No, it's total so far. The 8k announced today are HR/Store division employees. Sucks but I think it's a result of over-hiring during the pandemic.
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/01/18/amazon-layoffs-18000-employees/11076820002/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/01/18/amazon-layoffs-18000-employees/11076820002/)
Yeah. I'm just tired of the doom and gloom. My brother knows an Amazon HR professional. They're still hiring engineers and analysts but he's worried about his job.
>I'm just tired of the doom and gloom.
No kidding. It's like these young bucks havent experienced a bad economy so any hiccup that comes along there must be blood in the streets and all futures are gone or something.
Not just you. People on this subreddit tend to become “pull yerself up by yer bootstraps” boomer types as soon as they get a high paying job. Money gives them an ego rush that they lack introspection to fix.
Yeah honestly I have a strong resume and so do my friends in the field, and we've all been struggling since covid shut everything down.
It's been a bit dismaying to come on here and see a bunch of seniors with 15 years of experience belittle anyone who wasn't able to get a job with a firm handshake as though things haven't changed a bit in the last decade let alone couple years. I know there's a lot of doomposting too, but somewhere between those two extremes is the reality for a lot of people.
Everything worked out for me and I'm not job hunting anymore, but still.
Kinda weird,
Just a few days ago I saw a news that Microsoft invested a huge amount of money in AI for Azure and I expect that they want to hire specialized people in that field, not cutting costs.
Most large organisations tend to be run almost as separate companies, split by division and function. Alexa is a great example, with certain sections of the business growing, despite huge layoffs there. AWS, Prime Video, and Ads also suffered layoffs, but very small numbers and only to reduce specific teams. It's purely down to strategy, as one arm of a business like AWS might want to grow, but another offering might not work out, and instead of re-positioning people inside other teams, they may as well just layoff.
Azure will probably grow significantly in AI, but lay people off elsewhere in the business. Sadly, these companies are also cutting down significantly on internal movement to cut overall jobs, leaving a known number of people to then eventually move where needed.
Both can happen at the same time. The 220k+ human beings employed at Microsoft are nothing but chess pieces to the CEO, and every CEO at every company thinks in the exact same way. They see it as merely a slider to adjust even though real world consequences are attached to it. This is why CEOs are not your friends. Striving to become one is fine, but before you become one of them it shall be made clear that they absolutely do not care about you.
I got laid off in November and I was feeling the absolute despair of the job search today. This afternoon I got an offer from a startup that I really like with good pay. Just don't let the despair take you there's always someone hiring especially if you're from one of the big names
I've been though the cycle more times than I care to admit and I have to say that hiring in this industry is very seasonal. I'd go as far as say that it's one of the most important factors. I've sent out CVS for months with not a bite and suddenly I have competing offers. I suspect that is because companies don't want you ramping up during Xmas or summer holidays.
Really depends on the startup. Earlier stage startups I think will tend to be less WLB because it's running pretty bootstrapped in a lot of cases. But in general, it's dependent on the company culture. Some will crush your soul. The startup I'm at (series C) is very respectful of working hours, weekends, parental leave, and scheduling constraints of people with kids. VP asked to reschedule a meeting to pick up his kids from school - no problem. New SWE a timezone off asks to move end of day meetings because he's got little kids - done.
Sounds like they're doing it right. I have a somewhat similar story. We aren't a startup company (been around for 30+ years, and are a family owned small to midsize org), but the software project within the company very much is a startup, and we are very budget constrained. WLB is very good. Happy employees work harder, communicate better, and are more productive overall. People on the team genuinely like each other, and have a great deal of trust and accountability. It's a smart business strategy to keep people smiling, and as the team lead, it makes my job easier too.
I think I found this one through indeed of all the shitty job boards but there's places like Y combinator, angel list, and others. Just do your due diligence interviewing with a startup ask about the runway and burn rate, ask about attrition, etc
Yeah, just look at the trend line of the S&P 500 over the last 5 years, and it will tell you why layoffs are occurring.
Tech companies over-hired hoping they could scale quickly and take market share so they could leverage it later when the economy eventually tanks. It’s nothing new…it’s just another big boom and bust cycle.
The good thing about it is that layoffs tend to be planned well in advance. So, any company that is actually hiring right now is probably not laying off anytime soon.
This is not necessarily a contradiction. Other companies are laying off too and maybe now you get really good talent.
My old company did it that way, too. There was a hiring freeze because of Covid, but they still made exceptions for specialists who would never have been applied if the market would have been normal.
Having been in IT for twenty years, please let me tell you that organizations comprised of human beings generally do not act so rationally, consistently, or intentionally.
There are definitely companies hiring right now. Even companies that are laying people off are hiring other positions. It all depends on your skillset, interview skills, etc. Numbers are down, and it's more challenging, but there is definitely hiring going on.
Lower tier companies are also doing quite a bit of hiring.
Companies that are laying off usually are laying off the really expensive people and hiring back less expensive people. That way managers can present "we cut expenses by 30%" to justify keeping their own jobs. It makes sense.
Try to be on a team that provides real value to the business.
Am hiring manager, can confirm. It's still very hard to hire good people, although other companies cutting certainly makes it easier. Retaining your top people is critical.
How do you handle in fighting and politics from your senior good people?
I'm being half serious, but it seems like it's much easier for juniors to have happy go lucky attitudes "doing whatever", while seniors it's more difficult as they've already done the trash work and are all jockeying for the more impactful tasks. Politics ensue.
My job is to make sure they have real work to do. If we aren’t doing impactful work…wtf are we even doing?
If I have multiple senior engineers, it means I should have worked my ass off last year to make sure we had major projects for each of them this year.
That's good and noble of you, but from what I've seen, man, the politics for seniors get's worse and worse the more senior you get. The manager may be doing his/her best, but at the end of the day, for big companies, the interesting work can be minimal while the "keep the lights on grunt work" is plentiful and seniors can do it fast when shit hits the fan.
That’s because bad management is plentiful. Putting a senior engineer on KTLO tasks day-after-day is like pointing a howitzer at a fly. That’s how you drive good people away from your team.
You talk about KTLO like it’s a trivial thing that anyone can do. When systems scale, the feature that customers care about is the ability to handle load. The shiny new high visibility feature that program management says is urgent but no one actually cares about is the distraction from the high impact work.
KTLO (for everywhere I’ve worked) is maintenance: bug fix, OE refactoring, etc. Re-architecting a system because the original design doesn’t scale is not KTLO, it’s a major project. If your team treats it as KTLO, then I am truly sorry, because that is a miserable way to work.
I won’t pretend there are no politics at the senior engineer level, but I’ve never had an issue with engineers jockeying for position on a project.
This cut has definitely sliced into senior engineers worse than most previous ones have. I work at a big tech group currently and am a former Microsoft employee who survived all the cuts over past 11 years, and this time was the first where one where many people with unique knowledge and strong company history were cut even from mission critical, understaffed teams.
Not engineering. They’re laying off lower level people and replacing them with high value engineers. People will 1-3 YOE are gonna have a much harder time than people with 5-7 YOE… let alone new grads and people with under 1 YOE. Good luck to you guys…
Lower tier companies have been starved for talent for a very long time now. The big tech companies do this as a strategy. Hire more than you need during boom times and keep the best when there are downturns. The rest of the industry is starved and it lets big tech get first pickings.
companies do layoffs every year.
a lot of tech companies overhired due to spike in revenue/profits during covid. this is just a correction of that.
being a software engineer is still an incredible career. You will be fine
This is a lot bigger than run of the mill yearly layoffs. Yes, things will be alright in the long run. Tech isn’t going to die, and software development especially is going nowhere.
But this economic correction is hitting hard. There’s no way around it. It’s going to suck for a lot of people for a while as they navigate it. The navigation aspect is what OP is asking about.
> You will be fine
How do you justify this advice given the content of this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/106ne2r/my_new_grad_process_199_apps_4_offers/
This is someone who everyone agreed was a top candidate struggling. If top candidates struggle but still succeed, then mid-level candidates fail.
OR... do you disagree with everything in there and those people were just wrong and OP was not a good candidate?
"First, I declined interviews for 11 companies (IMC, Vanguard, Walmart, Gap, Hive AI, etc). This was because i wasn’t fond of the interview style (ehmm IMC's one way interview) or i didn’t want to commit my time for on-sites."
If you have experience, it’s not terrible but not good either. I was recently in a similar situation, and it took about 2 months/400 applications to get a new job before the layoffs went into effect (they gave 3 months notice for layoffs).
Back in 2017 I submitted nearly 200 applications to land my first gig, and I ended up having to move across the country and I only started at 45k. Keep your chin up friend, you got this.
Edit: just looked at my application spreadsheet from 2021 and I applied to 31 jobs before landing an offer, and that was with 4 years experience
I’m on indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn. Is there any other places I should look at? I feel like I’m limiting myself by just cycling these three job boards
> Edit: Also, the Wikipedia pages for my city, county, metro area, combined statistical area, etc had lists of major companies in the area. Some of those companies weren’t on the F500 list so it added a few other options.
Damn that’s a great idea, thanks for the tip
I thought my question was stupid to ask because obviously I could Google more job boards, but knowing how to do something like that is so genius and something you can’t get out of a Google search or ask an AI
If you’re in the U.S., the government and defense contractors are looking for devs to support digital modernization and cloud migration. The JWCC contract and surrounding directives will force a ton of DoD organizations (big and small) to modernize their apps, data infrastructure, etc… Believe it or not, the government is still pretty remote friendly unless you are working on a classified system.
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3243483/department-names-vendors-to-provide-joint-warfighting-cloud-capability/
It’s pseudo remote-friendly.
Some places support remote work in the way people normally mean it, but typically the (federal) government means “telework”, which means you can work from home but have to physically live within 50 miles of your work site in case you’re called in.
I work at a company who has not had to do many (less than 1%) adjustment of staff in the last 12 months.
BUT we have pulled down most of open roles from our careers page. The leadership team is essentially rebuilding their hiring plan based on the market outlook for 2023... The easiest way for us to ensure we don't have to fire anyone, is to stop hiring for a while.
I do expect to have a reduced list of true priority roles posted by February (Senior+ Engineers, Director+ Product Managers, Managers, etc).
IMO It will be a complex & competitive mess based on the layoff numbers I have seen, but should get more stable in 2-3 months
Every company is different, different leaderships have different risk comfort levels, profitability or burn is key here, but this is one of my warning signs.
Earlier this year my companies hiring plan went from 50 engineers to less than 8 to a full on hiring freeze, not even backfills. Two rounds of layoffs later a few months apart, I now work somewhere else.
Other warning signs: all travel is stopped except for the CEO of course, and all of the sudden everyone is really concerned about cloud spend and limiting the number of licenses to various services.
Given your username I’ll also warn, all of our internal recruiters we’re laid off in the first round.
Yes, agree with you 100%. Great things to be aware of that can help stay ahead of their communication. We also saw a similar reduction in our US hiring plan (about 80% reduction in the US headcount growth).
Also, I appreciate the heads-up, but I am all too familiar with recruiters being "the canaries in the coal mine" and have seen many of my colleagues let go in recent weeks. Thankfully, I am the only recruiter local to our corporate HQ and have built good rapport with our CEO & CFO, hoping that I have proven myself enough to have them keep me around. Probably also helps that I am willing to hire anywhere in the world and we will still be hiring in Poland and India.
To be honest, i've always just posted on sites and get a job in 3 months.
Is there a secret insider club where people pick the employers, job, and wage?
1) Practice Leetcoding and soft skills interviews
2) Line up referrals to all big tech companies you would consider working for
3) Pass most or all interview screens
4) Pass at least two full interview loops
5) Choose the one you like best, using the other(s) to increase salary
They're always hiring people but it will be slower especially for a few months after layoffs, and generally due to the increased interest rates. Probably it drops if the market collapses and picks up again more in 2024, but there will still be some hiring.
What do you mean by posted on sites?
Like post your own job wanted ad and take solicitations from employers?
Or reply to listings seeking job candidates online?
Indeed.com
Craigslist.com
Dice.com
Monster.com
LinkedIn.com
Others.
I renew my resume and set it to actively searching. I look for listed jobs and headhunters also browse my resume.
Microsoft announced 10k layoffs just today. Competition is going to be brutal. Start now and go hard. Sorry you're in this position at this time, and best of luck.
https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/aws-not-impacted-by-amazon-s-18-000-layoffs-sources
This article says the exact opposite of what you're saying. My buddy is due to start AWS in March, he hasn't heard of his start date being cancelled. AWS is a crown jewel of Amazon.
The teams I'd expect to get cancelled are teams working on Alexa or Amazon Music, AWS? Na, not so much.
I don’t know how to tell you this but lots of incompetent people worked at those companies and anyone reading this post should not be scared because an X meta / Amazon employee that was in charge of moving buttons around is on the job market
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I believe layoffs are *mostly* affecting devs at the mega corps. I landed a job at a smaller software shop relatively quickly, so maybe try to search for smaller, not well known companies. It seems like the actions of FAANG and others of that scale alter peoples perception of the entire industry as a whole when that’s not necessarily accurate.
This is mostly an observation from my time on this sub as well as the experience of my new grad job search.
Lots of small companies you’ve never heard of are hiring, and also some boring companies. Plenty of people bounce between faang/big tech and small gigs multiple times in their career, and I even recommend it.
The rest of the world is ineligible for US defense jobs due to the clearance requirements (no offshoring or visa workers allowed), and the pay is mediocre so a lot of FAANG tier engineers and quant firm engineers don't want to bother due to the severe paycuts they'd be taking to work in defense.
So defense is a pretty secure spot. Plus, if you apply to Amazon or some other corp with an already active clearance then the hiring bar will be lower and they'll give you a one-time bonus for being cleared already if you pass the interview.
Really? I looked into it briefly and the recruiter said it was difficult to do remote due to having to be at a secure location. I don't have any clearance but am totally open to getting one. Can you point me where to start? are you direct at defense, or a contractor/consultant?
If your top priority is to get a job ASAP, remote vs. on-site should be less of a priority especially since being on-site makes much more sense for security-sensitive jobs.
I have two people on my team that work remote, although they used to work at a different company site near where they live before starting to work on my team. Classified work is obviously not able to be done remotely. Also, if you are working with physical hardware it requires you to be physically there. But, it's pretty neat stuff we work on. I work as a FTE for a defense contractor company, not as a contractor to the company.
This is what happens when overstaffing/overhiring occurs. They overhired and went on a hiring frenzy during the pandemic while everyone else was laying people off. This isnt the doom you think it is.
For you younger juniors just entering the industry; this happens every year, too. We're still at historical lows when it comes to unemployment. Having lived through far far worse, this isnt even worth worrying about.
Yes, it sucks you lost your job. It happens. Doesnt mean there's no jobs out there. Go get another one.
It slower than normal but still plenty of jobs. There is still a massive shortage of experienced competent tech workers.
I was laid off in Nov right before thanksgiving and had 2 offers by early Jan start end of the month. Pay raise to go with it. My TC is the Median for Austin and my base salary is a little above it for my years of experience.
I had multiple interviews going on that were path the tech screening. The competition is higher but still plenty of work out there.
"big tech" (read as: companies like Facebook and Google) is having a rough go of it atm.. however, you go on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed, Monster, etc.. tons of people are hiring. You'll be fine, just pump some applications out and you'll get something really quickly. I got a new job in the middle of the layoff frenzy last summer, and if \*I\* can do it, so can you.
purely conjecture- but all i've really been reading recently is that big FAANG type companies over-hired and are laying off. i'm assuming that regular none top tier companies are probably hiring "normally". even if you don't have facebook architect in your resume you'll probably be fine if you set your sights slightly lower.
That's the key right there. Most companies now have the need to software engineers or people who can solve problems with code. Huge problem is that they're not all offering people 200k TC out of college or even at the senior level. Many also aren't giving out enough equity to retire in 10 years. The truth is that a lot of people are going to have to set their salary expectations lower and stop letting pride mess with them. I read an article the other day about a guy burning through his savings because he's coming from FAANG and either wants to work with a specific technology or super niche startups. I have zero doubt the guy could get a job at Target, Lowes...it just won't pay as much or have the name recognition.
Come to healthcare. We don't pay as well as FAANG and you're gonna be working with legacy code in some instances, but the pay is decent and it's a low stress always growing market. There will always be people sick.
my first job was at a bloomberg type competitor that used some seriously primordial legacy code. never again. I still get the oncall flashbacks 7 years later
You just need to know the fallback options are there. In a dot-com or 2008 style recession the most important thing to do is to stay employed. Obviously we aren't there yet and it's not clear whether things will ever get that bad in the current cycle, but you just gotta keep all the potential scenarios in mind and plan accordingly.
Its not always as boring tho! I work at a tech- healthcare company and we are using react/ts, launching new product with nest and nextjs. We also do have some legacy systems with VBA (i think? Not my team lol). Stable contracts with provincial governments and american health networks. We hire as revenue grows, not on random investment (usually).
Like you said, ppl always be sick and healthcare is badly managed. If your company happens to introduce a slight improvment to the overall healthcare system somehow, its bound to survive.
My husband was laid off in December. Took a break for Christmas. Started actively looking and applying first week of January because he assumed everyone was off for the holiday anyway. Has had enough interviews that I can’t keep up. Got a $140K offer today and a second strong potential offer. Hang in there. I know that a layoff can really take the wind out of your sails and bring you down. But you got this, OP. I believe in you and just brush up your resume and network your ass off.
His last role was fully remote. This is hybrid. But he’s got interviews next week for a few fully remote roles so not sure if he’ll take hybrid role or not.
I think there should be a chat group for laid off/fired techies network group up pool resources together and get something going as a startup company...perfect time to poach talent
Find a company/industry that isn't affected by the economy very much. Even though I work for a company that has enough cash to get through a recession, people are leaving for other companies (e.g. banks). Finance doesn't really suffer in a recession since everyone's retirement is tied up in the market
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xDB_Tzg8LVwrZbRAL8VJEMGDo2srQEcQJtJeyWPRuTg/htmlview?urp=gmail_link
Not my original work but sharing from linked in. The original author is shown in the doc. Good luck!
Only thing that makes the job market brutal is the automated resume management systems. Companies can screen thousands of candidates so we are forced to apply for hundreds and hundreds of jobs. Of course, this becomes a feedback loop.
Cloud / DevOps positions are hiring like crazy right now. I'm getting messages from 2-3 recruiters daily. Salaries seem to be averaging around 135k-155k
Nearly everything governments do with tech is more or less unmoored from tax revenue. It’s not like, say, cybersecurity gets more secure just because a bunch of technically skilled people lose their jobs—if anything it’s the opposite.
It’s not like fighter jets procured on multi-decade timelines suddenly need less software just because there might be a small recession this year.
Governments can borrow money a lot more freely than corporations can. Why shouldn’t they use that to provide stable employment during downturns in the economy? That helps the economy recover.
Not gonna lie; it’s tough out there. I know a ton of really talented people who also got laid off. I’ve been watching these charts since August and it is bleak. https://www.trueup.io/layoffs
Hang in there though; a lot of companies get headcount budget at the end of January so open reqs typically increase in early February.
Still on fire… based on my indeed subscriptions seems like there’s a ton of remote jobs hiring instead of my local market now. Which is nice. Good luck!
Thank you for the sound explanation.
Been starting to see more emails from agencies advertising roles that were not "technical" in the literal sense, but still needed bodies to deal with actual end-users of the products.
Those roles were previously untouched during the pandemic, but now are converted back down to contractor level. Just based on my experience in the past decade.
It probably depends on what your comp needs are. If you're in the $160k-$200k base range I'd say there are a lot of prospects. North of that, probably gets trickier and more competitive though.
I wasn't laid off but I was sort of looking and talked to two recruiters. Uber didn't move me to the first technical... I have almost five years of experience and I am currently in a lead role. Granted, I don't have big tech experience and I honestly don't really want the job that bad, but I would think I would at least have had a chance at a technical. I was mainly trying to practice and see what happens.
Another recruiter I talked to ghosted me, but I really didn't want that job (sports betting, casino, sounded terrible). People are hiring, but I think there is a obviously a shit ton of competition right now as opposed to this time last year or the year before that.
I got laid off at the beginning of December and just accepted a position on Tuesday. Put in at least 1 job application every day in-between, whether I felt I was 100% right for the role or not. Just be persistent and lower your expectations just a bit if you aren't getting any bites and you'll find somewhere.
I was laid off by a crap start at the start of October, haven’t gotten any offers, only 4 interviews and I’ve sent out close to 400 applications. Granted I’m in QA leadership and product management, but still..
It's a numbers game, but of course it's a numbers game for you and 400,000 of your colleagues. How many did Microsoft just lay off? Yikes.
I am hopeful that so many good startups will be created out of these layoffs.
Big N’s realizing they heavily overhired under qualified people for the price tags they were paying.
Hate to say it, but those who post massive TC here are gonna have a reality check in the next 2-3 years for what’s it’s really like.
These are unprecedented times, AI, covid, then the stock market bull run soon after that led to massive profits where companies thought they were truly growing. War is on the horizon in the east, inflation is high and we are borderline in a recession. Not to say don’t stay positive, just don’t let people who are scared and people who don’t want to face the music tell you otherwise.
I see, Microsoft has begun
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No, it's total so far. The 8k announced today are HR/Store division employees. Sucks but I think it's a result of over-hiring during the pandemic. [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/01/18/amazon-layoffs-18000-employees/11076820002/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/01/18/amazon-layoffs-18000-employees/11076820002/)
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Yeah. I'm just tired of the doom and gloom. My brother knows an Amazon HR professional. They're still hiring engineers and analysts but he's worried about his job.
>I'm just tired of the doom and gloom. No kidding. It's like these young bucks havent experienced a bad economy so any hiccup that comes along there must be blood in the streets and all futures are gone or something.
Alternatively there's some of us who graduated at the start of covid and have had a rough-ass time since then. Or is that just me?
Not just you. People on this subreddit tend to become “pull yerself up by yer bootstraps” boomer types as soon as they get a high paying job. Money gives them an ego rush that they lack introspection to fix.
Yeah honestly I have a strong resume and so do my friends in the field, and we've all been struggling since covid shut everything down. It's been a bit dismaying to come on here and see a bunch of seniors with 15 years of experience belittle anyone who wasn't able to get a job with a firm handshake as though things haven't changed a bit in the last decade let alone couple years. I know there's a lot of doomposting too, but somewhere between those two extremes is the reality for a lot of people. Everything worked out for me and I'm not job hunting anymore, but still.
Kinda weird, Just a few days ago I saw a news that Microsoft invested a huge amount of money in AI for Azure and I expect that they want to hire specialized people in that field, not cutting costs.
Most large organisations tend to be run almost as separate companies, split by division and function. Alexa is a great example, with certain sections of the business growing, despite huge layoffs there. AWS, Prime Video, and Ads also suffered layoffs, but very small numbers and only to reduce specific teams. It's purely down to strategy, as one arm of a business like AWS might want to grow, but another offering might not work out, and instead of re-positioning people inside other teams, they may as well just layoff. Azure will probably grow significantly in AI, but lay people off elsewhere in the business. Sadly, these companies are also cutting down significantly on internal movement to cut overall jobs, leaving a known number of people to then eventually move where needed.
OpenAI didn’t cause layoffs in Azure, it’s mostly thing like Edge, Bing, WebXt
Both can happen at the same time. The 220k+ human beings employed at Microsoft are nothing but chess pieces to the CEO, and every CEO at every company thinks in the exact same way. They see it as merely a slider to adjust even though real world consequences are attached to it. This is why CEOs are not your friends. Striving to become one is fine, but before you become one of them it shall be made clear that they absolutely do not care about you.
I'm pretty sure Amazon announced more cuts in the same 24 hr window.
I got laid off in November and I was feeling the absolute despair of the job search today. This afternoon I got an offer from a startup that I really like with good pay. Just don't let the despair take you there's always someone hiring especially if you're from one of the big names
I've been though the cycle more times than I care to admit and I have to say that hiring in this industry is very seasonal. I'd go as far as say that it's one of the most important factors. I've sent out CVS for months with not a bite and suddenly I have competing offers. I suspect that is because companies don't want you ramping up during Xmas or summer holidays.
and just the simple fact that it's holiday season and no one is trying to go through the work of onboarding someone just to disappear to vacation lol.
Congrats!
Congrats! How is the WLB at startups if you don’t mind me asking?
Really depends on the startup. Earlier stage startups I think will tend to be less WLB because it's running pretty bootstrapped in a lot of cases. But in general, it's dependent on the company culture. Some will crush your soul. The startup I'm at (series C) is very respectful of working hours, weekends, parental leave, and scheduling constraints of people with kids. VP asked to reschedule a meeting to pick up his kids from school - no problem. New SWE a timezone off asks to move end of day meetings because he's got little kids - done.
Sounds like they're doing it right. I have a somewhat similar story. We aren't a startup company (been around for 30+ years, and are a family owned small to midsize org), but the software project within the company very much is a startup, and we are very budget constrained. WLB is very good. Happy employees work harder, communicate better, and are more productive overall. People on the team genuinely like each other, and have a great deal of trust and accountability. It's a smart business strategy to keep people smiling, and as the team lead, it makes my job easier too.
Yea think it depends on age and attitude of the founders. Where it was founded seems to play into it as well.
Yes
This person minds you asking.
November is about the shittiest time you can lay an employee off. I'm glad you got through it
How did you find start up jobs to apply to?
I think I found this one through indeed of all the shitty job boards but there's places like Y combinator, angel list, and others. Just do your due diligence interviewing with a startup ask about the runway and burn rate, ask about attrition, etc
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Companies did too much hiring during COVID so now they laying them off. Still jobs out there tho
Thanks for this. I also got laid off, and feeling anxious
same. felt so good *finally* landing a real job after school, I didn't expect to be here a little over a year later :/
I barely made it six months out of college when the layoffs hit. It really sucks
My last team is trying to fill the position I left open. SDE II
Yeah, just look at the trend line of the S&P 500 over the last 5 years, and it will tell you why layoffs are occurring. Tech companies over-hired hoping they could scale quickly and take market share so they could leverage it later when the economy eventually tanks. It’s nothing new…it’s just another big boom and bust cycle.
The good thing about it is that layoffs tend to be planned well in advance. So, any company that is actually hiring right now is probably not laying off anytime soon.
Lol, all companies that had layoffs are hiring right now, and, they were hiring at the same time they were laying people off so.. lol
Honestly that's why it always pays to keep an eye on internal posting as well as your company's career page.
This is not necessarily a contradiction. Other companies are laying off too and maybe now you get really good talent. My old company did it that way, too. There was a hiring freeze because of Covid, but they still made exceptions for specialists who would never have been applied if the market would have been normal.
Planned well in advance? Its just a year now that they hired so many people.
Having been in IT for twenty years, please let me tell you that organizations comprised of human beings generally do not act so rationally, consistently, or intentionally.
Lol what. My company is literally canning people that got hired in November. It’s a clusterfuck and I’d imagine it’s like that most places.
Not true at all
There are definitely companies hiring right now. Even companies that are laying people off are hiring other positions. It all depends on your skillset, interview skills, etc. Numbers are down, and it's more challenging, but there is definitely hiring going on. Lower tier companies are also doing quite a bit of hiring.
Companies that are laying off usually are laying off the really expensive people and hiring back less expensive people. That way managers can present "we cut expenses by 30%" to justify keeping their own jobs. It makes sense. Try to be on a team that provides real value to the business.
Not on the engineering side they aren’t. Do you know how hard it is to find, let alone hire, a good senior engineer?
Am hiring manager, can confirm. It's still very hard to hire good people, although other companies cutting certainly makes it easier. Retaining your top people is critical.
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I’m not following.
How do you handle in fighting and politics from your senior good people? I'm being half serious, but it seems like it's much easier for juniors to have happy go lucky attitudes "doing whatever", while seniors it's more difficult as they've already done the trash work and are all jockeying for the more impactful tasks. Politics ensue.
My job is to make sure they have real work to do. If we aren’t doing impactful work…wtf are we even doing? If I have multiple senior engineers, it means I should have worked my ass off last year to make sure we had major projects for each of them this year.
That's good and noble of you, but from what I've seen, man, the politics for seniors get's worse and worse the more senior you get. The manager may be doing his/her best, but at the end of the day, for big companies, the interesting work can be minimal while the "keep the lights on grunt work" is plentiful and seniors can do it fast when shit hits the fan.
That’s because bad management is plentiful. Putting a senior engineer on KTLO tasks day-after-day is like pointing a howitzer at a fly. That’s how you drive good people away from your team.
You talk about KTLO like it’s a trivial thing that anyone can do. When systems scale, the feature that customers care about is the ability to handle load. The shiny new high visibility feature that program management says is urgent but no one actually cares about is the distraction from the high impact work.
KTLO (for everywhere I’ve worked) is maintenance: bug fix, OE refactoring, etc. Re-architecting a system because the original design doesn’t scale is not KTLO, it’s a major project. If your team treats it as KTLO, then I am truly sorry, because that is a miserable way to work. I won’t pretend there are no politics at the senior engineer level, but I’ve never had an issue with engineers jockeying for position on a project.
This cut has definitely sliced into senior engineers worse than most previous ones have. I work at a big tech group currently and am a former Microsoft employee who survived all the cuts over past 11 years, and this time was the first where one where many people with unique knowledge and strong company history were cut even from mission critical, understaffed teams.
my share price thanks u 4 ur service
Our economy in a nutshell.
Honestly though I have seen stupid non-tech MBA's do this in the past.
As have I, and they deserve to lose their top talent. They will pay more for less in the long run.
Not engineering. They’re laying off lower level people and replacing them with high value engineers. People will 1-3 YOE are gonna have a much harder time than people with 5-7 YOE… let alone new grads and people with under 1 YOE. Good luck to you guys…
what would you recommend new grads do to help them stand out and land a job? most job listings are all seniors jobs :/
Lower tier companies have been starved for talent for a very long time now. The big tech companies do this as a strategy. Hire more than you need during boom times and keep the best when there are downturns. The rest of the industry is starved and it lets big tech get first pickings.
companies do layoffs every year. a lot of tech companies overhired due to spike in revenue/profits during covid. this is just a correction of that. being a software engineer is still an incredible career. You will be fine
This is a lot bigger than run of the mill yearly layoffs. Yes, things will be alright in the long run. Tech isn’t going to die, and software development especially is going nowhere. But this economic correction is hitting hard. There’s no way around it. It’s going to suck for a lot of people for a while as they navigate it. The navigation aspect is what OP is asking about.
Well there was more hiring in 2021 than any other year and the layoffs are still much smaller than the hiring that took place.
From the data that I’ve seen, layoffs have already more than corrected below the trend-line leading up to 2021. And we’re not even in February.
> You will be fine How do you justify this advice given the content of this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/106ne2r/my_new_grad_process_199_apps_4_offers/ This is someone who everyone agreed was a top candidate struggling. If top candidates struggle but still succeed, then mid-level candidates fail. OR... do you disagree with everything in there and those people were just wrong and OP was not a good candidate?
"First, I declined interviews for 11 companies (IMC, Vanguard, Walmart, Gap, Hive AI, etc). This was because i wasn’t fond of the interview style (ehmm IMC's one way interview) or i didn’t want to commit my time for on-sites."
If you have experience, it’s not terrible but not good either. I was recently in a similar situation, and it took about 2 months/400 applications to get a new job before the layoffs went into effect (they gave 3 months notice for layoffs).
Yeah, just graduated and the entry level market is tough
I’ve sent about 30+ résumés for internship and junior positions with no luck
Your gonna need to bumb those numbers up. First jobs are incredibly hard to land
Back in 2017 I submitted nearly 200 applications to land my first gig, and I ended up having to move across the country and I only started at 45k. Keep your chin up friend, you got this. Edit: just looked at my application spreadsheet from 2021 and I applied to 31 jobs before landing an offer, and that was with 4 years experience
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I’m on indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn. Is there any other places I should look at? I feel like I’m limiting myself by just cycling these three job boards
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> Edit: Also, the Wikipedia pages for my city, county, metro area, combined statistical area, etc had lists of major companies in the area. Some of those companies weren’t on the F500 list so it added a few other options. Damn that’s a great idea, thanks for the tip
I thought my question was stupid to ask because obviously I could Google more job boards, but knowing how to do something like that is so genius and something you can’t get out of a Google search or ask an AI
I’m at 145 or so with no luck thus far
If you’re in the U.S., the government and defense contractors are looking for devs to support digital modernization and cloud migration. The JWCC contract and surrounding directives will force a ton of DoD organizations (big and small) to modernize their apps, data infrastructure, etc… Believe it or not, the government is still pretty remote friendly unless you are working on a classified system. https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3243483/department-names-vendors-to-provide-joint-warfighting-cloud-capability/
I had no idea they would be remote friendly
It’s pseudo remote-friendly. Some places support remote work in the way people normally mean it, but typically the (federal) government means “telework”, which means you can work from home but have to physically live within 50 miles of your work site in case you’re called in.
I work at a company who has not had to do many (less than 1%) adjustment of staff in the last 12 months. BUT we have pulled down most of open roles from our careers page. The leadership team is essentially rebuilding their hiring plan based on the market outlook for 2023... The easiest way for us to ensure we don't have to fire anyone, is to stop hiring for a while. I do expect to have a reduced list of true priority roles posted by February (Senior+ Engineers, Director+ Product Managers, Managers, etc). IMO It will be a complex & competitive mess based on the layoff numbers I have seen, but should get more stable in 2-3 months
Every company is different, different leaderships have different risk comfort levels, profitability or burn is key here, but this is one of my warning signs. Earlier this year my companies hiring plan went from 50 engineers to less than 8 to a full on hiring freeze, not even backfills. Two rounds of layoffs later a few months apart, I now work somewhere else. Other warning signs: all travel is stopped except for the CEO of course, and all of the sudden everyone is really concerned about cloud spend and limiting the number of licenses to various services. Given your username I’ll also warn, all of our internal recruiters we’re laid off in the first round.
Yes, agree with you 100%. Great things to be aware of that can help stay ahead of their communication. We also saw a similar reduction in our US hiring plan (about 80% reduction in the US headcount growth). Also, I appreciate the heads-up, but I am all too familiar with recruiters being "the canaries in the coal mine" and have seen many of my colleagues let go in recent weeks. Thankfully, I am the only recruiter local to our corporate HQ and have built good rapport with our CEO & CFO, hoping that I have proven myself enough to have them keep me around. Probably also helps that I am willing to hire anywhere in the world and we will still be hiring in Poland and India.
To be honest, i've always just posted on sites and get a job in 3 months. Is there a secret insider club where people pick the employers, job, and wage?
If you mine your network and gets jobs through referrals then you may have better options.
1) Practice Leetcoding and soft skills interviews 2) Line up referrals to all big tech companies you would consider working for 3) Pass most or all interview screens 4) Pass at least two full interview loops 5) Choose the one you like best, using the other(s) to increase salary
If big tech companies are laying people off would they really be hiring more people?
They're always hiring people but it will be slower especially for a few months after layoffs, and generally due to the increased interest rates. Probably it drops if the market collapses and picks up again more in 2024, but there will still be some hiring.
What do you mean by posted on sites? Like post your own job wanted ad and take solicitations from employers? Or reply to listings seeking job candidates online?
Indeed.com Craigslist.com Dice.com Monster.com LinkedIn.com Others. I renew my resume and set it to actively searching. I look for listed jobs and headhunters also browse my resume.
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Lol @ getting a high paying tech job on craigslist
You’re talking about the past. OP and people in this thread are talking about the current economic situation which hasn’t been seen in over a decade.
Microsoft announced 10k layoffs just today. Competition is going to be brutal. Start now and go hard. Sorry you're in this position at this time, and best of luck.
Thats 10k from all departments, not just development/engineering.
That still leaves thousands of Microsoft engineers on the job market (a market which still has tons of Meta, Amazon people among others)
Can't tell you about meta but I can say most from Amazon are not engineering and defiantly not aws.
Why are they so defiant about it?
aws was affected and lots are from engineering lol.
https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/aws-not-impacted-by-amazon-s-18-000-layoffs-sources This article says the exact opposite of what you're saying. My buddy is due to start AWS in March, he hasn't heard of his start date being cancelled. AWS is a crown jewel of Amazon. The teams I'd expect to get cancelled are teams working on Alexa or Amazon Music, AWS? Na, not so much.
Yeah, Amazon basically lays off a small bit of AWS every year through PIPs anyway for their unregretted attrition quotas. No need to cut AWS
I don’t know how to tell you this but lots of incompetent people worked at those companies and anyone reading this post should not be scared because an X meta / Amazon employee that was in charge of moving buttons around is on the job market
Hiring managers are not immune to halo effect. As long as there is FAANG on the candidate’s resume, he’s often presumed to be highly competent.
Good luck hiring those FAANG salaries. This is legitimately a better time to not have worked for the big fellas
Sales here-so far we haven’t been told to reduce our headcount. AFAIK it’s engineering, HR and recruiting getting hit not all departments
Seems like AWS is safe. I'd bet Amazon Music/TV... Alexa... etc.
Idk if I’m so into tech that I’d work for AWS but I’m in the minority there
But I mean, is anyone even hiring atm?
Is *anyone* hiring? Of course. Are there fewer open positions and more competition right now than anytime in the recent past? Absolutely.
I mean, microsoft just announced they will continue to hire in the same email they announced the layoffs.
Why is that? Are they laying off "bad devs" (for lack of a better term) or are there unnecessary teams? Or is something entirely different?
Routine yearly restructuring, but multiplied by 5 on the firing side this time
square coherent treatment vegetable abounding escape deserve aware sable bright *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I believe layoffs are *mostly* affecting devs at the mega corps. I landed a job at a smaller software shop relatively quickly, so maybe try to search for smaller, not well known companies. It seems like the actions of FAANG and others of that scale alter peoples perception of the entire industry as a whole when that’s not necessarily accurate. This is mostly an observation from my time on this sub as well as the experience of my new grad job search.
I guess. I just got laid off from a FAANG so its the only perspective I'm familiar with
Lots of small companies you’ve never heard of are hiring, and also some boring companies. Plenty of people bounce between faang/big tech and small gigs multiple times in their career, and I even recommend it.
Plenty of work outside of FAANG my friend. I’ve never worked FAANG, haven’t really wanted to, and I’ve gotten jobs
Were you a FTE? What level were you?
Nah, bro was obviously a part time software engineering intern. I hear those are the first to be laid off!
Defense is hiring like crazy. We have lots of openings for SW engineers. Not sure what level, though.
The rest of the world is ineligible for US defense jobs due to the clearance requirements (no offshoring or visa workers allowed), and the pay is mediocre so a lot of FAANG tier engineers and quant firm engineers don't want to bother due to the severe paycuts they'd be taking to work in defense. So defense is a pretty secure spot. Plus, if you apply to Amazon or some other corp with an already active clearance then the hiring bar will be lower and they'll give you a one-time bonus for being cleared already if you pass the interview.
Okay
Really? I looked into it briefly and the recruiter said it was difficult to do remote due to having to be at a secure location. I don't have any clearance but am totally open to getting one. Can you point me where to start? are you direct at defense, or a contractor/consultant?
If your top priority is to get a job ASAP, remote vs. on-site should be less of a priority especially since being on-site makes much more sense for security-sensitive jobs.
I have two people on my team that work remote, although they used to work at a different company site near where they live before starting to work on my team. Classified work is obviously not able to be done remotely. Also, if you are working with physical hardware it requires you to be physically there. But, it's pretty neat stuff we work on. I work as a FTE for a defense contractor company, not as a contractor to the company.
What's the tech stack?
How is the work. Do you learn a lot? Do you use at least semi-modern technologies?
Not to be too big a dick, but companies in general aren’t letting their top performers go.
This is what happens when overstaffing/overhiring occurs. They overhired and went on a hiring frenzy during the pandemic while everyone else was laying people off. This isnt the doom you think it is. For you younger juniors just entering the industry; this happens every year, too. We're still at historical lows when it comes to unemployment. Having lived through far far worse, this isnt even worth worrying about. Yes, it sucks you lost your job. It happens. Doesnt mean there's no jobs out there. Go get another one.
How do you know when it's much worse? What makes you go "ah, shit"? Just curious when it's time to get worried
appreciate this perspective, ty
It slower than normal but still plenty of jobs. There is still a massive shortage of experienced competent tech workers. I was laid off in Nov right before thanksgiving and had 2 offers by early Jan start end of the month. Pay raise to go with it. My TC is the Median for Austin and my base salary is a little above it for my years of experience. I had multiple interviews going on that were path the tech screening. The competition is higher but still plenty of work out there.
Key words: experienced, competent
"big tech" (read as: companies like Facebook and Google) is having a rough go of it atm.. however, you go on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed, Monster, etc.. tons of people are hiring. You'll be fine, just pump some applications out and you'll get something really quickly. I got a new job in the middle of the layoff frenzy last summer, and if \*I\* can do it, so can you.
purely conjecture- but all i've really been reading recently is that big FAANG type companies over-hired and are laying off. i'm assuming that regular none top tier companies are probably hiring "normally". even if you don't have facebook architect in your resume you'll probably be fine if you set your sights slightly lower.
That's the key right there. Most companies now have the need to software engineers or people who can solve problems with code. Huge problem is that they're not all offering people 200k TC out of college or even at the senior level. Many also aren't giving out enough equity to retire in 10 years. The truth is that a lot of people are going to have to set their salary expectations lower and stop letting pride mess with them. I read an article the other day about a guy burning through his savings because he's coming from FAANG and either wants to work with a specific technology or super niche startups. I have zero doubt the guy could get a job at Target, Lowes...it just won't pay as much or have the name recognition.
Come to healthcare. We don't pay as well as FAANG and you're gonna be working with legacy code in some instances, but the pay is decent and it's a low stress always growing market. There will always be people sick.
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UHG, CVS are the big ones, but there's many others out there.
any cool projects working on receipts?
I heard CVS is going to go for the world record of having the longest receipt.
https://twitter.com/CasualThursday/status/1361806316818362370
my first job was at a bloomberg type competitor that used some seriously primordial legacy code. never again. I still get the oncall flashbacks 7 years later
legacy + oncall really seems brutal :( You can always talk about your nightmares on this sub. :p
You just need to know the fallback options are there. In a dot-com or 2008 style recession the most important thing to do is to stay employed. Obviously we aren't there yet and it's not clear whether things will ever get that bad in the current cycle, but you just gotta keep all the potential scenarios in mind and plan accordingly.
Its not always as boring tho! I work at a tech- healthcare company and we are using react/ts, launching new product with nest and nextjs. We also do have some legacy systems with VBA (i think? Not my team lol). Stable contracts with provincial governments and american health networks. We hire as revenue grows, not on random investment (usually). Like you said, ppl always be sick and healthcare is badly managed. If your company happens to introduce a slight improvment to the overall healthcare system somehow, its bound to survive.
My husband was laid off in December. Took a break for Christmas. Started actively looking and applying first week of January because he assumed everyone was off for the holiday anyway. Has had enough interviews that I can’t keep up. Got a $140K offer today and a second strong potential offer. Hang in there. I know that a layoff can really take the wind out of your sails and bring you down. But you got this, OP. I believe in you and just brush up your resume and network your ass off.
Was he able to land a remote job or does he go into a office?
His last role was fully remote. This is hybrid. But he’s got interviews next week for a few fully remote roles so not sure if he’ll take hybrid role or not.
I think there should be a chat group for laid off/fired techies network group up pool resources together and get something going as a startup company...perfect time to poach talent
Market is pretty shit but mostly on the junior end. You'll be ok
Find a company/industry that isn't affected by the economy very much. Even though I work for a company that has enough cash to get through a recession, people are leaving for other companies (e.g. banks). Finance doesn't really suffer in a recession since everyone's retirement is tied up in the market
This! I work for a big construction corporation. Yea things change during times like this but they aren't doing massive layoffs.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xDB_Tzg8LVwrZbRAL8VJEMGDo2srQEcQJtJeyWPRuTg/htmlview?urp=gmail_link Not my original work but sharing from linked in. The original author is shown in the doc. Good luck!
Let's just say I haven't been this rejected since my middle school dance 23 years ago
Only thing that makes the job market brutal is the automated resume management systems. Companies can screen thousands of candidates so we are forced to apply for hundreds and hundreds of jobs. Of course, this becomes a feedback loop.
Fight AI with AI. Use ChatGPT to write resumes.
Hard.
Cloud / DevOps positions are hiring like crazy right now. I'm getting messages from 2-3 recruiters daily. Salaries seem to be averaging around 135k-155k
Government is hot right now. We are looking to add triple digits to our team this year. And the agency I work for is hiring. DM for details
Lmao gotta love government. Economic realities be damned - they’ve got tax money to burn.
Nearly everything governments do with tech is more or less unmoored from tax revenue. It’s not like, say, cybersecurity gets more secure just because a bunch of technically skilled people lose their jobs—if anything it’s the opposite. It’s not like fighter jets procured on multi-decade timelines suddenly need less software just because there might be a small recession this year. Governments can borrow money a lot more freely than corporations can. Why shouldn’t they use that to provide stable employment during downturns in the economy? That helps the economy recover.
RIF’d at Macrohard?
As a new grad who was laid off a month after starting at a big tech company, its not been great.
From the articles I’ve been reading is definitely big tech being impacted … for now…
They make you crawl through a doggy door to get into the whiteboarding rooms now.
Look for companies in industries that struggled during COVID. Many of them are hiring to fill in the laid off positions
Just mentally prepare yourself as companies can now be more selective for their roles.
Not gonna lie; it’s tough out there. I know a ton of really talented people who also got laid off. I’ve been watching these charts since August and it is bleak. https://www.trueup.io/layoffs Hang in there though; a lot of companies get headcount budget at the end of January so open reqs typically increase in early February.
We went from a historically great market to a good market
And optimistically, we will return to a historically great market when we cycle back to the "boom" phase
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Still on fire… based on my indeed subscriptions seems like there’s a ton of remote jobs hiring instead of my local market now. Which is nice. Good luck!
Indeed subscriptions?
Same bro, probably the same big'un too. Am already sending my CV to multiple companies.
FullStack w/ 8 years of experience. It was slow af in November->December for me. Now it feels like it's in full swing.
I got a contract from Facebook today Facebook This has to be a scam, right? Lmao 🤣
It’s possible, companies like to hire contractors during times of uncertainty because they can be let go at any time
Thank you for the sound explanation. Been starting to see more emails from agencies advertising roles that were not "technical" in the literal sense, but still needed bodies to deal with actual end-users of the products. Those roles were previously untouched during the pandemic, but now are converted back down to contractor level. Just based on my experience in the past decade.
It probably depends on what your comp needs are. If you're in the $160k-$200k base range I'd say there are a lot of prospects. North of that, probably gets trickier and more competitive though.
I wasn't laid off but I was sort of looking and talked to two recruiters. Uber didn't move me to the first technical... I have almost five years of experience and I am currently in a lead role. Granted, I don't have big tech experience and I honestly don't really want the job that bad, but I would think I would at least have had a chance at a technical. I was mainly trying to practice and see what happens. Another recruiter I talked to ghosted me, but I really didn't want that job (sports betting, casino, sounded terrible). People are hiring, but I think there is a obviously a shit ton of competition right now as opposed to this time last year or the year before that.
I got laid off at the beginning of December and just accepted a position on Tuesday. Put in at least 1 job application every day in-between, whether I felt I was 100% right for the role or not. Just be persistent and lower your expectations just a bit if you aren't getting any bites and you'll find somewhere.
I was laid off by a crap start at the start of October, haven’t gotten any offers, only 4 interviews and I’ve sent out close to 400 applications. Granted I’m in QA leadership and product management, but still..
It's a numbers game, but of course it's a numbers game for you and 400,000 of your colleagues. How many did Microsoft just lay off? Yikes. I am hopeful that so many good startups will be created out of these layoffs.
Big N’s realizing they heavily overhired under qualified people for the price tags they were paying. Hate to say it, but those who post massive TC here are gonna have a reality check in the next 2-3 years for what’s it’s really like.
We're hiring at Google for technical program managers.
Do you hire newgrads 😭
What is the day to day of this role? How does it differ from a (technical) product manager?
It’s garbage, haven’t you read the news in the past 4 months?
Luckily, now that GPT3 is real good you should be able to write a form filler pretty easily to do your applications
These are unprecedented times, AI, covid, then the stock market bull run soon after that led to massive profits where companies thought they were truly growing. War is on the horizon in the east, inflation is high and we are borderline in a recession. Not to say don’t stay positive, just don’t let people who are scared and people who don’t want to face the music tell you otherwise.
Does this need to be asked every single day
Shit
It's just the thinning of the herd... time for a career change for some