Ask HN: Hiring managers for SWEs, how is the market changing for open positions?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34053152

by pm90 • 4 years ago

37 20 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

With all the recent layoffs, are you getting flooded with too many great applicants? Are open positions filling up lightning quick? Or has it been more gradual?

Just want to understand what the environment looks like post major layoffs from the hiring side.

cwkoss• 4 years ago

The suits fear funding will be all dried up next season, so there aren't any open positions.

wittycardio3• 4 years ago

Not even close to true. I've received about 20 recruiter messages this week and most of my colleagues have had the same experience

awb• 4 years ago

Surprisingly no.

Several clients have reduced hiring and while there is a steady stream of SWE applicants, they’re not from prominent tech companies.

This is for multiple small, funded, successful startups.

djohnston• 4 years ago

Most people getting laid off aren't SWEs. This is what I'm hearing from a headhunter friend. She also said that hiring folks are using layoffs as a proxy for "not high performer". I told her this was unfortunate and probably not that accurate of a heuristic.

sosodev2• 4 years ago

It's certainly not accurate. I was laid off from my SRE role despite having saved the company huge amounts of money. I'm sure that some executive did a simple calculation of salary compared to seniority/experience and I came up towards the top of the spreadsheet.

So I was let go without a deeper analysis of my contributions or highly positive performance review.

I have been having some success getting interviews at decent companies despite it being the slowest time of year for hiring but I do get the impression that some recruiters are looking my layoff negatively.

phphphphp• 4 years ago

Stop calling it a layoff :) You left, the reason is immaterial.

If pressed for a reason, explain that you feel that you have achieved all that you could at the company and are excited for a new challenge where you can apply everything you’ve learned through your career. As long as you don’t explicitly lie, it’s not going to matter… and as long as you had the job for at least 6 months, nobody would question why you left — I’ve quit jobs after 6 months with no new job lined up and it has never been an issue in subsequent hiring processes.

The signal of a layoff isn’t great but it’s a very weak signal that a hiring manager would rely on only if they didn’t have any better signals. Don’t give them the opportunity to be lazy and rely on it. You’re pitching yourself, only give them the information you think benefits you.

onphonenow• 4 years ago

This - some swe’s but market still pretty tight there. I think tougher market in some of the other spots. Have some friends sitting longer periods in open to work.

dakiol• 4 years ago

With all the recent layoffs, are you getting flooded with too many great applicants?

Why do you think the people who were laid off were "great" to begin with? Surprises me a lot the folks who think that a software engineer with Twitter in their CV is a "great" software engineer. The majority of good software engineers out there do not work for FAANG. This is pure statistics.

xupybd• 4 years ago

They are probably very good at leet coding and FAANG interviews.

sosodev2• 4 years ago

With the scale of layoffs it seems obvious that there are many great applicants in the pool again. There's no way you can argue that 100% of laid off FAANG employees were poor performers.

wittycardio3• 4 years ago

The majority of good software engineers don't work for faang but the majority of faang engineers are good

renaissance_tea• 4 years ago

Based on what data?

willcipriano• 4 years ago

Bad time of year to look at this. I'd be more interested in this answer in a month.

kunjank• 4 years ago

I am personally not hiring. But the hiring landscape is very different. I had a conversation about this with another manager who is hiring at work. Very anecdotal info below:

We may see much higher applications. Most are going to be backed with good brands. It's hard to let go of the bias that we maybe looking at the bottom quartile for these companies. Most will be extremely good at the interviewing. The candidates will also have very different motivations.

clpm4j• 4 years ago

The bottom quartile at some of these companies could still easily be in the top decile at many other companies. Unfortunately every company thinks they need, and are deserving of "Top Talent".

jdlshore• 4 years ago

top decile

I think you’re overestimating the hiring ability of big companies, and underestimating the people at small companies.

Ask HN: Hiring managers for SWEs, how is the market changing for open positions?

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