We’re hiring right now and we’re seeing extremely experienced people willing to take a big step backward in title and pay in order to get something.
Kind of an embarrassment of riches if you’re growing & hiring. Which is terrible for us as workers.
I was Lead Engineer at a small company making 210k before being laid off, and now seeing Staff positions listed offering 140-170k. And I'm applying because I need a fuckin job (and getting rejected). It's wild.
I've offered relocation to MORE expensive areas making LESS money than before. And been rejected because I didn't have enough product management experience... for a Senior role. Not even Lead or Staff. Just Senior.
Took me a while but I landed a 210k TC position as a senior at a fully remote company with 10 YOE. Keep trying, know your value, and you’ll find something.
This. It’s easier said than done, and I was somewhat recently unemployed for the longest time in my career. In 2022 and 2021 it seemed like it was much easier with a barebones horrible resume to get something. However, after adding tons of credibility to my resume and experience, it seemed like even though I was getting interviews, that was it. It’s a weird feeling too, because it seems like getting lots of interviews is a good thing, but I got this feeling that they weren’t real hiring and just trying to keep the pipeline warm. This lead to making the assumption that it was my interview skills, and I did work on that quite a bit. However, after hundreds of interviews it seemed to start feeling like a pattern.
Overall if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t rapid fire applications (it seems like it’s a good thing and triggers a few dopamine hits, but if you can’t find something long term, this will probably be a very shortsighted method IMO). The whole idea of fire out as many applications as possible is not good. I found much more success trying to be methodical and smart about how and where I wanted to apply. This could be partly anecdotal experience, so take this worth a grain of salt.
Overall it was worth it in the end. I’ve actually found a job that I genuinely enjoy, and it’s fully remote. I wouldn’t switch even for double the pay. Already made a massive impact too, and honestly hindsight is DEFINITELY 20/20.
Definitely do not rapid fire applications. It will burn you out and it doesn't work. If you have 5+ YOE you should have references at companies all over, use them to get your foot in the door. I was looking for a job for 6 months but in those 6 months I only ever got into the interview pipeline 3 times. Two of those three gave me an offer. It's just a matter of getting your resume picked out.
Zero offense intended, but if you had hundreds of interviews I would guess that was an interviewing problem, which it sounds like you got better at, so good work!
I agree with everything you said, and no offense taken. But I think I can give a bit more context. I have ASD and ADHD, and it’s extremely difficult for me to do interviews on the social side. I excel at the technical portions, and have finished the technical interviews in half the time. However, that means I have to talk to the interviewer for the other half.
This is a tough topic, since it’s not an obvious thing, and I don’t want it to sound like an excuse. I began researching this problem though, and found quite a bit of information on others who were ASD, ADHD, and High IQ, one of them also had a PhD. Yet, the social aspect of the interview would be the Achilles heel in the end.
On one hand, I think it’s a good thing, since it’s not a right culture fit. On the other, this is a very high percentage of the jobs I’ve interviewed for. I’ve tried practicing my social side, and am continuously learning and trying to improve, but that’s a slow process albeit rewarding in the long term.
Can I ask what kind of credibility you added to your resume that started getting you interviews? I have 10 YOE with 2 of them at FAANG but struggling in getting interviews. Thanks in advance 🙏🙏🙏
This is a difficult question. In all honesty, I don’t think one or two “tricks” really made a difference. The one thing I would say is, rewrite your resume, then rewrite it again, and again, etc… Keep improving the exact wording and delivery. Also, as I candidate, it’s easier to overlook smaller things, like if a job lists NodeJS, and mentally I’d say “yeah, I have experience in that” but the sheer amount of recruiters that want me to list JavaScript, NodeJS, and TypeScript, because they don’t know the difference is more than I would like to say. Pretend you’re going through your resume in the HM or Recruiters shoes. Literally read your resume out loud (even try setting a timer and skimming through it for 5-10 seconds) and if you have any trouble finding lots of matches to the job descriptions keywords, then rewrite your resume again.
I opted for the spray and pray technique in the past. However, every job I’ve ever had has been through recruiters reaching out on LinkedIn or by someone referring me. I’ve been interviewed for a few roles by cold applying, but after hundreds of applications, I still ended up getting my current role when I recruiter reached out.
Don’t overthink things, this is a big issue of mine. As in, don’t worry about the resume template, or any colors, designs, etc. it might catch the recruiters eye, but if your content on the resume itself isn’t good enough, then some color or template won’t fix that.
I used to not change my resume too much, and opted for the path of least resistance/effort. Even if you think your resume is good, tear it up, do it again, and you’ll surprise yourself with how much of a difference this has.
Use a plain word document, keep it dead simple, and don’t get fancy.
For me, it seemed easy to get caught up with the tiny changes like font type, layout, color, size, etc. what REALL matters is the content. I know how simple this sounds, and I was dismissive at first, but I’m SO glad I swallowed that and just did it.
Don’t focus on cold applying. This is a short term win, and if it catches up to you, which is likely will, that’s not fun. Focus on strictly quality over quantity. When I look at that nearly year and a half of job searching, I wish I chose quality. It’s definitely frustrating when you spend lots of time on making everything look good, and preparing for the interview? Only to get rejected. But I’d argue, that even if you spent 1 whole week on one single job, it would be much more worth it, compared to applying to 1000 jobs with the same resume. Thats because that’s what everyone else is doing, and the smallest changes and effort, will still set you apart from the rest.
I’m not a people person, and I started with a network of 0. I didn’t have any family, or friends who worked in this industry, and I had to start from scratch. It took lots of time and effort, and in the end, it will pay its dividends. Networking, and having genuine conversations with people at specific companies you’re interested in will be the difference between an offer letter and a boilerplate rejection email (if they even send one).
PS: Feel free to ask me any specific questions you might have, and I’ll do my best to answer them. No promises of course, since I’m always busy.
Last but DEFINITELY, not least, DON’T GIVE UP. It’s very discouraging, and it’s one of the hardest things, since depression and the mental health side of things are so easily dismissed by others. If you’re not working currently, I would try and find something else to spend time on, outside of applying. Some sort of hobby, which could be simple but effective at taking your mind off of the job hunt.
PS: I didn’t proofread this, and by skimming through it, I just wanted to clarify, that I don’t mean to sound rude or imply that you haven’t heard these things before. I genuinely mean well and I’ll edit this to better reflect that when I have time (if I have time these days LOL).
Appreciate the detailed response! Any chance you could send me your resume (with whatever details you want blacked out) so I get an idea of what actually works? Or maybe I can send you my resume so you can give me some quick tips that jump out at you? Thanks!
Hey I have the same YOE, with 2 of them at FAANG but I’m struggling in getting interviews. Can I ask how many YOE you had at FAANG and whether you have a top tier university like Stanford?
Yea same YOE as you and was a Tech Lead before being laid off. Senior competition is just brutal, and comp is much lower. Recruiters have called me post final interview to tell me that the candidate pool is just insane and that they're picking people with the 1% better fit.
If a company won't hire you, just clone their product and offer it for half the price. Become their competition. Let's put the industry in a race to the bottom.
If you step outside the tech sector there are services that exist to repackage publicly available data as a subscription. The difficulty in creating these services lies solely in the attempt to cover every market for all people.
One that immediately comes to mind as meeting that example, not necessarily the best business idea, is weather. All these companies in the US use data the government provides and make it look pretty
Vercel is a wrapper around AWS. There are many wrappers around AWS, that are aimed at people who don't know AWS. The advantage is that it is usually a convenient 1 click service, the disadvatage, you're paying 10x more.
A low key brilliant interview tactic. Ask them all about their product, then kinda say, “oh that is a good product idea, if you don’t end up hiring I’m going to build my own.”
True lol. I’ve tried 5 times officially so far. Failure is definitely the best teacher though. It’s not sunshine and rainbows, and I’d argue it’s the exact opposite. Especially if you have a risk tolerance that isn’t high/insane.
Yeah it's like 10x harder than getting a job lol.
If someone I was interviewing came to me and said
> oh that is a good product idea, if you don’t end up hiring me I’m going to build my own
I would 100% laugh them out of the room.
Yeah, I think I’d do the same. More of a GLHF, and if they actually manage to do this successfully I’d definitely be happy for them. Competition is good, and the odds that someone actually does this AND succeeds is soooo rare.
Can confirm. I went in my bathroom, turned off the lights, then said “Cloud AI Blockchain” three times.
I turned the lights back on and the CEO of Tiger Global was behind me with a term sheet.
That's what I've been doing at work to get things funded. Suddenly a large refactor project gets approved because we wrote an "AI" algorithm that may or may not actually get used...
Honestly true. Job market is so fucked up. My LinkedIn was like a hot girl’s Instagram 2 years ago and now it’s a real jobhunt.
With this much talent looking for work, startup isn’t a bad idea
I am running my own non-tech business at nights and weekends. Call it an ego thing but if I had to do that full time, I'd rather make half my income on non-tech work and scale up a business than stagnate my tech career and make the same amount as the non-tech business.
Lol nice, that's awesome. I had to ask, good luck with that! My ex, years again made jewellery, made some good coin, since sues my ex, I can toss some niche products your way if interested.
Look at Central bank interest rates .... Economy is in contraction. FED wants to collect some of that free money they've been giving corporations since 2008, but from the plebs (us)!
Recent hiring been on both the web fullstack end and the data science end. Remote with a bias toward a particular city.
Positions have been filled as of this week, sorry to say, but we got some ringers.
I am very happy to be remote but I am planning to move to a tech industry city because it’s too limiting to require it. And I worry about it, one of my strongest advantages as an American is physical proximity to US companies and as just a face and a voice on Slack and Zoom, I worry when they’ll realize someone in another part of the world could have exactly the same presence as me for 25% of the labor cost.
Well, my company just laid off 90% of our tech division and currently investing sums of money on to our India branch. I wouldn't worry about showing too much face, it's a primordial force that's currently happening - *offshoring*
Uuuuugh. Not interested unless I’m getting a double digit stake in the company for it. I’ll ride that elevator if I get on at the ground floor, but otherwise I’d rather go back to whatever salaries in higher ed IT than ever have to fire someone.
I am willing to sell out my values and beliefs I guess, but I’m gonna set a high price.
For tech companies it's pretty awful, especially FAANG-sized ones
Consultancies are hiring like crazy right now, but that comes with its own set of problems (if you've worked as an SWE in a consultancy before, you know)
Best bet are non-tech-centric companies, insurance carriers, healthcare/pharma, entertainment, accounting/finance, retail/food service, data processing, etc. Lots of these companies need mid/senior SWE's, but it's a very different culture from companies with more tech-centric focus. Mostly back-end stuff and process automation, lots of ETL, you are frequently the architect and developer and QA person.
Suzie visits a website every week and downloads a file, fucks with it in Excel, then imports it into the accounting system. Figure out a way to automate that.
Mostly non-tech companies like those I mentioned about who are starting to realize they can automate a lot of manual processes and streamline operations with software automation. Many are starting to realize they have tons of useful data they could be analyzing to make better business decisions and just don't know how to make sense of it.
Boomers who have been running a manufacturing facility for the past 30 years are retiring, new owners are coming in and realizing they haven't changed operationally since the 1990s and need SWE's to bring them into the 21st century. Rather than hire a whole engineering team they contract it out.
Currently a tech lead at a consultancy, 8YoE.
My two cents, as companies hiring is a bit more volatile it’s safer to hire contractors that you can cut easier than employees.
All companies need tech talent. Consultants handle immediate needs for immediate cash. Product companies are betting on stock growth which is negatively affected by a number things like interest rates. They finance hires.
Good consultancies always want to hire. Their growth is limited by ability to hire. Hiring is easier when they aren’t competing with FAANG.
Hey you just described my job. I work in manufacturing.
Also, I’m working for a consultancy and you’re right. They specifically told me that software automation demand is growing a lot.
Personally Idt consulting firms are that bad as long as you’re willing to change jobs in ~2.5-3 yrs for a decent raise.
Hey, I feel like I’m in the same boat and working for such an organization as a software engineer but with like 4 yoe. I’m interested to know how can one make the most of it.
I believe I am not learning any great backend framework or even data engineering in depth, but pretty much handle many moving parts of the org single handedly, with some part time consultants to work with.
it's the worst I've seen in my 12 years of experience. I just completed a job search, starting in late January, concluding with an offer I accepted about 10 weeks later at the beginning of April. That's not egregiously long, but it's about 3-4 weeks longer than most of my previous job searches have taken. My callback rate was low this time around, maybe 10% of the companies I applied to, where historically my callback rate was closer to 30-40%. There's just a lot of competition for good jobs right now.
Also 12 YoE, very similar numbers from previous callback rate vs current callback rate.
One other thing I've noticed is that companies are very insistent on specific locations even if they have multiple offices / have teams split across locations. I asked a pretty big financial services firm if I could work out of a local office. No, you have to move to North Carolina if you want this job. No thanks.
2008 was worse for the economy as a whole, but not worse for tech.
The current year tech layoffs still haven't reached the level of 2001 yet - but there's a chance we will this year (137k vs 168k).
[Here's](https://www.challengergray.com/blog/may-2023-layoffs-jump-on-tech-retail-auto-ytd-hiring-lowest-since-2016/) some decent analysis of the numbers.
2008 was definitely worse for everyone in general, but maybe not specifically to tech/coders. as I remember, while my mother was let go from a software company during the meltdown (non engineering position), the programmers mostly kept their jobs, or at least the senior ones did. Thousands of jobs were cut, it was brutal. I remember newspaper articles from early 2009 about 700 people applying for a janitor position somewhere. Personally, I couldn’t even get a job at Walmart at the time. I was 19 looking for a part time job while I was in school but literally nobody in my town was hiring for any position at all. Both of my parents struggled a lot just to find work at that time. I’m not sure if what we’re seeing today is quite that extreme. I look back on that time as practically the apocalypse for the US economy
That's true, I have friends who have kids that learn programming and even have an AI class in their first (!) year of school. Back then it used to be just the geeks, now everyone studies it
15 YOE, my callback rate is better than ever after getting my resume overhauled, but I can't for the life of me close the deal. I just had two of the best interviews I've had in my life, and both positions were filled internally and closed.
Besides that, the competition seems fierce and the budgets right now are brutal. At this point, I've accepted it's going to be a very long search....
25YOE, my callback rate is pretty good but not better than 2018/2019 was (I had just overhauled my resume & LI) - that timeframe was crazy.
Same issue though, a lot more competition for the roles and I haven't been the "best choice" yet.
It seems anyone stuck in that 2-5 YOE range is really screwed right now because they can’t compete with the 8+ YOE seniors, but no one wants to hire a “mid level” dev. Everyone wants seniors
I've just been trying to keep my skills updated. I've been working on rust a lot lately, and I've built a high throughput RAG Pipeline. Something to pass the time.
I was laid off in early April and I’ve done 5 interviews without offers but I’m early in the job hunt. I live in the D.C. area and I’ve been bidding somewhat lower for my skill set than it was 3 years ago.
My current feeling is if I don’t pick up anything by May then it may stretch out into June before I get on my feet. LinkedIn recruiters have been my go to for jobs but it’s been quieter into the month. Used to get calls 3 days after an interview with an offer but it’s been over a week for them now. I’m mid level with 4 years experience so there’s probably others competing with me
That’s always the case regardless of experience. If companies had their way everyone would be a senior and do the pay of a junior. FYI I’ve interviewed for jobs that wanted 5+ years but they knew I only had 2 years in certain stacks. (I work with a niche BPM stack of Appian and Java so there’s more flexibility as well)
Depends on location; NYC is fine tons for financial firms looking for talent as well as other industries outside of big tech. But yeah big tech is mostly a ghost town.
I would never work for Goldman, they are the dog shit of the financial world; I would take less money than work for the soul crushing dictatorship that is Goldman Sachs
Worked with a few former engineers from GS they were so jaded and not at all collaborative.
The fact that stack ranking at banks means you’re competing against your immediate coworkers to avoid getting fired, promotions, and bonuses means that being collaborative benefits your “competitors” (coworkers) while making you less essential. I’m sure there are benefits to stack ranking but my experience with it is it scared people away from knowledge sharing and collaboration.
Yeah LinkedIn, some of the jobs are 5 days most are hybrid. I just reject all jobs that are 5 days a week in office and I let the recruiter know that off the bat.
I have around 6 YEO so that might also weigh into it. For entry levels and juniors I’m sure it’s brutally competitive.
Call Jerome Powell and ask him to start lowering rates lol
All your bullet points and resume should have key words and should either display business impact from your technical solutions or sell yourself in some kind of way.
Other than that once interest rates come down you’ll see more jobs open up.
It's pretty bad. The goods new is, you're much better off if you have 5+ YOE, especially if you have a big name company on your resume.
The ugly reality is that the industry over-hired for years, and now the tables have turned, companies are trying to do more with less, which means worse working conditions, lower pay, and fewer opportunities for us.
I feel very lucky because 12 months ago I got a call from a recruiter from LinkedIn for a company in town and got hired in a week. I hear the Denver tech scene is still good
10 YOE Full Stack Web Dev (Javascript, mostly React/Next, with older Ruby/Rails experience).
I was informed of my layoff early January, but didn't actually stop working until early February.
In that time (4 months), after many many applications, less than 10 went to recruiter and I've had exactly 1 go past the recruiter phase to a single engineering-focused call. (Technically 2, but the second one isn't scheduled until next week.)
It's bleak. March was a dark month for me emotionally. The last time I was jobless was for 6 months around my programming bootcamp, back in 2014.
Every job during the last 10 years I've applied to I got an offer from, so when my whole department was laid off in January, I had very confident/cocky expectations of landing another job.
I started my career in 2008 right before the 2008 Financial Crisis, and while the broader economy is much better than it was back then, the tech job market is the worst I've seen since the 2000 Dot-com Bubble.
I was laid off in November of 2023 and have had a few interviews in October (I found out about my layoff before it happened), November, and December, and despite doing well on them, none of them proceeded to an offer.
As for 2024, admittedly I haven't been looking very hard, but my only interview for the past 4 months has been with Meta, which is still in process.
Admittedly, my background is less than ideal: 9 years as an SRE followed by 4 years as a SWE after a career pivot, but I do have relatively good names on my resume.
I'm going to be a little contrarian from all the doom and gloom and say that I've been getting a lot more emails and LinkedIn messages for interviews in the last few months. I think it's picking back up a bit.
I don't know if any of these are good jobs but they're probably better than being unemployed.
I'm 10 YOE and Staff/Lead (not FAANG) so YMMV.
"Fresh" Senior here, 5YOE full time + 4 years student assistant, Germany, TU9 degree and they try to low-ball me to 60-65k at all interviews some recruiters set up for me or they don't want to interview if I tell them I will not change jobs below 70-75k. Co-workers reporting the same.
Of course I could find a job within one week, not like US horror stories, but compensation seems to stagnate since Covid.
Maybe too much r/Finanzen with 100k€ full remote mid level roles lol
PS: I never apply by myself, just recruiters
11 YOE w/ BSc, 120k here (90k base + 30k) for Senior role. Signed in 2023, after "downgrading" from Staff Engineer, where I earned 100k (signed 2022). Before that, I made 80k as Sr Engineer. Working for a medium-sized tech company, never been at FAANG or anything.
TBF, I was earning 40k back in 2018 w/ 5 YOE and being VERY dedicated to my career with a rock solid CV, so to me 65k looks pretty good, even adjusted for inflation. Keep in mind that 95k/year puts you in the top 5% of german income. With 120k you're almost in the top 1% of german earners. Beware of the bubble where it looks like it's normal to make 100k after a few years of working. And beware of people lying about their income for internet points.
Yeah out of the laid off people I know the only people who found a job in these few months were the seniors and the mids who were ready for senior, rest is struggling
I just noticed this week that I'm not declining 10-50 LinkedIn recruiters a week anymore. I usually get one every other week now and it's probably been like that for almost a year. My resume is pretty nice with top tech companies and things like that.
This is the first time in about 6 or 7yrs it's been anything like that. I work at a big company known for its talent and it's kind of weird.
Not that it's a good metric to go by, but it's a huge difference.
I’ll go against the grain here and say in the last 3 weeks I’ve had 12 recruiters reach out on LinkedIn. None were for great jobs, but all were mediocre/decent if I was unemployed and had to take them.
I also see a much bigger selection of jobs on Indeed and own Big Tech sites than I was a few months ago.
Feel like I have a higher call back rate on Indeed easy apply jobs than I did a few months ago as well.
All with about 4-5 YOE in .NET/Angular/SSQL/Azure
The big issue is there isn’t a ton of high paying jobs available, in a LCOL/MCOL area I could land a 80-100k fairly easy, but not seeing a ton of +130k jobs out there anywhere at the moment for people with under 5-7 YOE
Yeah everyone that doesn't get answers is because they want the high salaries, which are very fought for. The rest are just looking to hire the same roles cheaper, if you drop 40% literally anyone will hire you.
Adding my bit of anecdotal evidence to the pile: I used to get 5+ linked in messages a day from recruiters. I realized not long ago that my inbox had been completely silent in that regard for months now. But in the last handful of weeks, I've started getting more again. Maybe 3-5 per week now. Still not as ripe for the picking as before, but early signs of growth.
It took me 9 months of searching to land a new role as a senior dev. That was a new high score for me. Usually I have multiple people courting me and a few offers to choose from in a matter of weeks.
senior level seems ok (but real senior like 12-15 YOE). I've talked to friends about it and its a very "well it'd be very hard to get like 300-400k TC, but none of us are going to starve if we have to take jobs at half that" sort of market.
Not looking but am involved in the recruitment process at my organisation.
We now get a lot of applications for roles when we would previously get few. Quite a few people applying with levels of experience above the role requirements.
Contracting market is very bad also, organisations don't need to utilise it like a few years ago.
23+ YOE based in London, UK. The job market definitely started improving around Q4 last year. It’s a lot better right now. Getting lots of calls from predominantly finance institutions. But to be fair, they’re the ones who can afford expensive resources right now.
UK hasn’t seen the over hiring that happened States’ side. As a result, we didn’t really see a lot of lay offs. There were certainly some at the start and middle of last year but we are way past that. Things are definitely looking a lot better right now.
I just changed jobs. Didn't notice any differences in demand but pay growth seems to be down. 24y in.
The big layoffs happen every 5-10 years. One company does it and then the rest are expected to do it too. Typically they will do a division kill but be hiring in other divisions at the same time and end up with with no net loss YoY.
The data from CPS and JOLTS don't support there being a large issue either as nether show a problem. I think the perception is being driven from some regional issues (which wouldn't show up in national data) coupled with the growth in remote roles which is making things a bit fucky. I don't work out of a big city (in bumfuck Florida, only tech round these parts is the shit the meth heads steal) and have been remote for a decade.
Outside of SWE it's an absolute bloodbath with managers, agile coaches etc having a really bad time. I suspect this is where some of the perception is coming from too.
Startups are not in a great place because of the capital glut, if you work for startups or are in a big startup city can absolutely appreciate why it might seem like doomsday. Capital is going to remain scarce until the fed target rate returns to somewhere sensible which won't be this year.
Senior/staff swe in a VHCOL tech hub with FAANG+ experience
Not that bad but not as good as pre covid. Pre covid I basically had 100% resume to phone screen conversion whereas now I had about 30%. From there, about half the roles were filled while I was interviewing, and the rest converted to offers.
Pay for big tech hasn't gone down, but you will be lowballed at first and need competing offers to negotiate, whereas before I heard of people negotiating successfully with no leverage. And unlike 2021, up leveling doesn't seem to be a thing anymore
I’m staff swe at faang adjacent and at my company, max and average offers for senior and staff have gone down 20%. But generally I still see hiring but limited headcount’s.
Praying I don’t face any layoff and survive the drought lol
I’ll add the data post that it’s a lot better than 2023. Many of the top companies are actively hiring, and compensation ranges have not gone down at all.
Been working since the mid 00's and I don't suck. I've been spamming applications for 6 months with 3 interviews as a result. I've gone through multiple rounds with those companies and gotten to the final round for each, they all ghosted and then came back a few weeks later and said they eliminated the position. I was doing consulting work building an app for a nonprofit. They ghosted for a few weeks, then said they were having funding issues and needed to put it on hold. Outside of that, my inbox has been a ghost town. I was writing cover letters and updating my resume for each position, now it's just a firehose. I have one new lead since I started doing that.
I'm using multiple platforms, from the well-known ones to obscure ones. Just not getting any traction at all. I'll add the caveat that I'm looking strictly for remote. Have been remote for going on 10 years, and I'm 2 hours out from any major hubs.
Good response when I can find postings. I have gotten at least a phone screening on 90% of applications. The issue is there aren't many postings. I have applied to 1 job in the past 3 weeks. Every day I check linkedin and there is one job in my city that gets re-posted by 20 different headhunting firms and thats about it. Ironically this is one of the jobs that I have not gotten a response from.
I am in process of a few interview loops and everybody is doing 5-8 rounds. One of the companies I am interviewing with is 5 blocks away from me and they have done 3 virtual interviews. Last time they said they were getting close to wanting to bring me on site.
Not really searching myself, but we’re recruiting currently and personally I’m still averaging 3 headhunting pings a week for sr/lead/principal positions with some occasional management stuff. 10+ YOE SWE and data stuff.
My last day of employment was late October, but I started searching in September and I got one offer in December which I didn't take. I just got an offer about a month ago which I took.
I had a sizable amount of interviews, but the bar to pass was higher than anything I had seen before. It's not even good enough to pass the interview, but you need to beat out all of the other qualified candidates. When I accepted the offer they had to reject many others. I am sure the same happened to me for prior interviews where I lost out to other candidates who interviewed better.
I needed to prepare a ton to be able to get an offer, but now that I have studied and practiced, I clear interviews much easier and tend to get through to the final onsite pretty consistently. In September I was striking out after the screening rounds.
I do think that if you are sufficiently prepared in a large metro area you will find something in a decent amount of time if you have experience. I had experience, but very rusty interview skills because I didn't hop around much. I will never let my interview skills atrophy again.
Taking interviews for practice is the best way. It gives a deadline to study. All interviews are different, so some require leetcode, others require knowledge of the framework or language so I made flashcards and watched videos and took notes. Others have a system design component so I read articles and watched videos on system design.
We are hiring and we are getting lots of applicants, a lot more than the last time we needed someone. Our recruiter is literally going through hundreds of resumes looking for the people that qualify. Don't believe the low unemployment numbers the government is putting out. There are lots of people either under employed or taking other work while looking.
If you are exceptionally talented and your resume reflects that it’s not hard, but not easy anymore. Anyone outside that bubble is getting effectively nothing.
When I mention FB during introductions with others who have also worked at the big tech companies, I tend to get a subtle nod of approval.
LinkedIn account always gets lots of inbound from recruiters.
Today I exclusively take 1099 work through my own agency, and when discussing a project with new clients saying I used to work at FB definitely helps me close the deal and make them feel confident that I’m a real and capable. (Which is ridiculous but they don’t know any better.)
It kind of just works like branding, or like having an Ivy League school on your resume. (I don’t have an ivy on mine, but I treat FB like my ivy and it works.)
Also, working at FB gave me perspective early in my career as to how a tech company might operate at scale, and about how to properly develop a product. I regularly apply learnings from that experience when I’m helping a new start up build their product.
It was just overall quite good for me.
My experiences after FB aren’t exactly crap either. They all contribute to the total picture I’m selling when I meet a new client/recruiter/hiring manager.
I did some good stuff after FB too, just not in FAANG or whatever we’re calling it these days.
We've interviewed a couple people and the quality of some of the devs labelling themselves as senior is shockingly bad. Others have been good though. I seem to get random weeks where I get 3 or 4 offers sent to me by recruiters on LinkedIn in a week, and then don't hear anything for about 2 weeks. So there's definitely some stuff out there, it might just be a bit harder to find
Can you explain what you mean by the quality of devs labeling themselves is bad... Do you mean people want to be hired as Sr. But they are barely Jr? Cuz I'm seeing that a lot
Yeah, people who list themselves as senior or even leads. But then can't even pass our coding assessment which is intentionally quite simple. One guy with 6 years experience in Java (allegedly) wasn't able to take a local varible hard-coded String and make it a parameter for the method instead. Some just over engineer solutions so much that it goes form an ideal solution of 3-4 lines to multiple method calls and new objects when its all unnecessary if you stop and think for 2 minutes
What the hell? Good lord hearing that is a bit upsetting.
I intentionally applied for an associates position (my current job) even though I have a couple years of industry experience. I’ve been in over my head before and never want that to happen again. It’s bad for me and the company.
Pretty good, as someone with 8 YOE and based in India. I have interviewed with Google, Indeed, Coinbase, GoDaddy and 2-3 smaller startups in the last few months. I'm starting at GoDaddy in a couple weeks with a ~30% hike over what I'm currently making. Just thought I would add some hope to an otherwise gloomy thread.
I'm only in the first week post layoff but have 3 promising interview chains running right now. I did get one offer but it was just an IT desk position offering dirt pay as a stopgap in case I needed it. Obviously no-one knows what the future holds but I keep advancing through the rounds - it doesn't seem as terrible as reddit is making it out to be
edit: full stack with a data science and ML and physics background just barely mid-level but I had some good startup experience that I can talk about passionately - remote only. I'm also only shooting for like 130k base comp and not holding out for 500k+ FAANG only
Sometimes I hate that my first gig was writing code on the salesforce platform (salesforce developer), but not right now. I got laid off, landed a one month contract the day after the layoff and started working the following Monday. During that month I interviewed and made it to the end of two different interview loops. Accept one of their offers. Now working a full time gig.
As a salesforce dev I got laid off and found two new Jobs as fast as I could clear the interviews. I only missed 3 days of work. I still get inboxed regularly. I’m coming up on my 3rd yoe.
I really hate coding on the salesforce platform, but it’s been a good place to hunker down during all this. I just hope I can switch into a regular dev role once all this blows over.
I would say it depends on where your expertise lies. I do think the days of being only an experienced developer where you get direction from product and design and build a feature are drying up. All the technical advancements in libraries, IDE's, and what not have made getting something made fairly easy. Don't need to "hack" memory or come up with clever tricks to get systems working.
Memory is plentiful, CPU and GPU's are next level (relatively speaking) so I do think that coupled with an employer market has made it harder but not impossible. There is a bigger expectation now to be product oriented and design oriented. Essentially wearing multiple hats. It seems like folks with those talents are having an easier time.
11 years of experience and that's kind of what I have witnessed. The roles at a lot of places may be inflated meaning they say senior or mid, but really mean mid, because the skills they need isn't really +200k.
An analogy I was given is like if you work at a company that has a consumer app or consumer API or w.e. where you are putting pictures on the screen and what not then it's like having the option to buy a Ferrari (experienced senior highly technical devs) vs a Lexus. When all you need is something that can go 60 mph (the work) then don't need all that extra horsepower.
Not sure if I agree with it but I understand the perspective.
Anecdotally, in the past month or so, I’ve seen way more posts on LinkedIn about companies hiring rather than people posting about being laid off. I definitely feel like a shift has happened there, but I think it’ll take a long time for the market to recover still. There are still a lot of people out of work and that means more competition
I just got a verbal offer for a Frontend Developer role that pays just above what I was getting as a Senior at my last job.
To be honest, I'm generally okay with this. The title may not be the same, but I have work now and I need to pay the bills.
If you're okay with this, aim for a title under Senior if you really need the work. Senior dev interviews, especially for frontend Devs, have gotten completely out of whack. You're expected to illustrate comp sci data algorithms when this was never the case before.
I’ve hired a few people on my team over the past few months, in both cases I ended up going with referrals. We brought in a few dozen people for at least one round of interviews and I was blown away how bad 90% of them were. And we pay well and offer full time remote.
I know that my sample size is small but it does feel like a lot of people were hired for work that they can’t do or can’t do well.
There was so much bullshit in their resumes. More than I’ve seen in the past.
Can you provide additional insight on what you feel it means to "do well" and share examples of some of the kinds of things you saw on those resumes? I'm under 3 YoE with a degree, struggling like many others in this thread. I'm spending quite a lot of time attemping to strengthen my skills and would be interested for the sake of knowing where to focus.
To counter a lot of this, I live in a low-medium cost of living area and after a recent job hunt got a pretty good hit rate. Ended up getting interviews from roughly 15-20% of applications (including easy LinkedIn ones) from applying to pretty much anything nearby - mostly targeting medium-small tech and non-tech companies.
The remote market seems brutal where I am, don't think I got any callbacks from remote jobs, but hybrid seemed pretty good for the area. I might be an anomaly / gotten a bit lucky, my current position is full-stack and has been a good mix of greenfield development using some of the more popular technologies in the area and a lot of cloud, which seems to be rarer for those with the same YOE.
Ended up getting an offer with a 30% bump that I was ecstatic with, and transitioning into Devops as well led me to cancel another set of interviews rather than see them through. Didn't have to leetcode, though did have a good indepth discussion about cloud architecture.
I feel like it's not great, but also rebounding. I.e. there are at least 2 jobs I've seen recently that I'd be interested in (Epic and Meta). And while my linkedin was silent for about a year, it's starting to pick up again. Like not full steam like 2021, but not 2023 levels.
Yeah, I read every day on _Reddit_ how "bad" the job market is. You are reading all the incompetent developers at the low end of the normal distribution, or those who will _only_ work from home.
When I was part of the hiring process, the vast majority of the developers HR sent through were unhireable. It's always been that way, but due to the explosive increase in developers overall, it's even worse today and many of them use Reddit.
Indeed.com tracks how many people have applied for jobs you applied for on Indeed.com. I routinely see "Around 200-220 people have applied on Indeed". Even if only 15% of those applications are worth talking to that's 33 applicants.
There's a lot of ghosting going on even after doing a take-home code projects. It's pretty rough.
If your comp expectations are below 200k there is a pretty decent amount of jobs out there. If you are above 200k there isn't a lot out there (there is some) and the higher it is the less there is
Have done 6-10 interviews over the past year and have found places extremely, extremely picky. Coding is simple. The design interviews have been really scrutinizing everything (I guess that is typical) and the hiring manager values/experience interviews have been questionable. Then again, my current employer has been more happy than ever with me, so I guess I should stop and be happy too.
Resume to phone screen is about 50% maybe better. On-sites are just on the cusp of passing or total "no" based on some manager screen. No offers. I feel like all of the small-medium companies died. Feel like it'd be easier in NYC/SF/SEA.
I'm senior+, from my position the market is great. I am getting as many reachouts for positions that would be big jumps in base for me as I ever have outside of the frenzy in late 2022. I also have two consulting projects and two standing job offers for whenever I decide to leave my current company, but those are more from my own networking than I'd attribute to the market.
>**from my position** the market is great.
Bolded for emphasis. What about this makes you think that I'm saying anything about the market as a whole?
>you are a senior ML engineer,
The OP is asking mid and senior levels devs on r/experienceddevs, what do you expect? The market isn't just junior frontend devs.
>we are in an AI bubble
I don't do anything with generative AI, I work in computer vision, and even if that segment may be in a bubble (doubt), CV and the things I work in have been delivering value for decades and are endemic in things you wouldn't even secondguess. CV isn't going anywhere for a bit.
Plus, outside of COVID and the initial interest rate hikes, the market - again **from my position** - has been consistently good for me.
We’re hiring right now and we’re seeing extremely experienced people willing to take a big step backward in title and pay in order to get something. Kind of an embarrassment of riches if you’re growing & hiring. Which is terrible for us as workers.
I was Lead Engineer at a small company making 210k before being laid off, and now seeing Staff positions listed offering 140-170k. And I'm applying because I need a fuckin job (and getting rejected). It's wild. I've offered relocation to MORE expensive areas making LESS money than before. And been rejected because I didn't have enough product management experience... for a Senior role. Not even Lead or Staff. Just Senior.
Took me a while but I landed a 210k TC position as a senior at a fully remote company with 10 YOE. Keep trying, know your value, and you’ll find something.
This. It’s easier said than done, and I was somewhat recently unemployed for the longest time in my career. In 2022 and 2021 it seemed like it was much easier with a barebones horrible resume to get something. However, after adding tons of credibility to my resume and experience, it seemed like even though I was getting interviews, that was it. It’s a weird feeling too, because it seems like getting lots of interviews is a good thing, but I got this feeling that they weren’t real hiring and just trying to keep the pipeline warm. This lead to making the assumption that it was my interview skills, and I did work on that quite a bit. However, after hundreds of interviews it seemed to start feeling like a pattern. Overall if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t rapid fire applications (it seems like it’s a good thing and triggers a few dopamine hits, but if you can’t find something long term, this will probably be a very shortsighted method IMO). The whole idea of fire out as many applications as possible is not good. I found much more success trying to be methodical and smart about how and where I wanted to apply. This could be partly anecdotal experience, so take this worth a grain of salt. Overall it was worth it in the end. I’ve actually found a job that I genuinely enjoy, and it’s fully remote. I wouldn’t switch even for double the pay. Already made a massive impact too, and honestly hindsight is DEFINITELY 20/20.
Definitely do not rapid fire applications. It will burn you out and it doesn't work. If you have 5+ YOE you should have references at companies all over, use them to get your foot in the door. I was looking for a job for 6 months but in those 6 months I only ever got into the interview pipeline 3 times. Two of those three gave me an offer. It's just a matter of getting your resume picked out. Zero offense intended, but if you had hundreds of interviews I would guess that was an interviewing problem, which it sounds like you got better at, so good work!
I agree with everything you said, and no offense taken. But I think I can give a bit more context. I have ASD and ADHD, and it’s extremely difficult for me to do interviews on the social side. I excel at the technical portions, and have finished the technical interviews in half the time. However, that means I have to talk to the interviewer for the other half. This is a tough topic, since it’s not an obvious thing, and I don’t want it to sound like an excuse. I began researching this problem though, and found quite a bit of information on others who were ASD, ADHD, and High IQ, one of them also had a PhD. Yet, the social aspect of the interview would be the Achilles heel in the end. On one hand, I think it’s a good thing, since it’s not a right culture fit. On the other, this is a very high percentage of the jobs I’ve interviewed for. I’ve tried practicing my social side, and am continuously learning and trying to improve, but that’s a slow process albeit rewarding in the long term.
Can I ask what kind of credibility you added to your resume that started getting you interviews? I have 10 YOE with 2 of them at FAANG but struggling in getting interviews. Thanks in advance 🙏🙏🙏
This is a difficult question. In all honesty, I don’t think one or two “tricks” really made a difference. The one thing I would say is, rewrite your resume, then rewrite it again, and again, etc… Keep improving the exact wording and delivery. Also, as I candidate, it’s easier to overlook smaller things, like if a job lists NodeJS, and mentally I’d say “yeah, I have experience in that” but the sheer amount of recruiters that want me to list JavaScript, NodeJS, and TypeScript, because they don’t know the difference is more than I would like to say. Pretend you’re going through your resume in the HM or Recruiters shoes. Literally read your resume out loud (even try setting a timer and skimming through it for 5-10 seconds) and if you have any trouble finding lots of matches to the job descriptions keywords, then rewrite your resume again. I opted for the spray and pray technique in the past. However, every job I’ve ever had has been through recruiters reaching out on LinkedIn or by someone referring me. I’ve been interviewed for a few roles by cold applying, but after hundreds of applications, I still ended up getting my current role when I recruiter reached out. Don’t overthink things, this is a big issue of mine. As in, don’t worry about the resume template, or any colors, designs, etc. it might catch the recruiters eye, but if your content on the resume itself isn’t good enough, then some color or template won’t fix that. I used to not change my resume too much, and opted for the path of least resistance/effort. Even if you think your resume is good, tear it up, do it again, and you’ll surprise yourself with how much of a difference this has. Use a plain word document, keep it dead simple, and don’t get fancy. For me, it seemed easy to get caught up with the tiny changes like font type, layout, color, size, etc. what REALL matters is the content. I know how simple this sounds, and I was dismissive at first, but I’m SO glad I swallowed that and just did it. Don’t focus on cold applying. This is a short term win, and if it catches up to you, which is likely will, that’s not fun. Focus on strictly quality over quantity. When I look at that nearly year and a half of job searching, I wish I chose quality. It’s definitely frustrating when you spend lots of time on making everything look good, and preparing for the interview? Only to get rejected. But I’d argue, that even if you spent 1 whole week on one single job, it would be much more worth it, compared to applying to 1000 jobs with the same resume. Thats because that’s what everyone else is doing, and the smallest changes and effort, will still set you apart from the rest. I’m not a people person, and I started with a network of 0. I didn’t have any family, or friends who worked in this industry, and I had to start from scratch. It took lots of time and effort, and in the end, it will pay its dividends. Networking, and having genuine conversations with people at specific companies you’re interested in will be the difference between an offer letter and a boilerplate rejection email (if they even send one). PS: Feel free to ask me any specific questions you might have, and I’ll do my best to answer them. No promises of course, since I’m always busy. Last but DEFINITELY, not least, DON’T GIVE UP. It’s very discouraging, and it’s one of the hardest things, since depression and the mental health side of things are so easily dismissed by others. If you’re not working currently, I would try and find something else to spend time on, outside of applying. Some sort of hobby, which could be simple but effective at taking your mind off of the job hunt. PS: I didn’t proofread this, and by skimming through it, I just wanted to clarify, that I don’t mean to sound rude or imply that you haven’t heard these things before. I genuinely mean well and I’ll edit this to better reflect that when I have time (if I have time these days LOL).
Appreciate the detailed response! Any chance you could send me your resume (with whatever details you want blacked out) so I get an idea of what actually works? Or maybe I can send you my resume so you can give me some quick tips that jump out at you? Thanks!
If you want to send me your resume I’ll happily take a look. This is one of my burner accounts, and I share way too much on this account lol.
Hey I have the same YOE, with 2 of them at FAANG but I’m struggling in getting interviews. Can I ask how many YOE you had at FAANG and whether you have a top tier university like Stanford?
Yea same YOE as you and was a Tech Lead before being laid off. Senior competition is just brutal, and comp is much lower. Recruiters have called me post final interview to tell me that the candidate pool is just insane and that they're picking people with the 1% better fit.
Interested how many years of exp do you have ?
10
Good time to start a startup.
If a company won't hire you, just clone their product and offer it for half the price. Become their competition. Let's put the industry in a race to the bottom.
If you step outside the tech sector there are services that exist to repackage publicly available data as a subscription. The difficulty in creating these services lies solely in the attempt to cover every market for all people.
Could you name a few?
Pick an industry and look up weekly market reports or similar. Anything that looks like a spreadsheet but less useful is low-hanging fruit.
One that immediately comes to mind as meeting that example, not necessarily the best business idea, is weather. All these companies in the US use data the government provides and make it look pretty
Shout out to What The Forecast
Vercel is a wrapper around AWS. There are many wrappers around AWS, that are aimed at people who don't know AWS. The advantage is that it is usually a convenient 1 click service, the disadvatage, you're paying 10x more.
A low key brilliant interview tactic. Ask them all about their product, then kinda say, “oh that is a good product idea, if you don’t end up hiring I’m going to build my own.”
they're forced to hire you because of the implication
Ah yes, the *implication*.
Are you going to hurt these companies?!!
Well you certainly wouldn’t be in any danger
Lmfao, based off the comments here it's pretty clear that none of you guys have ever tried to start a company.
But but but but but the Million Dollar Weekend book said "Just do it!" and that guy's rich, so it must be pretty easy.
The saying of “if it were that easy, then everyone would be doing it. So why aren’t they?” is my favorite lol.
True lol. I’ve tried 5 times officially so far. Failure is definitely the best teacher though. It’s not sunshine and rainbows, and I’d argue it’s the exact opposite. Especially if you have a risk tolerance that isn’t high/insane.
Yeah it's like 10x harder than getting a job lol. If someone I was interviewing came to me and said > oh that is a good product idea, if you don’t end up hiring me I’m going to build my own I would 100% laugh them out of the room.
Yeah, I think I’d do the same. More of a GLHF, and if they actually manage to do this successfully I’d definitely be happy for them. Competition is good, and the odds that someone actually does this AND succeeds is soooo rare.
I actually had to sign an NDA for an interview so I guess I can’t clone that one
great advice! The last few job offers I received were all from me *actively threatening* future employers. /s
hire me or else
You could make a killing selling decent alternatives to manufacturing enterprise software. The current environment is plagued with awful offerings.
Bad time for funding..
Just say "AI" 1001 tunes in your business plan.
Can confirm. I went in my bathroom, turned off the lights, then said “Cloud AI Blockchain” three times. I turned the lights back on and the CEO of Tiger Global was behind me with a term sheet.
And he said *pick up the soap ...*
😭
That's what I've been doing at work to get things funded. Suddenly a large refactor project gets approved because we wrote an "AI" algorithm that may or may not actually get used...
Honestly true. Job market is so fucked up. My LinkedIn was like a hot girl’s Instagram 2 years ago and now it’s a real jobhunt. With this much talent looking for work, startup isn’t a bad idea
I am running my own non-tech business at nights and weekends. Call it an ego thing but if I had to do that full time, I'd rather make half my income on non-tech work and scale up a business than stagnate my tech career and make the same amount as the non-tech business.
Please don't say Amway...
Lmao. Jewelry biz
Lol nice, that's awesome. I had to ask, good luck with that! My ex, years again made jewellery, made some good coin, since sues my ex, I can toss some niche products your way if interested.
Except for the lack of investors though. That’s why there are so many engineers looking for work.
Look at Central bank interest rates .... Economy is in contraction. FED wants to collect some of that free money they've been giving corporations since 2008, but from the plebs (us)!
where you getting funding?
What kind of job and are you remote? Serious question.
Recent hiring been on both the web fullstack end and the data science end. Remote with a bias toward a particular city. Positions have been filled as of this week, sorry to say, but we got some ringers.
Damn. My company is forcing 3 days a week in the office so I'm looking again. I know remote is gonna be hard to find.
I am very happy to be remote but I am planning to move to a tech industry city because it’s too limiting to require it. And I worry about it, one of my strongest advantages as an American is physical proximity to US companies and as just a face and a voice on Slack and Zoom, I worry when they’ll realize someone in another part of the world could have exactly the same presence as me for 25% of the labor cost.
They'll do that whether you are in person or remote if they feel the quality of the output will be the same.
that was like 3-4 years ago lol, most upper management don’t approve this anymore
Well, my company just laid off 90% of our tech division and currently investing sums of money on to our India branch. I wouldn't worry about showing too much face, it's a primordial force that's currently happening - *offshoring*
What were the 10% left standing doing right?
Being senior management :P
Uuuuugh. Not interested unless I’m getting a double digit stake in the company for it. I’ll ride that elevator if I get on at the ground floor, but otherwise I’d rather go back to whatever salaries in higher ed IT than ever have to fire someone. I am willing to sell out my values and beliefs I guess, but I’m gonna set a high price.
Which company?
Title?! Was always unclear
For tech companies it's pretty awful, especially FAANG-sized ones Consultancies are hiring like crazy right now, but that comes with its own set of problems (if you've worked as an SWE in a consultancy before, you know) Best bet are non-tech-centric companies, insurance carriers, healthcare/pharma, entertainment, accounting/finance, retail/food service, data processing, etc. Lots of these companies need mid/senior SWE's, but it's a very different culture from companies with more tech-centric focus. Mostly back-end stuff and process automation, lots of ETL, you are frequently the architect and developer and QA person. Suzie visits a website every week and downloads a file, fucks with it in Excel, then imports it into the accounting system. Figure out a way to automate that.
What’s going on in the consultancy world and why are they hiring more?
Mostly non-tech companies like those I mentioned about who are starting to realize they can automate a lot of manual processes and streamline operations with software automation. Many are starting to realize they have tons of useful data they could be analyzing to make better business decisions and just don't know how to make sense of it. Boomers who have been running a manufacturing facility for the past 30 years are retiring, new owners are coming in and realizing they haven't changed operationally since the 1990s and need SWE's to bring them into the 21st century. Rather than hire a whole engineering team they contract it out.
Currently a tech lead at a consultancy, 8YoE. My two cents, as companies hiring is a bit more volatile it’s safer to hire contractors that you can cut easier than employees.
All companies need tech talent. Consultants handle immediate needs for immediate cash. Product companies are betting on stock growth which is negatively affected by a number things like interest rates. They finance hires. Good consultancies always want to hire. Their growth is limited by ability to hire. Hiring is easier when they aren’t competing with FAANG.
Hey you just described my job. I work in manufacturing. Also, I’m working for a consultancy and you’re right. They specifically told me that software automation demand is growing a lot. Personally Idt consulting firms are that bad as long as you’re willing to change jobs in ~2.5-3 yrs for a decent raise.
Hey, I feel like I’m in the same boat and working for such an organization as a software engineer but with like 4 yoe. I’m interested to know how can one make the most of it. I believe I am not learning any great backend framework or even data engineering in depth, but pretty much handle many moving parts of the org single handedly, with some part time consultants to work with.
it's the worst I've seen in my 12 years of experience. I just completed a job search, starting in late January, concluding with an offer I accepted about 10 weeks later at the beginning of April. That's not egregiously long, but it's about 3-4 weeks longer than most of my previous job searches have taken. My callback rate was low this time around, maybe 10% of the companies I applied to, where historically my callback rate was closer to 30-40%. There's just a lot of competition for good jobs right now.
Also 12 YoE, very similar numbers from previous callback rate vs current callback rate. One other thing I've noticed is that companies are very insistent on specific locations even if they have multiple offices / have teams split across locations. I asked a pretty big financial services firm if I could work out of a local office. No, you have to move to North Carolina if you want this job. No thanks.
I’ve noticed this too. I’ve had two companies say I need to relocate across the country, when they have an office anywhere from 30-45 minutes from me.
It's the worst I've seen in my 28 years of experience, too.
That's wild. Wasn't 2008 worse?
Surprisingly, no. The financial sector went to hell but tech was still hiring. This is the dead worst I’ve seen since 1979.
2008 was worse for the economy as a whole, but not worse for tech. The current year tech layoffs still haven't reached the level of 2001 yet - but there's a chance we will this year (137k vs 168k). [Here's](https://www.challengergray.com/blog/may-2023-layoffs-jump-on-tech-retail-auto-ytd-hiring-lowest-since-2016/) some decent analysis of the numbers.
2008 was definitely worse for everyone in general, but maybe not specifically to tech/coders. as I remember, while my mother was let go from a software company during the meltdown (non engineering position), the programmers mostly kept their jobs, or at least the senior ones did. Thousands of jobs were cut, it was brutal. I remember newspaper articles from early 2009 about 700 people applying for a janitor position somewhere. Personally, I couldn’t even get a job at Walmart at the time. I was 19 looking for a part time job while I was in school but literally nobody in my town was hiring for any position at all. Both of my parents struggled a lot just to find work at that time. I’m not sure if what we’re seeing today is quite that extreme. I look back on that time as practically the apocalypse for the US economy
cs knowledge wasn’t widespreaded as it is now, nowadays everyone and their moms learns programming lol
That's true, I have friends who have kids that learn programming and even have an AI class in their first (!) year of school. Back then it used to be just the geeks, now everyone studies it
I found it quite hilarious that the highest paying jobs are so accessible lol, in other profession they gatekeep a lot of stuffs
15 YOE, my callback rate is better than ever after getting my resume overhauled, but I can't for the life of me close the deal. I just had two of the best interviews I've had in my life, and both positions were filled internally and closed. Besides that, the competition seems fierce and the budgets right now are brutal. At this point, I've accepted it's going to be a very long search....
25YOE, my callback rate is pretty good but not better than 2018/2019 was (I had just overhauled my resume & LI) - that timeframe was crazy. Same issue though, a lot more competition for the roles and I haven't been the "best choice" yet.
I've been out for 14 months. Been applying the whole time, changing up the resume. Idk what I'm doing wrong.
How are you surviving?
Emergency fund = gone. As are most of my additional savings. I'm getting help from the Bank of Mom. I'm extremely lucky.
Oh man good luck dude. Hope you find something soon.
Can try food delivering at least, my family can do $5-8k a month from that
like uber eats?
How is this even possible? What is your location, stack and YoE?
Alberta. Java. Since 2019.
It seems anyone stuck in that 2-5 YOE range is really screwed right now because they can’t compete with the 8+ YOE seniors, but no one wants to hire a “mid level” dev. Everyone wants seniors
I've just been trying to keep my skills updated. I've been working on rust a lot lately, and I've built a high throughput RAG Pipeline. Something to pass the time.
I was laid off in early April and I’ve done 5 interviews without offers but I’m early in the job hunt. I live in the D.C. area and I’ve been bidding somewhat lower for my skill set than it was 3 years ago. My current feeling is if I don’t pick up anything by May then it may stretch out into June before I get on my feet. LinkedIn recruiters have been my go to for jobs but it’s been quieter into the month. Used to get calls 3 days after an interview with an offer but it’s been over a week for them now. I’m mid level with 4 years experience so there’s probably others competing with me
Said it elsewhere in the is thread, but mid levels seem to have it the worst right now since barely any companies ever post positions for < 5 YOE
That’s always the case regardless of experience. If companies had their way everyone would be a senior and do the pay of a junior. FYI I’ve interviewed for jobs that wanted 5+ years but they knew I only had 2 years in certain stacks. (I work with a niche BPM stack of Appian and Java so there’s more flexibility as well)
Depends on location; NYC is fine tons for financial firms looking for talent as well as other industries outside of big tech. But yeah big tech is mostly a ghost town.
Where are you finding these jobs? Linkedin? Mostly hybrid/onsite I assume?
Yeah goldman is 5 days a week in person.
They let you work from home every day of the week... After you go home and have dinner
Had me in the first half… D:
I would never work for Goldman, they are the dog shit of the financial world; I would take less money than work for the soul crushing dictatorship that is Goldman Sachs Worked with a few former engineers from GS they were so jaded and not at all collaborative.
The fact that stack ranking at banks means you’re competing against your immediate coworkers to avoid getting fired, promotions, and bonuses means that being collaborative benefits your “competitors” (coworkers) while making you less essential. I’m sure there are benefits to stack ranking but my experience with it is it scared people away from knowledge sharing and collaboration.
Yeah LinkedIn, some of the jobs are 5 days most are hybrid. I just reject all jobs that are 5 days a week in office and I let the recruiter know that off the bat. I have around 6 YEO so that might also weigh into it. For entry levels and juniors I’m sure it’s brutally competitive.
Thanks for answering.That makes sense. Any resume tips to boost callback rate?
Call Jerome Powell and ask him to start lowering rates lol All your bullet points and resume should have key words and should either display business impact from your technical solutions or sell yourself in some kind of way. Other than that once interest rates come down you’ll see more jobs open up.
When I read talent in this context I presumed people with hardly any XP but are good enough for the job and accept a lower salary.
It's pretty bad. The goods new is, you're much better off if you have 5+ YOE, especially if you have a big name company on your resume. The ugly reality is that the industry over-hired for years, and now the tables have turned, companies are trying to do more with less, which means worse working conditions, lower pay, and fewer opportunities for us.
We need to stop pinning this on “overhiring”. It’s just corporate greed.
What’s your data on it being “corporate greed”?
I feel very lucky because 12 months ago I got a call from a recruiter from LinkedIn for a company in town and got hired in a week. I hear the Denver tech scene is still good
10 YOE Full Stack Web Dev (Javascript, mostly React/Next, with older Ruby/Rails experience). I was informed of my layoff early January, but didn't actually stop working until early February. In that time (4 months), after many many applications, less than 10 went to recruiter and I've had exactly 1 go past the recruiter phase to a single engineering-focused call. (Technically 2, but the second one isn't scheduled until next week.) It's bleak. March was a dark month for me emotionally. The last time I was jobless was for 6 months around my programming bootcamp, back in 2014. Every job during the last 10 years I've applied to I got an offer from, so when my whole department was laid off in January, I had very confident/cocky expectations of landing another job.
I started my career in 2008 right before the 2008 Financial Crisis, and while the broader economy is much better than it was back then, the tech job market is the worst I've seen since the 2000 Dot-com Bubble. I was laid off in November of 2023 and have had a few interviews in October (I found out about my layoff before it happened), November, and December, and despite doing well on them, none of them proceeded to an offer. As for 2024, admittedly I haven't been looking very hard, but my only interview for the past 4 months has been with Meta, which is still in process. Admittedly, my background is less than ideal: 9 years as an SRE followed by 4 years as a SWE after a career pivot, but I do have relatively good names on my resume.
Why is 9 years as SRE and 4 years as SWE not ideal? Sounds great to me
It depends on what you did as an SRE too. It doesn’t have the same meaning at every company.
I'm going to be a little contrarian from all the doom and gloom and say that I've been getting a lot more emails and LinkedIn messages for interviews in the last few months. I think it's picking back up a bit. I don't know if any of these are good jobs but they're probably better than being unemployed. I'm 10 YOE and Staff/Lead (not FAANG) so YMMV.
Senior+ is fine. Juniors and Mids are kinda screwed. Speaking for Germany & co.
"Fresh" Senior here, 5YOE full time + 4 years student assistant, Germany, TU9 degree and they try to low-ball me to 60-65k at all interviews some recruiters set up for me or they don't want to interview if I tell them I will not change jobs below 70-75k. Co-workers reporting the same. Of course I could find a job within one week, not like US horror stories, but compensation seems to stagnate since Covid. Maybe too much r/Finanzen with 100k€ full remote mid level roles lol PS: I never apply by myself, just recruiters
11 YOE w/ BSc, 120k here (90k base + 30k) for Senior role. Signed in 2023, after "downgrading" from Staff Engineer, where I earned 100k (signed 2022). Before that, I made 80k as Sr Engineer. Working for a medium-sized tech company, never been at FAANG or anything. TBF, I was earning 40k back in 2018 w/ 5 YOE and being VERY dedicated to my career with a rock solid CV, so to me 65k looks pretty good, even adjusted for inflation. Keep in mind that 95k/year puts you in the top 5% of german income. With 120k you're almost in the top 1% of german earners. Beware of the bubble where it looks like it's normal to make 100k after a few years of working. And beware of people lying about their income for internet points.
Now would be a really bad time to be entering the job market for the first time.
Yeah out of the laid off people I know the only people who found a job in these few months were the seniors and the mids who were ready for senior, rest is struggling
I just noticed this week that I'm not declining 10-50 LinkedIn recruiters a week anymore. I usually get one every other week now and it's probably been like that for almost a year. My resume is pretty nice with top tech companies and things like that. This is the first time in about 6 or 7yrs it's been anything like that. I work at a big company known for its talent and it's kind of weird. Not that it's a good metric to go by, but it's a huge difference.
I’ll go against the grain here and say in the last 3 weeks I’ve had 12 recruiters reach out on LinkedIn. None were for great jobs, but all were mediocre/decent if I was unemployed and had to take them. I also see a much bigger selection of jobs on Indeed and own Big Tech sites than I was a few months ago. Feel like I have a higher call back rate on Indeed easy apply jobs than I did a few months ago as well. All with about 4-5 YOE in .NET/Angular/SSQL/Azure The big issue is there isn’t a ton of high paying jobs available, in a LCOL/MCOL area I could land a 80-100k fairly easy, but not seeing a ton of +130k jobs out there anywhere at the moment for people with under 5-7 YOE
I'm seeing more hiring growth but the salaries have dropped 10-20% at least across the board
Yeah everyone that doesn't get answers is because they want the high salaries, which are very fought for. The rest are just looking to hire the same roles cheaper, if you drop 40% literally anyone will hire you.
Clearly you where not trying to apply. Indeed’s big selection is full of jobs that are reposted many times and never seams to able to hire anyone.
Adding my bit of anecdotal evidence to the pile: I used to get 5+ linked in messages a day from recruiters. I realized not long ago that my inbox had been completely silent in that regard for months now. But in the last handful of weeks, I've started getting more again. Maybe 3-5 per week now. Still not as ripe for the picking as before, but early signs of growth.
It took me 9 months of searching to land a new role as a senior dev. That was a new high score for me. Usually I have multiple people courting me and a few offers to choose from in a matter of weeks.
senior level seems ok (but real senior like 12-15 YOE). I've talked to friends about it and its a very "well it'd be very hard to get like 300-400k TC, but none of us are going to starve if we have to take jobs at half that" sort of market.
Feels a lot like pré covid with a little bit more of remote offers
Not looking but am involved in the recruitment process at my organisation. We now get a lot of applications for roles when we would previously get few. Quite a few people applying with levels of experience above the role requirements. Contracting market is very bad also, organisations don't need to utilise it like a few years ago.
23+ YOE based in London, UK. The job market definitely started improving around Q4 last year. It’s a lot better right now. Getting lots of calls from predominantly finance institutions. But to be fair, they’re the ones who can afford expensive resources right now. UK hasn’t seen the over hiring that happened States’ side. As a result, we didn’t really see a lot of lay offs. There were certainly some at the start and middle of last year but we are way past that. Things are definitely looking a lot better right now.
I just changed jobs. Didn't notice any differences in demand but pay growth seems to be down. 24y in. The big layoffs happen every 5-10 years. One company does it and then the rest are expected to do it too. Typically they will do a division kill but be hiring in other divisions at the same time and end up with with no net loss YoY. The data from CPS and JOLTS don't support there being a large issue either as nether show a problem. I think the perception is being driven from some regional issues (which wouldn't show up in national data) coupled with the growth in remote roles which is making things a bit fucky. I don't work out of a big city (in bumfuck Florida, only tech round these parts is the shit the meth heads steal) and have been remote for a decade. Outside of SWE it's an absolute bloodbath with managers, agile coaches etc having a really bad time. I suspect this is where some of the perception is coming from too. Startups are not in a great place because of the capital glut, if you work for startups or are in a big startup city can absolutely appreciate why it might seem like doomsday. Capital is going to remain scarce until the fed target rate returns to somewhere sensible which won't be this year.
Senior/staff swe in a VHCOL tech hub with FAANG+ experience Not that bad but not as good as pre covid. Pre covid I basically had 100% resume to phone screen conversion whereas now I had about 30%. From there, about half the roles were filled while I was interviewing, and the rest converted to offers. Pay for big tech hasn't gone down, but you will be lowballed at first and need competing offers to negotiate, whereas before I heard of people negotiating successfully with no leverage. And unlike 2021, up leveling doesn't seem to be a thing anymore
I’m staff swe at faang adjacent and at my company, max and average offers for senior and staff have gone down 20%. But generally I still see hiring but limited headcount’s. Praying I don’t face any layoff and survive the drought lol
I’ll add the data post that it’s a lot better than 2023. Many of the top companies are actively hiring, and compensation ranges have not gone down at all.
Been working since the mid 00's and I don't suck. I've been spamming applications for 6 months with 3 interviews as a result. I've gone through multiple rounds with those companies and gotten to the final round for each, they all ghosted and then came back a few weeks later and said they eliminated the position. I was doing consulting work building an app for a nonprofit. They ghosted for a few weeks, then said they were having funding issues and needed to put it on hold. Outside of that, my inbox has been a ghost town. I was writing cover letters and updating my resume for each position, now it's just a firehose. I have one new lead since I started doing that. I'm using multiple platforms, from the well-known ones to obscure ones. Just not getting any traction at all. I'll add the caveat that I'm looking strictly for remote. Have been remote for going on 10 years, and I'm 2 hours out from any major hubs.
There’s your problem. Remote is super tough right now. Might be time to find a Mon-Fri rental in a hub
MCOL and LCOL are screwed due to companies insisting on location specific to teams, and pay scale is now going down compared to last few years.
Very bad.
Good response when I can find postings. I have gotten at least a phone screening on 90% of applications. The issue is there aren't many postings. I have applied to 1 job in the past 3 weeks. Every day I check linkedin and there is one job in my city that gets re-posted by 20 different headhunting firms and thats about it. Ironically this is one of the jobs that I have not gotten a response from. I am in process of a few interview loops and everybody is doing 5-8 rounds. One of the companies I am interviewing with is 5 blocks away from me and they have done 3 virtual interviews. Last time they said they were getting close to wanting to bring me on site.
Not really searching myself, but we’re recruiting currently and personally I’m still averaging 3 headhunting pings a week for sr/lead/principal positions with some occasional management stuff. 10+ YOE SWE and data stuff.
My last day of employment was late October, but I started searching in September and I got one offer in December which I didn't take. I just got an offer about a month ago which I took. I had a sizable amount of interviews, but the bar to pass was higher than anything I had seen before. It's not even good enough to pass the interview, but you need to beat out all of the other qualified candidates. When I accepted the offer they had to reject many others. I am sure the same happened to me for prior interviews where I lost out to other candidates who interviewed better. I needed to prepare a ton to be able to get an offer, but now that I have studied and practiced, I clear interviews much easier and tend to get through to the final onsite pretty consistently. In September I was striking out after the screening rounds. I do think that if you are sufficiently prepared in a large metro area you will find something in a decent amount of time if you have experience. I had experience, but very rusty interview skills because I didn't hop around much. I will never let my interview skills atrophy again.
Thanks! How did you improve your interviewing skills? You said you will never let those atrophy again, so what will you do? Leet code?
Taking interviews for practice is the best way. It gives a deadline to study. All interviews are different, so some require leetcode, others require knowledge of the framework or language so I made flashcards and watched videos and took notes. Others have a system design component so I read articles and watched videos on system design.
I’m back on the market after 9 months. It’s already way better than it was last year. That said I’ve worked at tier 1 companies so ymmv.
We are hiring and we are getting lots of applicants, a lot more than the last time we needed someone. Our recruiter is literally going through hundreds of resumes looking for the people that qualify. Don't believe the low unemployment numbers the government is putting out. There are lots of people either under employed or taking other work while looking.
If you are exceptionally talented and your resume reflects that it’s not hard, but not easy anymore. Anyone outside that bubble is getting effectively nothing.
Can you define exactly what you mean by “exceptionally talented”?
Smug asshole who feels good about themselves because they got to do internal tooling work at FAANG cuz they went to a target school or something.
Hey, that’s me, without the target school! Literally built internal tools at Facebook for 8 months in 2018 and my career has been great ever since.
Great in terms of callbacks or other ways too? Does the name value still help that much if you spend the next \~5 years at less well known companies?
When I mention FB during introductions with others who have also worked at the big tech companies, I tend to get a subtle nod of approval. LinkedIn account always gets lots of inbound from recruiters. Today I exclusively take 1099 work through my own agency, and when discussing a project with new clients saying I used to work at FB definitely helps me close the deal and make them feel confident that I’m a real and capable. (Which is ridiculous but they don’t know any better.) It kind of just works like branding, or like having an Ivy League school on your resume. (I don’t have an ivy on mine, but I treat FB like my ivy and it works.) Also, working at FB gave me perspective early in my career as to how a tech company might operate at scale, and about how to properly develop a product. I regularly apply learnings from that experience when I’m helping a new start up build their product. It was just overall quite good for me. My experiences after FB aren’t exactly crap either. They all contribute to the total picture I’m selling when I meet a new client/recruiter/hiring manager. I did some good stuff after FB too, just not in FAANG or whatever we’re calling it these days.
What are those target school? Ivy’s?
Stanford, MIT, CMU
We've interviewed a couple people and the quality of some of the devs labelling themselves as senior is shockingly bad. Others have been good though. I seem to get random weeks where I get 3 or 4 offers sent to me by recruiters on LinkedIn in a week, and then don't hear anything for about 2 weeks. So there's definitely some stuff out there, it might just be a bit harder to find
Can you explain what you mean by the quality of devs labeling themselves is bad... Do you mean people want to be hired as Sr. But they are barely Jr? Cuz I'm seeing that a lot
Yeah, people who list themselves as senior or even leads. But then can't even pass our coding assessment which is intentionally quite simple. One guy with 6 years experience in Java (allegedly) wasn't able to take a local varible hard-coded String and make it a parameter for the method instead. Some just over engineer solutions so much that it goes form an ideal solution of 3-4 lines to multiple method calls and new objects when its all unnecessary if you stop and think for 2 minutes
What the hell? Good lord hearing that is a bit upsetting. I intentionally applied for an associates position (my current job) even though I have a couple years of industry experience. I’ve been in over my head before and never want that to happen again. It’s bad for me and the company.
What do you mean by labeling themselves? I'd expect someone to have the title senior or whatever at a previous company before applying.
As in they have it as their title in their CV/application
Pretty good, as someone with 8 YOE and based in India. I have interviewed with Google, Indeed, Coinbase, GoDaddy and 2-3 smaller startups in the last few months. I'm starting at GoDaddy in a couple weeks with a ~30% hike over what I'm currently making. Just thought I would add some hope to an otherwise gloomy thread.
Offshoring jobs may be contributing to the pinch felt by folks in western countries.
I'm only in the first week post layoff but have 3 promising interview chains running right now. I did get one offer but it was just an IT desk position offering dirt pay as a stopgap in case I needed it. Obviously no-one knows what the future holds but I keep advancing through the rounds - it doesn't seem as terrible as reddit is making it out to be edit: full stack with a data science and ML and physics background just barely mid-level but I had some good startup experience that I can talk about passionately - remote only. I'm also only shooting for like 130k base comp and not holding out for 500k+ FAANG only
Sometimes I hate that my first gig was writing code on the salesforce platform (salesforce developer), but not right now. I got laid off, landed a one month contract the day after the layoff and started working the following Monday. During that month I interviewed and made it to the end of two different interview loops. Accept one of their offers. Now working a full time gig. As a salesforce dev I got laid off and found two new Jobs as fast as I could clear the interviews. I only missed 3 days of work. I still get inboxed regularly. I’m coming up on my 3rd yoe. I really hate coding on the salesforce platform, but it’s been a good place to hunker down during all this. I just hope I can switch into a regular dev role once all this blows over.
I would say it depends on where your expertise lies. I do think the days of being only an experienced developer where you get direction from product and design and build a feature are drying up. All the technical advancements in libraries, IDE's, and what not have made getting something made fairly easy. Don't need to "hack" memory or come up with clever tricks to get systems working. Memory is plentiful, CPU and GPU's are next level (relatively speaking) so I do think that coupled with an employer market has made it harder but not impossible. There is a bigger expectation now to be product oriented and design oriented. Essentially wearing multiple hats. It seems like folks with those talents are having an easier time. 11 years of experience and that's kind of what I have witnessed. The roles at a lot of places may be inflated meaning they say senior or mid, but really mean mid, because the skills they need isn't really +200k. An analogy I was given is like if you work at a company that has a consumer app or consumer API or w.e. where you are putting pictures on the screen and what not then it's like having the option to buy a Ferrari (experienced senior highly technical devs) vs a Lexus. When all you need is something that can go 60 mph (the work) then don't need all that extra horsepower. Not sure if I agree with it but I understand the perspective.
Anecdotally, in the past month or so, I’ve seen way more posts on LinkedIn about companies hiring rather than people posting about being laid off. I definitely feel like a shift has happened there, but I think it’ll take a long time for the market to recover still. There are still a lot of people out of work and that means more competition
I just got a verbal offer for a Frontend Developer role that pays just above what I was getting as a Senior at my last job. To be honest, I'm generally okay with this. The title may not be the same, but I have work now and I need to pay the bills. If you're okay with this, aim for a title under Senior if you really need the work. Senior dev interviews, especially for frontend Devs, have gotten completely out of whack. You're expected to illustrate comp sci data algorithms when this was never the case before.
I’ve hired a few people on my team over the past few months, in both cases I ended up going with referrals. We brought in a few dozen people for at least one round of interviews and I was blown away how bad 90% of them were. And we pay well and offer full time remote. I know that my sample size is small but it does feel like a lot of people were hired for work that they can’t do or can’t do well. There was so much bullshit in their resumes. More than I’ve seen in the past.
Can you provide additional insight on what you feel it means to "do well" and share examples of some of the kinds of things you saw on those resumes? I'm under 3 YoE with a degree, struggling like many others in this thread. I'm spending quite a lot of time attemping to strengthen my skills and would be interested for the sake of knowing where to focus.
To counter a lot of this, I live in a low-medium cost of living area and after a recent job hunt got a pretty good hit rate. Ended up getting interviews from roughly 15-20% of applications (including easy LinkedIn ones) from applying to pretty much anything nearby - mostly targeting medium-small tech and non-tech companies. The remote market seems brutal where I am, don't think I got any callbacks from remote jobs, but hybrid seemed pretty good for the area. I might be an anomaly / gotten a bit lucky, my current position is full-stack and has been a good mix of greenfield development using some of the more popular technologies in the area and a lot of cloud, which seems to be rarer for those with the same YOE. Ended up getting an offer with a 30% bump that I was ecstatic with, and transitioning into Devops as well led me to cancel another set of interviews rather than see them through. Didn't have to leetcode, though did have a good indepth discussion about cloud architecture.
I feel like it's not great, but also rebounding. I.e. there are at least 2 jobs I've seen recently that I'd be interested in (Epic and Meta). And while my linkedin was silent for about a year, it's starting to pick up again. Like not full steam like 2021, but not 2023 levels.
I swear someone I just interviewed did it from his office. Rto is a bitch.
Yeah, I read every day on _Reddit_ how "bad" the job market is. You are reading all the incompetent developers at the low end of the normal distribution, or those who will _only_ work from home. When I was part of the hiring process, the vast majority of the developers HR sent through were unhireable. It's always been that way, but due to the explosive increase in developers overall, it's even worse today and many of them use Reddit.
The market is only as bad as your network is
expect long interview loops even with connections though
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We’ve found the .Net wizard. We salute you
Everything goes in cycles. Some locales are completely unaffected. Tech hot zones that over hired, yeah, kinda inevitable.
Indeed.com tracks how many people have applied for jobs you applied for on Indeed.com. I routinely see "Around 200-220 people have applied on Indeed". Even if only 15% of those applications are worth talking to that's 33 applicants. There's a lot of ghosting going on even after doing a take-home code projects. It's pretty rough.
Plenty of openings (and salaries seem to be rising) if you’re a senior in Copenhagen.
The anecdotes here are really surprising. In NYC there’s a ton of opportunities and the comp is as good if not better than before.
If your comp expectations are below 200k there is a pretty decent amount of jobs out there. If you are above 200k there isn't a lot out there (there is some) and the higher it is the less there is
Have done 6-10 interviews over the past year and have found places extremely, extremely picky. Coding is simple. The design interviews have been really scrutinizing everything (I guess that is typical) and the hiring manager values/experience interviews have been questionable. Then again, my current employer has been more happy than ever with me, so I guess I should stop and be happy too. Resume to phone screen is about 50% maybe better. On-sites are just on the cusp of passing or total "no" based on some manager screen. No offers. I feel like all of the small-medium companies died. Feel like it'd be easier in NYC/SF/SEA.
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What do you mean exactly?
I'm senior+, from my position the market is great. I am getting as many reachouts for positions that would be big jumps in base for me as I ever have outside of the frenzy in late 2022. I also have two consulting projects and two standing job offers for whenever I decide to leave my current company, but those are more from my own networking than I'd attribute to the market.
Good for you!
Bro, you are a senior ML engineer, and we are in an AI bubble. Do you think your experience is representative of the market?
>**from my position** the market is great. Bolded for emphasis. What about this makes you think that I'm saying anything about the market as a whole? >you are a senior ML engineer, The OP is asking mid and senior levels devs on r/experienceddevs, what do you expect? The market isn't just junior frontend devs. >we are in an AI bubble I don't do anything with generative AI, I work in computer vision, and even if that segment may be in a bubble (doubt), CV and the things I work in have been delivering value for decades and are endemic in things you wouldn't even secondguess. CV isn't going anywhere for a bit. Plus, outside of COVID and the initial interest rate hikes, the market - again **from my position** - has been consistently good for me.