In addition to the (real, but somewhat overblown) downturn in tech, the main problem is that hiring is fucked. Both sides are in a scam/fraud arms race.
Getting a job through the front door is basically impossible now - and if you want to try, you will need to lie and do all the dirty tricks your competition does, and even then, your conversion rate will be minuscule.
An alternative is either to go through your network (where people you know can vouch that you are real and not just a monkey slinging ChatGPT'd resumes from a boiler room) or in-person (which is immune to a lot of the boiler-room scams and thus you have more chance your application will actually be considered).
Maybe what we needed was a classical and humanities education all along so that people would not abuse available technologies to their worst possible end because more people might have been aware of the outcomes of such behaviour. C’est la vie. Fires have a warm glow, at least.
it's not to late to change education and teach people how to be compassionate and care for others and the world. that's really the most important change. everything else (including fixing climate change) will follow.
I agree. But as I get older, I wonder if the will exists or can yet exist. I’ve seen pockets, at a distance.
And the horror movie moral trope of trauma unaddressed or unidentified begets trauma is all too true, and even if the will exists outside of those pockets the people can be ill equipped to deliver that education without help.
And any effort to install some kind of help is regularly short-circuited by various measures—intentionally or otherwise.
Edit: I don’t mean to imply hopelessness. I mean, I still pull myself in here to comment. But it is the reality for some.
I'm glad you had a relatively good experience but for many mid "average" software engineers, this is absolutely the case.
And by "average" I mean:
- did not go to prestigious college
- do not have 8 years of specialized experience
- have not worked at faang level company
- struggle to do multiple leetcode hards in an interview
- are not cheating with ai tools and/or straight up lying about experience
i can, with full confidence, tell you that the reports of these developers sending out hundreds (if not thousands) of applications without any progress is absolutely the norm at this moment.
You don't need to believe me, just look at the data. There's been hundreds of thousands of software developers laid off in the past years and not enough job openings to make up for it.
Global remote has been on a bit of a downturn in the last few years.
There are many decent job boards out there, but the bigger problem is that many of them don't allow specifying remote within a country, or the US-oriented companies that post on them never specify that they only want remote within the US.
You end up wasting time looking at a cool job that pays well, only to see "Remote (US only)".
A lot of the time the company cannot make it remote global because of tax and regulatory compliance. I work for a multinational company who has employees in at least a dozen countries, but we can't employ anyone who isn't in a country we don't have a registered company entity.
Add to that the number of people we've had apply for jobs using AI and then turn out to have zero knowledge of what we've hired them for when they turn up.
What I'm saying is if you can't hire me, that's fine, but I'd like a little bit less of my time wasted up front by stating clearly where a company is hiring instead of just "remote".
Job market is bad right now. I don't even see many local remote jobs (in Canada). Some say "remote" but then they are actually "hybrid" when you meet the recruiter.
Another thing I found out is that many companies hire contractors through contracting agencies and their hiring is ... horrible to say the least.
Hacker News monthly threads. Frequencies of Remote jobs in there rises and falls, some months have more than others. But a lot (almost all) of my income over the last few years has been from HN or references thereof
I recently came across Remote Yeah[1], but I can't vouch for its viability personally. It might help discover some companies who are at least willing to go down the remote route.
A lot of OSS companies are currently hiring. Contribute to their codebase to stand out, get experience, network & improve your resume. Some also share feature bounties on GitHub (https://algora.io) so you can even make money in the process.
I know dozens of engineers who landed jobs within a few months by actively contributing to OSS.
I think you have to go via your network referral.
I've bought linkedin premium and can see that most jobs have 500+ candidates, not only it's impossible to apply but I have serious doubts they will chose the right person.
I failed my last interview because I failed to sell myself.
I've hired by Linkedin recently and had to triage that stream of shit. There's 50% of candidate with no qualifications at all, then 25% that are somewhat qualified for something but not for the job at hands, then on those qualified there are some which might have left actual ChatGPT identifiable output in their own CV ("this job summary is short and insightful and will increase retention rate by 55%"), then of those that actually took some care of their CV and/or cover letter you realize their 'personal website' is an empty shell with fake projects and links to 2s YouTube video telling you that the demo is coming soon... you get the idea.
If you match the job well and want to get it, and actually accomplished something at some point, you should try to get it even if Linkedin showed you a high number.
I’ve heard from people in hiring that often 490/500 of those candidates will be from India and often aren’t actually eligible for the job. Just apply, it’s partly a numbers game.
The best way is via a referral though; if you know someone that works at a company you want to work for, you can skip a lot of the BS and often they can get a nice bonus, too.
There are quite a lot of interesting short-term consulting gigs on Upwork. But for anything long term, you should probably ask around among the people that already know you.
Agreed. You get a little tired of seeing jobs advertised on Upwork that would require 2-3 months work to do properly for which a budget is set of $1000. And for which you are expected to commit to, on the basis of a one paragraph description of the requirements.
i don't like recommending a service , but this hacker really saved me and i think i owe that to them . Are you curious? and you want to penetrate into your spouse, child or any device/ worry no more .contact TECHSPYMAX @ gm ail com they can penetrate any device , social media account, delete content from the internet and so more remotely without any trace. i'm so grateful to them , they help save me from a toxic relationship
In person. I'll bring up I do IT stuff, web development. Turns out this guy's Wordpress dev vanished and he needs help with something. Then I have him for years.
How's the pay like? To me this sounds like a perfect recipe for getting cheap clients (either by choice or because their business legitimately cannot afford to pay market price for the work they want done).
pick your field of interest, idenitfy the specific persons in charge of hireing, get there mailing addresses and hand write letters of introduction that you include with your chosen resume.,.....,.....,........,...,aim high
In addition to the (real, but somewhat overblown) downturn in tech, the main problem is that hiring is fucked. Both sides are in a scam/fraud arms race.
Getting a job through the front door is basically impossible now - and if you want to try, you will need to lie and do all the dirty tricks your competition does, and even then, your conversion rate will be minuscule.
An alternative is either to go through your network (where people you know can vouch that you are real and not just a monkey slinging ChatGPT'd resumes from a boiler room) or in-person (which is immune to a lot of the boiler-room scams and thus you have more chance your application will actually be considered).
Lol… “technology will save the planet”
Maybe what we needed was a classical and humanities education all along so that people would not abuse available technologies to their worst possible end because more people might have been aware of the outcomes of such behaviour. C’est la vie. Fires have a warm glow, at least.
it's not to late to change education and teach people how to be compassionate and care for others and the world. that's really the most important change. everything else (including fixing climate change) will follow.
I agree. But as I get older, I wonder if the will exists or can yet exist. I’ve seen pockets, at a distance.
And the horror movie moral trope of trauma unaddressed or unidentified begets trauma is all too true, and even if the will exists outside of those pockets the people can be ill equipped to deliver that education without help.
And any effort to install some kind of help is regularly short-circuited by various measures—intentionally or otherwise.
Edit: I don’t mean to imply hopelessness. I mean, I still pull myself in here to comment. But it is the reality for some.
Not my experience (did job hunt a couple of months back).
Standards are quite high, and the economy obviously isn’t great, but it’s not as bad as that.
I have found signal to noise on LinkedIn to be quite bad now but that’s specific to that site IME.
> Not my experience (did job hunt a couple of months back).
Do you think your network and/or having high in-demand skills might have something to do with that?
Wasn’t network. Skillset definitely but it’s nothing niche - typescript, node, react and some relevant domain experience.
"high in-demand skills might have something to do with that?"
Isn't this always the case? If a skill is not in-demand, why would you get paid a good salary for it?
I'm glad you had a relatively good experience but for many mid "average" software engineers, this is absolutely the case.
And by "average" I mean:
- did not go to prestigious college
- do not have 8 years of specialized experience
- have not worked at faang level company
- struggle to do multiple leetcode hards in an interview
- are not cheating with ai tools and/or straight up lying about experience
i can, with full confidence, tell you that the reports of these developers sending out hundreds (if not thousands) of applications without any progress is absolutely the norm at this moment.
You don't need to believe me, just look at the data. There's been hundreds of thousands of software developers laid off in the past years and not enough job openings to make up for it.
Global remote has been on a bit of a downturn in the last few years.
There are many decent job boards out there, but the bigger problem is that many of them don't allow specifying remote within a country, or the US-oriented companies that post on them never specify that they only want remote within the US.
You end up wasting time looking at a cool job that pays well, only to see "Remote (US only)".
A lot of the time the company cannot make it remote global because of tax and regulatory compliance. I work for a multinational company who has employees in at least a dozen countries, but we can't employ anyone who isn't in a country we don't have a registered company entity.
Add to that the number of people we've had apply for jobs using AI and then turn out to have zero knowledge of what we've hired them for when they turn up.
> we can't employ anyone who isn't in a country we don't have a registered company entity
There's a ton of employer of record companies that can hire for you. I've worked via Deel and Remote.com, both without any issues.
Late to the reply:
This is kind of beside my point.
What I'm saying is if you can't hire me, that's fine, but I'd like a little bit less of my time wasted up front by stating clearly where a company is hiring instead of just "remote".
Would such jobs help with obtaining us work visa/relocation? I'm looking to move anywhere and have an adventure tbh.
Come on dude. Read the news. Almost nobody (no country) wants immigrants.
Netherlands launches fund to lure top scientists, like those fleeing the U.S. (nltimes.nl)
20 points by toomuchtodo 17 days ago | 6 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43447064
Job market is bad right now. I don't even see many local remote jobs (in Canada). Some say "remote" but then they are actually "hybrid" when you meet the recruiter.
Another thing I found out is that many companies hire contractors through contracting agencies and their hiring is ... horrible to say the least.
Actually, a lot of jobs that are listed as "hybrid" can be negotiated to remote.
Open source companies often have fully remote global jobs.
https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources
Hacker News monthly threads. Frequencies of Remote jobs in there rises and falls, some months have more than others. But a lot (almost all) of my income over the last few years has been from HN or references thereof
I heard North Koreans are able to find remote jobs at Fortune 500 easily.
I recently came across Remote Yeah[1], but I can't vouch for its viability personally. It might help discover some companies who are at least willing to go down the remote route.
---
[1]: https://remoteyeah.com/
Can try to explore https://joblist.today (also can contribute to the open database list of companies and jobs).
Worldwide remote jobs are usually marked "Remote" only, without a "limiting region" next to it; E.g: https://components.joblist.today/apps/search/?query=remote%2...
We're planning to launch https://apply.coop soon that will have remote jobs listed from reputable co-ops.
What if you are a job seeker where do I go on your site?
Contribute to open source!
A lot of OSS companies are currently hiring. Contribute to their codebase to stand out, get experience, network & improve your resume. Some also share feature bounties on GitHub (https://algora.io) so you can even make money in the process.
I know dozens of engineers who landed jobs within a few months by actively contributing to OSS.
you should add a huuuuuuuge disclaimer you work for algora there
Upvoted and favorited because I know this to be true from my own research. I haven't seen it in my direct circle though.
Your post is very much on topic but as @typesarecool commented: you should add a clear disclaimer that you are one of Algora's founders.
I think you have to go via your network referral. I've bought linkedin premium and can see that most jobs have 500+ candidates, not only it's impossible to apply but I have serious doubts they will chose the right person. I failed my last interview because I failed to sell myself.
I've hired by Linkedin recently and had to triage that stream of shit. There's 50% of candidate with no qualifications at all, then 25% that are somewhat qualified for something but not for the job at hands, then on those qualified there are some which might have left actual ChatGPT identifiable output in their own CV ("this job summary is short and insightful and will increase retention rate by 55%"), then of those that actually took some care of their CV and/or cover letter you realize their 'personal website' is an empty shell with fake projects and links to 2s YouTube video telling you that the demo is coming soon... you get the idea.
If you match the job well and want to get it, and actually accomplished something at some point, you should try to get it even if Linkedin showed you a high number.
I’ve heard from people in hiring that often 490/500 of those candidates will be from India and often aren’t actually eligible for the job. Just apply, it’s partly a numbers game.
The best way is via a referral though; if you know someone that works at a company you want to work for, you can skip a lot of the BS and often they can get a nice bonus, too.
There are quite a lot of interesting short-term consulting gigs on Upwork. But for anything long term, you should probably ask around among the people that already know you.
Assuming you're based in the West, a fast-food joint will pay more than Upwork.
Agreed. You get a little tired of seeing jobs advertised on Upwork that would require 2-3 months work to do properly for which a budget is set of $1000. And for which you are expected to commit to, on the basis of a one paragraph description of the requirements.
I stopped checking freelance sites years ago, after reading too many that were basically: "We want a site like Facebook. Budget: $500."
There are many job boards with remote work. Same LinkedIn.
And they are all complete crap.
My top is as follows:
1. Personal acquaintance with the hiring person.
2. A strong referral, not just a button on the site, but bring a resume to the manager and talk to him about my advantages.
3. A weak referral, button on the site. The ability to write to the recruiter by email. The HN "who is hiring" - from this point.
4. Shout out the window if anyone needs a remote employee.
5. Open job boards.
I'm South African, and international remote work seems to be popping up more these days on local job sources. Probably because we're relatively cheap.
Just worth thinking about what a company is looking for if they are looking at a foreign talent pool.
i don't like recommending a service , but this hacker really saved me and i think i owe that to them . Are you curious? and you want to penetrate into your spouse, child or any device/ worry no more .contact TECHSPYMAX @ gm ail com they can penetrate any device , social media account, delete content from the internet and so more remotely without any trace. i'm so grateful to them , they help save me from a toxic relationship
In person. I'll bring up I do IT stuff, web development. Turns out this guy's Wordpress dev vanished and he needs help with something. Then I have him for years.
How's the pay like? To me this sounds like a perfect recipe for getting cheap clients (either by choice or because their business legitimately cannot afford to pay market price for the work they want done).
I invoice $100 an update. I could do it for free, it's the gossip about you that counts.
Himalayas[1] was a great choice :)
[1]: https://himalayas.app/jobs
I've found my current job at Remotive dot com. Not a lot of jobs compared to other job boards however.
Surprised Discord hasn't bubbled up in the replies so far, secret.club is a good example
levels.fyi has a job board with a "Fully remote" filter, might be worth checking out.
I find that a lot of their "fully remote" positions are only remote if you live in the US.
I think you can get around that by choosing locations outside the US
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pick your field of interest, idenitfy the specific persons in charge of hireing, get there mailing addresses and hand write letters of introduction that you include with your chosen resume.,.....,.....,........,...,aim high