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Ask HN: Did you get a new job in 2024?
24 points by gunnr15 6 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 35 comments
Are you a software engineer who started a new job in 2024? Share your job search strategy and help others succeed!

With a 5x increase in layoffs and 30% fewer open roles, career instability is at an all-time high. Currently, 79% of SWEs are seeking their next opportunity.

If you LOVE your new job, what was the key to your success?

A) Crafting the perfect application. B) Networking and finding a warm intro. C) Other.

Your insights can empower fellow engineers in this challenging job market.

BONUS: if you comment on this post, and your company is hiring, you can/should add a link to an open role.




I got laid off last month but I'm in no hurry to find a new job. I'm actually not even sure if I want one. Working as a frontend software engineer became too boring, I don't want to work with React anymore. I want to get back to work as a full stack engineer creating full applications but that aren't many jobs for that.

So I'm creating apps for myself with the intention of turning one of them into a profitable business. It is been fun to catch up with LLMs and other models.


Nice. There is so much new things to learn. Sounds like a good path.


Not a SDE, but I’m actually doing more of that than ever before. 2 years ago, was given the choice to interview for new internal roles or walk away with a severance package after almost two decades in QE and PM for a large, design tools company. Having witnessed the transition from developer-led (“hey, I just invented this cool thing. Let’s give it to users and see if there’s something there?”) to product-led (“hey, let’s keep making our awesome products better for customers!”) to ultimately marketing-led (“hey, McKinsey taught us this method to circle the wagons and protect our brand to the detriment of paying customers!”), I chose to walk away.

I had a bit of cushion, sold some early-purchased crypto and spent most of my savings, to build my skills in launching a startup and writing code. I interviewed with plenty of companies, but felt the same McKinsey cringe from the big FAANG’s, couldn’t believe the skeeviness of the crypto startups, and went pretty far but not far enough with some of the smaller but more interesting companies. My startup got some interest but ultimately, did not hit hard enough to break gravity.

But, it kept me on the radar for some old contacts and when they wanted to explore the areas I had expertise in, reached out. I did some contract work, ultimately building and launching a major new product on their platform which led to getting brought on full time at the beginning of the year.

I love what I’m doing now. I get to play PM and R&D and Developer roles building things now. The things I build directly impact real people and I can experience the results within days, and I have flexibility to decide what I think is important or interesting.


In late 2023 a recruiter found me for a completely different job than I had ever done before. This was my escape route and I would have taken any exit path from software.

They found me from either LinkedIn or Dice. I had a US security clearance in hand and security certifications.

I remember years ago on here when developers scoffed with great arrogance and entitlement at the mere thought of professional certifications. Now many developers are struggling to find employment while I have choices they don’t have. The learn here is don’t let popularity and peer immaturity influence your career mobility.


Infosec is probably one of the only areas of tech where certificates are useful. I would say where possible you should still try to get an employer to pay for them though.

But that's hard these days so I know people who paid for their own OSCP in the hopes of landing a job


+1


not looking, but I noticed recruiters in Europe started to reach out again after more than a half year of radio silence


I've started getting a lot of outreach again in the US, except it's all such banal "AI" solutions that seem like wrappers on someone's LLM API. They all have 8 figure funding rounds too, which means investors believe there's something there. Is that all it takes right now?


I get recruitment contacts fairly often as well. Mostly by email (and they don’t look automated) but also some on LinkedIn (these look more automated).


That is great news.


Got two jobs and refuted one offer. In the middle of 2 interviews.

I don't have any tricks. I'm just a bit luckier I think. I am quite unlucky in certain other ways that I consider this a necessary complement.

I'm a mediocre data engineer at best, but people usually look at years of service and automatically assume 6 years in some well known but non-faang companies is good enough -- well in most places it indeed is enough.

Neither do I practice LC -- I did have a few LC interviews but everyone agrees that DEs are inferior to other SWEs so they only gave me easy/medium. I prefer companies that don't give LC interviews TBH. I'm fine with SQL LC though.

The only thing I'm doing is coding personal projects using Python or Java or C so I brush up language skills, in this way at least I don't need to Google for list comprehension or enumerate loops. But I'm so burnout by my day job that I don't work on personal projects very often.

I don't love my old or new job. I desperately want to switch to a low level job, no hope as for now. I don't consider myself being success as I hate my job and don't know what to do next.

My company is not hiring at the moment so good luck to everyone who is seeking for a job.


I wish I could give many tips, but I think right now the most important thing is to find connections so that you can skip HRs, and advertise yourself if you have strong personal projects.


How did you go about it? Did you only apply to jobs you where knew someone there?


No they mostly come to me. I did refresh my profile from time to time so that may help.

Other than that, I think having some concrete no BS examples from work really helps.


Thanks for your honesty.


I was laid off last year, but contract ended up getting extended until end of Jan 2024. After talking to a few other companies I decided to take 6 months - 1 year off unless something really interesting came along. A few days after that decision, a company reached out that fit into exactly that category and I ended up joining them.

I didn't notice any particular issues with job availability or recruiter outreach, and figured maybe the sentiment about the market is a little exaggerated.


That sounds like an ideal way to find a new job.

What specifically about the job made you change your mind re: taking time off?


I just thought a lot about what kind of work I was especially curious about doing and decided that it was autonomous agents. Seemed like a great area to explore in, since I believe agents running in permissive environments _could_ be a really powerful and practical way to leverage AI but have not been "solved" yet. AI is super buzzy though so I was careful with filtering out companies working on legitimate applications vs just ones wanting to hop on the AI train for the sake of it. The company that approached me happened to be working on agents in an area that I've already had significant experience in, so ended up being a great fit!


In UK, started new job in August 2023.

Judging from the amount of LinkedIn recruiters reaching out with job offers, I feel confident I could get a decent offer if I wanted (data analytics / science, more than 5 years of experience).

But I don't, it's such a hassle to deal with Visas post-Brexit.


In your experience has it increased lately?


> Currently, 79% of SWEs are seeking their next opportunity.

You mean in the US, right? Still hard to believe.


It’s from October 2023, but I feel it is still relevant.

https://www.developer-tech.com/news/2023/oct/30/stack-overfl...


"79 percent of developers are either actively seeking new job opportunities or are open to the idea"

I mean yeah, I don't know a single developer (employed or not) who ever wasn't "open to the idea" of a new job. This is kind of a meaningless statement.


Hmmm.

I see your point, but if you read the article, this is still 2-3x higher than in previous time frames.


It just means employee loyalty continues to erode to one day match company levels of loyalty to employees.


Yes, same old way: by applying and getting interviewed. Has anything changed lately? Any major breakthroughs in job hunting?

EDIT: you should add a disclaimer that you're the CEO of a job hunting startup.


I would, but I didn’t want this to be a promotion.

Am authentically interested.


C) i looked for jobs. applied with zero filters. more than 96% of the companies rejected me. But eventually i've got two offers. One from Germany and the other one from Estonia.


Nice. Way to have grit.


Yep. Just got hired out from an YC backed tech giant here in Latam and I'm joining a large IT consultancy firm. I think its gonna be fun.


Nice. How did you find the job?


Check https://www.workatastartup.com/


this is cool. Is this open source that we can poke around? What stack do you use to build this?


huh?


Arr.. I replied to wrong thread .




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