very positive interviews and even some offers. It really burns to put in the hours and have things go cold, but I try to remind myself how much worse it has been and could be. It's alright to have to work a little harder at times like this.

I'm looking for much different roles than you are, so our experiences will differ. My advice for anyone would be to be persistent though. There's not much to lose by keeping at it and maintaining good spirits, but there's a lot to lose by giving up. You could be surprised to find that connections you make now are rewarding when the economy is looking better, too.

The job market isn't a reflection of you, and losing out on opportunities will be easier than ever, but not by any fault of your own. Give it time and do your best, and you'll find something.

Good luck, keep your head up!


Wholesome and sound advice!


I bet the non-profitable, feeding-on-VC startups are getting worried and we'll see more of this. I work at a non-VC-funded, profitable, stable, small place and we're desperately trying to hire. I've never made FAANG/startup income, and I've always felt a little left-out because of that. But we've been stable for nearly 30 years, and have never had the big layoffs or hiring freezes including, dot-com bust, 2008, 2020 COVID lockdowns, and now. We're low variance, so the upside isn't as crazy, but then again the downside has been historically pretty limited too. My advise is to find a smaller, stable, profitable place to interview at.

edit: grammar


> My advise is to find a smaller, stable, profitable place to interview at.

This is the answer. Our organization is tiny and works in an extremely boring niche - B2B banking consultants & related software shenanigans. We've been at it since the 90s.

If you adjust your expectations just a little bit (i.e. you are now OK using "boring" stuff like .NET/Java), you might be able to get something much more quickly than otherwise.

Regardless, the market has spoken and we must all adapt.


Yes, forgot boring! We're kind of boring. Our customers are boring, our technology is boring (Java 8!), but the problems we solve are actually pretty exciting - we just solve them in a boring way :)


Right there with you. Small manufacturing company, been going steady for 51 years, boring as can be (20 year old PCB layout software and straight C on bare metal Arm Cortex), but we've found a good niche solving problems for customers that nobody else will. Being able to attract workers is definitely difficult though, as we cannot pay what the big guys around here can.


There are an incredible amount of jobs, niche jobs, that exist at companies like this all over. Small companies, in great niches, that have good industrial customers, that will continue to exist and will not be easily optimized away by some SaaS startup.

There's also good existing small companies that are in more exciting tech spaces, that are hiring, that are not startups.

Shout out to Fastmail, my former employer, as they are one of those nice small companies, seem to get lots of love here, and they're lovely people. And last I checked, they're hiring as well.

Even in the 'SaaS' space there are boring but profitable small comapnies that fulfill automation for niche use cases. I just picked up on that we are using for our CDN that cloudfront doesn't being to cover. The pricing is good, the company is small, stable, and I'll continue to use them as long as I can.

So... they're out there, but they certainly aren't FAANG and a lot of times, they aren't wild startups either.

Part of this leads to less "popularity" for potential employees. You've never heard of ABC Bearings & Co, and they haven't manufactured Bearings in 100 years, but they fulfill important roles in the roller industry. Not Boeing, but just as important.

I think this is because startups spend incredible amounts of time trying to grow and to find customers, so naturally they advertise, are in the news, on HN, etc. In a more boring economic sphere (IE: no exponential growth, a few solid players that often times are more cordial than cutthroat competitive) you may never hear of these places.


> Being able to attract workers is definitely difficult though, as we cannot pay what the big guys around here can.

Maybe visibility is an issue, too? I like boring work for a decent (not excessive, stable) wage. But finding these companies is difficult. Most of the ones I come across are rarely ever hiring because their turnover is low.


I'm a dev at a VC-funded SaaS startup in California. We're still in a growth trajectory (doubled headcount last year, on track to do so again this year, just hit a headcount of 500).

Our industry is such that we're not too worried about the recession -- people tend to buy our product because it's significantly cheaper than paying one more employee and it tends to make teams in a particular corporate department far more efficient. When COVID hit, we had a surge in sales.

My last company (larger & much older) also tended to get increased sales when the market slumped. Their product is key to helping governments, utilities, and other companies operate more efficiently.

So there are still great startups (and larger companies) that are hiring. I'd suggest looking for ones that have a recession-tolerant market or business model.


The fact that you cite VC funded and then headcount as your only metric of success is hilarious.


I wasn't trying to communicate level of success, just economic context and the fact that jobs are available there.

But since you ask: $57M ARR, 117% NRR, 97% YoY growth, 51 NPS, named a best place to work in [insert regional business journal] for the last 4 years in a row, customers really love us, and employees really love working here.

I don't know how reliable Glassdoor is considered to be these days, but we're rated 4.8 stars by employees, 97% recommend to a friend, and 92% approve of the CEO.

Your comment seems rather cynical, but I hope to at least demonstrate that there do exist good VC-backed startups.

Oh, and we're hiring! If anyone wants to know where this is, my email is in my profile.


Thanks, these are the numbers that people care about -- Nobody wants to take a job at a company that's just going to be hitting layoffs in 6-12 months, as many will do. I'll keep an eye on you guys and see how things fare over the next 18 months. Customer growth is slowing (15-20% YoY) so most of that revenue growth was from upselling and price increases, which is a a lemon you can only squeeze so many times.


Not OP but if I may, these numbers alone also does not necessarily indicate that you can successfully weather a downturn in near future or is well on the path to future success. Your headcount doubled last year and so did your revenue, maybe you doubled your sales team and the model won't scale further (I don't know what is your industry/product is so just speculating). Your revenue per employee is ~$114K, if most of these employees are in tech, maybe there is already too much bloat that you may need to shed soon if the growth does not materialize. If half of your customers just came onboard last year, maybe you are being too quick to boast a 117% NRR. NPS, Glassdoor and best place to work can also be dismissed as easily manipulatable stats.

I am not trying to dismiss anything or being cynical but just trying to point out that a lot of things goes into determining if you are a "good" VC backed startup. In my opinion, a smaller growth in headcount (compared with revenue growth) would have been a better indicator of a healthy startup.


For context the company is Floqast, accounting software SaaS. They raised $110M in July 2021 at 40x revenue (with an aggregate $93M raised over the 4 years prior). They’re proudly waving that Unicorn banner everywhere they can. 180 employees end of 2020 and 500 today on the way to 725.


The fact he cited that they have a successful product didn't register with you?


You mean that product that had the same temporary surge in demand as everyone else?


And if it were “successful” they would be “profitable” and not “VC funded”.


FAANGs are slowing down and freezing hiring too. It's not just startups that are worried.


I hope the 3-5 emails a week from recruiters hiring for Amazon will stop then.


In 2008, Goldman Sachs had their M&A department come in as usual, working on deals all day. They didn't close a single deal in over a year. (This is hearsay, btw)

So with that being the only anecdotal data point I have, the emails won't stop until the recruiters become fewer.


I imagine that FAANGs are sensitive to offering higher and higher proportions of equity pools to keep up with total comp expectations.


I imagine FAANGs will mostly let RSU compensation drift downward as the stock market does.


It will for unvested past grants. New future grants are named in $ not shares, so have to be explicit.


My grants were named in shares.


You don’t have to imagine it. Amazon publicly said as much and I believe Microsoft made a similar announcement.


There are also recently IPO'd companies that are dependent on share dilution. This was in the Wallstreet Journal today.


Mind sharing a link to that article?


I can tell you two of the BigTech companies that are definitely not slowing down - at least in their cloud divisions.


> I've never made FAANG/startup income

> we're desperately trying to hire

Do you wonder why people aren’t joining?


Yeah. We can’t compete with the numbers I see the SV folks making. Most of our work is directly billed to the customer so we need reasonable rates if we’re ever going to win bids. We can’t just live off of monopoly-level ad revenue.


The extremely high paid FANG income is a thing of the past, already down 50% ytd. I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.


Completely untrue. Just finished up my interview process and my experience was that comp is higher than ever at the strong FANGs (I.e not Netflix). Microsoft and Amazon just massively bumped their comp maximums. Google was good as ever. Pre-ipos cash comp is still very strong although they are currently relying on previous stock valuations so the comp isn’t as good as they claim right now


What do you mean by finished up your interview process?

And when was your experience, and what was comp for all these places?


If you think those comps were only from last two years - I suggest you go back in historical data. $400k+ wages have been a thing well before the pandemic.


The truth is somewhere in the middle. High comps have existed forever, but they have also been handed out like candy the last few years.

If you're in the bay it might be hard to see, but high comps spread rapidly across the country, to Canada and to some parts of Europe. It became more commonplace hence why everyone and their dog has been trying to get into the industry.


Salaries at FANG have been cut 50% in the past 12 months? I have to give that a massive Citations Needed.


Total comp has likely come down, not salaries.

If a significant part of your comp is in stock, then yeah, that portion of your pay is down potentially 70% or more in six months (Netflix). There’s probably some employees at FAANG that are negative on their equity.


Netflix historically paid in all cash. Recently, they started letting their employees choose.


> Recently, they started letting their employees choose.

lol didn't want to be the last ones holding the bag. What a scumbag move.


paid cash on the way up, paying stock on the way down, lol


AAPL still up 10%+ YoY. Msft not technically FANG (MAGA?) and also up YoY.


They mean total comp, which is probably true since lots of people include their stock price appreciation when they talk about their total comp.


Even so, a 50% decline over the last 12 months is impossible. Of the FAANG companies, only Netflix is down more than 50%, and Netflix is notable for compensating people in mostly cash. Someone's compensation would have to be 100% stock and even then it wouldn't be down 50%.


I have yet to see comp go down at the high end.


High end tends to be equity heavy, and equity has dropped in value massively this year. Not sure how common it is to issue refresher grants of RSUs to top up the total comp.


Source?


The salary also depends on where you live. If you get a salary from a small company in a place where is cheap to live, you might have the same level of living as someone working for a FAANG in The Bay Area.


for FAANGers, how does everyone feel about their wild comps now that the stock prices have come back to earth?


Back down to whose earth?

Even if you’re only making $250K, that puts you well within the top 10% of earners in the US.

I think Amazon has seen the largest drop out of the BigTech companies and it is down 30% year to date. Amazon has been adjusting SDEs cash component up even before the crash.

Netflix should have never been put in the same category as the 1 trillion+ market cap companies.


I work at one of these companies and we're hiring https://activatedinsights.com/jobs/software-engineer-remote/


100% accurate. If you want to work at companies that don't make anything people buy, aren't profitable, and where the CEO's singular focus is raising another 18 months of runway, this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

But, if you work for employers like mine (we're hiring for multiple senior positions, by the way) all this is going to do in the short term is make hiring a bit easier. Honestly, I'm looking forward to the market getting a little more sanity in it. Bootstrapped or reasonably invested (e.g. non-VC) companies haven't been able to compete on comp in years.


There are hundreds if not thousands of positions at boring old big profitable enterprise shops like banks and government jobs that are humming along fine. I barely knew there was a dot com bust in 2000. I was working for a bill payment printing company.


I wrote about this just a couple of days ago! Our investors have been warning of a looming bear market for many months and now financing another round anytime soon looks rough.

If you want personal advice check this out:

https://www.towardssoftware.com/blog/economic-environment-fo...


> we're desperately trying to hire

Perhaps this is a good place to leave a link to your hiring page...


We’re small enough that it would tie my account to me. Not wanting to do that. Maybe the next Who’s Hiring I’ll have a throwaway ready and do that.


You'd be surprised by (probably) how easy would be to tie your account to you. But I respect the care to your own privacy.


If I _really_ cared, I'd never post publicly at all. Just trying to not be obvious who I am in real life. Every night when I plug in my phone and go to bed, I always say "good night NSA" because I assume I'm always being tracked :)


Yeah, totally agree you don't need to make it obvious.

But any smart, motivated actor can probably derive who you are from your posts.

You probably give away little hints about yourself, interests, tech you use, etc. Cross referencing with data leaks, public Github commits, LinkedIn profile, the time you usually post here (tells your TZ), etc, it's not far fetched to determine who you are...


I’m sure you’ll get some interests folks if you post where you work here on HN!


I’d like to. I’m always caught off guard when the Who’s hiring comes around and most of our HR dept isn’t on HN to make a post. I need to make a throwaway some time and post an ad here (not looking to tie my account to real life right now)


I am slightly amused your account name appears to be your real name =)


It’s not :). Its from when I was a poor grad student. I filled out a survey to get free stuff and purposely wrote very sloppy so they wouldn’t be able to send me follow up mail (back when people would send you real mail). They were able to decipher my mailing address but they got the name really mangled and sent it to Michael R. Peskin. So I use that as my pseudonym now.


Well played, didn’t see that one coming. =p


What are the pay ranges for the roles you have open?


It’s a pretty wide range. For juniors just out of college, I think we’re near 80-100, I’m at a principal level and am close to 200. We’re looking mostly for junior to mid. We’re a bit top heavy right now. It’s not SV levels plus equity like they get, but we don’t have unlimited budgets like the FAANGs. The owners just take a normal salary and all of the profits go to the employees as year end bonuses. So it’s pretty fair, I think.


My entry-level base salary, admittedly at a FAANG, ignoring equity/bonus, was $127k real.

So on the one hand, that you say you're doing $80-100k sounds low, to me. But $200k for a principal eng. sounds not too bad¹. So IDK.

¹it sounds "inline with what I'm making now, adjusted for experience / title differences. But it's crap compared to the current housing market.


If you want to be recession-proof, get a job at a non-software company (or in academia, state/city government, etc).

In theory, "programmer" is the same job whether you work for a startup or the Minnesota Dept. of Transportation, but in practice they feel like completely different industries. In one, you can make fantastic money but the interviews are famously difficult, the culture can be borderline abusive, and layoffs are a way of life. In the other, the money is only pretty good but you leave at 5, the toughest interview question you'll get is "Please name three design patterns," and your job is mostly immune to macro trends.


> In one, you can make fantastic money but the interviews are famously difficult, the culture can be borderline abusive, and layoffs are a way of life.

These generalizations are untrue for a lot of companies, and for a lot of teams. Software companies, even FAANGs, can be very relaxed and comfortable places to work. It all really depends on the team -- and you can end up with an abusive boss in any industry.

Job security depends on the nature of the recession. In 2008 a lot of government employees in California (and probably other states) got furloughed without pay for a while because the state government basically ran out of money.

Also, the pay difference for software engineers at tech and non-tech companies is not small. It's at least 4X, often more. If you work at an established tech company for several years and you aren't totally irresponsible, you will be able to save enough money to live for a long time without an income -- even while paying a Silicon Valley mortgage.


> Software companies, even FAANGs, can be very relaxed and comfortable places to work

And government can be very not relaxed, in both the same and different ways to high-pressure industry jobs.


Sure, but that's going to be about as rare as finding a mythical high pay, low stress, 0 pip job in famously negative companies. They absolutely exist, but there's almost no point in talking about them.


This is untrue in my experience.

I know several people who have worked as software engineers for local governments in California for the better part of a decade. Both of them had previously worked for large tech companies which you have definitely heard of. They both preferred the work environment of the private sector and there was a lot of stress in their government jobs over the same things that stress people out anywhere: interpersonal relations, bad management, deadlines, projects going off the rails, etc.

That stress was harder to deal with than it should have been, at those government jobs, because the environment is less flexible and a lot of the coworkers are, shall we say, not exactly top talent and underperformers stick around until they retire -- a PIP process would have been very handy! The level of drama at those jobs, over things that would be considered minor issues where I work, was unreasonable.

On the contrary, I have been at a large tech company for almost 5 years and I usually stop working between 5 and 6pm. I see the parking lot empty out around the time I'm leaving, so I know it's not just me. I've worked on a weekend twice, and one of those times I volunteered to do it. I have never been on call. I work in an org that employs hundreds of engineers and I know that most of them have a good work-life balance too -- and those who work on the high pressure teams have chosen to do so.


> > And government can be very not relaxed, in both the same and different ways to high-pressure industry jobs.

> Sure, but that’s going to be about as rare as finding a mythical high pay, low stress, 0 pip job in famously negative companies. T

If you think its hard to find, I suspect you haven’t worked in or around government much.


Of course these are generalizations. "All models are wrong, but some are useful." I'm sure there are some laid-back jobs at startups and some stressful jobs at the Minnesota Dept. of Transportation, but I also think it is generally fair to say that those are less common than the opposite.


To explain this more clearly: what I'm trying to say is that the different parts of the software industry seem more like a bimodal distribution than a smooth one. If you think broadly of the extremes in software jobs (say, "fresh college grads making $250k+ to use cutting-edge frameworks to build a 'doordash for pet food' app" on the one hand, and "SE3s making $120k to add features to a jankety legacy application that gets manually deployed once every three months" on the other), thinking of those as separate industries is a more useful mental model than thinking of them as two ends of the same industry.

I thought this was relevant because one is more recession-proof than the other, but that's hardly the only way that they're different. So my point probably came across muddled because I was referring to a larger distinction in the industry without describing it very well.


> It's at least 4X, often more.

i'd say, often 2X, sometimes more.

4x would be a case of being drastically underpaid.


I'd recommend the opposite approach and go for stable software companies as the best employers. Non-software companies usually see software as a cost that is often at the top of the list when layoffs come up. IMO working for a software company means not only better treatment (eg. see the recent discussions on staff vs. line jobs) but you get better stability as you are core to the business.

None of this applies to start-ups which are volatile in every industry. But if looking at established players I'd 100% rather work for a software company or, more specifically, any company where the software is core to what they do (ie. SaS companies, hardware+software companies, etc. all are usually good).


Not sure about that. Let's say you work for a bank. ATMs still need to work, wiring money still need to work, accounts still need to be tracked and new legal regulations still need to be implemented. I guess they aren't going to fire their IT department.


Better job in this case is the ATM company. They are the hardware/software vendor that has the better chance of being a good employer as the ATM is their product. Working for a bank on ATMs would probably suck.


This is a great point. I work for a medical device manufacturing company. Times have never been better for us. There was a dip in the beginning of Covid, but after a few months we just started sucking up clients from companies that went under.

Joining that industry was a conscious decision I made because I want to work for a company that makes tangible things, not "just" software. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with "just software" but I find it's more interesting when you're making widgets and the software needs to interface with the physical world.


Why do people really even try to compare FAANG/SV-companies with random government org?

In my experience and from talking to peers - random eng job in most parts of the country is less than or equal to $150k even for people with 10+ years. If you’re at FAANG with 10+ years - clearing $500k+ is reasonably accomplished.

Sure - one of those is markedly higher than the average random person in the US - the other is in the top 1% of household incomes off a single income. It’s markedly different.


Maybe because out of the 2.7 million developers in the US, most are “dark matter developers”?

I know plenty of developers who “only” make $150K-$160k a year and are living in their nice house in the burbs with 2.1 kids, the white picket fence in the “good school system” with a spouse making decent money and don’t have a care in the world.


I think these folks are often very different than FAANG crew tbh. That’s why I say - why bother comparing. It’s not the same even remotely.

People I work with at FAANG-etc tend to be top 10 school, upper class upbringing, want to go even higher, etc.

It’s different. It’s what you’d expect from doctors. I think different types of personalities are attracted to SV than to rest of the country. We’ve built the stereotype around the Midwest developer than the SV one though. The SV ones are just so different in background and ambition.


As someone who can sort of see things from both sides, I have opinions…

I graduated from a small unknown college in the south in 1996. I moved to the major metropolitan area where I still live after graduating and by 2000, I was making around $70K. For reference, my rent was $600 a month and the 2700 square foot brand new build I bought in the burbs in 2002 was $175K.

Life happened and by the time salaries for SV started getting crazy around 2012-2014, I was 40 years old, remarried and I had a wife and two teenage (step)sons in another 3000+ square foot house in the burbs that we had built in the good school system. I was the dark matter developer who was quite comfortable.

By 2017, I saw the writing on the wall, I knew I was going to plateau soon locally and my youngest was graduating in 2020. I knew I didn’t want to be a 46 year old software engineer at a large company. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was going to be content bumbing around smaller companies as “the adult in the room”.

I just happen to fall into a remote role in cloud consulting (cloud enterprise application development and deployment) at BigTech (yes full time with the same compensation structure as SDEs). I have former coworkers my age that did the same calculus. They had no interest in working in software development at a large company. They already had the life they wanted.

https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherma...


You get SV compensation and have to pay SV prices for everything. Not sure the level of living is better than getting non-SV payment while paying non-SV prices.


> Not sure the level of living is better than getting non-SV payment while paying non-SV prices.

SV prices apply to housing. Everything else you buy -- cars, computers, phones, clothing, food, etc. costs about the same everywhere. A Honda Civic or Tesla Model S, or an iPhone, or anything you see on Amazon, costs about the same in California and anywhere else in the country.

On an SV engineering salary, you end up in a situation where your housing is expensive but almost everything else feels very cheap. And you end up putting more money in savings, even after paying for housing, than most people could ever do. Early retirement is definitely achievable too.


Correct.

People are also completely missing the entire point of what I'm saying too. SV attracts a different kind of person. Your colleagues, neighbors, and peers are just wildly different than what you'd find in a midwestern governmental position.

Again - it's like comparing doctors to electricians. They are a very different set of people. If you don't care about those things then fine - but for those of us who want to be surrounded by those who are similar to us... Living in SV is kinda the only option.


It seems like bigtech gets you both of these, right? More bureaucratic and stable than startups, less abusive than startups, more stability and salary than either startups or "Minnesota DOT"-type places.


Even better: a software company that makes software for the government. And has actual revenue and long term contracts.

Yes we are hiring, email in bio.


Contractors are immediately brutalized in any sort of government budget cut. They go first, instantly.


Government contractors are different than private companies that sell to the government.


> I wanna know if during recessions recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies.

Yes, and they might lay people off. Hiring slows generally (and unemployment rises) during recessions.

For example, I was at Amazon in 2008-9 and their attitude was: "We think we'll be alright, but we're not taking any chances, so departments should expect to make due with their current staff for a while." Once the freeze was lifted we started hiring like crazy.


I interviewed at Amazon a few months into Covid and they were interviewing but not hiring to put people in their “recycled” status. Which means we’ll hire you but not in this exact role or this exact time.


This is totally anecdotal, but earlier this month, in a two week period, I interviewed with 8 different companies. None of them pulled out or hinted they were pulling out. I wrote about the experience here:

https://www.observationalhazard.com/2022/05/my-experience-wi...

I bring this up to present a counter to your experience and encourage you to keep applying. While I'm doubtless many companies have/will pull back, there are also many that are continuing to hire.


Thanks for you submission. I think it is not up to HN standards to draw conclusions from n=1 as OP did.


Extrapolating from one negative experience could be a sign of anxiety. I‘d focus on that.


To add on, but still anecdotal, my company announced slowed hiring, but all our current plans for hiring will be finalized. I'm interviewing multiple candidates (SWE and others) over the next few weeks.


I always get flak for this but here we go anyway: the key is to manage expectations in the short term.

First realize that the market you know is far from the norm. We were at the end of the longest bull run in history and the hottest tech job market in memory. These are things you can kiss good bye for a while: eye popping salaries with little experience, kombucha on tap and Prosecco Friday, headcount doubling every 6 months, 50% YoY stock growth...

Yes, your timing is bad and it sucks. Such is life. I graduated in 2008 into one of the worst economies in my country. Imagine living paycheck to paycheck working as a software engineer.

The good news is you have a few years of experience, so you are in a better position to weather this than a fresh grad. When the economy starts picking up again you'll be in an excellent position to take advantage of it.

This is a fact: big companies are still hiring and are very resilient. Deep pockets will take the chance to attract talent. Amazon still has a huge gap due to the great resignation and hasn't slowed down. Now is a good chance to join for a stable job during turbulent times.

This is an opinion: I truly believe many decacorns from the next generation will come out of this. The recession will clean up the undergrowth and leave room for the next rocketships to take off. Imagine being an early engineer at Google? that might be happening now. Of course the trick is to pick the right horse out of thousands.

What path you choose depends on your situation. If you want stability try big tech. If you want to play the lottery keep an eye open for startups.


I'm really skeptical of all the "sky is falling" talk. Asset prices have been wildly inflated since COVID opened the taps on QE. That they are now coming down to reality is the entire point. The Fed is doing its' job. This isn't 2008. There isn't a systemic risk. Revenues are strong, consumer spending is strong, and savings are at historical levels. A wildly inflated sector of the economy is being unwound, and there will be sore losers. But the bull case for the foreseeable future hasn't changed at all really.


I think an aspect is still true though. Many companies have been operating with an extreme growth mindset for a long time. Trying to achieve more than 40% yoy growth, getting investors to bankroll huge salaries and hiring pushes, etc. Many startups operate like this and leave sustainable profits as a problem for the future. (E.g. spend way more than revenue on hiring now and hope to be profitable later once you have more users.) That strategy relies on cash from investors.

I think these types of companies are driving the big salaries people see, which is impacting the larger hiring market. I can talk to my employer about a raise because my peers get hired at a higher rate too.

If companies adjust back into a more sustainable growth strategy, it’s likely salaries won’t continue to be as large, just because the hiring market stops driving big wage increases. And if investors aren’t willing to bankroll as much spending, companies will have to cut back on different costs if they aren’t profitable.

I think we’re still in a good career, especially at a stable company in a good financial position.

But the startup market is defined by initially unsustainable business strategies [1], so I think it’s fair to think some amount of instability is in the future if investors cut back.

1: by this I just mean the classic startup strategy which uses investor money to hire lots of devs and grow users, and then in X years, start monetizing to find profitability. It’s not sustainable until it becomes sustainable at the end, so there’s a lot of room for weird situations!


I don't think the sky is falling either. But the weather is certainly changing, and you better get that raincoat out of the closet and make sure there are no holes in it.


I graduated around the same time and I ended up getting a job in finance anyways - hard asset investments specifically. So there are actually markets that thrive during times like these and identifying them and reaching out to them is what you might want to consider doing.

I might want to add this was a programming role, not anything crazy like a quant or something like that either, and I didn't even go to school, they hired me on self-taught and that was that.


Of course, there will be winners and losers in any situation.


> Imagine living paycheck to paycheck working as a software engineer

Is that supposed to be hard to imagine ? Most of the population don’t have entitlement about this.


In a world where new grads can easily make 6 figure salaries as software engineers, yes. I mean, everyone I tell literally has a hard time believing I was making a poverty-level wage as a programmer.


If you have a family, six figures in San Francisco is below the poverty line.


Everything slows down. Almost every CFO wants to be more cautious.

Some companies get more aggressive, since they want to seize the opportunity in the marketplace and possibly get talent for cheap. This typically has pros and cons for the employee.

However, during recessions is historically when the actually cool stuff is built. Find companies doing real things that generate cash flows and try to target them as best you can. Read their blogs, talk to their SWEs on social, build a mini-version of what they do if you. This isn’t just a time waste, suck-up effort, it actually helps you learn the sector of the industry you are interested in. Someone will think it is impressive.

NOTE: hacker news suggestions that “this will only impact those bottom 90% plebe developers” are bad and even if true would only be helpful advice for the top 10% (who typically aren’t on hacker news anyway)


> However, during recessions is historically when the actually cool stuff is built.

Lots of truth here, and that applies to all sectors. Creativity, invention, and innovation thrive during economic downturns. Don’t ask me why.


I had a full signed offer to join large semiconductor company designing chips back in 2001. I found out on slashdot before the call that they were giving people a choice to take a payout or take your chance looking for a job within the company. This was during the dotcom crash.

The best advice I can give you is to keep developing skills that are in demand. Keep building things. Keep networking. You will find something better even in tough times.


100%

and even better:

- focus on developing skills that are transferable, not unique to a particular project or companies

- work on your own projects, always, because when you're an employee you trade your time, mental space and your work for inflationary cash

you deserve better than this


The screenshot has the word "bootstrapped" which makes sense. Unless you have free VC money to throw, startups and smaller companies have to really watch their spending and as VC money is drying up (supposedly), this is expected.

Having said that, I think in 2022, there are lot of companies tech and non tech that are still hiring as the demand for tech jobs is a lot more than what we had during 2001 or 2008 crash. You just have to do a bit more homework and effort to get the jobs.


Good point, definitely the demand for these jobs and our tech dependent lifestyle is completely different nowadays than 2 decades ago, that didn't crossed my mind... it really gives me a new perspective


Expect hiring freezes and layoffs across the board. Startups and companies that don’t show a profit may shrivel up. This happened in 2000 and got pretty bad before it got better.

Businesses in other sectors (not tech companies) rely on software so those jobs don’t go away. Not every sector of the economy is a rollercoaster like the tech sector. Some skills transfer better than others. I stayed employed through the 2000 downturn doing database work (Oracle) for enterprise logistics companies, for example. Away from the bleeding edge of tech you find plenty of jobs, although maybe not as sexy or fun as you’d like.


Keep in mind that it might be (or might not, impossible to predict) a preemptive decision due to uncertainty, not necessarily due to actual changes they see. A company I worked at when COVID started also had a hiring freeze, but had the best result in years during 2020-2021 due to the market situation.

Ultimately all companies are linked to a market of some sort which in the end can see growth or shrinkage if a crisis comes, you can't do anything about it.


This is what I really expect. Just like the oil companies that jacked prices up and then claimed record profits lol.

Ultimately I think this might be an around-the-block way to cut fat, get rid of remote workers, and a desperate attempt to try and take control of the job market again.

If the big companies claim the sky is falling and start laying people off and cutting costs everywhere, then everyone else is going to follow.

The evidence will be in earnings reports later on. If a company's executive management is crying wolf and then reporting record profits, well.........


Yeah, you have to wonder how many people who were let go in Q1 2020 because of lockdown uncertainty were let go needlessly based on how tech rebounding in the following months.


I graduated in 2001. I had an offer from campus placement in the summer of 2000. Things were rosy till March, April 2000. And then everything moved very fast, most of the offers were cancelled. I was utterly unprepared for this. I picked up pieces and went for the masters. About 18 month later I was in the middle of masters I got an email from the company saying they are honoring their offer.

2008 wasn’t that harsh for the tech sector. I was at Amazon. I was visiting colleges for campus recruitment, we were given reduced head counts to fill but nothing bad. And I don’t remember there being any mass layoffs.

Given this experience I would say the current downturn to last for about 18 months. Here’s what I’d do differently.

1. Always be on the lookout for opportunities. Even if you get a job offer don’t make plans around it.

2. Develop network your university alumni who are employed. Figure out ways of making yourself useful for them.

3. Internship or part time work is totally OK. You will be abreast of the ecosystem.

4. Learn macroeconomics and business cycles. We all are impacted by it. Whether we like it or not. So we might as well be prepared.


> What companies or roles will be more resilient?

Well, for startups, if they've just raised (in the last 6 months) and you know or can estimate their burn rate and they have 18-24 months in the bank (or are cash flow positive), that's a good choice. Also good if they have a clear business model, rather than still trying to figure it out.

I think that any of the pandemic focused companies were darlings of the markets for the past 2 years and they'll be a snap back for them (Zoom, Pelaton, etc).

But it's hard to counsel you on areas of growth/stability at this time. If you are currently employed and decently happy, this next 6 months would probably be a good time to stay still, since you're a known (and hopefully respected) quality at $CURJOB.

See this great tweet on the topic: https://twitter.com/techgirl1908/status/1524740200206848000 (there are also some companies in the replies who say they are still hiring).


Can you elaborate what you mean by startups that have raised in the last 6 months being a good choice?

My understanding is those companies could be high risk for being overvalued and will have difficulty raising funds in 18-24 months. The RSUs maybe taxed at the current value, but actually be worthless after a down round.

My interpretation is companies that raised 18-24 months ago and are still hiring now would show stronger signals, because their last valuation missed the tech book of 2020 and they seem to think they can continue hiring despite the current economic situation.


My reasoning: if they raised in the last 6 months, they should be good to go for the next 18-24 months, which is hopefully enough to get through the storm.

I didn't consider RSUs or the possibility of a down round (but frankly, everyone who raised in the last 2 years has that, to your point). I'm cynical enough that I typically value options or RSUs of private companies close to $0 ("whee, a lottery ticket!"). Now, stock grants of public companies are a different situation.

> My interpretation is companies that raised 18-24 months ago and are still hiring now would show stronger signals

That's a good point. Sure, and stronger yet would be startups that are profitable or cash flow positive (or could be by flipping a few switches). The problem is that knowing from the outside if a company is profitable is as difficult as knowing if someone is going to hit the brakes on hiring in the next few months.


The job market is still about as hot as I've ever seen it as a senior engineer - I don't know what it looks like for juniors these days, but I know a lot of places are hiring a lot of people and some have been trying for over a year now to fill positions.

I think probably startups will take a hit, but there are plenty of places that pay well and do good things and need coders.


I'm just taking a guess, but wouldn't it make sense that more qualified people or people who have a good track record are going to have less trouble finding a job?


If 2009 is any gauge it comes gently and then suddenly. Ripple effects of contracting credit take a long time to work through the economy, so it's important to heed observations of the bow shock. Fewer startups, lower credit card limits, no access to cheap corporate debt, cost cutting, more conservative consumer spending, all add up until one day you're chatting to a recruiter who is visibly sweating as he tells you he hasn't placed a candidate in months.

I was already senior back in 2009 too and it was ugly. If your bum is not already in a seat, right now it should be your top priority, and you should absolutely be vetting the kinds of companies making you offers.


I can say without hyperbole that this job market is still incredible compared to post 2008 recession times. Especially comparing apples to apples at the entry level.

What you can do to prepare is just to keep getting better at the skills people are looking for.


Isn’t it too early to tell? The crash is very recent.


I like your optimism but what crash? Things might get much worse. Or not.

There are many things happening at once.

One that I think people are underestimating is baby boomer money. They are retired/retiring. It doesn't feel comfortable with the same risk that was acceptable in the last decade. That will suck at an unprecedented amount of liquidity from the system.


I may be living under a rock but i second the question: “what crash”? I am not aware of anything of the sort.


US economic growth is leveling off after the recovery in 2021. The opposition party wants to use it to retake power and is calling it a disaster to undermine optimism in the economy. Business owners fear a drop in demand and scale back hiring.


Same here. People talk also about the "2020 pandemic recession", and at least in IT I didn't notice it at all. So, yeah, maybe we (software developers) are the privileged ones. Touching wood.


At least in the markets, the NASDAQ is down roughly 30% YTD.


Which is still 50% up from 3 years ago and 80% up from the "crash" of 2018


Right, but financial markets are forward-looking (or "leading economic indicators"). They don't encode the current state, they encode a consensus prediction for some time period in the future. In this case, the stock market is pricing in a sharp downturn in profits (and margins) over at least the next few quarters, and I don't believe it's even finished.


But that's precisely why the "correction" will have to be much steeper for Fed to rein in inflation. Fed cannot magically fix the supply side: they can't control Putin or lockdown in China. The only way to bring inflation way down is by dampening demand. To dampen demand Fed essentially would like see the stock market collapse, the extra liquidity that has been injected for the past 10 years need to be evaporated so people will feel impact to bring down demand.


So far it's really just asset valuations coming back to earth. With employment so high, wages higher than ever, and the problem is that we can't get enough supplies are employees, can we really call this a crash for the economy at large? For once it's wall street suffering while main street thrives.


You are right, as codegeek commented this is a different time. I'll keep improving my skills and keep looking at the opportunities.


I graduated during a financial collapse in 2008 with a CS degree. I had about 2 years of internship experience at the time. My college friends were telling me "it's really bad - take what you can get." After weeks of searching I ended up taking my first engineering job which paid $25k a year. It was rough and my only advice is get ready for the worst.


The 2000 recession sucked and lasted a while. I remember Intel was hiring web programmers for $12/hour and were getting swarmed with applicants.

In those kinds of environments, contractors do a little better. Employers are all freaked out, they want to get work done but they don't want to make long-term commitments. It's not until they start making noise about contractors being expensive and wanting to convert you to full-time that you know the recession is over.


What happens in times like this and people's issues with wage discrimination for example? Are there people left at the company still making $50 an hour for a similar role to someone new hired making $20? Do all these salaries get readjusted eventually?


Not at all. Companies generally will just pay you a below market rate unless you can force them into an adjustment. That is a major source of wage gaps actually. People who have the leverage and safety to risk counter offers and renegotiation end up getting paid more than people who cannot take the risk of damaging their reputation or even getting fired over a 30% raise. People with an ample safety net can take a gamble on an unknown new job with a big pay increase also.


The last 10 years or so have been very good for startup financing. It's been relatively easy to get funding. That's changing. Investors are going to be more selective about what they fund so you'll see lots of companies slowing their hiring. But that does not mean it will all fall apart. There are still plenty of startups that are doing good work. My advice is to keep trying and don't give up. Be flexible about what you accept and after you have a job keep an eye out for a better one. I would focus on the bigger companies that have a steady profit margin. They will be more likely to weather the coming slowdown. These things happen. You just have to make the best of it.


I'd advise looking for roles at established profitable companies because they are more likely to weather any potential recession (if one happens - I'm not yet convinced this isn't just a long overdue correction). I just left one FAANG for another, meanwhile my friends are joining small risky crypto startups. Personally, I don't share their appetite for risk.


Go get your MS/PhD. By the time you finish, the market will be stronger, and so will your resume

The Georgia Tech online MS is good and about $7k total. You can pay for it working at Starbucks


I have never once in my career seen someone with an MS get hired over someone with a BS because they had a MS. If you're doing it purely for return-on-investment, it's a massive waste of time and money.


You may be underestimating the number of job descriptions which demand a masters degree to even be considered. This is especially the case for data science roles for tech/fin/blue chip. From experience OMSCS is perfect for this.


That's a small number of jobs and they are in niche areas.

Also, the degree requirements on job descriptions are usually flexible. If you are qualified, apply anyway.


What can be said - is that recessions and hiring stops send people back to schools, and you suddenly have a lot of people with Masters degrees applying for the same jobs.

Tech could very well be immune against credential inflation like that (because of the growth) - but others are not. There are industries where you don't even get interviews unless you hold a graduate degree - precisely because there are too many applicants with graduate degrees. Maybe more relevant to the niche positions within tech (data science, for example)


I've seen hundreds of job descriptions for a wide range of interesting roles (data science, ML, systems, computer graphics, AI research, CV, etc) that list an MS or PhD as a requirement

But even if that bullet point is BS, I am sceptical that the ROI on spending $7k to get 1000+ hours better at your field can be THAT bad. Maybe suboptimal, with all the good free/cheap resources out there, but a waste of time? I'd be surprised.

Besides, you get to avoid meetings for a couple more years, and that by itself might be worth $7k :)


For many software engineers, taking time off work to get a Master's degree would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost earnings. That's a much bigger deal than the cost of tuition.


As a counter example: I've seen that plenty of times. PhDs too.


I've worked for a place that would only hire MS or PhD grads.


>I've worked for a place that would only hire MS or PhD grads.

Specialized regions aside, how bad was their code?


Haha not great, issue was the PhDs automatically were hired at Senior Software Engineer or higher, and then they couldn't write a concrete list of expectations of the role, because so many PhDs had no experience.


Getting a PhD for this reason is an absolutely terrible idea. A PhD is an apprenticeship to be a university professor. It's only sometimes, incidentally, helpful for the would-be engineer, and it's very rarely more lucrative than staying in the job market. And, it's generally absolute hell for a few years. Most people don't make it through.

If the OP had any business doing an PhD he would already know it---he would either have a burning desire to become a professor, or he would have a burning desire to do intellectual research. In the latter case, a modern PhD will probably still be a huge disappointment.

There are tons and tons of pieces online arguing exactly this; I would encourage anyone considering a PhD to seek them out and consider their observations carefully.

This comment is pretty US centric, but also applies to some extent to other countries.


For the Georgia Tech online MS, what does the process look like? If you wanted to, could you accelerate the timeline (instead of 2-3 years part time)? That is, take multiple classes at once? Are the lectures prerecorded and you only need to complete the required coursework and lectures or are you required to pace at the same time as a traditional degree?


Don't know the current answers to all your questions, but re: courseload: you can take 6 credits max in the fall and spring and 3 credits max in the summer. You need 30+ credits to graduate, so the quickest you can finish is 2 years (but this should be quite doable from a workload POV if you're not working full-time)


I don't know for sure about OMSCS, but in OMSA you can ask the advisors to let you take more than 6 credits and they'll usually approve it. There are a fair amount of people who try to finish it in 3 semesters, although that seems a little crazy to me. It probably depends on your course selection, but I would struggle to take more than 3 classes (9 credits) at once (without working), and I would definitely have a shallower understanding of the material.


I don't think the market will be stronger in a year. There is also an opportunity cost to studying over getting on the career ladder - more years of work experience entails a higher salary.


> the market will be stronger

what makes you think so?


People anticipate the drop to hit hardest in 6 months, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as everyone cancels hiring immediately to see how the market will end up.

I don't think companies are stopping because they're out of money. They're just slamming the brakes because something strange and unexpected happened.


No deep expertise, just looking at the last few decades and eyeballing the odds


> You can pay for it working at Starbucks

Ah, so housing included in tuition huh? :D (/s)


I’ll give you the same advice my father gave me when I was graduating. Be persistent. Don’t give up after one rejection. I’ll also add my mixin - be smart about how you network. That’s how I landed my first job, rather than blindly applying, though I did that too.

Being on the other side of the interviewing table, we really want to give you the job. Don’t give us a reason not to. I’m willing to let some syntactical things slide when doing the code interview if a candidate is a good behavioral fit (communicate!).

One thing you have to realize is that rising interest rates has led to a decrease in liquidity, especially when it comes to fundraising. So look for companies that have an ample runway, and ideally are profitable. Worst case grind out the leetcode and look for a FAGMAN job, a lot of teams are still hiring, but don’t bank on it.


Unfortunately for you being a recent graduate but the rest of us experienced folks knew that a recession was looming. Anyone thinking we'd get out of the pandemic without a recession isn't that familiar with business or economics.

Kudos to them for not ghosting you and letting you know they're not hiring. That's being up-front, honest, and respectful. Don't expect that from everybody.

As for advice - recessions make for tough markets for inexperienced people. Companies tend to hire fewer people and the people they do hire they prefer they have a proven track record. Your bargaining chip is your price. Your inexperience makes you cheaper and if you can somehow demonstrate you can do the work you may find people willing to take a chance on you.

Good luck!


Many mature companies are freezing net headcount, but still backfilling positions. Others are instituting temporary hiring freezes. Others are laying people off.

In the startup space, many companies were raising money on valuations equal to 30-50 times ARR. Investors can be very picky and many startups are about 1 yr of cash on hand. If they are forced to raise money now, and their performance isn't the best of what's out there, they are going to be SOL or facing such onerous terms, it's going to be demoralizing.

Startups should be preparing to ride out the storm and that's going to mean they're going to find a way to push off a fundraise / going broke at any cost, if possible.


Interest rates have changed how easy money is, now unit economics has to work and the blitzscale and monopolize model doesn't have the capital to fuel itself

That's why classic blue chips are up and all the creative accounting, exotic pricing, complex funny money stuff is crashing hard. Anything that's not super easy to understand is doing terrible.

Look at who's up over the past 6 months. Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg's, Coca Cola, Coors, General Mills, Campbell Soup, Eli Lilly - companies with solid conventional reliable products and not a bunch of adventurous moon shots. Even PayPal, which is normally a pretty "safe" tech company is -60% YTD.


With the yield on the 10 year being at 2.75% I think it's fair to say this is much less about interest rates and much more about public market sentiment. Rates today are still lower than they were in say 2013 or 2018 and much lower than they were pre-GFC.

If public markets refuse to value unprofitable tech companies as highly as they did over the last several years then that puts more pressure on VCs to be more careful with their capital and prioritise companies making money today.

The thing is this isn't a sustainable trend because most smart tech entrepreneurs understand that startups that prioritise profitability will typically have their market share eaten by a competitor that prioritises growth at all costs.

Where I think some adjustment is probably healthy is for companies like Uber or Airbnb. These companies have a large enough market share that prioritising profitability probably wouldn't be a bad idea. My guess it that unless rates go much higher this will be a temporary set back, although the days of unprofitable tech IPOs are likely over. Going forward we'll probably see tech companies hold off on publicly listing until they've reach sufficient scale and profitability.


Honestly, I think it depends on where you are looking. Over in the Midwest we have had trouble finding SDEs, maybe it's because in my area starting pay is in that 65-80k range and I know alot of grads shoot for the startup/FAANG 100k+ pay but in the rest of the tech world I would say more people are moving around because there are so many open roles and not enough people to fill them.

I have been an engineer for over 10 years now, and my advice would be to widen your search and seek out experience and when your ready to level up leverage that experience to move into the pay/role/company you want.


Big picture: A shit ton of software needs to be written over the next 20 years. Many software companies will continue to have good economics. You'll do great.


It's interesting to see the self-reinforcing aspect of this recession/downturn. Many companies have yet to see a material impact to their revenue or market conditions, but are tightening their belts in anticipation. I'm not saying that's a bad thing or the case here. The more a potential recession is discussed, the more fearful companies become, the more conservative they become in their actions and ultimately the recession will be worse due to that. Perhaps the contagion of fear is better in the long term as companies are forced to act more prudently.


This is a little incorrect for some sectors, though for other sectors would absolutely be right.

I work in a product oriented company (won't get into details), and because of inflation and other areas of the downturn, raw materials (plastics, circuit boards, wood) got more expensive. We then needed to adjust the final sticker price higher which (understandably) means that some customers at say, Walmart, are less likely to buy the product. It's a very real tight squeeze on both ends for us and also for the customer. This has been going on for a few months now and was a major early indicator (imo) to me that things were going to get grim for a bit.


Well, as someone who (re)entered the industry in 2003 after the fallout of the dotcom crash, one thing that helped me get a job was the fact that tons of people just straight-up abandoned the industry during that period and the pipeline of new applicants dried up. So all those people who got a CS degree or went to a bootcamp because coding looked like an easy ticket to a high paying job? Poof - gone. Not to mention a small minority of software developers just permanently left the profession. And what happened? A few years later companies were desperate for coding talent again.

The other thing is that changed was that there was way less cash being pumped into startups trying to solve every minute problem under the sun - so you could actually bootstrap product in spaces without having to compete with 2-3 Tier-1 VC-backed startups flush with cash.

Oh, and because less stuff is getting built and productized, there might be more demand for contract work. That's how I built out a resume. Did a handful of projects over the course of 18 months for a few local small businesses.

You're young. You just graduated. I assume you do not have a mortgage or family to support at this time. Maybe some student loans and a car payment? Big deal. If you have the stomach for it, stick it out. It'll be a rough few years but you'll have enough experience under your belt to be on the ground-floor of the next major wave.


This is a great piece of advice! I second that 100%.


Since you’re asking from a job seekers perspective, this only applies to pre revenue companies and companies running at a loss. There are profitable small, medium and large tech businesses (like mine) that have not changed hiring policies and continue to hire. But they are tightening belts in other ways.

There are public companies that are pre profit that are profoundly affected. Their run up in stock price was free money for things like stock based compensation that has gone away.

Small companies pre profit will all be implementing hiring freezes or have already to reduce burn as far as possible.

The job market just got a lot more competitive for jobseekers as hiring plummets.

If you are offered stock based compensation, make sure your strike price (if it’s options) is tied to CURRENT stock valuation and not some story about a temporary dip in the market that will correct soon. And know that this may be a protracted recession (think years) and that we haven’t yet seen the bottom.

In my opinion we’re looking at a bubble in housing, bonds, stocks and commodities along with a massive decoupling of the global economy, with war in Europe, a hangover from too much fed stimulus, and the real cost of COVID coming due. A perfect storm doesn’t begin capture what we need to dig out from here.

Best of luck to the founders and jobseekers here. I mean that sincerely. Hang in there and look for the opportunity amidst the crisis.


> There are public companies that are pre profit

I love the term “pre profit” instead of “losing money”.


I graduated in 2007 at the top of the housing crash and a few months later the great recession. My first job as SWE out of college was making 50k in a small company.

What got me through is that I love coding and learning, specially as a new grad. In hindsight, these are the times when great things happen - we just cannot see them. It happened in 2000, 2008 and I hope it happens again. Don't get demoralized, keep going at it and remember why you got into this profession (hopefully not just for the money)


I am still finding in my inbox lots of job proposals almost daily. But I don't live in US.

We don't know yet if are living a crisis or a recession. Until many people lose their jobs, sales of goods and services take a big hit and real estate colapses hard, we don't experience a crisis. But even if that is true, if we are experiencing the start of a crisis, I guess hiring for SWE roles will might slow a bit, but that won't make finding a job very hard.

Startups, unicorns and multibillion companies which had inflated stock prices might be more prudent now when hiring.

But apart for that there is a huge number of companies with an even greater need for SWE.

If you think a crisis might come, just ask yourself what industries/corners will be affected. What will people do in a crisis? Would they watch as much Netflix? Probably no, since they have to pay money. Will they still buy food, search google, use facebook and twitter, need insurance and banking? Probably yes.

Will old, "boring" industries, which are not hi tech, but are now on the rise such as oil and financial services need to hire SWEs? I am sure they will need.

IT is much more than startups, unicorns and FAANGS. These are just a drop in the ocean.

And if you want a great job security, you might find out that your national and local governments and state owned institutions are hiring SWE roles, too.


This is a tough market. It will be difficult to find opportunities but if you do find an opportunity, it's more likely to be a good one.

The downside of a tech boom is that there is too much easy money floating around some companies and this causes industry standards decline. The workplace becomes political; it feels chaotic and non-meritocratic. It's easy to lose passion for your work when nobody can recognize its value and nobody cares about things like efficiency and maintainability.

I'm a senior developer with 15+ years of experience and I've recently had to accept a 2 month contract for almost half my normal pay to build a new system from scratch. Unfortunately, when experienced, highly productive developers are willing to take such huge pay cuts, it pushes all the less experienced devs out of the market completely.

I would recommend trying to join a startup or a small company (or start your own on the side). Find tech companies whose customers produce real, obvious economic value. For example; the business' main customers are in farming, mining, construction, manufacturing...

The past decade in tech has been fueled by low interest rates and massive money printing and has mostly been about zero-sum activities like surveillance and manipulation... IMO this should start to change now.


I started my business in 2007...a great first year and then a global economic recession like none other. We got through that one, we'll get through this one.

Media will have you believe that everything has gone to shit in a recession. Don't read the papers and stop looking at the stock market. They're only two viewpoints - there are businesses and individuals who do VERY well in a recession. It's not all doom and gloom.


I give them some credit. Rather than hire you and have to unceremoniously lay you off six months from now, they're being proactive, upfront, and honest. Kudos to their hiring manager.

Keep at it. Recruiters on LinkedIn are still foaming at the mouth.


The proper translation for “we are not hiring because of a looming translation for a startup is”:

“We burning through cash like Willie Nelson burns through weed and VCs are antsy that they won’t be able to pawn their money losing investments off to the public market and are antsy about throwing good money after bad”

Profitable tech companies are not going to stop hiring where they see opportunities.


- All companies will be impacted, but smaller ones more and unprofitable high growth ones more. YC companies are at the extreme of both of these and aren't your gauge on the larger market. Figure out which kinds of larger and more secure businesses you can enjoy and learn something from working for during your first years out of school.

- Make a plan for how to reset expectations for your career (your and others!) in three years. You don't want recession decisions and salaries to define your career. You can clean the slate by getting and advanced degree, actively pursuing a management track, or developing an on the job specialty

- You are going to be fine. Having a four year degree and SWE training puts you ahead farther than the recession puts you behind. This sucks relative to your plans, but you can broaden the perspective and feel fortunate that you're not someone with less demand and mobility in the same environment. This timing isnt fair but others have been here and still prospered -- you will too!


We are still hiring at Fractal (NFT marketplace for gaming assets). We're a revenue generating company with fewer than 15 team members that just raised $35m in new funding. Founded by experienced founders. https://jobs.lever.co/fractal-is/


Anything relating to NFTs sounds like the absolute opposite of a recession-proof job.


1) Games will move from closed economies to open economies, just as they transitioned to free-to-play 15 years ago. Blockchain is just the technology through which this will happen.

2) This transition will take 10 years - we are building for that timeline

3) We raised a ton of money and have a lean team, and can exist for >5 years without revenue. We are keeping our team lean to maintain that level of runway.

4) For whatever reason, people are still buying gaming NFTs right now (as of this week). Of course, that may change quickly.


Oof it sounds like NFT marketplace will be first to go in a recession.


The "job description coming soon!" doesn't inspire a ton of confidence (https://jobs.lever.co/fractal-is/1952f298-7008-44e2-891d-567...)


Worked at gaming company. Everybody I know including me extremely bearish on NFTs. Good luck.


What you can do in these times is to work in, or interview 'line' jobs vs 'staff' jobs. Jobs that actively bring in revenue are rarely at risk, even in economic downturns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staff_and_line


Throughout my career I always relied on recruiters in two ways.

1. They help me find jobs. 2. ASK them what technology frameworks they are being asked for.

Number 2 has been more beneficial than number 1, it has allowed me to have insight into what is a valuable framework to learn next.

Take time to befriend and talk to recruiters, it is a two way street with many of them.


NPR’s marketplace segment was unusually honest in their assessment yesterday, noting that most economic experts want new hiring to considerably slow down. I’m old enough to remember when this kind of statement was in the news all the time in the 1990s, but this is the first time I’ve seen it said in public in a long time.


I encountered this a lot in the 2001 drawback. There were mini pockets though. Things would dry up. Then people would start interviewing again. The next shoe would drop. Rinse, repeat. It was more typical of smaller companies but wound up being across the entire industry.

I didn't wind up job hunting in 2008 so can't speak to that.


From the sound of it, my timing going back to school may just work out.

Though I’m kinda curious if the affect is outsized mostly in the SV, VC pumped side of the tech industry. I work for what technically could be considered a tech startup but is backed by companies with heavy domain experience and traditional investment firms. As far as I’ve heard we’re still in a hiring storm.


What we saw in 2001 was a network effect. The artificially pumped up companies died. Then the B2Bs that they were paying also struggled and died. And then other companies that relied on those B2Bs had trouble.

You're right that it will start with the obvious candidates, but we'll see if it goes on long/bad enough to have a broader impact.


It will... think of how many startups use AWS, Google Cloud, Tableau, Slack, or Microsoft products. Our industry is incestuous.


I would hope that a number of those companies are well embedded and experienced to weather a tech crash/recession. I mean I know MS has had to have seen their share.


MS seems like it should be safe. Slack seems like it could be hit hard.


They'll be all right once Microsoft acquires them.


Slack is owned by Salesforce. My point is that big co revenue will get hit with start up drop-off.


I was laid off in early 2009 during the Great Recession. I figured instead of competing with a bunch of people getting laid off I might as well go back to school and spend the next two years finishing up my degree and ride it out a bit.

Didn't regret that decision. Although tuition has gotten totally ridiculous. Do it the cheapest way you can, like a public in-state school or something (I did that and it was still pretty expensive).


During a recession it is common for companies to freeze hiring. Even Google has done it before, from low levels to very very high, it's a very common and fast to implement step. It's a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel, but they often just don't have the information to know whether their revenues will go down, userbase might go down, maybe salaries go down and they don't want to overpay, it's not especially surprising.

This is the time when starting a (slow-burn) company and being in school are big advantages, I think a lot of people go back to grad school during these sometimes. But I think a lot of people were just sort of like... too risky to assume I can get another job so I better stick with what I have. It's a scarcity mindset that favors employers for sure, but it may also be correct during a recession.


Anecdotally, the recruiter calls surged in the previous few months and have slowed to a trickle in the last couple.


My anecdata is that it seems tech is where the bubble has bursted, other sectors are still looking for people. It is late state valuation where the squeeze has happened and this has impacted in turn how VCs raise their funds, we could see contagion in other part of the economy but i hear almost nothing in the regular press about this problem (except for inflation/stagflation warnings). Maybe it is wishful thinking on my part but I for one welcome the return of "rationality" to this marked. Everyone was playing fast and loose, AI generated NFT and other BS like that, but as a slow and tight player I prefer it this way.


Mine are still off charts. I had 15 reach out today, alone. Currently have interviews at Github, Google, Stripe, and Reddit.


How does one get to the point where they get so much inquiries?


Pretty much just have over 5-10 years of experience as a software engineer on LinkedIn. Multiply for tier of company reputation.


It's not about being talented, that's for sure :)


Though I doubt you'd pass an interview at any of the companies you listed without being talented (in interview skills anyway)


I do okay, thanks


My email volume doesn't seem to have dropped much at all, but perhaps they're trying to take advantage of the uptick in layoffs..


> recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies.

The first response of businesses, big and small, to uncertainty is to pause everything they are doing to stock of the situation. Regardless of whether they are profitable or not. When that happens they pause hiring until they know what they are dealing with.

You would have seen the news/grapevine that Twitter, Google, and Meta have paused hiring. It takes about a quarter for them to adjust and get back to business as usual. After that hiring managers will start putting pressure on execs to open up the head count or face missed deadlines. So I'd say give it 3-6 months as far as big, profitable businesses are concerned.

As for unprofitable ones such as Uber; well it's going to be a tough ride. And it's been like that since going IPO.


I’ve seen so many posts like this on HN and Reddit. Maybe I’m just interviewing at the wrong companies, but honestly the market feels hotter than it ever has before.

I’m getting companies practically begging me to come work for them. Startups, Fortune 500s, the whole lot of em.


You should offer more details about the role you're seeking. All SWE jobs and industries are not the same. Being a web programmer is not the same as being a systems programmer, career wise. You might get better advice with more info.

Some of us have lived through multiple recessions. You'll do fine. What you might have to accept is that the FANG compensation that we've gotten used to could be reduced for quite a while. No one can really say how deep this recession will go or how it will affect SWEs. I would be defensive though. Get a job soon, even if its not your dream job, and start building experience while accumulating savings.

Long term you'll be fine, but don't be complacent.


Can anyone explain to me how come we are about to hit recession when there is an incredible demand (as in people have the money and want to spend them) for everything (furniture, appliances, anything really..) but there's no supply?


Non-asset holders (read: bottom ~70%) do not have money and cannot stomach inflation.

Unfortunately, the data shows that most Americans are not SWE's pulling $180k from the comfort of their newly renovated living room for the last two years.


Interest rates were raised and there seems to be a concerted effort to blame inflation on higher wages and low unemployment, so those are being dealt with with hiring freezes: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-fed-wants-corporate-a...


...except the fed doesn't have the authority to enact hiring freezes. They can raise interest rates which might cause hiring freezes, but it's also a policy tool with wide ranging effects so saying inflation is being "dealt with with hiring freezes" is still a bad characterization.


The article is about leadership in financial institutions choosing to interpret the Fed's policy and rhetoric about inflation as "hiring freezes to reduce inflation caused by rising wages and employment rates, please". I didn't say that the Fed is forcing anyone to do anything, just that there is a concerted effort to portray a cause and a solution to inflation in a certain way, seemingly coming down from the Fed.


Caveat: not an expert.

Well, demand is high and supply is constrained. This has caused a spike in inflation. It’s a good question whether interest rates should be used to counter this. In order to counter this interest rates are going up, this reduces the attractiveness of the stock market causing a crash- as you’ve seen in the main indices. But on top of that inflation is high in energy and Putins war is going to spike food prices. High interest rates also encourage people to save instead of spend which will put a headwind on spending.

So we’re moving into a situation where consumers are going to be spending a lot of their income on mortgages, rent, fuel and food. Whilst the supply chain may ease supply, discretionary spending looks likely to tank.


Economists like to say "the cure for high prices is high prices." High prices should reduce demand and also increase supply. I don't see how this necessarily leads to a recession (a contraction in the economy) which is usually caused by fewer people working. We have record low unemployment. A lot of people are just parroting political talking points at this point about the inevitability of a recession, there is no indication yet of one AFAIK.


The Fed is going to raise rates until something breaks, and a recession or "hard landing" is just the likely cost to be paid. It's a healthy part of the business cycle, and closer to an intentional policy outcome than something that is just happening out of nowhere. The excesses of the past decade are exemplified by the tech industry and it will likely be disproportionately impacted.


There are certainly worse positions to be in, and I believe you'll be fine if you stay persistent. As much as it may seem here on HN and other dev socials, dubbing yourself as a 'software developer' doesn't guarantee that you write your own ticket from the get-go. Stay persistent, go through the application process for everything that seems remotely interesting, and negotiate from there. Good luck - once it happens, everything changes and soon you'll be looking for a more senior role where you can demand a bit more.


I'm afraid the recession will be used as an excuse in a lot of cases where it's not the real issue.


A side note. I see a lot of hiring freeze at least in the gaming industry.


A couple of things:

1. Bootstrapped business are very good at cash management because they usually don't have a lot of cash.

2. Better to never be hired than hired for three weeks and laid off.

3. Software development is still an awesome industry to be in and there are still far too few developers than there are jobs at all levels.

4. Look for companies that have customers that continue to buy in a downturn if you fear recession. Companies that serve government, healthcare and energy industries tend to be safe, but they usually pay less than other industries.


Companies are pre-emptively closing open recs for non essential positions. It's a defensive posture to protect budgets, which are going down as the economy winds down.

This could have been prevented, or mitigated, it they'd increased [edit] interest rates 6 months to a year ago as many voices were calling. And we spoke of corporate greed causing inflation rather than money printing. Rhetoric aside, now we're needing to climb down a steeper hill.


I had the same situation in reverse.

I had a loop set up with a tech startup, and ultimately I decided that due to their market segment potentially being impacted by the recession that it didn't make sense to keep interviewing. I was likely to be much more secure at my much larger company in the economy sours.

So I canceled an interview loop that was going really well. There's more to it than just economy, but it was one factor.

Ultimately no hard feelings. They understood.


I entered the software job market in 2009 as an intern, start of 2010 as a full timer. All through college people were questioning my choice of major; they viewed CS as a bad bet. I took what I could find starting out, but it hasn't hurt my career.

It may be harder to find something. It likely won't be your dream job right after college. Mind you, you probably wouldn't have gotten that anyway. Don't stress too much about it.


This is unfortunately expected behavior and a bullet dodged. The only exception would be that this startup likely was expecting to get a funding round to close soon, and because of the recent shifts, VC dollars are drying up. That said, there is still money moving to tech companies.

Your skills are in demand, just may need to work with a recruiter for find a spot that works best for you (how I get most of my roles lately).


It was quite common by 2000/2001 (Burst of the dot.com bubble) and again in 2008 (Financial Crisis).

It was 2001 when a mayor semiconductor company stop the hiring process two days before signing the contract, and one week after leaving previous company. At the end it was an opportunity get out of the comfort zone.

My advice:

   * Keep on moving 
   * Be bold
The recession will pass and the market will be hot again.


Can someone do a story time of the last recession and how it impacted tech? Start, middle and end

Just want to understand what to look out for and just prepare.


I was working on a web hosting startup in 2001 in Latin America, I was 18. I liked the job and they gave me a lot of freedom regarding also going to college, but it's not that I was not looking for something better. Honestly until 2003 none of my friends and community switched jobs, not a single one of them.

Things only started taking off again when the "mobile" thing started with the cellphones revolution In my experience until that started, the job market was difficult. Not impossible, just difficult.


2008? Not much. Some hiring freezes, maybe some salary freezes, but overall quite reduced impact. Of course, this is very location dependent and domain dependent.

New grads were probably hit the hardest, as they usually are during recessions.

2000 was much worse from everything I hear, but I wasn't there at the time.


Yes, 2000/2001 was much worse generally in tech. I was pretty lucky. Was laid off but got another job through a good connection with a company still doing OK. Then not so OK but aside from a salary cut made it through.

But there was a lot of "Would you like fries with that?" in the tech sector generally.


a salary freeze might as well be a firing right now


Real salary decreases happen in life, too.

That's actually the reality for most people.


companies with consistent revenue are doubling down on hiring atm - think Atlassian, Cloudflare, etc


Be wary of taking a job with a tool maker. They can be hit hardest, eventually.


I'm not so sure. Atlassian doubled down on hiring through the last slump (2008-2012) and it seems to have paid off for them.

Depends on the size of the tool maker, I guess.


This will be at least the fourth such downturn I have seen in my career:

- the 2000 Dotcom Bust

- the 2008 recession

- the 2020 pandemic recession

- Now

The short answer is that no one really knows what will happen. A lot of companies are reading the tea leaves - and regardless of what anyone tells you, that's really all it is - and trying to figure out how to make the best moves given rising prices, rising interest rates, a pandemic that, though mostly tamed, still presents challenges and potential dangers, war in Europe, etc. Back in March of 2020 when I was still actively looking, I went through the same thing you are now - companies who were super eager to hire me all of a sudden stopped the interview process and circled the wagons. And these were the FAANGs.

My advice here is to keep looking, but start working on something on the side that will generate revenue. Working for a company feels like a safe move until the economy contracts and they ultimately decide what they think you're really worth. In every one of those previous downturns, I felt like my sense of self worth diminished along with every rejection or ghosted call - and I suffered a LOT of those. This last time around in 2020, I finally gave up entirely and became an independent technical strategy consultant - basically doing what I've always done, but under my own banner instead of someone else's.

It took six very hard months until I had a solid client base and consistent enough income to survive - I had to borrow money from some folks during the time to pay the mortgage and healthcare, which was humbling, but it worked. I also have a mortgage, a wife, and a teenager to support, so I really had to get a solid income flowing fast - there wasn't a lot of room for error.

If you get a job before you figure out your side gig, great! But maybe keeping working on the side gig because it's nice to have something to fall back on. If you get the side gig running, but it's not making you enough money and you get an offer - take the offer, but make sure you keep building out the side gig.

I was probably about your age when the first Dotcom bust happened - I had been out of college only two or three years at that point - and I gotta tell you, that was frightening. When I got my first job out of college, I was hot shit. I put my resume on Monster.com on a Wednesday and by the following Friday I had received about 100 calls, 10 job interviews, and five solid offers. When the bubble burst, not a single person or company returned any of my calls. For nine months. A smarter man would have spent that time trying to build something to make money, to be independent from the vagaries of corporate America and economic cycles over which he has zero control. I was not that smarter man then - it took 20 years and at least three more cycles for me to finally figure it out.

Be the smarter (person). Keep applying and interviewing, but spend the rest of the time you would otherwise be working building something for yourself to generate revenue. Could be code, could be an online class, could be selling stuff on Etsy - doesn't matter, so long as it's something you can sustain and that can eventually sustain you if worse comes to worse.


Opposite anecdote and a lot more likely to succeed than to “find a side project that can generate enough revenue to sustain your lifestyle.”

2000 - I was three years into my career and I had been looking at the market to see what were the in demand skills. I was working for a boring profitable company that was printing bills and just getting into integrating with CheckFree - the backend for most banks electronic bill payments at the time.

2008 - while I was just coming out of my “expert beginner stage”, once again I had a skillset that was in demand and a network that allowed me to find a job quickly. (4 days after being laid off)

2020 - my company had an across the board paycut. Again I spent the prior two years learning an in demand skillset and found a job paying about 33% more than I was making before the cut.

Until 2020, admittedly the jobs were unremarkable by big tech standards. But I had a comfortable life.

The first two years after my new job, I used the two year prorated signing bonus to pay off all of our debt and build a “go to hell fund”. If I get laid off tomorrow, I’m 99% sure that I could get another job or contract quickly. Fortunately, I work for $BigTech remotely and I could take a 40% pay cut without it affecting us too much.


I would lump 2020 through 2022 into one big catastrophe.


I thought things are looking pretty positive by the end of 2021. Some of this is of course made worse by the Ukrainian War.


The 2020 pandemic crash hardly counts - it was a quick blip and everything quickly rebounded to new highs (hiring, salaries, stock market etc).


I agree with the poster above this one - 2020 and now are basically one big event, but I still mark 2020 because it was the point when I finally decided enough was enough with this hiring BS these companies put us through. You spend weeks in in the interview process, meeting everyone and their cousin, taking dumb little tests and such, all so that, right near the end, they can say the job is no longer available because they need to figure out how the pandemic will affect things. I mean, yeah, I get they need to look out for the business... but they wasted weeks that could have been better used doing something else.

I actually think we're going to look back and see the massive hiring and good news that came in 2021 is the blip. A lot of these companies that soared during the pandemic - like Zoom and Netflix - are seeing revenues drop. Many companies figured the worst was over and went nuts hiring, getting funding, etc. Now that the fed is raising rates again, a lot less of that money will be flowing around, and companies that hired thinking they would get their next round will find themselves laying a bunch of folks off. It's already started. Every single day there's another version of an article in my tech feed saying something to the tune of, "Batten down the hatches for the next 18-24 months". Executives reading those stories are already making moves to cut costs and try to ride out the storm. Whether the storm comes or not is largely irrelevant as the effects will be the same - and all of that preparation for the storm in many ways ensures its arrival.


> taking dumb little tests and such

I once had a company ask me to do a math test after I had already done their phone screen, coding interview, and day-long on-site interview. Like, they wanted to test my knowledge of trigonometry. That was 2018 but also the moment I decided I was done with that BS.


i have a more ridiculous one

a company once wanted me to do HackerRank after they invited me to work on essentially a copy of my open source project

i was like: "you know i've done the same thing before, right?"

they never responded


Could you please some advice regarding this for someone with 2yoe mostly lamp stack? Where do I find clients after incorporating

> My advice here is to keep looking, but start working on something on the side that will generate revenue


You need to spend a lot of time thinking about your product and who actually wants to pay for it. Who are your ideal customers? What are their challenges? How does your product solve those challenges? How high a priority are those challenges to that audience? Is there an audience that would put them at a higher priority? How much is it worth to them to solve those challenges - how are those challenges currently affecting their business and how much money could they make / save if they fixed them?

If you figure out these answers and get to know your targeted audience very well, you will then understand how they learn about new products and evaluate them. You can then start marketing to them in their language with the value proposition of how your product solves their problems. Put ads up where they will find them, hang out in forums and chat rooms and such where they ask questions, write blog posts about things they are interested in and make sure they get picked up by search engines and - hopefully - news aggregators like this one where your target audience is reading. It's a slow, iterative process that keeps building on itself as you keep going and building momentum. It will be very discouraging at times, but you need to really understand your customers and, when you do, you should be able to figure out why things aren't working when they aren't and how to fix them.

Don't worry about going big and scaling - make enough money to support your needs (and trim your needs as low as you can while remaining comfortable). I found consulting clients by posting on my LinkedIn feed. I have one major privilege here - I've been in the industry for more than 20 years and have built a sizable network as a result, all of whom were eager to help me find clients. The bulk of this network is only a few years old, though, so there's no reason you can't build a similar network yourself, if you haven't already.

As technologists, we tend to focus on the tech. Spend some time focusing on people, their problems, and how you can uniquely solve them - better, faster, more focused, whatever. You may even find tech isn't the answer to solve for - it may be education or writing or running workshops or something else.

And, mostly, build trust in yourself. All of this stuff seems so complicated at first, but that's because we complicate it needlessly. You want o be successful in business? Find an audience that has a need, really understand the consequences of that need and what it means to that audience, create a solution and solicit feedback from the audience, then sell to those who respond favorably. Then, keep listening to them and intelligently improving it to grow the business. If you sit down and think about how YOU would go about doing it, you may find most of the answers you're looking for.


Thank for the valuable feedback. I've taken this to heart and have started exploring a niche. As you said, the goal is to provide value and I need to figure out how to articulate that best. May I ask how you received your first client?


> - the 2020 pandemic recession

Did this affect the IT sector? Seriously asking because I didn't notice it.


Yeah it did, but I don't think it was that big. I had a final interview call the day my job at the time started WFH (March 2020). I remember we were kind of joking about how wild everything was, but how they seemed well situated for it (they were a mostly distributed team). Call ended with them saying that they were looking to move forward and would send over paper work, but they ended up ghosting me. My job at the time also had a small wave of layoffs, but by the end of the year started hiring again.

Had a friend have a pretty similar experience with a different company at the time, but ended up landing a job there by the end of the summer of that year.


For me it did in a big way. I was in process with about 15 companies w/ one incoming offer (doing a ref check) and another potential one. In the course of one week mid-March, everything fell off except 3, and all those ops slow-walked to the extreme. 6 weeks later when the lockdowns ended a ton of activity came in, and within a few weeks I ended my job search with 4 offers after going through 7 sets of final rounds.


If you were looking for a job at the time, it absolutely did. It recovered in 2021, but I was very far along - at the stage where they were ready to make an offer - with at least two major companies and a handful of small ones, and had the rug pulled out at the end citing the pandemic and them closing ranks.


excellent advice on side gigs!

i have (mostly) quit consulting this year to bootstrap some of my long-planned projects (e-mail me if you want to see some)

i'm now more happy than ever, eventhough i have not yet made any money (!)

the source of happiness comes from me owning all the IP for the project, no NDAs to sign and me being in full control of the technical decisions

the most positive so far is, i've stopped seeing work as hours/leisture, but as an investment

the more effort i put into a project the more value it can generate to the clients

as an employee, however, more hours on a project, guarantees only two things a) to get mentally exhausted or b) to make some super-rich VC more richer

own your work!


Agree with others, wouldn't count 2020 as a big downturn, the government sent checks out to everyone so they could medicate with netflix, alcohol and vaping. We are on the brink of the next one - just wait until some geopolitical event occurs (ahem China) that throws yet another wrench into an already distressed supply chain and watch things fall apart.


I already got laid off once this year because the startup I was working for had such a bad time during COVID-19 (small company, high touch sales, sales pipeline was unusually bad due to their target customers not wanting to spend).

These are turbulent times we're living through. Good luck everyone


This is why I keep interviewing, while I am already in late stages of job applications and/or already have a job. This can happen to anyone at any point, whether you are applying for jobs, are in the late interviewing stage, an employee of 5 years or on a 1 year contract.


This is one advantage of living in a (relatively) low-cost country like India. Recruiting actually picks up here when there's a recession in the US, because it's cheaper to hire here. The difference is not 10x like it used to be, but it's still at least 2-3x.


There are still people hiring, there's always work out there. I'd put up a post in the "freelancer" and "who wants to be hired" posts next week here on hackernews. Maybe you can get some bites that way, I've gotten work through that in the past.


Thanks for the advice, I will definitely check "whos hiring" next week.


Was interviewing with a few startups in the Series A and B phases. They had come back and held all hiring.

Their time to zero is in the 2-3 year range but a lot of companies are dealing with a people issue to make sure staff is aware of the state and has confidence they aren’t going to get laid off.

Most seem to have held for 3-4 weeks. Will see at that point how many are paused indefinitely or are back to normal.

If a company is near the end of the runway, they maybe in damage control and would be concerning.


Just keep interviewing. This maybe your first recession. Advice, just keep swimming. If a company freezes hiring because market conditions then they might be too volatile for you. Try a larger organization that has funds to weather the storm.


I was in a similar position in 2008. The key thing you need is experience, as people fresh out of college take awhile to ramp up and actually be productive.

I'd avoid small startups and focus on larger, established players. Unless they raised money before things started to get bad, smaller companies won't have the same resources as late stage orgs and FAANG.

While you're applying, try to get experience however you can. Work on personal projects relevant to jobs you're applying for and post them on Github. Pick up work on UpWork, etc at whatever price people are willing to pay. Having experience you can point to gives you a leg up over everyone else.


> I'd avoid small startups and focus on larger, established players.

normally good advice, but it is a conservative stance and one should understand what they are choosing if they go down this path imho.

Fresh out of college is a time when you can take the highest risk in terms of jobs; your expenses ought to be quite low (zero dependants presumably), you can share house/get room mates etc; you can work long hours without hugely impacting health short term (as you get older, you will no longer be able to function this way).

Therefore, if you would want startup experience, and a chance at making it big (both financially and experientially), there's no really better time than straight out of college. Of course, nothing prevents you from doing so later in life - there's a large variation in startup career, and what i described is merely just one anecdote.


Yeah, good point.

In my case, I tried starting a company and failed. The learnings I gained helped me secure my next job. Leading up to the company failing though, it was more a less a year of misery.

Based on the original post, it sounds like he's looking for the easier path right now.


This may be somewhat anecdotal, but I founded a product in the recruiting space and my daily active users and key metrics are all well within expectations and trending up.

I would say we are doing fine, do not let the fear mongering get to you.


> Will be this the situation for most tech companies or just start ups?

One start up, with specific reasons to chicken out, not the whole industry. You luckily avoided a dying employer, and you'll find someone else soon.


I entered the market in a similar situation in 2008. For what it's worth, while certain companies tighten their belts, at the end of the day more software needs to be built than exists right this second, and so there will always be positions available.

Thats not to say it won't be hard, but you're still in the biggest growth industry I can think of, and it touches more and more other industries every day. There will always be need for software, and there will always be need for software developers.

Thats my two cents anyway, and how I approached it when I was younger, and I was right in the medium term :)


It shouldn't be that bad if you're in a non-tech established company - something that is making money and will continue to make money.

Startups and a lot of tech companies rely on easy money. They are the ones impacted the most.


Yeah I mean if you look at the IPO of YC backed businesses they are all down on average -70% from its previous ATH. Now ask yourself, how much of a run way would non-IPO businesses sustained by cheap capital has left.

People aren't joining YC to build a sustainable business. They are doing it for a shot at selling their shares on secondary market if they can't IPO, or dumping it on retailers through direct listing

The good news is that these failing startups will end up generating a ton of businesses for those that had been financially stable and conservative. Those are the ones to look at.


Honestly I'd take that as dodging a bullet, and so appreciate the honesty - if they have sufficient concerns about present market behavior impacting their ability to retain staff or even continue as a going concern to be stopping recruitment, then you'd be risking turning down other opportunities for a job that may literally disappear in just a few months.

OTOH, if they're still around and hiring again a few months later then I'd take that a sign that they are running themselves well, and have a good grasp on their stability, and would consider applying again then.


Our VC backed company is still hiring! It will totally depend on the situation, but my general advice is that public companies and the hot VC backed cos will do fine. The less capitalized businesses will have knee jerk reactions to this. Plan accordingly! I wrote a synopsis from my experience and talking with friends that are founders as well.

https://www.towardssoftware.com/blog/economic-environment-fo...


Government, non-profits, and universities are the most resilient institutions from a job-seeking perspective. They don't pay as much, but that's the trade off.


I work in a very large company which operates globally and there is talk around the water coolers about recession. All I can say is be ready for it. As another poster mentioned software engineers tend to do alright in such times as our tech is a route to cost reduction and automation - which can be bad for other trades but not. This is normal cycle of life - lost count how many recessions and market slumps I’ve been through.


You should look less into startups and more into established companies. There will be a time again to join startups, but it is not now.


I graduated in the middle of the dot com crash. I feel you.

Get any job you can. As soon as you have real experience the entire hiring process gets easier.


I have felt that for some time we are headed for a market over saturation situation like the 80's when everyone got Electrical Engineering degrees, and then it all collapsed. I know lots of people who have quit other careers to go the BootCamp route to get in on the movement. I've worried for some time this can't be sustainable.


You just have to work at any sub 200k job to realize that while we are oversaturated with devs, we are by no means saturated with skilled ones


> What companies or roles will be more resilient?

Maybe the right question to ask is: which industries will still be essential in a downturn?

There will still be food production, health care, transport, energy, telecommunication, manufacturing, ....

The closer a job is to enabling tangible things that our society needs, the less likely it is to go away.


We're desperately trying to hire for my team. If you have Java experience consider looking into fintech. The pay isn't as great as SV but the benefits are so much better. This is the first SE role I'm in where I am only assigned work for 40 hours a week and am expected to not work any extra.


This matches the tweet I saw from a stripper that said she is a leading indicator and yes we are in a recession.


I'm searching right now. There are jobs to be had, but you'll have to fire like a scatter gun instead of a rifle. I started my interview process with 10 companies and I'm down to three that I'm closing final rounds with.


There’s also a significant reduction in pay for the new offers being handed out. Somebody I knew joined a company for +50% 4 months ago. The same company is offering +5% for the same role now.


Markets need to cool down sometimes to wipe out millions of ineffective businesses. Others will optimize their processes to cut off expenses. Real estate will be cheaper. These moments are positive.


I thought that was what covid was for


It was for about 6 weeks during the initial lockdowns. Since coming out of it/stimulus things bounced back fierce and haven't really throttled down until the past couple months.


Covid didn’t hurt most of tech companies. Instead they got hot money and multiplied capitalization.


if you're good and can convey it don't worry about it. if you're not, start developing communication skills. that's more important than anything.


if all goes to shit, just apply to work at fb/google/amazon/apple. These companies are recession proof. Rotate through many teams until you find one you like.


I am still hiring software engineers at Academia.edu; email me


I am about to graduate college and start the job hunt. Should I be especially concerned about a potential dearth in entry level roles over the next 6-12 months?


You don't have to outrun the bear (market), you just have to outrun your friends. If you can bring your A game, than you have nothing to worry about. Starting salary may be lower, so you will probably have to aggressively move on to the next company once the hiring market improves.


Graduates also have the advantage that they’re relatively cheap to hire.


There are tons of jobs out there with plenty of remote options. Turnover is high and companies are desperate to back fill. This is US west coast so YMMV.


> To be honest is my first time job hunting since I graduated in 2019.

Do you mean you’re leaving your first job after ~3 years or there’s been a gap in your resume?


no, what they imply is that they didn't have to look for a job since after they graduated in 2019


Maybe I'm still misunderstanding the situation; but if you graduate college and then don't get a job for 3 years, I don't think that's going to help you get interviews.


This year I gained 75% more on the salary by switching jobs two times. :)

Since 3 years ago I gained a bit more than 300%. All by changing jobs.


You are lucky getting a response, I have been ghosted by FAANG twice past 3 months. Reminders didn't work either..


> What companies or roles will be more resilient?

Defense or any project fulfilling federal contracts.


Healthcare is another safe bet.


Amazingly, no one is questioning whether there will be a recession or not.


Hiring will still slow down if growth slows, even if it doesn't go negative.


The hiring rate is at an all-time high, so yes. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=POYy


We're still hiring at Wefunder! Our platform allows founders an alternative to VC funding, and helps a lot of small companies get started that might otherwise get overlooked.

Check it out https://wefunder.com/jobs


Just got an interview canceled from Meta as well. Nowhere is safe.


I guess everyone read YC and others’ memos about tightening the belt


Good time to go to grad school, if the recession gets bad.


recessions are always looming. They're a natural part of the business cycle. sounds like you dodged a red flag to me.


… no, not like this they're not. Most quarters have positive GDP, most quarters we've not got half a recession under the belt already, and the way this quarter is going, it is very likely we are already in one and are just waiting for the numbers to come in.


my core point is that recessions are inevitable and are considered an unavoidable part of the business cycle.


Obligatory "Do you have 1. a Website containing at least a small portfolio of two or more projects, and 2. a Github and/or Gitlab profile with some small open source projects, and 3. a LinkedIn presence, and 4. Your Resume on multiple resume sites frequented by Recruiters (Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Dice, Workatastartup.com , etc.?"


you have not done any job hunting since graduating three years ago?


I'm still hiring for my digital agency - we have clients that are funded as an existing traditional business or have already raised a round in anticipation of a market slowdown. You can contact me through my profile if you're interested.

Answering your questions - Will be this the situation for most tech companies or just start ups I expect companies that are still looking for PMF using VC money to die. This is essentially a population bottleneck (1) for certain classes of companies (pre-revenue) & verticals (crypto).

- during recessions recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies[?] The job market overheated for companies doing traditional sourcing, salaries were bumped across the whole industry to retain people, and still a lot of people left. I am sure that some companies overcompensated for this and are going to be burned if last year they went overboard with hiring & retention and this year the market blows up. I don't have an inkling as to which companies to watch out for, but some have already announced layoffs.

- What companies or roles will be more resilient? Companies - big blue chip ones are always safe and look good on a resume. Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc. aren't going anywhere. Even if you join Meta and get laid off due to their bad VR strategy.. it still helps your career by having joined them in the first place. Roles? Anything that existed a couple years ago is fine. Anything brand new like "head of remote work" I wouldn't be so confident about.

- And how as a SWE / tech industry professional, specially the ones starting their careers like me, can prepare? Just keep interviewing at companies with established engineering teams. Don't go somewhere with just 1 or 2 developers, or where engineering isn't the core of their business. This is where good talent goes to languish. I've seen too many people come out of these companies with years of "experience" but it was learned in isolation without somebody experienced helping to shape them into a real middle of senior developer; The worst thing you can do is rack up the years without the actual substance. It's like not MSFT or others are tough - it's just everybody you work with will teach you something new that it's unavoidable. In a tiny company you have to figure out everything by yourself or follow trends, which are less than ideal.

- Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market You are entering almost the best market ever for developers. If you're good, you can get a job anywhere in the world right now at way above nominal rates (if you know how to negotiate).

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck


> Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market.

Came out of college in 2000. I was told it was a gold rush from many grads I knew who were hitting the market in 98'. Startups doing startup things, VC money flowing for IDEAS, didn't even need a business plan of any kind, just have a solid idea and watch the millions get tossed your way.

Then the bottom fell out less than a year after I got out. Everything evaporated. All the cool kids were having "hanging parties" where entire companies were getting laid off in a single day. As fast as the VC money showed up, it turned into sand and disappeared.

I had the same reaction - WTF do I do now? It was so devastating to everyone around me.

Here's what happened:

- lot of friends went back to college to get advanced degrees

- some went back to college to do something totally different

- some got together and started new companies, in the ashes of the recession no less

- some just collected unemployment while waiting the recession out and waiting for companies to start hiring again

- some found gigs at big corporations and started at the ground floor. They wanted stability in the desert of constantly shifting sands. Less pay, but stable.

Here's the point. You have to seize your opportunities when they show up. You should see this, and any "negative" situation as a chance to see what's out there, make a plan and go for it. Things will eventually come back around, but I wouldn't sit around waiting for something else. Start your own company, find out what you really want to be doing and do THAT.

I found out in 2000, that when everybody was standing around holding pitty parties for themselves, there was a huge group of people that were already dusting themselves off and planning the next charge into the next big thing.

Here's an ENTIRE LIST of companies that were founded in 2000:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_companies_es...

The best advice I can give you is to do some digging. Got to networking events, see what everybody is doing. Make connections at companies, talk to people, see who's hiring, let people know you're out there looking for something that's a good fit. Right now? There's roles out there, but you're going to have to do some digging and leg work. The market conditions warrant you doing some legwork, instead of waiting for those companies to come knocking.

Chances are once you get out there and make some connections, you'll find people will start contacting you about roles which won't be on any job board. You'll hear from people about XYZ startup, looking for some solid talent. Or ABC Corp doing some contracting hire through DEF agency.


Watch Unlearn Your MBA by DHH on Youtube - a video from Stanford during crisis of 2008


[flagged]


Twitter thread was cool thanks.


thanks! feel free to DM there if need any help!


First comment: Don't say "get rekt" anywhere near managers, recruiters or founders.


I'll take contemporary teenager slang over YC-backed web3 shitcoin startups, recruiters looking for "rockstars" or "ninjas" coupled with the latest JS library, or founders with their "change the world" mantra at yet another utterly useless ETL SaaS.


Correct, in polite company one should say "get dabbed on" instead.


Are you f*cking kidding me?

Counterpoint: Say "get rekt" around me. It's fine. Nobody cares if you're making stuff or can help them make stuff.

This comment is a joke, nobody who matters thinks like this.


It is not.


Yes, the party is over.

Prepare for a semi-long recession.

If you are in a high-cost market as USA - you are basically more or less fucked.


Doesn't speak well of their longterm planning ability to yank six open positions over a tweet - but I would guess there are other undisclosed reasons, and saying "because of the economy" is just a convenient thing to say.




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