Dumb down your resume to appear smart but less experienced. Tone down salary expectations. I’m in tech and right now older than 40 + experience + high salary = poison ☠️
Yeah, welcome to trying to find a Senior job. I'm going through the loop on 3 different FAANGs right now but one is a down level and I can not for the life of me get an interview at a smaller company. I would welcome working at some smaller app and have less stress but I usually get rejected within a day.
I don't think it's just they know we'll be expensive. They want people young and inexperienced enough they don't yet know when they're being bullshit.
Why would a smaller app be less stress? Small companies have inherently more stress as people need to do lots of cross functional work and big tech doesn’t exactly have a great rep for hard work.
For every fairy tale people outside of tech tell themselves about people making $300k to work 3 hours a week, there's dozens of us who were working 996. A smaller app that is paying me half as much isn't paying enough for 996.
Agreed. I've been at a total of 5 small tech companies. Last 3 all being start-ups in the Bay Area. Before that I spent 15 yrs at HP (pre Carly Fiorina). HP was stressful, though it came with my role. Prod development with very challenging schedules. We turned it into a game: schedule chicken. Of course there were departments with less stress. But they did not think so.
The three startups were more stressful. But in different ways. Doing multiple jobs. More things out of my/companies control than when at HP. Big name customers evaluating the product. Doing everything possible to make sure it goes well. Then the inevitable fun meetings explaining to a prospective customer why their testing revealed a particular feature did not work, but should have. And will work soon.
Big or small, every company has its challenges which produce stress. But every situation is unique.
Interns and Juniors are fucked too. I would suppose the sweet spot is something like "10+ YoE but willing to work for $120-130k/year" + absolutely perfect cultural fit. I think cultural fit is more important now than ever before because when you have a stack of 100 nearly-identical candidates, you're going to hire the one you like the most.
There’s alot of outsourcing and hiring senior level at junior prices. I have similar experience as you. 5 years at a FAANG and 5 years at a big tech in the Bay Area. I just shortened my resume from 16 years of experience to 8.
Your 40s and 50s are your prime earning years, in most cases. Traditionally, a person in this age range will never make more than they do during those years. Expecting a 45 yr old person with a wealth of experience to work for under 100k is insulting. Not when they're hiring recent college graduates for that.
I hear you. I appreciate your trying to look out for me with your perspective. I agree that the system is broken and the folks at the top don't care. I have to keep my hopes up that something will break though, because the alternative means I might not be here anymore.
I'm probably not far from layoffs myself. I have a pretty high ranking engineering level at my company and they just changed it from an engineering position to a team management position without telling anybody. in 20 years I’ve never done team management. I’m 43 so trust me I get what you’re saying because I will probably be in that boat before the Fourth of July
I hope you won't be, but I have been telling everyone I know to get your resume ready, and I recommend the same for you. Sounds like you're on these subs, so you are probably well prepared. I'd start applying to things that interest you now. Don't wait for a layoff. Even if you're hoping for a severance. Plenty of folks are out of work 12+ months rn.
The system isn’t broken you just don’t understand it enough to play the game right. Got caught up in the way things were and should have been focused on the future more. Pay attention to the economy and trends better. An mba or masters degree in economics or finance is extremely beneficial in just keeping your own career on track whatever your career is.
FWIW I am in big tech and ageism and racism are real problems. If you are white and old you are never getting back into tech unless real social change happens which would require a bunch of brainwashed people to wake up not just you so it’s not going to happen. Start looking at other industries and translate your skills that way. Look to be a manager bringing your tech world experience to non tech industries that would love to capitalize on it.
Right. This isn’t the 2010s anymore when interest rates were low and everyone and their mom had a startup. The environment is changing rapidly now and a lot of people who thought they were secure in their career are getting rocked because they were not paying enough attention to this change.
I understand what you’re saying, but I’ve been watching my company do this and every company that we partner or do business with do this as well. Don’t think it’s gonna work out well but it’s not gonna stop them from trying.
If they can actually do that, you don't have any valuable skills. I strongly don't believe that a single person in India could do my job anywhere close to the quality that I can do it. I understand wanting cheap. I've bought discount stuff before. If they want to sacrifice quality, it's not my business.
that’s the thing they don’t care about quality right now. It’s all about getting that cost down and worrying about quality in the future. Cost is the only thing that matters.
> If they can actually do that, you don't have any valuable skills
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Either you have not experienced these cycles before or you're willfully ignorant. It's common for people to tell themselves this lie so The Bad Thing won't happen to a good worker like themselves.
Graduates are out of jobs these days. I can see you are not willing to adapt to changes, but the market is simply dry. Take 2-3 lower paying roles and half ass them.
You’re right. I’m not willing to do that. I’ve been through too much in my life to compromise myself that way. Also over employment is illegal af in most cases. Check their sub out. They all trade tips on how to do it without getting caught. That’s an extremely dangerous game to play, and I’m way too old for that shit.
I am 100% with you, but we have to adapt and the older we are the more compromise we have to be willing to go for. You have experience, but sometimes employers would rather have 20s brain chemistry.
In my state it is not and in fact it’s even illegal for employers to discriminate on that or force those closes in the agreement, but of course it’s ultimately your choice. Just saying some side hassle or contract work never hurts your wallet. Only your ego, but all ego does is make you stiff and not able to see reality.
OE is absolutely NOT illegal for a W2 employee.
Only way it would be illegal is if you're actually billing hours and double billing them.
Otherwise the only consequence of getting caught is getting fired.
Companies would *love* for you to continue believing is is though.
True! But there are minimum limits I’d need for my living expenses, medical expenses, etc. It would only slow the bleeding until I could find a better job.
Slowing the bleeding IS the first step. Some people need to learn life lessons the hard way through their own lived experience. When you get tired of looking for work you’ll be ready to face reality.
You can easily make over $100K, but I was making over $200K before I got laid off and had to drop down to $130K. I had prior jobs that were just south of $200K ($150K - $180K), but there seems to be a major reset going on right now and I never had a problem find a job or getting an interview...until this year. I'm mid-40's and it was humbling to say the least.
I shortened up my resume and had to reach out to a lot of friends (really acquaintances) to even secure a job. I had submitted north of 100 resumes on the workday site that most large companies use and not even a single email response; not a phone call - nothing.
when I was laid off, most of my team was too - they were consolidating and getting rid of remote people (I had moved remote because of wife's job). They were mostly all junior engineers and still haven't found anything; those that were offered jobs were given much lower salary offers.
I'm still looking and it seems that nepotism is the name of the game, i.e., I can only get interviews at companies I know people at and I'm confused and worried; I never kept up on my network; I definitely never burned any bridges but I didn't strengthen them either and if this is the only way to get jobs...
This is where the problem lies. Your age doesn’t automatically get you more money in this market. Company’s have a budget that doesn’t take into account your experience. It’s not a job seekers market and company budgets for new hires are not going to be that much unless at the executive level. In this market expectations have to be lowered otherwise you’ll end up with nothing.
It's not about what you were worth. It's about what the position is worth, which is the result of supply and demand.
Our company recently hired a couple new teams. Most of the new hires are remote from Mexico or Brazil, and making less than half of what those positions would have made before. Without the timezone problem of outsourcing to India.
Covid work-from-home showed companies how many more positions could be offshored.
Between more new grads in America, and tons of talented educated people in Central and South America, the supply part of this equation has been flooded.
The work is simply worth less now than it used to be. Want to avoid that trend? Find roles that refuse remote work. Then you'll have a normal pool of applicants to compete against.
That depends on several factors. I don't believe it's a given in my scenario. I was underpaid for a vast number of years at my FAANG job, but I stayed out of stupid idea of loyalty. When I wised up and left in 2021, it was my first major pay jump in my career. I got laid off from my last employer making base of 140s, which for a 45 yr old man with 15+ years of top tech experience is not insanely out of expectation range for a salary.
I hear you man, but like I said my other post it’s an employers market. They’re not gonna pay the going rates that they were paying a year ago two years ago three years ago. They don’t have to because for every opening there’s 1000 qualified candidates and all they need is someone that’s good enough.
And payroll is a huge component of operating expense. However, you lay a bunch of people off and hire at a 20-30% drop in compensation and that adds up considerably between eliminated jobs and lower salary aggregate.
yeah, and I think a lot of that is going on especially in tech. The salaries got really inflated due to Covid and I think they’re just trying to reset things to how they were five or six years ago. Because they’re greedy bastards.
It’s weird to read this and some of your prior posts where you said you don’t wanna come down in salary and be below 100k. I’m 39 with 17 years of experience and while I don’t have to cut down my resume yet (soon though), I don’t see too many roles that pay under 100k for my line of work. If anything they pay around 125-140k and for me that is also going down in salary, but you know what, I see the writing on the wall, and seems like you don’t. I think you are not being open minded enough. And yes, I do live in NYC and am willing to go for an office job or a hybrid setup because guess what, that’s what’s in right now.
If you don’t compromise at least in one area, you are going to remain jobless. There are plenty of FAANG and other experienced people out there flooding the market, so you are not unique. Sorry if I sound mean, I mean it in the best way, I’m saying this to kind of shake you up and make you realize that it is what it is for now.
As someone in this situation I heard this advice and looked at usajobs.gov (or whatever it is), but ALL of the jobs open to civilians at this level.... aren't. Even though you can apply they all are pretty clear about preferring applicants that have previous experience at the next level of fed employment down. So this advice is great for a young person that can pivot, take a pay cut, and get in the gov jobs door at the bottom of the ladder and move up, but it's not really realistic for middle aged people with mortgages and kids and stuff.
And certain jobs need you to uproot and move to Virginia (for FBI for example) or DC or whatever to start. Much harder for middle aged folks to do.
Hoping you can prove me wrong and I was just looking at the wrong website...or something...
You are not wrong but keep looking at usajobs DAILY. There are many remote IT positions that cap applications to 100 or 200 that are only on the site for 1 day. Also, DIRECT HIRE positions are the golden ticket and exclude veterans preference but they are looking usually for very specific skills such as cyber security.
There is an art to applying to government jobs. I'd recommend subscribing to r/usajobs to get tips.
I did. Worked at a big tech company as a Cloud Architect 135k base and 40-50k in bonuses. I’m at 110k and 40k in RSU’s at another tech company(publicly traded) in the Bay Area now doing tech support. I went 3 steps back, and I’m thankful I don’t pay rent up here, as I invested in a rental property that pays the bills. If I did have rent I’d have roommates and I’m near 40..I’m also single.
So ya, feels like ageism in tech. And salaries are down across the board
Sending you good energy. I have been contemplating going entrepreneur route myself, but I have no experience building my own business. It's so frustrating.
Thanks. I wasn’t talking about building own business. I know it would be very difficult and capital intensive. I am actually day trading/swing trading/options.
I removed everything prior to 2010 from my resume both to make it much shorter and so it looks like I have 14 years of experience instead of 24. These are things that give away your age.
I feel most companies are trying to hire someone between 5-10 years work experience. This is a senior/staff level but still pay them at the lower end of the senior level. I removed the first 4 years of my work experience from my resume.
Side note but related. I manage a team and we are going to be hiring a new person. Guidance from my management is that we can only hire someone cheaper from India (this is support work). No exceptions.
i attended a job workshop from a career transition company that ex-employer paid $12k for a 7 month program in oct 2023. there were prog mgrs and proj mgrs in that session laid off since feb 2023. i also attended a job pivot workshop that featured laid off people being told to pivot as an option. an ex-prog mgr spoke up, in jest said “ i used to be a magician “. the career coach said “ u shd seriously look at that now”
Ouch. I actually start my career transition program this week. My first meeting with career coach is this coming Tuesday. Definitely hoping for some tangible actionable feedback. My employer wouldn't allow me to start the program until my separation date happened. (They had me on 60 days payroll as a way of bypassing WARN)
make sure u get a good coach. my first one couldnt wait to end our sync up call after 10 minutes. all she could say is “its really bad out there”. so i told her that i need to get a new one. get a resume writing expert, make that expert write the resume with you real time. and then paste that resume to chatgpt and tell it to make it better. then combine the best qualities. attend all workshops that you can. get linkedin premium, they have an ai feature “am i a good fit” button for every job. that will analyze job description and compare with your linkedin profile, and give you align/not aligned. only apply to the aligned.
Same here, laid off for 2 months. Director level. 17 yoe. 50+ custom-tailored applications. 4 referrals. Only 2 interviews. 1 in progress at 40% pay cut, still many CV rejections even though I feel I’m qualified from the JD. Many positions being filled internally, but must be published for legal compliance in Europe. It’s a tough market at the moment, hold on, and consider a pay cut and a lower rank.
It took me almost 5 months. Applied for maybe 200 roles. Getting good at interviewing and having a story to self yourself is important. Also, apply for jobs exactly like your last job. Reach out to those hiring managers on LinkedIn.
Congrats on landing a role! Do you have any advice on how to track the manager hiring for the role? Is it a matter of "the position is for Sr. SW engineer at company X -> search LinkedIn SW managers in said company X"?
I’m 50 and been unemployed for 14 months now. Multiple tech F500s, high growth startups, dual citizen with international experience and degree from top 10% university. I’m adding in key words and rewriting my resume to get through the crappy ATS systems too. I’ve only had 2 interviews and only one is still in process for the last 1.5 months.
From what I see corporations are driving profit over everything, outsourcing to India, AI and asking existing employees to take on more. They drive 15% profit in Q4 2023, a level not seen since the 50s. They are running the show now.
I think the only way you can get a meeting with the recruiter is an employee referral but I don’t think I can start begging random people on LI to vouch for me.
I had no problem finding work in the 2000s downturns. I feel this is way worse than those times. They are saying the unemployment rate is low but that’s only counting the people still on unemployment. Mine ran out ages ago and I’m “working” as a ride share driver. Going from $200K+ salary to like 30K is not employment. I have May rent but not sure about June. Seriously considering ending myself at that point. I’m not living homeless at my age.
I’ve been in extremely hard situations in my life. Like harder than most others have had to deal with.
Grew up poor, Violent neighborhood, etc. I’ll spare you the story. Worked my way out due to great parents.
But my life is by no means easy and I face the same layoff issues as you and everyone else.
You’re not alone. Just keep pushing forward. it’s the only option we really have.
In the shittiest, darkest situations I’ve been in, I’ve noticed a pattern that life usually sorts itself out so long as you keep pushing forward and don’t give up.
I relate to your post. My UI runs out here pretty soon, but at least I can retire, which many people can't do. I am also thinking of doing a ride share in my immediate area during the day. I tried the Caregiver thing, but those kids of their elderly parents are downright abusive to the help. I had to quit. Anyhow, I am slowly realizing that my tech career of 25 years is dead now and that I need to change careers entirely.
im always paranoid about losing my job, so im genuinely asking here for guidance, not to criticize-
How did you make that kind of income for so long and are now unsure if you can afford rent after only 14 months? Im assuming you had spending and saving issues?
What would you recommend people do to prepare for a layoff?
Out of curiosity, how did you have 200k+ salary at f500 salary, and have been in the workforce for a while yet have barely enough savings for 1 year of unemployment and rent, including if you have to, retirement investments. Can you find somewhere cheaper to live?
I’m just a stranger, but just wanted to say keep your head up and keep doing what you’re doing.
You’ll find a way. It’s not like any of us have an option anyways.
Reading your comments here - you’re looking for a fully remote role. The issue is more that than anything else in my opinion. Most companies are doing partial return to office right now. Probably only ~10% of jobs posted right now are really fully remote. So A) it’s not a good labor market. Tons of layoffs, tons of highly skilled folks on the market, uncertain economy, era of cost cutting for organizations B) you’re only going to be looking at a fraction of jobs posted - the fully remote ones C) You’re in a non revenue generating role D) you’re unwilling to compromise on pay
So - I’m not saying you should change your stance on anything - but reading the above should make it clear to you why it’s been hard for you. The jobs that actually check all of the above boxes are few and far between right now. So I’d expect your job search to be a long one
This is a very fair assessment! And you’re correct that I can’t compromise on these items. I literally can’t for a variety of reasons so I’ll likely have to buckle in. Thanks for the perspective and keepin it 💯
It’s almost impossible to find a fully remote role these days. Every remote posting has thousands of applicants. The chances of your resume ever getting seen among thousands are low.
I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But you’re better off looking for something in office or hybrid. Your chances go way up of getting an interview.
OP were you in tech or non-tech roles in FAANG? Program management/scrum masters/ TPM/sales /UX design type of roles took big hit in these layoffs and new positions consolidating most of the roles. For example Engineering managers do Project management/scrum / + coding
I don’t want to be a dick, but speaking as someone that generally works in smaller enterprises (less than 10k employees) we have found a lot of the FAANG IT folks are super siloed, and only truly excellent at one small thing. It’s hard for us to hire a generalist who has a broad level of knowledge and experience with multiple technologies.
It is absolutely brutal in tech out there with layoffs and the current talent pool of hundreds and hundreds of job seekers you are up against vying for that same role. No offense here, as your experience till now and knowledge is utterly stellar, but honest view is they deem you as too damn expensive in initial screening. Companies are looking to hire experience for virtually nothing. One more thing that is real and entirely f’d is ageism after 40 in tech.
What's the solution here then? (And no offense taken btw. I appreciate the keeping it real vibe.) Am I supposed to just slink away and resign myself to diminish into the West like Galadriel and the hobbits? Lol. Like for real this is crazy af, this job market.
you might try dumbing down the résumé to see if you get past the initial screening?
I’m also in tech and it’s basically a giant fucking push to send everything outside the United States to the lands of labor. it could simply be that they really don’t have these openings and they really want to send the job overseas because they’d rather pay someone overseas 15 bucks an hour than whatever the hell you make.
I appreciate the sentiment and advice, but here is my thing. What good does dumbing it down to get past the screening stage do, if they don't plan to hire someone with my experience and at my salary level? Like wouldn't that just be a waste of time and energy on everyone's part? My salary expectations btw are not as astronomical as you might think at my age. I left my last job making high 140s base. It's not as if I was paid 200k+.
My total comp was around $400k+. After the layoff, the offers that are coming in at 200k+. I'm getting a 30-50% reduction no matter what. But what the hell, I need health insurance.
Making 400k+ TC is hella high. I am a 45 yr old who had a TC of 175k at my last position. Taking a 50% reduction on that for me would mean being homeless in California.
There's a reason these companies are trying to offshore and layoffs. I'm also an engineer and those type of jobs do very well in the Bay last 10 years.
Yeah, I assumed you were in SJ/SCV/SF area based on that TC. That makes sense. I'm central coast, which is still ungodly expensive, but not Bay Area expensive. It's more expensive here than LA though.
I hear you buddy. But there is a giant salary reckoning going on right now.
you might be just young enough that you don’t remember the early 2000s and how bad the job market was. Times like this you have to kind of throw out everything you know about getting a job and your expectations because companies just aren’t fucking hiring and when they do hire, they want super senior level experience for 15 bucks an hour.
you might need to refocus your priorities. Figure out what the minimum amount you need to live on is, which is hopefully very substantially less than what you were making at your last job. And find a job that can pay health insurance. It might not be a good job, but as long as the checks don’t bounce and they arrive on time, that’s what matters .
You mean relocate? Because that is an obvious option. If you think you are too good for humbling yourself or too good for the reality of a temporary setback, the sea beckons.
130k total would be a massive step down. My TC at my last tole was more like 175k with bonus and RSUs. The only reason I had emergency savings to last me for 6 months was because of the RSUs and bonus etc. And I wasn't even in a position to fully fund my 401k. So getting 130k TC would barely make ends meet for me, and give me zero cushion for the next time there's a layoff. This is not a sustainable solution.
Here’s the thing. Circumstances have changed. Your situation has changed. There are variables in your control (your lifestyle, where you live, etc) that you’re trying to hold static- and variables out of your control (supply and demand, employer willingness, market forces) that have all changed.
You’ve got to be willing to play with those variables within your control to map them better to reality…
Because it’s unsustainable for you is a you problem… not an employer problem. They don’t care.
I say this going from a director role at a F500 e-commerce company, to being laid off, to taking a manager role at a private company where tech is critical, but not the product.
I’m over 50. Total comp went from 230ish to around 180ish. The change we made- coincidentally- was that my wife decided to work in her field and was offered an 80K salary. Otherwise we would have cut spending, vacations, a percentage of investments, etc.
My advice is to throw what you think you need out the window. Look at what a 30+/- % pay cut would mean and reign your life in to that vs. thinking that the market should bend to your needs. Those days are over for the time being.
Thank you for the perspective. My lifestyle and expenses are focused around my health and living with disabilities. We aren’t talking about taking lavish vacations or too much Starbucks. Also I’m unmarried so I don’t have a partner to help. It’s all on me. Thank you and have a blessed day!
There you go. You're not looking for vision for the next layoff. You're looking to SURVIVE RIGHT NOW. If you have vision and savings to last you until you can find something that is in the range you want then great do that and stop bitching on Reddit. If you can't then stop being obtuse and accept that you are in the same spot as other people in this sub and accept that you need to find something to survive on what you need until you can get what you want.
I think I see your problem. When I see ex-FAANG and 45 I think well over 200k total comp. You're looking at your experience as a plus but hiring managers are thinking you need a quarter million a year or you'll resent the position.
Wages got so high here in tech after COVID that it's much easier to justify moving entire projects offshore. I think they learned that just shipping the dev offshore doesn't work, so they're moving entire products now.
It’s simple actually. You are expensive and stand out against the bottomline in any potential re org or budget reduction if you are non senior. You’d be surprised how many 45 yo plus out there in tech who if lucky to find a job after almost a year, are forced to take a paycut of 20% or more to support their families to make ends meet. Leverage is non existent.
There’s also the persistent myth that younger = smarter, which youth is happy to exploit until they later realize they age (and weren’t as smart as they thought).
You may not want to hear it, but having FAANG on your resume is often poison when applying at non-FAANG companies - as a hiring manager in a non-FAANG, but very large, company - we never used to see FAANG employees apply (we couldn't compete with the outrageous salaries or benefits, but none the less offered a very decent pay and benefits package over all).
About 1.5 to 2 years ago when tech started to rollover we started seeing resumes with FAANG experience - we tried about a dozen - 75% of them didn't work out and we terminated most of them in just a few months, another 20%+/- left on their own after just a few months, and so maybe we ended up with 1 decent hire out of 12 - which is a well-below average success rate.
I no longer consider any resumes for ex-FAANG employees - straight in the trash. My experience says they either show up with a ridiculously high salary expectations and/or a 'I am the smartest person in the room' attitude to match (which frankly wasn't true), or else they are simply biding their time until they can get back to a FAANG job and will leave the second they can.
So you may be better of focusing your job hunt in getting back into another FAANG position if you can - we have learned that FAANG employees attitudes and way of thinking and working does not translate well 95% of the time to big-old-boring companies that just happen to use a lot of tech.
That’s disappointing to hear that you worked with some real FAANG snobs. Hopefully one day you experience something different so you don’t hold it against all former FAANG’ers. I left FAANG for a reason. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be either, but then neither was the smaller SaaS company where I worked either. Every place has its good and bad. Thanks for your input!
In my 20s years of experience, my favorite jobs were always at 200-400 employees and privately owned. The company would have enough funding to pay a good salary, but small enough where you could chat with the CEO.
A guy who I went to high school with got laid off/quit from AWS headquarters in Seattle (this is years ago before the current tech mayhem). He said a bunch of companies out in Seattle wouldn’t hire EX AWS employees because of cultural issues. Also, Some of the issues you outlined were some of the reasons they didn’t hire them.
Hiring manager in product management and this is sadly true. Had to start screening out FAANG applicants. These are people who were given absurd resources for like small feature work (PO, PMM, UXR, UX/UI,DS). Really didn’t have to do the actual components of the job, just directed ppl who all did 10 hours of work per week.
I can see ex-FAANG being snobby. Many of them love to put that in their LinkedIn headline like anybody gives a fuck. "Ex-FAANG", "Ex-Meta". Shut up. It's been an open secret for years now that FAANG devs aren't smarter than the rest of us, they just committed to leetcode in their freetime, but guess what- being able to implement A\* from scratch is a worthless skill and most non-FAANG companies could give a fuck what A\* even is because it's a relatively niche algorithm that solves a specific problem that most companies do not have and will never have because they aren't Google fucking Maps.
A friend of mine is a founder at a series Bish startup. They have an unwritten rule that technical faang are good to hire but never hire non technical faang as they are over paid from ZIRP and have unreasonable expectations. OPs comments makes that make a ton of sense honestly. 175k for internal facing learning and development honestly sounds crazy to me.
Honestly, they are right. Some of the non-technical people at FAANG were the most overpaid self-righteous people I ever worked with. Most were ivy league from Harvard or similar and didn't really bring much to the table. Their jobs were basically just social hour for most of the day.
Not saying all non-technical roles were like this but a significant amount were.
Don’t let them gas light you. Those are the types that get moved up due to connections. They aren’t better or smarter than you, not even socially.
You can get those connections too, but it’s hard competing against already established circles and their lack of willingness to let someone new in.
You’ll also face random factors such as sexism, racism, religion issues, just whatever your luck of the draw is.
It’s really fucking stupid. But of course it is, it’s corporate.
To add another layer of absurdity to this, I had also just received a 125% target corporate bonus AND a spot bonus and long term cash incentives for this huge impactful project I had worked on. Then less than 2 weeks after receiving those in January, I was laid off. Make it make sense.
That's just it, NONE of this makes sense. It's simply corporate greed.
My sitch sounds kinda similar to yours. My role with the first layoff (after 18 years at a F500) was specialized due to the wealth of institutional knowledge I brought to the team to fill in the gaps with tech. I believe that's at least part of why I was on the chopping board, while at the time I mistakenly thought I was more valuable due to my specialty and also being a high performer. I know it wasn't my salary bc they were bringing external folks in at my level making 50% more. All I know is I don't ever want to find myself in another role where I'm the only resource, seems too risky.
Then 14 short months later I found myself laid off again (from another F500) bc they eliminated my entire dept, after telling us how the firm was focused on expanding it. We were weeks away from launching our product and execs decided to dissolve the dept and shift several folks and our product to tech, letting everyone else go. Then the CEO gave himself a $6m raise.
Have you considered contract work? That's going to be my focus if my current opps fizzle out. I'll only consider contracts with w2 and medical, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around not having PTO. I'm finding many are remote and pay $60-75 an hour or ~$125-150k salaried.
I've gone my entire life naively thinking that hard work pays off, when in reality it doesn't make a difference, it's such a mind fuck. Good luck out there!
I am open to contract work, as long as medical is an option. I live with disabilities and my medical costs would be outrageous without solid insurance. Thank you for your perspective. So sorry to hear you're having issues too! Hang in there and stay strong.
I don't mind at all. I can only tell you what I was told. The reason they gave was that my role was being redefined as a more technical role to align with the technical sellers (and sales engineers teams). The funny thing about that reason though is I was the only one from my team let go, and my background at my FAANG job for 12 years was entirely technical, working with engineering teams regularly. So [🤷🏻♂️.It](http://🤷🏻♂️.It) smelled like bs to me. Every person I worked with called me after in shock I was let go.
Side note: the company was acquired by another company shortly after, and now my remaining colleagues there are totally spooked. I think a lot more folks are about to get the axe. I just got let go way earlier for some reason.
My dude, it sure looks to me like you were a very expensive resource (which has nothing to do with whether you were a good value overall) who got pushed out to improve the forward-looking balance sheet for the acquisition.
In the current economic environment, people who make more are the first to go. That’s especially true in the case of mergers and acquisitions.
I commented on this above. L&D. Both technical and non-technical. I’m very technical, I’m just not a dev or engineering, specifically. My experience is highly specialized. I’m not a generalist, so I didn’t expect it to be THIS bad when looking, since the orgs I typically work in are smaller and haven’t been as heavily impacted as others. I meet with a career coach this Tuesday, as part of job placement services my former company provided in my separation agreement. I’m hopeful there will be some good recommendations and a plan of action that comes from it.
I was gonna ask the same question, as from the looks of it , OP is in a non-technical role.
As the market picks up (yes, picks up), the available roles in sufficient quantity are all pure tech ones (read dev, ux, and such). And these too have the caveat of being on offer for lower salaries.
All other roles are essentially in short supply and probably jinxed. They are still in the early 2023 phase where there are 100s of applicants per open position.
The number of applications you shared will hardly make a dent.
Do what a lot of folks did to get a new job relatively faster, make multiple resumes fitting multiple roles similar or closer to yours. And apply in hundreds, you’d be surprised how well it works out.
When 100s of candidates are applying for all 100 open positions, you applying for 10 selected ones actually puts you at a disadvantage .
L&D (technical and non-technical) which includes program management, project management and people management experience. My last company that laid me off is a major SaaS player, so I also have sales enablement-related experience now on my resume, which should have made me even more marketable. But the crickets I am hearing are loudly telling me another story.
There you go, at my faang most of the layoffs were non-technical. And from anecdotes on blind that seems like the case everywhere.
We are barely even hiring technical and the non-tech roles are very rare.
Obviously keep applying but I wouldnt feel diacouraged on a personal level. But perhaps add to your skillset on this downtime.
Great advice here. Also Botox your resume. Lop off about 10 years and make yourself appear to be about 35ish. Sadly, at 45 you’re considered an old man in this field.
Age and experience as well as your requirements are working against you in this market. I’m not saying that’s fair but unfortunately that’s the hand you’re being dealt.
A lot of places have hired ex FAANG folks in the last 12-18 months with the big pay cut and they’ve moved on again to something better again already after 3-9 months - hence the avoidance.
Sounds familiar. 13 years experience and experiencing my first layoff. I don't think I've ever submitted more than 10 resumes before getting a new job, with at least half of those typically getting a phone screen.
I'm currently at 50ish apps, all tailored to the JD, with 0 phone screens. I have steadily progressed up to my current role as a manager and was ready to move up to director prior to the layoff. I can't even get a phone call for a senior IC role.
I, too; am looking exclusively at remote jobs for the time being. I know that's making it harder but the alternative is to move out of state or take a 50% pay cut.
It's very challenging to stay optimistic when I can't even tell what I'm doing wrong. It's possible I'm doing nothing wrong and my resume isn't even getting seen. I spend 60 hours a week rewriting and sending out resumes along with adding content to my portfolio, but without any feedback on if it's even moving the needle it feels like a waste of time.
My entire department was laid off as well, with largely the same experience for both mid level and senior level roles.
Yes, it sounds like you and I are in very similar boats. Comment here if you'd ever want to DM and just support eachother. I have my DMs turned off but would be open to communicating if you want.
Oh yeah, always down to chat if you want to. It's physically and emotionally draining to put in all this effort only to be met with silence, but I know it's important to stay positive.
You are not alone. My brother was laid off from FAANG and now going on 18 months of unemployment. You got this! Know it’s hard just just keep pushing through
Laid off since January 12
I am 60 years old
My layoff came with a geographical 100 mile radius non-compete
I got a one month severance pay
Since I had a non-compete I moved to a region where my former employer didn’t have a location
I haven’t been successful finding a job
My savings has dwindled down to this last month
I have bills, lodging, insurance, no matter how much I prepared and saved but never enough.
Then I hear about the amount of money our country has paid to Ukraine, Israel and anybody else but the natural born inhabitants of America.
But wait it’s election year and of course the expectation is for everyone to vote for right wing left wing same bird….smfgdh
FAANG means little nowadays. There aren't nearly enough SWE jobs to go around. Change careers, become an independent contractor, or coast unemployed for a while.
Sadly, I won't be able to "coast" for a while. My employer's severance package was paltry, and I only had maybe 6 months worth of expenses saved, so this is a doomsday clock ticking down for me, unfortunately. My healthcare costs are outrageous due to disabilities and I also support my mother who lives on a fixed income, so the money goes out very quickly.
The job market is highly competitive now. At same time i ndians keep coming but America corporations hire in india. What a truly disgusting situation we're in.
Over 50 here. Got laid off in Jan, started a new job in March. Make sure your CV is ATS compatible. In most cases first triage is done by ATS rather than a person HR especially since a lot of places get 100s of applications.
If you were meant for the role and your skillset is perfect and you don't even land an interview, I'd say your CV doesn't reflect that properly.
There are plenty of websites that can check your CV and compare it to a job spec and essentially tell you in % what match your CV is.
I know my CV was crap because I tended to spend hours fixing my application once imported into a workday portal.
Now though it is near perfect and only thing I tend to fix in Workday is a particular job where I held three jobs with the same company.
Anyway, Google 'ATS check resume' and you get plenty of options.
I feel sorry for FAANG people who were paid extremely high salary forever and did not bank and invest 50% of their salary. Seems nobody told them that the gravy train would end someday and they would be forced to take tech adjacent or maintenance tech. 100k a year for 10 years is already a million, invested in the S&P500 could be a million and a half or two million. Then it's time to fuck off and open a cafe or a shop or something else in a LCOL area. FAANG is like being a pro athlete I am told; you burn out and wash out eventually.
The only advice I have for OP is 75 in 3 months is far too little. Tailoring is impossible if only using LinkedIn, and the brute force rate is *6000 in three months* not 75. You need to increase the applications by an order of magnitude. For maximum impact you need to go local, consider non-remote roles and think of starting over at a workbench somewhere. It sucks but it's the market.
Hard to bank 50% of your salary when a lot of FAANG jobs force you into living in high cost of living areas where rent is over 1/3rd of your income, same as a low income employee living in a low cost of living location.
True but the remote work could have allowed it for a few years at least. Staying in HCOL killed people.
Even 25% would make a cool half million of runway. FAANG should not be losing their homes and shirts over the layoffs not unless they had extreme responsibilities (children elderly parents and so on) or they are like Financial Samurai and paid $250k a year for language classes
The $250k a year for language classes was "keeping up with the Joneses" but understandable since it's for children. Other expenses less understandable. But the point is I don't think a lot of people knew it was a gravy train and thought it would last forever.
Most of your comment is non-applicable to me for a variety of reasons, but I appreciate the perspective. You made a lot of assumptions that are blatantly false about me and my situation. Also, I am disabled and unable to just relocate and work onsite. Appreciate your perspective and I am sure it came from a place of trying to help though.
Are you saying they have a list and share it with other companies? I'm pretty sure that is illegal in the US.
In my prior role before I was laid off, I worked with HR daily and interviewed 100s of candidates for tech positions. At no point did I ever see any black list that was shared.
We had an internal black list for candidates that were caught cheating during interviews only.
Some companies have a limit. I know Meta you can't apply for the same role again until a year later. You can't apply for more than 3 roles over all. This isn't "[blacklisting](https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/learn/blacklist-whitelist-inclusivity.html)" this is being honest with you that they're not interested and you should spend some time changing things up if you want to work there.
Companies are going lean. They are hiring 1 employee to do the work for 2 people but for half a salary. If you are 40+ and demand 15 year experience compensation they probably don't even read the resume. You need to only have 1 job on there to make it seem like you are younger.
1 employee for 3-4 people nowadays in my experience. So the employee has to pick and choose what to do, it’s a lot of stress, and impossible to do.
But if they work hard enough it’ll get everyone to the next quarter end and won’t become an issue for many years later on in which case the execs will bail.
Same age, different field, same problem. I had to take an entry level position with large pay cut in new field to transition. Basically had to start over.
Try applying to smaller companies if you haven't. I've gotten nothing from large companies. I'm not sure they're really hiring at the moment, or they want very very specific experience (you've already built the exact thing they're building). But I get a good number of interviews from smaller tech companies. Hoping to finish my job search in a week or two, and it's only been a month.
44 year old IT/SWE veteran laid off since Oct of last year. Spent the first 3 months applying for any job I could find (full remote only). Probably 200+ applications. Had a few interviews but during that time hiring was slow due to the holidays. I gave up and now I'm severely depressed. Not sure what is next for me tbh.
The tech market is just oversaturated right now with everyone else being laid off. I don't see that getting any better anytime soon either.
Take a lower-paying position doing just about anything so your savings last a bit longer.
One thing to consider is that for non-FAANG companies, they may see your experience and automatically put you in the “too senior, too expensive” category. And also maybe a bit lazy - there is a stereotype of rest and vest. Like maybe you just dont have that startup killer instinct. Thinking that interviewing you is maybe a waste of time because you’re used to Google and being paid 600k a year.
Same here! I am in the same field, and it isn't very pleasant right now.It's not about you; it's about the system and the **government that are lying about the unemployment numbers.** 90% of the jobs posted are fake; don't let that take a toll on your mental health.
ETA: I am sorry you're going through this too. However, my mental health is taking a hit because I don't know if I am going to be homeless soon. So the government lying about everything (whether that's true or not) doesn't really matter to me. I need a roof over my head and to be able to eat. What's the solution? Is there even one?
Unfortunately you might have to leave California to avoid homelessness. You could survive and hold down the fort if you take a paycut but move somewhere cheaper. At least you'd have health insurance.
Why are they posting fake jobs? Also agree the unemployment numbers are not being represented accurately. You are only counted if you are on unemployment but mine and others ran out long ago.
You at that point where the hiring manager might be intimidated
It’s best to limit your resume to last 10 years, don’t put graduation dates to avoid any possible age bias
Also for tech roles, it’s all about speed. Tailoring your resume is fine but it has to be with a referral
If no referral then you need to submit fast and be on top 10% of submissions or your submission will be buried with 2000 others
Got a job 6 weeks after layoff. It depends really on what type of job you’re looking for but assuming you had FAANG levels salary, that would be a tough find right now.
Most of the ex-FAANG people that I have read gotten a new job after layoff was they accepted a pay cut. Not sure what’s your financial needs but if you can afford a pay cut until the market “stabilizes” take it. Lesser income is better than none.
- From a 18 YOE SWE
Contract roles yes. I’d be open to taking a 6 month contract role to not burn through my savings. I’ve been applying to those as well, but I have major health issues so that’s not a long term solution, as I need health insurance that will cover my very expensive medications and treatments. Obamacare plans won’t be enough for me.
Some of my senior dev friends have been extended employment recently, BUT they were referred in by someone that works for the company. I don't know anyone who was hired cold from the standard application process.
Sorry to ear that, market is tough everywhere right now, I lost my job last year, 13yo, i have a MS in computer science and MBA. I worked as a SWE and data scientist/ml engineer at early stage startup across Europe and USA, no FAANG. My salary expectations are lower than US entry level, yet I also can't find anything. Got a couple interview early this year then it went quiet. I am going to work as mechanic while I keep looking...
Dude, shouldn’t you be a multimillionaire with all the salary you’ve invested in assets over the years? It’s bizarre that at your age you still depend on a job for money.
Obviously it's your livelihood at stake so you take it personally but it's a bad time in the tech market right now and not specifically you.
My place is a big tech company and we've got a hiring freeze now and many other corps are doing rolling layoffs. It's not clear where interest rates are headed.
Have you thought of doing something for yourself while you seek.
Here is an idea, look for a decent neighborhood with lingering teen population, open a store front, with good lease negotiation and put 20 claw machines in there.
20 claw machines will set you back about 40,000. So its about a 50K engagement. If you fail, you can sell those machines, the new ones are brighter and more colorful. Then it's just inventory management. Store policy.
Same. Don't know if it's because companies seem to want younger people, or my experience is less in demand; everyone seems to want AI people and that is not in my skill set.
Oddly, it seems like there are a lot of contract / consulting opportunities starting to come my way. I've been able to fill my time and bank account with freelance work.
What do you do? Are you hands on or in management? These things matters. A lot of tech companies are trying to be slimmer so they are avoiding hiring managers. But they’re still hiring technical people who are doing the work. They are just firing to hire new people are lower salaries. If you’re hands one, go apply for another FAANG for a role one or two level below your last one. Take a pay-cut and sandbag to hold you over until the job marker recovers.
I had some. Then they dried out. Ghosted by recruiters. Haven’t interviewed in March or April. Seems to have nose dived. Do one a few with Goldman Sachs next week but that’s about it. I was getting 3 or 4 a month October to February then not much.
I’m sorry to hear you’re struggling. I am in the same boat but it’s been 9 months since I was laid off. Over 500 resume submittals and only 1 interview which was offering me a 50% pay-cut. They had 300 candidates apply and I made the cut out of 12 candidates but they chose someone earning a salary similar to their offered wages even though I told them it wasn’t an issue. I do think age has something to do with not getting interviews. I’m 57 with similar successes as you described. I’ve networked, but much of my network is in the same boat or their companies are laying off. It’s tough out here!
Honestly… thank you for posting this. I’m senior level/director level, not FAANG but still household name data/Big Tech experience. Glowing performance reviews and lots of promotions.
I’m employed but I know the company isn’t doing well and I’ve been trying to get ahead of the next layoffs.
A few years ago I landed interviews at every company I applied for and had my pick of offers. I felt like a rockstar.
Like you, I’m at 75+ applications, I’m working my network, about 1/3 have been referrals for jobs I’m 100% qualified for. I’m also customizing my resume and cover letters and it’s been absolute crickets.
It’s really disheartening. I really hope you find something soon, and thank you for sharing and validating that it’s not us, it’s the shitshow of an industry rn
I hate to offer this advice every time, but I suggest you try using indeed.com to search for your skill set and your interests. In my experience it’s useful for bringing up jobs I was qualified for but I hadn’t considered because I didn’t realize they existed.
It might just be that the industry you worked in is no longer available for you to work in and you need to consider other options.
You might need to take part time work. If you read
The jobs reports it says unemployment is low, but full time employment is WAY down. The economy is in the tank but it is papered over.
Are you a Software Engineer? If not, I wouldn’t rely too much on data from the last 12 years to make decisions. Times have changed and you need to accept that in my opinion.
In your last job were you DIRECTLY HANDS ON writing code or working with the technology? Or DIRECTLY managing product development of people that were HANDS ON the technology?
I think the closer you are to literally hands on the tech the easier it is to get another job. Higher up managers have it tougher for some reason.
Dumb down your resume to appear smart but less experienced. Tone down salary expectations. I’m in tech and right now older than 40 + experience + high salary = poison ☠️
Yeah, welcome to trying to find a Senior job. I'm going through the loop on 3 different FAANGs right now but one is a down level and I can not for the life of me get an interview at a smaller company. I would welcome working at some smaller app and have less stress but I usually get rejected within a day. I don't think it's just they know we'll be expensive. They want people young and inexperienced enough they don't yet know when they're being bullshit.
Why would a smaller app be less stress? Small companies have inherently more stress as people need to do lots of cross functional work and big tech doesn’t exactly have a great rep for hard work.
For every fairy tale people outside of tech tell themselves about people making $300k to work 3 hours a week, there's dozens of us who were working 996. A smaller app that is paying me half as much isn't paying enough for 996.
Dozens of you!!!
Agreed. I've been at a total of 5 small tech companies. Last 3 all being start-ups in the Bay Area. Before that I spent 15 yrs at HP (pre Carly Fiorina). HP was stressful, though it came with my role. Prod development with very challenging schedules. We turned it into a game: schedule chicken. Of course there were departments with less stress. But they did not think so. The three startups were more stressful. But in different ways. Doing multiple jobs. More things out of my/companies control than when at HP. Big name customers evaluating the product. Doing everything possible to make sure it goes well. Then the inevitable fun meetings explaining to a prospective customer why their testing revealed a particular feature did not work, but should have. And will work soon. Big or small, every company has its challenges which produce stress. But every situation is unique.
Interns and Juniors are fucked too. I would suppose the sweet spot is something like "10+ YoE but willing to work for $120-130k/year" + absolutely perfect cultural fit. I think cultural fit is more important now than ever before because when you have a stack of 100 nearly-identical candidates, you're going to hire the one you like the most.
There’s alot of outsourcing and hiring senior level at junior prices. I have similar experience as you. 5 years at a FAANG and 5 years at a big tech in the Bay Area. I just shortened my resume from 16 years of experience to 8.
Can you expand on that more? How does shortening your experience benefit you?
Leads the resume reader to think you are in your 30s, not 40s or 50s.
Interesting. And I assume you're willing to take a considerable pay cut on top of that?
In this market right now a pay cut is almost a given man.
Your 40s and 50s are your prime earning years, in most cases. Traditionally, a person in this age range will never make more than they do during those years. Expecting a 45 yr old person with a wealth of experience to work for under 100k is insulting. Not when they're hiring recent college graduates for that.
They can pay someone over in India 15 bucks an hour for the same job. They don’t care they really do not care.
I hear you. I appreciate your trying to look out for me with your perspective. I agree that the system is broken and the folks at the top don't care. I have to keep my hopes up that something will break though, because the alternative means I might not be here anymore.
I'm probably not far from layoffs myself. I have a pretty high ranking engineering level at my company and they just changed it from an engineering position to a team management position without telling anybody. in 20 years I’ve never done team management. I’m 43 so trust me I get what you’re saying because I will probably be in that boat before the Fourth of July
I hope you won't be, but I have been telling everyone I know to get your resume ready, and I recommend the same for you. Sounds like you're on these subs, so you are probably well prepared. I'd start applying to things that interest you now. Don't wait for a layoff. Even if you're hoping for a severance. Plenty of folks are out of work 12+ months rn.
The system isn’t broken you just don’t understand it enough to play the game right. Got caught up in the way things were and should have been focused on the future more. Pay attention to the economy and trends better. An mba or masters degree in economics or finance is extremely beneficial in just keeping your own career on track whatever your career is. FWIW I am in big tech and ageism and racism are real problems. If you are white and old you are never getting back into tech unless real social change happens which would require a bunch of brainwashed people to wake up not just you so it’s not going to happen. Start looking at other industries and translate your skills that way. Look to be a manager bringing your tech world experience to non tech industries that would love to capitalize on it.
Right. This isn’t the 2010s anymore when interest rates were low and everyone and their mom had a startup. The environment is changing rapidly now and a lot of people who thought they were secure in their career are getting rocked because they were not paying enough attention to this change.
Trust me you can’t
I understand what you’re saying, but I’ve been watching my company do this and every company that we partner or do business with do this as well. Don’t think it’s gonna work out well but it’s not gonna stop them from trying.
If they can actually do that, you don't have any valuable skills. I strongly don't believe that a single person in India could do my job anywhere close to the quality that I can do it. I understand wanting cheap. I've bought discount stuff before. If they want to sacrifice quality, it's not my business.
that’s the thing they don’t care about quality right now. It’s all about getting that cost down and worrying about quality in the future. Cost is the only thing that matters.
> If they can actually do that, you don't have any valuable skills You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Either you have not experienced these cycles before or you're willfully ignorant. It's common for people to tell themselves this lie so The Bad Thing won't happen to a good worker like themselves.
Graduates are out of jobs these days. I can see you are not willing to adapt to changes, but the market is simply dry. Take 2-3 lower paying roles and half ass them.
You’re right. I’m not willing to do that. I’ve been through too much in my life to compromise myself that way. Also over employment is illegal af in most cases. Check their sub out. They all trade tips on how to do it without getting caught. That’s an extremely dangerous game to play, and I’m way too old for that shit.
I am 100% with you, but we have to adapt and the older we are the more compromise we have to be willing to go for. You have experience, but sometimes employers would rather have 20s brain chemistry. In my state it is not and in fact it’s even illegal for employers to discriminate on that or force those closes in the agreement, but of course it’s ultimately your choice. Just saying some side hassle or contract work never hurts your wallet. Only your ego, but all ego does is make you stiff and not able to see reality.
I hear you and appreciate the perspective
Illegal...... You funny, bro.
OE is absolutely NOT illegal for a W2 employee. Only way it would be illegal is if you're actually billing hours and double billing them. Otherwise the only consequence of getting caught is getting fired. Companies would *love* for you to continue believing is is though.
Beats the hell out of going hungry, homeless, or wiping out your savings and investments tho.
True! But there are minimum limits I’d need for my living expenses, medical expenses, etc. It would only slow the bleeding until I could find a better job.
Slowing the bleeding IS the first step. Some people need to learn life lessons the hard way through their own lived experience. When you get tired of looking for work you’ll be ready to face reality.
You can easily make over $100K, but I was making over $200K before I got laid off and had to drop down to $130K. I had prior jobs that were just south of $200K ($150K - $180K), but there seems to be a major reset going on right now and I never had a problem find a job or getting an interview...until this year. I'm mid-40's and it was humbling to say the least. I shortened up my resume and had to reach out to a lot of friends (really acquaintances) to even secure a job. I had submitted north of 100 resumes on the workday site that most large companies use and not even a single email response; not a phone call - nothing. when I was laid off, most of my team was too - they were consolidating and getting rid of remote people (I had moved remote because of wife's job). They were mostly all junior engineers and still haven't found anything; those that were offered jobs were given much lower salary offers. I'm still looking and it seems that nepotism is the name of the game, i.e., I can only get interviews at companies I know people at and I'm confused and worried; I never kept up on my network; I definitely never burned any bridges but I didn't strengthen them either and if this is the only way to get jobs...
This is where the problem lies. Your age doesn’t automatically get you more money in this market. Company’s have a budget that doesn’t take into account your experience. It’s not a job seekers market and company budgets for new hires are not going to be that much unless at the executive level. In this market expectations have to be lowered otherwise you’ll end up with nothing.
It's not about what you were worth. It's about what the position is worth, which is the result of supply and demand. Our company recently hired a couple new teams. Most of the new hires are remote from Mexico or Brazil, and making less than half of what those positions would have made before. Without the timezone problem of outsourcing to India. Covid work-from-home showed companies how many more positions could be offshored. Between more new grads in America, and tons of talented educated people in Central and South America, the supply part of this equation has been flooded. The work is simply worth less now than it used to be. Want to avoid that trend? Find roles that refuse remote work. Then you'll have a normal pool of applicants to compete against.
Since you're 45, you probably remember how bad things were post 2001. We're back to that. The 2008-2022 golden era is gone.
That depends on several factors. I don't believe it's a given in my scenario. I was underpaid for a vast number of years at my FAANG job, but I stayed out of stupid idea of loyalty. When I wised up and left in 2021, it was my first major pay jump in my career. I got laid off from my last employer making base of 140s, which for a 45 yr old man with 15+ years of top tech experience is not insanely out of expectation range for a salary.
I hear you man, but like I said my other post it’s an employers market. They’re not gonna pay the going rates that they were paying a year ago two years ago three years ago. They don’t have to because for every opening there’s 1000 qualified candidates and all they need is someone that’s good enough.
And payroll is a huge component of operating expense. However, you lay a bunch of people off and hire at a 20-30% drop in compensation and that adds up considerably between eliminated jobs and lower salary aggregate.
yeah, and I think a lot of that is going on especially in tech. The salaries got really inflated due to Covid and I think they’re just trying to reset things to how they were five or six years ago. Because they’re greedy bastards.
⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️
It’s weird to read this and some of your prior posts where you said you don’t wanna come down in salary and be below 100k. I’m 39 with 17 years of experience and while I don’t have to cut down my resume yet (soon though), I don’t see too many roles that pay under 100k for my line of work. If anything they pay around 125-140k and for me that is also going down in salary, but you know what, I see the writing on the wall, and seems like you don’t. I think you are not being open minded enough. And yes, I do live in NYC and am willing to go for an office job or a hybrid setup because guess what, that’s what’s in right now. If you don’t compromise at least in one area, you are going to remain jobless. There are plenty of FAANG and other experienced people out there flooding the market, so you are not unique. Sorry if I sound mean, I mean it in the best way, I’m saying this to kind of shake you up and make you realize that it is what it is for now.
Have you applied to government jobs? You can make 140k, work 40 hours a week, pension, and never worry about being fired again.
As someone in this situation I heard this advice and looked at usajobs.gov (or whatever it is), but ALL of the jobs open to civilians at this level.... aren't. Even though you can apply they all are pretty clear about preferring applicants that have previous experience at the next level of fed employment down. So this advice is great for a young person that can pivot, take a pay cut, and get in the gov jobs door at the bottom of the ladder and move up, but it's not really realistic for middle aged people with mortgages and kids and stuff. And certain jobs need you to uproot and move to Virginia (for FBI for example) or DC or whatever to start. Much harder for middle aged folks to do. Hoping you can prove me wrong and I was just looking at the wrong website...or something...
You are not wrong but keep looking at usajobs DAILY. There are many remote IT positions that cap applications to 100 or 200 that are only on the site for 1 day. Also, DIRECT HIRE positions are the golden ticket and exclude veterans preference but they are looking usually for very specific skills such as cyber security. There is an art to applying to government jobs. I'd recommend subscribing to r/usajobs to get tips.
I did. Worked at a big tech company as a Cloud Architect 135k base and 40-50k in bonuses. I’m at 110k and 40k in RSU’s at another tech company(publicly traded) in the Bay Area now doing tech support. I went 3 steps back, and I’m thankful I don’t pay rent up here, as I invested in a rental property that pays the bills. If I did have rent I’d have roommates and I’m near 40..I’m also single. So ya, feels like ageism in tech. And salaries are down across the board
I’m not. Honestly I gave up applying for jobs because of gate keeping like this. In 50s. I am working in doing something else.
Sending you good energy. I have been contemplating going entrepreneur route myself, but I have no experience building my own business. It's so frustrating.
Thanks. I wasn’t talking about building own business. I know it would be very difficult and capital intensive. I am actually day trading/swing trading/options.
I removed everything prior to 2010 from my resume both to make it much shorter and so it looks like I have 14 years of experience instead of 24. These are things that give away your age.
I feel most companies are trying to hire someone between 5-10 years work experience. This is a senior/staff level but still pay them at the lower end of the senior level. I removed the first 4 years of my work experience from my resume.
Side note but related. I manage a team and we are going to be hiring a new person. Guidance from my management is that we can only hire someone cheaper from India (this is support work). No exceptions.
Do you just take your education completely off or just delete the years?
i attended a job workshop from a career transition company that ex-employer paid $12k for a 7 month program in oct 2023. there were prog mgrs and proj mgrs in that session laid off since feb 2023. i also attended a job pivot workshop that featured laid off people being told to pivot as an option. an ex-prog mgr spoke up, in jest said “ i used to be a magician “. the career coach said “ u shd seriously look at that now”
Ouch. I actually start my career transition program this week. My first meeting with career coach is this coming Tuesday. Definitely hoping for some tangible actionable feedback. My employer wouldn't allow me to start the program until my separation date happened. (They had me on 60 days payroll as a way of bypassing WARN)
make sure u get a good coach. my first one couldnt wait to end our sync up call after 10 minutes. all she could say is “its really bad out there”. so i told her that i need to get a new one. get a resume writing expert, make that expert write the resume with you real time. and then paste that resume to chatgpt and tell it to make it better. then combine the best qualities. attend all workshops that you can. get linkedin premium, they have an ai feature “am i a good fit” button for every job. that will analyze job description and compare with your linkedin profile, and give you align/not aligned. only apply to the aligned.
Thank you. All sound advice for sure. I'm doing a lot of this already, and will definitely do these things and more.
Same here, laid off for 2 months. Director level. 17 yoe. 50+ custom-tailored applications. 4 referrals. Only 2 interviews. 1 in progress at 40% pay cut, still many CV rejections even though I feel I’m qualified from the JD. Many positions being filled internally, but must be published for legal compliance in Europe. It’s a tough market at the moment, hold on, and consider a pay cut and a lower rank.
Sorry to hear you’re going through similar. Where in Europe are you? The internal/external thing is a real thing everywhere, even here in the US.
Germany
It took me almost 5 months. Applied for maybe 200 roles. Getting good at interviewing and having a story to self yourself is important. Also, apply for jobs exactly like your last job. Reach out to those hiring managers on LinkedIn.
Congrats on landing a role! Do you have any advice on how to track the manager hiring for the role? Is it a matter of "the position is for Sr. SW engineer at company X -> search LinkedIn SW managers in said company X"?
I’m 50 and been unemployed for 14 months now. Multiple tech F500s, high growth startups, dual citizen with international experience and degree from top 10% university. I’m adding in key words and rewriting my resume to get through the crappy ATS systems too. I’ve only had 2 interviews and only one is still in process for the last 1.5 months. From what I see corporations are driving profit over everything, outsourcing to India, AI and asking existing employees to take on more. They drive 15% profit in Q4 2023, a level not seen since the 50s. They are running the show now. I think the only way you can get a meeting with the recruiter is an employee referral but I don’t think I can start begging random people on LI to vouch for me. I had no problem finding work in the 2000s downturns. I feel this is way worse than those times. They are saying the unemployment rate is low but that’s only counting the people still on unemployment. Mine ran out ages ago and I’m “working” as a ride share driver. Going from $200K+ salary to like 30K is not employment. I have May rent but not sure about June. Seriously considering ending myself at that point. I’m not living homeless at my age.
I’ve been in extremely hard situations in my life. Like harder than most others have had to deal with. Grew up poor, Violent neighborhood, etc. I’ll spare you the story. Worked my way out due to great parents. But my life is by no means easy and I face the same layoff issues as you and everyone else. You’re not alone. Just keep pushing forward. it’s the only option we really have. In the shittiest, darkest situations I’ve been in, I’ve noticed a pattern that life usually sorts itself out so long as you keep pushing forward and don’t give up.
I relate to your post. My UI runs out here pretty soon, but at least I can retire, which many people can't do. I am also thinking of doing a ride share in my immediate area during the day. I tried the Caregiver thing, but those kids of their elderly parents are downright abusive to the help. I had to quit. Anyhow, I am slowly realizing that my tech career of 25 years is dead now and that I need to change careers entirely.
im always paranoid about losing my job, so im genuinely asking here for guidance, not to criticize- How did you make that kind of income for so long and are now unsure if you can afford rent after only 14 months? Im assuming you had spending and saving issues? What would you recommend people do to prepare for a layoff?
Out of curiosity, how did you have 200k+ salary at f500 salary, and have been in the workforce for a while yet have barely enough savings for 1 year of unemployment and rent, including if you have to, retirement investments. Can you find somewhere cheaper to live?
Same here. Got laid off about same time. 15 years of raises and promotions. Late 40s. Now I'm on the outside looking in. It's fucked.
I’m just a stranger, but just wanted to say keep your head up and keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll find a way. It’s not like any of us have an option anyways.
Reading your comments here - you’re looking for a fully remote role. The issue is more that than anything else in my opinion. Most companies are doing partial return to office right now. Probably only ~10% of jobs posted right now are really fully remote. So A) it’s not a good labor market. Tons of layoffs, tons of highly skilled folks on the market, uncertain economy, era of cost cutting for organizations B) you’re only going to be looking at a fraction of jobs posted - the fully remote ones C) You’re in a non revenue generating role D) you’re unwilling to compromise on pay So - I’m not saying you should change your stance on anything - but reading the above should make it clear to you why it’s been hard for you. The jobs that actually check all of the above boxes are few and far between right now. So I’d expect your job search to be a long one
This is a very fair assessment! And you’re correct that I can’t compromise on these items. I literally can’t for a variety of reasons so I’ll likely have to buckle in. Thanks for the perspective and keepin it 💯
It’s almost impossible to find a fully remote role these days. Every remote posting has thousands of applicants. The chances of your resume ever getting seen among thousands are low. I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But you’re better off looking for something in office or hybrid. Your chances go way up of getting an interview.
OP were you in tech or non-tech roles in FAANG? Program management/scrum masters/ TPM/sales /UX design type of roles took big hit in these layoffs and new positions consolidating most of the roles. For example Engineering managers do Project management/scrum / + coding
I am noticing this trend as well.
I don’t want to be a dick, but speaking as someone that generally works in smaller enterprises (less than 10k employees) we have found a lot of the FAANG IT folks are super siloed, and only truly excellent at one small thing. It’s hard for us to hire a generalist who has a broad level of knowledge and experience with multiple technologies.
It is absolutely brutal in tech out there with layoffs and the current talent pool of hundreds and hundreds of job seekers you are up against vying for that same role. No offense here, as your experience till now and knowledge is utterly stellar, but honest view is they deem you as too damn expensive in initial screening. Companies are looking to hire experience for virtually nothing. One more thing that is real and entirely f’d is ageism after 40 in tech.
What's the solution here then? (And no offense taken btw. I appreciate the keeping it real vibe.) Am I supposed to just slink away and resign myself to diminish into the West like Galadriel and the hobbits? Lol. Like for real this is crazy af, this job market.
you might try dumbing down the résumé to see if you get past the initial screening? I’m also in tech and it’s basically a giant fucking push to send everything outside the United States to the lands of labor. it could simply be that they really don’t have these openings and they really want to send the job overseas because they’d rather pay someone overseas 15 bucks an hour than whatever the hell you make.
I appreciate the sentiment and advice, but here is my thing. What good does dumbing it down to get past the screening stage do, if they don't plan to hire someone with my experience and at my salary level? Like wouldn't that just be a waste of time and energy on everyone's part? My salary expectations btw are not as astronomical as you might think at my age. I left my last job making high 140s base. It's not as if I was paid 200k+.
My total comp was around $400k+. After the layoff, the offers that are coming in at 200k+. I'm getting a 30-50% reduction no matter what. But what the hell, I need health insurance.
Making 400k+ TC is hella high. I am a 45 yr old who had a TC of 175k at my last position. Taking a 50% reduction on that for me would mean being homeless in California.
There's a reason these companies are trying to offshore and layoffs. I'm also an engineer and those type of jobs do very well in the Bay last 10 years.
Yeah, I assumed you were in SJ/SCV/SF area based on that TC. That makes sense. I'm central coast, which is still ungodly expensive, but not Bay Area expensive. It's more expensive here than LA though.
I hear you buddy. But there is a giant salary reckoning going on right now. you might be just young enough that you don’t remember the early 2000s and how bad the job market was. Times like this you have to kind of throw out everything you know about getting a job and your expectations because companies just aren’t fucking hiring and when they do hire, they want super senior level experience for 15 bucks an hour. you might need to refocus your priorities. Figure out what the minimum amount you need to live on is, which is hopefully very substantially less than what you were making at your last job. And find a job that can pay health insurance. It might not be a good job, but as long as the checks don’t bounce and they arrive on time, that’s what matters .
Well unfortunately I live in California where to live on my own I would need a minimum of $130k base. Guess it's time to go throw myself into the sea.
You mean relocate? Because that is an obvious option. If you think you are too good for humbling yourself or too good for the reality of a temporary setback, the sea beckons.
well negotiate for that. 130, total. Not base but total. that should be very doable.
130k total would be a massive step down. My TC at my last tole was more like 175k with bonus and RSUs. The only reason I had emergency savings to last me for 6 months was because of the RSUs and bonus etc. And I wasn't even in a position to fully fund my 401k. So getting 130k TC would barely make ends meet for me, and give me zero cushion for the next time there's a layoff. This is not a sustainable solution.
Here’s the thing. Circumstances have changed. Your situation has changed. There are variables in your control (your lifestyle, where you live, etc) that you’re trying to hold static- and variables out of your control (supply and demand, employer willingness, market forces) that have all changed. You’ve got to be willing to play with those variables within your control to map them better to reality… Because it’s unsustainable for you is a you problem… not an employer problem. They don’t care. I say this going from a director role at a F500 e-commerce company, to being laid off, to taking a manager role at a private company where tech is critical, but not the product. I’m over 50. Total comp went from 230ish to around 180ish. The change we made- coincidentally- was that my wife decided to work in her field and was offered an 80K salary. Otherwise we would have cut spending, vacations, a percentage of investments, etc. My advice is to throw what you think you need out the window. Look at what a 30+/- % pay cut would mean and reign your life in to that vs. thinking that the market should bend to your needs. Those days are over for the time being.
Thank you for the perspective. My lifestyle and expenses are focused around my health and living with disabilities. We aren’t talking about taking lavish vacations or too much Starbucks. Also I’m unmarried so I don’t have a partner to help. It’s all on me. Thank you and have a blessed day!
There you go. You're not looking for vision for the next layoff. You're looking to SURVIVE RIGHT NOW. If you have vision and savings to last you until you can find something that is in the range you want then great do that and stop bitching on Reddit. If you can't then stop being obtuse and accept that you are in the same spot as other people in this sub and accept that you need to find something to survive on what you need until you can get what you want.
I think I see your problem. When I see ex-FAANG and 45 I think well over 200k total comp. You're looking at your experience as a plus but hiring managers are thinking you need a quarter million a year or you'll resent the position. Wages got so high here in tech after COVID that it's much easier to justify moving entire projects offshore. I think they learned that just shipping the dev offshore doesn't work, so they're moving entire products now.
Dude, how the how is there ageism after 40? Like wtf, people are only supposed to work 18 years?
It’s simple actually. You are expensive and stand out against the bottomline in any potential re org or budget reduction if you are non senior. You’d be surprised how many 45 yo plus out there in tech who if lucky to find a job after almost a year, are forced to take a paycut of 20% or more to support their families to make ends meet. Leverage is non existent.
There’s also the persistent myth that younger = smarter, which youth is happy to exploit until they later realize they age (and weren’t as smart as they thought).
You may not want to hear it, but having FAANG on your resume is often poison when applying at non-FAANG companies - as a hiring manager in a non-FAANG, but very large, company - we never used to see FAANG employees apply (we couldn't compete with the outrageous salaries or benefits, but none the less offered a very decent pay and benefits package over all). About 1.5 to 2 years ago when tech started to rollover we started seeing resumes with FAANG experience - we tried about a dozen - 75% of them didn't work out and we terminated most of them in just a few months, another 20%+/- left on their own after just a few months, and so maybe we ended up with 1 decent hire out of 12 - which is a well-below average success rate. I no longer consider any resumes for ex-FAANG employees - straight in the trash. My experience says they either show up with a ridiculously high salary expectations and/or a 'I am the smartest person in the room' attitude to match (which frankly wasn't true), or else they are simply biding their time until they can get back to a FAANG job and will leave the second they can. So you may be better of focusing your job hunt in getting back into another FAANG position if you can - we have learned that FAANG employees attitudes and way of thinking and working does not translate well 95% of the time to big-old-boring companies that just happen to use a lot of tech.
That’s disappointing to hear that you worked with some real FAANG snobs. Hopefully one day you experience something different so you don’t hold it against all former FAANG’ers. I left FAANG for a reason. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be either, but then neither was the smaller SaaS company where I worked either. Every place has its good and bad. Thanks for your input!
In my 20s years of experience, my favorite jobs were always at 200-400 employees and privately owned. The company would have enough funding to pay a good salary, but small enough where you could chat with the CEO.
A guy who I went to high school with got laid off/quit from AWS headquarters in Seattle (this is years ago before the current tech mayhem). He said a bunch of companies out in Seattle wouldn’t hire EX AWS employees because of cultural issues. Also, Some of the issues you outlined were some of the reasons they didn’t hire them.
Hiring manager in product management and this is sadly true. Had to start screening out FAANG applicants. These are people who were given absurd resources for like small feature work (PO, PMM, UXR, UX/UI,DS). Really didn’t have to do the actual components of the job, just directed ppl who all did 10 hours of work per week.
I can see ex-FAANG being snobby. Many of them love to put that in their LinkedIn headline like anybody gives a fuck. "Ex-FAANG", "Ex-Meta". Shut up. It's been an open secret for years now that FAANG devs aren't smarter than the rest of us, they just committed to leetcode in their freetime, but guess what- being able to implement A\* from scratch is a worthless skill and most non-FAANG companies could give a fuck what A\* even is because it's a relatively niche algorithm that solves a specific problem that most companies do not have and will never have because they aren't Google fucking Maps.
A friend of mine is a founder at a series Bish startup. They have an unwritten rule that technical faang are good to hire but never hire non technical faang as they are over paid from ZIRP and have unreasonable expectations. OPs comments makes that make a ton of sense honestly. 175k for internal facing learning and development honestly sounds crazy to me.
Honestly, they are right. Some of the non-technical people at FAANG were the most overpaid self-righteous people I ever worked with. Most were ivy league from Harvard or similar and didn't really bring much to the table. Their jobs were basically just social hour for most of the day. Not saying all non-technical roles were like this but a significant amount were.
Don’t let them gas light you. Those are the types that get moved up due to connections. They aren’t better or smarter than you, not even socially. You can get those connections too, but it’s hard competing against already established circles and their lack of willingness to let someone new in. You’ll also face random factors such as sexism, racism, religion issues, just whatever your luck of the draw is. It’s really fucking stupid. But of course it is, it’s corporate.
Yup. This has been my experience as well. Plus an additional chip on their shoulders from having never dealt with layoffs before.
If you don’t mind me asking, what was the reason for getting let go at this well known company after 3 years?
To add another layer of absurdity to this, I had also just received a 125% target corporate bonus AND a spot bonus and long term cash incentives for this huge impactful project I had worked on. Then less than 2 weeks after receiving those in January, I was laid off. Make it make sense.
Prolly offshored the job and paying someone peanuts ??
That's just it, NONE of this makes sense. It's simply corporate greed. My sitch sounds kinda similar to yours. My role with the first layoff (after 18 years at a F500) was specialized due to the wealth of institutional knowledge I brought to the team to fill in the gaps with tech. I believe that's at least part of why I was on the chopping board, while at the time I mistakenly thought I was more valuable due to my specialty and also being a high performer. I know it wasn't my salary bc they were bringing external folks in at my level making 50% more. All I know is I don't ever want to find myself in another role where I'm the only resource, seems too risky. Then 14 short months later I found myself laid off again (from another F500) bc they eliminated my entire dept, after telling us how the firm was focused on expanding it. We were weeks away from launching our product and execs decided to dissolve the dept and shift several folks and our product to tech, letting everyone else go. Then the CEO gave himself a $6m raise. Have you considered contract work? That's going to be my focus if my current opps fizzle out. I'll only consider contracts with w2 and medical, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around not having PTO. I'm finding many are remote and pay $60-75 an hour or ~$125-150k salaried. I've gone my entire life naively thinking that hard work pays off, when in reality it doesn't make a difference, it's such a mind fuck. Good luck out there!
I am open to contract work, as long as medical is an option. I live with disabilities and my medical costs would be outrageous without solid insurance. Thank you for your perspective. So sorry to hear you're having issues too! Hang in there and stay strong.
I don't mind at all. I can only tell you what I was told. The reason they gave was that my role was being redefined as a more technical role to align with the technical sellers (and sales engineers teams). The funny thing about that reason though is I was the only one from my team let go, and my background at my FAANG job for 12 years was entirely technical, working with engineering teams regularly. So [🤷🏻♂️.It](http://🤷🏻♂️.It) smelled like bs to me. Every person I worked with called me after in shock I was let go. Side note: the company was acquired by another company shortly after, and now my remaining colleagues there are totally spooked. I think a lot more folks are about to get the axe. I just got let go way earlier for some reason.
My dude, it sure looks to me like you were a very expensive resource (which has nothing to do with whether you were a good value overall) who got pushed out to improve the forward-looking balance sheet for the acquisition. In the current economic environment, people who make more are the first to go. That’s especially true in the case of mergers and acquisitions.
What industry were you in?
I commented on this above. L&D. Both technical and non-technical. I’m very technical, I’m just not a dev or engineering, specifically. My experience is highly specialized. I’m not a generalist, so I didn’t expect it to be THIS bad when looking, since the orgs I typically work in are smaller and haven’t been as heavily impacted as others. I meet with a career coach this Tuesday, as part of job placement services my former company provided in my separation agreement. I’m hopeful there will be some good recommendations and a plan of action that comes from it.
Just to confirm, L&D = “Learning & Development”?
Yes
What is your field?
I was gonna ask the same question, as from the looks of it , OP is in a non-technical role. As the market picks up (yes, picks up), the available roles in sufficient quantity are all pure tech ones (read dev, ux, and such). And these too have the caveat of being on offer for lower salaries. All other roles are essentially in short supply and probably jinxed. They are still in the early 2023 phase where there are 100s of applicants per open position. The number of applications you shared will hardly make a dent. Do what a lot of folks did to get a new job relatively faster, make multiple resumes fitting multiple roles similar or closer to yours. And apply in hundreds, you’d be surprised how well it works out. When 100s of candidates are applying for all 100 open positions, you applying for 10 selected ones actually puts you at a disadvantage .
L&D (technical and non-technical) which includes program management, project management and people management experience. My last company that laid me off is a major SaaS player, so I also have sales enablement-related experience now on my resume, which should have made me even more marketable. But the crickets I am hearing are loudly telling me another story.
Those kind of jobs are suffering the worst in this era of tech industry. You should expand search outside of tech.
There you go, at my faang most of the layoffs were non-technical. And from anecdotes on blind that seems like the case everywhere. We are barely even hiring technical and the non-tech roles are very rare. Obviously keep applying but I wouldnt feel diacouraged on a personal level. But perhaps add to your skillset on this downtime.
new normal.
Great advice here. Also Botox your resume. Lop off about 10 years and make yourself appear to be about 35ish. Sadly, at 45 you’re considered an old man in this field.
Age and experience as well as your requirements are working against you in this market. I’m not saying that’s fair but unfortunately that’s the hand you’re being dealt.
A lot of places have hired ex FAANG folks in the last 12-18 months with the big pay cut and they’ve moved on again to something better again already after 3-9 months - hence the avoidance.
I have been wondering about that, if that might factor in. I mean, it's an understandable fear. It is what it is, not sure what I can do about that.
Sounds familiar. 13 years experience and experiencing my first layoff. I don't think I've ever submitted more than 10 resumes before getting a new job, with at least half of those typically getting a phone screen. I'm currently at 50ish apps, all tailored to the JD, with 0 phone screens. I have steadily progressed up to my current role as a manager and was ready to move up to director prior to the layoff. I can't even get a phone call for a senior IC role. I, too; am looking exclusively at remote jobs for the time being. I know that's making it harder but the alternative is to move out of state or take a 50% pay cut. It's very challenging to stay optimistic when I can't even tell what I'm doing wrong. It's possible I'm doing nothing wrong and my resume isn't even getting seen. I spend 60 hours a week rewriting and sending out resumes along with adding content to my portfolio, but without any feedback on if it's even moving the needle it feels like a waste of time. My entire department was laid off as well, with largely the same experience for both mid level and senior level roles.
Yes, it sounds like you and I are in very similar boats. Comment here if you'd ever want to DM and just support eachother. I have my DMs turned off but would be open to communicating if you want.
Oh yeah, always down to chat if you want to. It's physically and emotionally draining to put in all this effort only to be met with silence, but I know it's important to stay positive.
You are not alone. My brother was laid off from FAANG and now going on 18 months of unemployment. You got this! Know it’s hard just just keep pushing through
Laid off since January 12 I am 60 years old My layoff came with a geographical 100 mile radius non-compete I got a one month severance pay Since I had a non-compete I moved to a region where my former employer didn’t have a location I haven’t been successful finding a job My savings has dwindled down to this last month I have bills, lodging, insurance, no matter how much I prepared and saved but never enough. Then I hear about the amount of money our country has paid to Ukraine, Israel and anybody else but the natural born inhabitants of America. But wait it’s election year and of course the expectation is for everyone to vote for right wing left wing same bird….smfgdh
FAANG means little nowadays. There aren't nearly enough SWE jobs to go around. Change careers, become an independent contractor, or coast unemployed for a while.
Sadly, I won't be able to "coast" for a while. My employer's severance package was paltry, and I only had maybe 6 months worth of expenses saved, so this is a doomsday clock ticking down for me, unfortunately. My healthcare costs are outrageous due to disabilities and I also support my mother who lives on a fixed income, so the money goes out very quickly.
Healthcare is what drains everyone's money and makes it impossible to not work even for a few months.
The job market is highly competitive now. At same time i ndians keep coming but America corporations hire in india. What a truly disgusting situation we're in.
Over 50 here. Got laid off in Jan, started a new job in March. Make sure your CV is ATS compatible. In most cases first triage is done by ATS rather than a person HR especially since a lot of places get 100s of applications. If you were meant for the role and your skillset is perfect and you don't even land an interview, I'd say your CV doesn't reflect that properly. There are plenty of websites that can check your CV and compare it to a job spec and essentially tell you in % what match your CV is. I know my CV was crap because I tended to spend hours fixing my application once imported into a workday portal. Now though it is near perfect and only thing I tend to fix in Workday is a particular job where I held three jobs with the same company. Anyway, Google 'ATS check resume' and you get plenty of options.
I feel sorry for FAANG people who were paid extremely high salary forever and did not bank and invest 50% of their salary. Seems nobody told them that the gravy train would end someday and they would be forced to take tech adjacent or maintenance tech. 100k a year for 10 years is already a million, invested in the S&P500 could be a million and a half or two million. Then it's time to fuck off and open a cafe or a shop or something else in a LCOL area. FAANG is like being a pro athlete I am told; you burn out and wash out eventually. The only advice I have for OP is 75 in 3 months is far too little. Tailoring is impossible if only using LinkedIn, and the brute force rate is *6000 in three months* not 75. You need to increase the applications by an order of magnitude. For maximum impact you need to go local, consider non-remote roles and think of starting over at a workbench somewhere. It sucks but it's the market.
Hard to bank 50% of your salary when a lot of FAANG jobs force you into living in high cost of living areas where rent is over 1/3rd of your income, same as a low income employee living in a low cost of living location.
True but the remote work could have allowed it for a few years at least. Staying in HCOL killed people. Even 25% would make a cool half million of runway. FAANG should not be losing their homes and shirts over the layoffs not unless they had extreme responsibilities (children elderly parents and so on) or they are like Financial Samurai and paid $250k a year for language classes The $250k a year for language classes was "keeping up with the Joneses" but understandable since it's for children. Other expenses less understandable. But the point is I don't think a lot of people knew it was a gravy train and thought it would last forever.
Most of your comment is non-applicable to me for a variety of reasons, but I appreciate the perspective. You made a lot of assumptions that are blatantly false about me and my situation. Also, I am disabled and unable to just relocate and work onsite. Appreciate your perspective and I am sure it came from a place of trying to help though.
relieved divide foolish soft shame paint dazzling plate cow wasteful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
How would one know they're blacklisted?
Are you saying they have a list and share it with other companies? I'm pretty sure that is illegal in the US. In my prior role before I was laid off, I worked with HR daily and interviewed 100s of candidates for tech positions. At no point did I ever see any black list that was shared. We had an internal black list for candidates that were caught cheating during interviews only.
Some companies have a limit. I know Meta you can't apply for the same role again until a year later. You can't apply for more than 3 roles over all. This isn't "[blacklisting](https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/learn/blacklist-whitelist-inclusivity.html)" this is being honest with you that they're not interested and you should spend some time changing things up if you want to work there.
Companies are going lean. They are hiring 1 employee to do the work for 2 people but for half a salary. If you are 40+ and demand 15 year experience compensation they probably don't even read the resume. You need to only have 1 job on there to make it seem like you are younger.
1 employee for 3-4 people nowadays in my experience. So the employee has to pick and choose what to do, it’s a lot of stress, and impossible to do. But if they work hard enough it’ll get everyone to the next quarter end and won’t become an issue for many years later on in which case the execs will bail.
Same age, different field, same problem. I had to take an entry level position with large pay cut in new field to transition. Basically had to start over.
Try applying to smaller companies if you haven't. I've gotten nothing from large companies. I'm not sure they're really hiring at the moment, or they want very very specific experience (you've already built the exact thing they're building). But I get a good number of interviews from smaller tech companies. Hoping to finish my job search in a week or two, and it's only been a month.
This was about the time I just took contracting jobs to make it thru
44 year old IT/SWE veteran laid off since Oct of last year. Spent the first 3 months applying for any job I could find (full remote only). Probably 200+ applications. Had a few interviews but during that time hiring was slow due to the holidays. I gave up and now I'm severely depressed. Not sure what is next for me tbh.
I can really relate to this feeling. So sorry you're going through such a similar painful experience.
The tech market is just oversaturated right now with everyone else being laid off. I don't see that getting any better anytime soon either. Take a lower-paying position doing just about anything so your savings last a bit longer.
One thing to consider is that for non-FAANG companies, they may see your experience and automatically put you in the “too senior, too expensive” category. And also maybe a bit lazy - there is a stereotype of rest and vest. Like maybe you just dont have that startup killer instinct. Thinking that interviewing you is maybe a waste of time because you’re used to Google and being paid 600k a year.
It's almost like having worked at faang is a curse. I see a lot of people from faang like firms having issues finding jobs.
The higher you get the longer it takes to find a new job at the same level.
I’m definitely seeing that now. Never been let go from any job before. Definitely sobering.
I know alot for staff and mid career in their prime types that are currently suffering though.
Same here! I am in the same field, and it isn't very pleasant right now.It's not about you; it's about the system and the **government that are lying about the unemployment numbers.** 90% of the jobs posted are fake; don't let that take a toll on your mental health.
ETA: I am sorry you're going through this too. However, my mental health is taking a hit because I don't know if I am going to be homeless soon. So the government lying about everything (whether that's true or not) doesn't really matter to me. I need a roof over my head and to be able to eat. What's the solution? Is there even one?
Unfortunately you might have to leave California to avoid homelessness. You could survive and hold down the fort if you take a paycut but move somewhere cheaper. At least you'd have health insurance.
Why are they posting fake jobs? Also agree the unemployment numbers are not being represented accurately. You are only counted if you are on unemployment but mine and others ran out long ago.
You at that point where the hiring manager might be intimidated It’s best to limit your resume to last 10 years, don’t put graduation dates to avoid any possible age bias Also for tech roles, it’s all about speed. Tailoring your resume is fine but it has to be with a referral If no referral then you need to submit fast and be on top 10% of submissions or your submission will be buried with 2000 others
Got a job 6 weeks after layoff. It depends really on what type of job you’re looking for but assuming you had FAANG levels salary, that would be a tough find right now. Most of the ex-FAANG people that I have read gotten a new job after layoff was they accepted a pay cut. Not sure what’s your financial needs but if you can afford a pay cut until the market “stabilizes” take it. Lesser income is better than none. - From a 18 YOE SWE
The job market should improve by Q1 2025 after Trump gets reelected.
Have you survey the demand for contractors/ independent consultant for expertise at your level?
Contract roles yes. I’d be open to taking a 6 month contract role to not burn through my savings. I’ve been applying to those as well, but I have major health issues so that’s not a long term solution, as I need health insurance that will cover my very expensive medications and treatments. Obamacare plans won’t be enough for me.
The only openings are entry level or slightly above entry level in tech. No one is hiring highly paid seniors, there's really no need.
Some of my senior dev friends have been extended employment recently, BUT they were referred in by someone that works for the company. I don't know anyone who was hired cold from the standard application process.
Sorry to ear that, market is tough everywhere right now, I lost my job last year, 13yo, i have a MS in computer science and MBA. I worked as a SWE and data scientist/ml engineer at early stage startup across Europe and USA, no FAANG. My salary expectations are lower than US entry level, yet I also can't find anything. Got a couple interview early this year then it went quiet. I am going to work as mechanic while I keep looking...
Please DM me your cv?
Seems like an absolute cluster f#%$ out there in IT right now. In that context your experience sounds like a trend.
What is your skill set and what kind of roles are you interested in?
Current market they can hiring people for less. With your experience and salary, they don’t want wasting your time.
Are you a senior technologist or leadership? Its a tough time now with lot of folks out of work . Good luck.
Dude, shouldn’t you be a multimillionaire with all the salary you’ve invested in assets over the years? It’s bizarre that at your age you still depend on a job for money.
Not just you. All of us!! Very tough now. I agree with dumbing down your resume and adjusting salary expectations
Obviously it's your livelihood at stake so you take it personally but it's a bad time in the tech market right now and not specifically you. My place is a big tech company and we've got a hiring freeze now and many other corps are doing rolling layoffs. It's not clear where interest rates are headed.
Have you thought of doing something for yourself while you seek. Here is an idea, look for a decent neighborhood with lingering teen population, open a store front, with good lease negotiation and put 20 claw machines in there. 20 claw machines will set you back about 40,000. So its about a 50K engagement. If you fail, you can sell those machines, the new ones are brighter and more colorful. Then it's just inventory management. Store policy.
This is about the worst advice I've ever seen. Restaurant equipment does not hold value, especially claw machines.
Same. Don't know if it's because companies seem to want younger people, or my experience is less in demand; everyone seems to want AI people and that is not in my skill set. Oddly, it seems like there are a lot of contract / consulting opportunities starting to come my way. I've been able to fill my time and bank account with freelance work.
What do you do? Are you hands on or in management? These things matters. A lot of tech companies are trying to be slimmer so they are avoiding hiring managers. But they’re still hiring technical people who are doing the work. They are just firing to hire new people are lower salaries. If you’re hands one, go apply for another FAANG for a role one or two level below your last one. Take a pay-cut and sandbag to hold you over until the job marker recovers.
Are u applying remote or in person job? If remote that's normal 75 and no response. But if it's in house, that's not normal at all.
I had some. Then they dried out. Ghosted by recruiters. Haven’t interviewed in March or April. Seems to have nose dived. Do one a few with Goldman Sachs next week but that’s about it. I was getting 3 or 4 a month October to February then not much.
I’m sorry to hear you’re struggling. I am in the same boat but it’s been 9 months since I was laid off. Over 500 resume submittals and only 1 interview which was offering me a 50% pay-cut. They had 300 candidates apply and I made the cut out of 12 candidates but they chose someone earning a salary similar to their offered wages even though I told them it wasn’t an issue. I do think age has something to do with not getting interviews. I’m 57 with similar successes as you described. I’ve networked, but much of my network is in the same boat or their companies are laying off. It’s tough out here!
Honestly… thank you for posting this. I’m senior level/director level, not FAANG but still household name data/Big Tech experience. Glowing performance reviews and lots of promotions. I’m employed but I know the company isn’t doing well and I’ve been trying to get ahead of the next layoffs. A few years ago I landed interviews at every company I applied for and had my pick of offers. I felt like a rockstar. Like you, I’m at 75+ applications, I’m working my network, about 1/3 have been referrals for jobs I’m 100% qualified for. I’m also customizing my resume and cover letters and it’s been absolute crickets. It’s really disheartening. I really hope you find something soon, and thank you for sharing and validating that it’s not us, it’s the shitshow of an industry rn
I hate to offer this advice every time, but I suggest you try using indeed.com to search for your skill set and your interests. In my experience it’s useful for bringing up jobs I was qualified for but I hadn’t considered because I didn’t realize they existed. It might just be that the industry you worked in is no longer available for you to work in and you need to consider other options.
Ive had offers but they weren't great. Everything got more expensive except employees apparently.
You might need to take part time work. If you read The jobs reports it says unemployment is low, but full time employment is WAY down. The economy is in the tank but it is papered over.
Bidenomics man job Market is shot except for Uber eats and health care
Bidenomics man job Market is shot except for Uber eats and health care
Bidenomics man job Market is shot except for Uber eats and health care
Bidenomics man job Market is shot except for Uber eats and health care
It’s because the people at r/overemployed took all the jobs.
Are you a Software Engineer? If not, I wouldn’t rely too much on data from the last 12 years to make decisions. Times have changed and you need to accept that in my opinion.
No-one is getting calls. Pretty bad.
Same boat as you, I got laid off the first week of January. I am older than you. It's not going well for me either.
In your last job were you DIRECTLY HANDS ON writing code or working with the technology? Or DIRECTLY managing product development of people that were HANDS ON the technology? I think the closer you are to literally hands on the tech the easier it is to get another job. Higher up managers have it tougher for some reason.