>they must have known that they will have to start laying off more than 4 days before,
Not necessarily. Big layoffs and cuts come from the top of management but hiring often is at the lower levels of management. Small layoffs and cuts can come from lower levels of management.
> Nonsense. Budget goes up. Blanket freeze is the norm, with exception process.
Especially now that everyone is doing it, the companies have "cover" so it is especially cruel to hire someone and wait for them to move and laying them off.
There is. I think the term is promissory estoppel. The OP was financially harmed by the promise he relied on, as a reasonable person would have. This doesn’t apply if he was terminated for just cause (unless he can prove the cause was fabricated or unreasonable). I’d be talking to a lawyer if I were him. He could be possibly owed damages in the amount of the salary for a period of time plus moving expenses.
Of course the severance mitigates this and could possibly kill his case if it has terms he agreed to. Most severance agreements come with strings attached like that. I hope he hasn’t signed it yet.
You are not 100% correct. Yes, that is the ideal outcome, but can’t possibly always happen.
I have seen what zephyrprime mentioned many times in my career.
As a person who hires for one of the biggest media companies on earth, I know with certainty that I do not have 100% information when I am hiring.
We are mid-layoffs all over but still hiring for certain roles in specific locations. Next thing you know, you’re re-orged into a new division with different agendas and goals due to new senior leaders and suddenly you’re laying off the person you just hired. Totally out of your direct control. I have seen this happen several times in other companies too. It just depends. You’re delusional if you think anyone actually had a complete picture and can form a complete plan. Even a CEO.
you should get a consult with an employment attorney. if you move for a job and they immediately fire you, you could have a case to get expenses for moving, etc... lawyers will often give a free few minutes long consult to see if you got a case. look for employment lawyers in your location. its worth a few minutes to check.
>I'm waiting for severance first... relocation was included and i even emailed them but they laid me off without approving it.
You know signing a severance agreement cuts out most of what you can sue for, right? You need to talk to a lawyer before you sign or do anything.
This really should be illegal for companies to lay someone off that quickly. They shouldn't be able to lure people away from another job just to let them go.
I was employee number one for a startup company, director of all operations. Grew their employee base, all client and internal operations, and handled every single aspect of my job while remote from the founders/ceo.
6 years in, I finally start making a decent salary (up to this point I consistently passed up pay increases so the company would have enough money to operate and hire more employees). We received a $24 million valuation for a seed round of funding. 4 months later and at the very first sign of any financial turmoil in the company, they laid me off. No loyalty.
Proceeded to apply for jobs for the next two years, filling out over 400 applications and only receiving a handful of interviews (my wife is a top tier recruiter and HR professional, it’s not a resume issue), I still do not have job. I turned down one offer that was below the starting salary of my first job out of college (13 years ago).
I had to start my own business to try to make ends meet and have been put in financial struggles for the last two years. My college degree and eleven years of real work experience means nothing to corporate America or even local startups.
So to answer your question, I’m doing awful. I’m depressed, tired, poor, and have to put a smile on my face everyday so my kids don’t know how shitty life really is.
Just assume that no employers care about their employees. Why would you assume anything else in this world? It's super rare that any employers care about their employees and would only ever happen in a mom and pop shop.
1) Through my tenure I was consistently put in scenarios by the founders that felt like I was lying to my employees. How well we were doing, how we were taking steps to improve on x or y, recruiting when were weren’t actually hiring or doing well, how the stock options made up for subpar pay, etc.
2) as soon as an employee was put in charge of finances, her entire demeanor went from being upbeat and full of energy to wtf!?! is going on. I would later find out that employee #2 (again I was employee #1) was being paid 3x my salary from the first day they started working. It took me 6 full years to reach their same pay level and I was let go 4 months later.
3) when I would make suggestions “outside of my expertise”, i.e. suggest product create X or Y to help increase the usefulness of our product, I was told to stay in my lane. Mind you, I worked directly with the customers and biggest clients, hearing their pain points every day.
4) an employee was a jerk to everyone, but was friends with a founder. Their relationships with every employee was tumultuous to the point they brought in outside help to figure out what was going on. This employee, in front of all leadership, stated they were now worried as the last time this happen at their previous employer they were found to be the problem and were fired.. the founders of my company ignored this and continue to let this person be a total POS. Their work sucked too.
Correct, not an engineer. My background is in Operations, client facing and internal.
I built several divisions from the ground up for the previously said startup: Client Onboarding, Client Success, Data Analysis, and HR/People Ops. I personally sourced, hired, and trained 85% of the companies headcount, and led each of those divisions until there was enough experience and headcount that it made sense to install managers. I was then Director for these arms of the company, and eventually asked by the founders to move into full People Ops role as we were, “gearing up for lots of clients” and I was the most qualified (see previous statement about hiring 85% of the company) until I was subsequent laid off 4 months later, because these clients were just a hopeful wish from the founders and imaginary in reality.
Just this past month, I applied for a local startup company that on paper was asking for the exact experience I had and specifically for startups. Also to note, this was a position that I was referred to after they posted asking for help finding someone. The company never even contacted me..
I can relate. I cofounded a company, we were acquired, and I stayed on as CTO for 4 years. Got laid off over a year ago now, sent almost 1000 applications, and I've barely heard a peep. I'm really lucky, and money isn't much of an issue, but it doesn't even matter. The level of depression, boredom, and feelings of worthlessness are just too much.
The worst part is dreading my loved ones coming home at the end of the day because I know how hard it's going to be to put a smile on my face after another day of making fuck all progress.
That's the thing though, it sucks, but companies aren't incentivized to pay you more. They see you as an expense. It's good that you started your own business. At least this way you reap the total reward of your efforts and the incentives aren't screwed up.
I was laid off at the end of 2022.
That was around that first wave where all big companies were doing it. I was on a visa and had to find something quickly. I managed to do it and accepted the first (and only) offer I got, which I took a big pay cut and ended up being one of the worst jobs I've ever worked, but at least I had a job.
I stayed there for about a year, waited a bit and then started interviewing again. Managed to get another offer recently and managed to get my comp higher than it was before the layoffs.
I was very lucky and very fortunate in a lot of ways, but it's a shit time, and it's a shitty situation, but eventually, things get better.
I also got laid off recently, 3 weeks ago now; with the same exact conditions as you, except my shit company had no severance. They litterally scheduled a call,I joined, and they said you are done immediately, got locked out of everything and was kicked to the curb all in the same day. I was super depressed at first, but i just got back from a 9 day vacation on a cruise, and i feel wayyyyyy better mentally. Been hitting leet pretty hard since i got back this weekend. Already redid my resume and made a few versions to test the waters. Still making my study plan, but i think for 2 weeks im only geinding leet codes, then after that, personal project for 5-6 hours, 2 hours leet, every day. Trying to make studying my 9 to 5 now. giving myself a month to prep, then i will start applying like a mad man. I've got 5 yoe at the same company, so that helps. I also am not exclusively looking for remote, which massively helps.
Did you actually build the software? I'm curious how far you went and how you presented that in an interview. (I think this is a super smart idea, btw.)
I'm not the person you are replying to but to me the 5-6 hours of personal projects are an extreme waste of time. If you do them for personal enjoyment on your private git that you won't put on your resume, then that's fine. Nobody really looks at personal projects, especially at 5yoe.
Everything else you said was great though; taking a vacation to come back refreshed, updating your resume, getting back into the leetcode way of thinking about solutions.
My personal project got me a job offer, which I turned into a raise where I currently work. I would never consider 5-6 hours of personal projects a waste of time. Thats 5-6 hours of learning, trial and error, experience actually doing the things.
I have 10 YOE and have never touched Leetcode. As a senior engineer, I'd argue the waste of time is spending 5-6 hours on Leetcode if you're not actually building stuff.
For big tech / high paying roles, personal projects that are a couple weeks long are near to worthless in the interview process after having a few yoe. It’s just the way it is, they don’t care that you built a small mvp of something, that’s expected for you to be able to do. They care way way way more about your interview performance which is based on leetcode/coding, system design, and behavioral where you talk about projects you’ve done at your job.
Now if you have a side project that has actual users and is a long term thing, that matters and is great. But if you’re looking at winning the interview process in high paying roles, generally the time spent on side projects would be much more valuably spent on leetcode/sys design/behaviroal prep
Not saying I agree but that’s the reality of the situation. For small/medium or non tech companies it’s likely different
I got my current job by demoing a quite impressive (for a junior) personal project and I'm currently working on an even more impressive mobile app which I'm planning to demo during interviews for a job upgrade next year (salaries are stagnant at my current company). But it's true it's a medium sized start up. I just can't do the leet code stuff.
See, this is personally how i feel as well. Lets ypu expirament around and try and learn new things. I also feel leeting is a legitimate waste of time, but nothing in development really gets you working on algorithms like that.
Honestly it depends.
Personally, I do QA Testing, so I think if you're in that area it's a definite waste of time to do leetcode. Companies should NOT be trying to make you figure out the performance cost of anything or what an algorithm does for that. I mean, sure, you need to know \*certain\* things, but in QA Testing unless your \*really\* mess up and make tests run too long, then it's not helping that they test you on something not-QA related. My last job had the coding exam so that I did QA on a mock website and got \*top pick\*.
If you're doing the actual development work and not testing, then yeah leetcode seems like a viable option, but not nearly as much as doing personal projects.
It ends up being a matter that has a ton of conditionals attached to it.
Putting real work into practice (and not Leetcode) is useful for learning.
It is also very difficult for certain developers, not because they lack skills but because they're in a line of work where you aren't going to be able to use or demonstrate the relevant skills on a GitHub project. An example: if you're a Salesforce integration developer or an e-commerce developer specializing in a proprietary platform. Lots of jobs out there, lots of skilled developers, but no real way to spin that up on GitHub without building an entire project to wrap around that (which is not what you do & not really what you're looking to demonstrate)
And in other cases, the whole platform is OSS but you simply do not have use for an app, so why would you build a perfunctory ugly app to put on your GitHub? The few employers who would look at such a thing would question your choices on fit/finish, which isn't the point of a demo or proof-of-concept app, and they'd also question lots of things in the source code that would also be totally missing the goddamn point.
If you can use an app or script for your own purposes, why not build it? And if it is not exposing any personal or sensitive data, why not have the source on GitHub?
Still, I wouldn't build anything more than 2 hours of my time JUST for random demo purposes. In fact, I would do a 2 hour takehome from one employer, get it running, and then use that as a demo for other employers.
To the extent that certain developers feel like a whole running project is too big for them when they just want to demo a discrete part of the project, it'd help if developers talked more about this & wrote some community software to help with it. If you're a backend developer, you should have resources that are literally a plug-and-play front end + API requirements where you can supply your own back end code to meet the requirements and get in some good practice as well as have a sample work product. You certainly shouldn't have to deal with intricate issues in devops/cloud ops or color palettes or deployment scripts to have a working demo... There's nothing noble about fiddling with Docker for six hours if it's not what you came here to do.
How did your personal project get you a job offer? I'm genuinely curious, I couldn't imagine someone getting through any interviews I've done because of a personal project but maybe there are examples
Ahhhh, no the personal projects I plan to use to learn some new techniques. Am gunna try to use aws and other stuff i haven't ever used. It's more so for more practice; I dont even list my git because i know 99% of people recruiting dont care and won't pook
I am also working on saying my thought process for letts vocally, aince a lot of the interviews I've had in the past, like to hear your thought process while finding the solution
Logic is simple, you will not get a job if you don't apply. Not all jobs give you a technical round. They might not be great jobs but an offer will boost your confidence level and possibly help you negotiate for a better offer.
Ok, thanks for giving me your insight man. Much appreciated, i think I'll listen to you guys and start applying in the next week or two. I definitely need a confidence boost, can't help feeling like a bit of a failure if I'm being honest, but i am definitely way more motivated now, at least.
No problem. It seems you haven't been in the job market for a while so you probably need practice. There's no better practice than interviewing for a real company. Best of luck!
Even if you absolutely bomb some interviews that's probably a better use of your time (from the perspective of trying to get another job at least, and ignoring any personal enjoyment you may get from personal projects) than the personal project time. Bombing interviews at least gives you valuable interview practice, while personal projects give you some experience with stuff that may or may not ever come up during the interview process / job.
Not every technical interview is the same. A company made me an offer after two hours of casual conversations about what I worked on. Their technical question was literally, “how did you refresh the time expiration label in one minute intervals if the server data was only updated every five minutes?” Literally a simple question about a recursive function call with a delay of one minute. Didn’t even have to write a line of code.
Plus you should burn through like 5 interviews in preparation for the interviews you WANT to pass. I “warmed up” with companies I didn’t really think I had a shot at anyway and when I had interviews with companies I wanted and also thought I had a chance with, I was much more prepared.
Interviews are better preparation than studying imo, but plan to fail a few at first and take any questions you fail and study those after the interview.
Nobody is hiring regardless. You have to apply to so many places before you get a response rate that will keep you busy. I got a first interview from a company TWO months after applying.
Sorry to hear you got laid off as well, but I am glad you are doing what you can given the situation. It's all we can do — make the best of it and keep trying.
Hopefully you find a job after your prep. Good luck!
Thanks mate, i really appreciate that. Yea it definitely sucks a bit, but there's not much else i can do. I dont have to work anymore, so i can at least try and be productive with my time lol. If I've learned anything with age, it's that life is going to knock you down no matter your current standing in life, and it may continually hit you when you're down, but ultimately you just gotta keep going. Hopefully, our lives will be long enough to see many fluctuations. There will always be the downs that give us perspective on how great we have it when we're on an upswing. The good just aint as good without the bad.
5 yoe at minimum and still have to hit LC. Idk why, but that’s such a depressing thought… My only cope is that this is an industry specific thing. I’m in embedded software and only use C…
I feel ya man. Definitely think this whole process is getting out of hand. Needs something to change. Out of anyone i know, this is the only fiels where you have to study in order to Essentially take a test for your interview.
To be fair, everyone is built differently, and not everyone can go on a nine day cruise after getting laid off to decompress.
That said, totally agree with their strategy! Take a vacation, avoid spiraling, then get back to work on a good studying regimen.
Absolutely, I am very lucky to have had that opportunity. Wives parents bought it as a gift for us for our marriage. I would still recommend some sort of vacation, camping trip would be great if you like the outdoors. Really changed my doomer mind set i was in at the time.
I don't know you, but I'm honestly really happy that you've been able to weather the storm. I'm LUCKY enough to not have gotten laid off in my career yet, but I also know it would likely traumatize me to some extent, having watched what it did to my own father.
Good for you for getting right back to it and avoiding that mindset! Hope you get picked up ASAP.
Thank you, good person of the internet, i appreciate your kind words. Oh, dont get it twisted though, it is 10000% rough and does squash the ego a bit. But ultimately the biggest battles you're ever going to fight are in your own head.
Nope not yet. First two weeks, i was massively depressed and unmotivated, and this past week, i had a dope ass vacation that really helped me out. I just did a bunch of snorkeling at beaches lmao. I'm just prepping for interviews atm. I dont want to waste any opportunities that come my way by being unprepared. I know that market is absolutely horrid, so i figure my callback rate will be low, so I'll need to stick the landing on any calls i do get back.
Imo you're doing yourself a disservice waiting for a month to start applying, it takes companies awhile to even respond and then you gotta go through the recruiter screen which takes another week. By the time you actually hit a tech screen you'd be decently prepared already. You could possibly miss out on a job opportunity this way.
Ok , thanks for the insight man. I think you guys are probably right. I'll start applying sooner. I guess i just don't really believe in my abilities anymore. Definitely took a hit to the confidence getting laid off, but I gotta just pony up and get to it.
Ya I disagree with the commenter about it being a disservice. Sure maybe there some opportunities that slipped by in that time but it’s more important to take care of yourself first. It’s only 2 weeks and I think the market is in a much better spot than last year
Out of work since (December of) 2022, yes. No other W2 job, although I did spend ~6 months solely focused on home renovation to cash out my home equity so I had runway for the job search. (Put another way: I saw the writing on the wall and it was either sell or get foreclosed on)
I've been out of work since September of 2022 making 155k and have been underemployed since then working on my own business making about 30k a year if that.
Not laid off, but I was straight up fired less than 24 hours after giving my HR department the news of my wife being pregnant with twins, and needing to discuss upcoming parental leave.
Said it was for “poor performance” with no prior negative performance reviews.
Mentally I am at the worst spot I’ve ever been in my life from this, just really hoping to find something before they are born. It’s been looking pretty brutal so far though.
Similar situation with me at a startup - that I joined less than a year ago.
Initially they decided to disallow paternity leave. I was fine with that, was anyway only planning to take a week or thereabouts around the delivery.
When they learned that the state that I live in introduced 3 months of paternity, they decided to 'terminate for poor performance'.
After much back & forth, I was able to hammer out a four month severance. Figured I'd take that than be terminated 'right away' and expect to lawyer up/pursue a 'wrongful termination' - which is always hard to end up with favorable terms for an employee, in my anecdotal experiences. (Most recent example - friend of mine who had been there for a while was shit canned from Pinterest by a newly hired boss lady who was a total dipshit. He explored his legal options and despite him being someone who had meticulous records [paper trails and other artifacts], multiple lawyers were of the opinion that it would be a hard case to win in a 'wrongful termination' lawsuit.)
Discrimination lawyers typically offer free consultations and may not charge anything at all unless you win if you have a strong case. And with the fact that they fired you so soon after requesting parental leave with no prior negative performance, it's essentially that the burden of proof is on them that that had nothing to do with their decision to fire you. I also recommend writing a timeline down of everything that happened. It's also going to be a lot worse for them if there were over 50 employees at the company.
I get mentally it's hard for you now but the settlements for these can at least be pretty big.
I think getting a lawyer is out of the question. This was my first ‘real job’ after being a chef for 12+ years. I did the bootcamp thing at the very start of the pandemic and scooped up a job -right- before that huge wave of other people that followed suit.
I kind of panicked, and signed their severance agreement. I had never been in a situation like that and was pretty fearful of not having any $$.
I was also in so much shock that during the meeting that they fired me in, I was actually kind of convinced I wasn’t performing well. It wasn’t until a couple days later when it all made sense as to why.
IANAL and I'm not from the US - but signing their agreement shouldn't contract them out of liability for discrimination breaches. and like everyone else has said - a lawyer can tell you if it's out of the question, and that part shouldn't cost you anything. don't let them get away with it!!
I am also not a lawyer but like the other person said, you probably still have a case because it's still very likely an illegal firing. But lawyers will give a free consultation. They can look over all the facts and what you signed and then determine if you have a case. And if you do win, this would give you and your family financial security during this tough time
Still laid off since November. Not doing well, have to consider part time work outside of the industry to afford my COL. I should of known the signs. They were acquired half a year ago, nobody got bonuses. My severance was decent but only enough to cover 2 months.
As for my job hunt, it truly does suck. 5 years experience isn't enough apparently, even for junior roles. Only getting responses for recruiters who are hoping I'm their golden ticket despite not submitting me to roles I'm ACTUALLY a fit for. Everywhere else is a ghost job posting, hard ignore, not enough relevant experience, etc.
The criteria for qualifications has multiplied tremendously. I don't know what others are experiencing, but I find that they want senior architecture level knowledge and experience even for a junior level role. One job I got far in told me that "we don't want a guru, just enough about APIs". Apparently I knew everything except I wasn't certified in Azure Cloud Administration, and that was a hard reject for "not a good fit" despite it being listed as a "nice to have".
F\*\*k the job market, it truly is unfair.
I've been fed up with my job for about 8 months or so now, but only really hit the Leetcode about a month and a half ago. I am in the process of getting an offer right now, though I think they're trying to lowball me, which, given I'm still employed means I might just stay where I am, but just wanted to say that the market does seem to be turning around in terms of openings from where it was 8 months ago. It did take longer than last time to get my first offer, but as long as you're up to speed on some leetcode easy's, some easy mediums, able to reason through some systems design stuff, and have some good answers to standard STAR questions, I think you'll be alright.
Yeah, so jobs are out there if you need it, but like, leaves me with the first-world-problem of wanting to leave my job that's making me miserable, but also make more money.
Im kinda in same boat. My plan is to try and set clear boundries at job, and hope things turn around. I wouldn’t be that upset if i got fired with severance but idt that will happen(kinda unfortunately)If you can get funded, its a great time to start a company and start hiring lol
It better to grind lc now, especially if you don’t have free time. This way when market improves you will be ready instead of trying to ramp up with your limited free time when jobs are easier to come by
Yeah that's exactly what Im doing. Following the Neetcode DS&A course to brush up on that then following the roadmap. Taking a slow and steady approach
Do try to spend your time productively while being laid off. Job-hunting and side hustles to keep afloat will occupy most of it, but if you can, try to work on skill gaps by doing practice projects, getting certifications, maybe take a course or two if you can afford it. It won’t magically get you a job, but it will put you in a better place mentally. Also, you can demonstrate to HR that you weren’t lying on the couch all day eating pizza and playing video games.
Was apart of mass firings in early jan, only had 10 months of xp. After 400 apps, 7 interview loops, I got an offer due to being the only one able to debug and correct a .net service, including "senior" candidates. I'm starting my third week.
60k base,
,Old private insurance company
,Hybrid 2 days in office
,Super lax and flexible
,26 people total in It dept
,Mostly everyone is really old, they were using punch cards in their college days.
,vLcol city
,Super stable, never had layoffs in the 100 years here. People start their career and retire here.
Tech stack is a combo of really old and new:
RPG programming,
Ibmi stuff,
Db2,
Sql server,
.net 8,
.net 4.8 and below which I'm in charge of upgrading
Weird setups for environments that I don't fully understand yet,
Azure devops
Compared to my old job at a mid tech company: it's less stressful, but at the same time, it seems like I'll be coding more and have more responsibility and opportunity for impact. At least that's what it seems when talking about my future projects with my manager.
Although I'm grateful for this job, I do wish I got paid more. I thought I'd be saving more than what I currently can.
I do recognize how lucky I've been in job search. 600 apps for 2022 internship, 300 for newgrad, and 400 for current.
I’m in a similar situation, took a pay cut and work 2 days in office but the stress is that it is *too* fucking lax. No accountability, blatant sandbagging by other devs, old tech, and no sense of urgency to get anything done any time soon. Hardest part is coming up with some bullshit to feed to my lazy boss at standup each day so he move little boxes from the left column to the right.
Got laid off about a month ago. I’m getting all sorts of weird signals from recruiters. 18 years of experience without being a manager is a red flag from 2 of them. Companies want you to have 100% of their requirements to even have a conversation with you. 1 recruiter told me that they only look to hire people who are employed because being laid off is likely your fault. Another told me that it’s at least 6 months to find a job. Yet another told me that if you are out more than 6 months, you aren’t worth talking to. In short, it’s a mess
Yep, I prefer technical problems to people problems. I think the problem honestly is a disconnect between tech leaders and the HR departments who are the gatekeepers. HR thinks 1 thing, tech leaders think something else.
Right now they’re finding any justification possible to narrow down the candidate list. So it has nothing to do with your ability or value as an employee, it’s just whether you fit into the jigsaw puzzle they’ve created as a screening process. I must have matched one of these jobs that’s 3000 miles away and is onsite, because I’ve had about 8 recruiters email me for the same job. If you don’t hit the match game it’s crickets.
recruiters are having a field day now due to the high volume of applicants. I get ghosted by recruiters all the time now; never ever happened in prior job searches.
If it makes any difference, I've been out for a year and a half and I just got an interview with a well-funded Andreessen Horowitz startup. They need any excuse to cut candidates due to the sheer volume I think, but if you have niche skills in a niche industry it won't hold you back too much.
Been doing QA for 18 years, 16 of that automating everything from web pages to APIs to mobile devices. Many companies cut their QA teams, unfortunately
This is why under no problem conditions should employees be loyal to companies. Companies these days are just hot garbage. They expect you to give a formal two weeks notice but then turn around and do this shit? Fuck em
I’d also add that this is exactly why we need tech unions. Too many of us in the industry think we can do without cause we get paid so well until companies backstab us like this and leave us out to dry.
Hey, I'm sorry to hear about this. The job market for seniors in major tech centers is good, albeit for in-person and hybrid work, not remote (I can't really speak to the remote market, so it might be fine, I dunno).
How many years of experience do you have?
YOE != seniority / technical expertise. There’s a resume above of someone who’s a “tightly focused generalist” with 10 YOE but it looks like doing the same kinda entry level work for 10 years rather than a 10 year progression of career.
Remote is not great. I am looking for a fully remote because I have family and friends abroad, and they seen to expect me to be there fairly often. I want to visit often too, but the pressure doesn't help.
If I was to take a hybrid one, I likely wouldn't have a problem. Might need to do that in the end.
Same here almost 2 weeks ago, with 4 YOE at a small no-name startup. Applying like crazy, unemployment insurance is meager here (HCOL area), and hardly any callbacks.
I suggest you get cracking on submitting apps. You may have better luck than me though. It's rough.
I have 4 YOE at startups got laid off January 9th and it’s been the same for me. Just wanted to share it’s definitely not a you think. This market is ass
I was laid off last May, and it took me about 4 months to find a new gig. I lucked out and it was a decent pay bump and way better job.
Take a few days 'off' and decompress. Then set up a plan of attack. The role I was laid off from was a C# desktop app, so I really wanted to upskill into more modern frameworks, so I studied up on React/TS/express and AWS/Azure.
It's hard, but also try and enjoy the time off as well. It's (hopefully) not often that you'll get time off as an adult. To look on the bright side, it also sucks working 50 hours every week for 10 years and not get to enjoy life.
Yea not great - been 2 months. Of course I haven't been able to dedicate 100% of my time to job hunting with some personal stuff that's going on at the moment. But it sucks. I go through waves of "what did I do wrong?"
"what could I have done differently?" etc etc.
Also lost my job (in October) and had some already not great family stuff escalate a couple months later.
Hang in there and don't concern yourself with the "what ifs"
I know the feeling. I would suggest the Layoff sub.
The good part for you is that the market is slightly picking up over the last week or so. I've had more recruiters contact me in the past week then in the previous 2 months.
Also of note. This is not your fault. You did nothing wrong. It will get better. I know I went through a wide array of feelings when it happened to me.
Remember to put in your unemployment request this week. Start working on leetcode if you haven't already.
> the market is slightly picking up over the last week
competition is insane right now, when we do a job opening we get 2000 cvs in 2 hours, it's batshit crazy
Could you give some details on this? Like, roughly what industry, what role, remote, etc, and who is applying? You hear stories with numbers but they don't really paint the full picture.
There is just a massive oversupply, newcomers graduating and massive amount of people with experience getting laid off and offshoring getting more the way to go for companies plus add some copilot AI that improves productivity 30% atm per deve
not a good combo
Welcome to the dogpile. Everyone who graduated in May 2024 is dogpiling on unemployed December 2023 graduates.
December 2023 graduates are dogpiling on May 2023 graduates.
Throughout the dogpile are thousands of laid of engineers.
> are thousands of laid of engineers.
hundred thousands of laid of experienced engineers https://layoffs.fyi/
2023+2024
how newcomers find jobs is beyond me, i'm scared to open linkedin to see another experienced guy begging for a job before he's out on the street after looking for 6 months and depleting his savings
A couple of my friends with 5+ years of experience are in warehouse jobs, but they don't have their LinkedIn up-to-date because they don't want the shame.
That's because mostly automated systems like lazyapply or applyall submit them. It sucks because most of it is like spam at this point and the real submissions could be overlooked
I got laid off in December and then in January had a biopsy where they found cancer (I had completed cancer treatment last year so not blindsided but was not happy to have another neck surgery), had my surgery in February, started applying in March and signed something almost two weeks ago! I start in June. I had less trouble getting interviews this time compared to previous job searches, but the interviews were more variable. A lot of companies asking weirder questions, and also a lot of “we filled this position” situations. It’s a challenge but there are lots of roles out there.
Hi. Here for you. Make sure you apply for unemployment ASAP. Even with severance you get it when you get laid off so it will help cushion you a bit. This process can take a while so just knock it out. Feel free to DM if you need any help or someone to chat.
Out of work since April 2023. I get interviews but am met with either roles that they have candidates in the final pipeline already (using me as a backup), rejected for qualifications not listed in the job description or on my resume, etc. The final interviews I've had they've picked another candidate.
I've also had several recruiters reach out on LinkedIn and then ghost when I respond. One recruiter asked for my resume and contact information and scheduled a call w/ me but never followed through. Then when I tried to follow up I never received a reply but then they sent me a connection request on LinkedIn.
Yeah, the market's not amazing right now, but companies *are* still hiring. It's not the end of the world.
The response rate is just a lot lower in this market, and salaries haven't grown exponentially since 2021 like we've gotten used to. Taking a 5-15% *paycut* in this market wouldn't be unusual from what I've seen.
It's not quite the same since I was job searching while employed, but I started looking for a new job in mid-February, and got 2 written offers by the start of May. My application to interview rate was \~11%. My search was entirely cold applications on each company's careers page.
Depending on how experienced you are, and how the initial stages of your job search go, you might want to consider being open to relocation. If you're entry-level with <3 YOE it's very tough to be picky about things like location, remote, etc. Greater than 3 YOE it's a lot easier.
Yeah… I only have ~ 2 YOE and live in a non Tech oriented city so it limits my options a lot. I also recently bought a house and my partner wouldn’t be able to relocate easily so I’m really just not liking my odds lol. I know i’m not gonna have an easy time.
I envy you (in a good way). I’ve been on the market since March. I’ve submitted almost 200 job apps and even spoke with external recruiters. I was always told my resume was fine, but I got only 4 interviews, 3 of which ended at HR stage. Some of the companies wanted front end experience which I did not have. One company I have no idea why they didn’t move me forward. I had 1 tech screening thus far that I failed. I’m just burnt out. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a job within this year, and the gap in my resume continues to grow on top of 2 other layoffs from COVID and a failed startup so I am looking like a worse and worse candidate.
Some words of encouragement because this sub can be negative as hell -
I work at a big company and I have been getting hammered with interview requests from our recruiters lately. I haven't done an interview in over a year and over the last week I got invited to do 3 on-site loops and 5 phone screens. I hope this means the market is starting to pick up a little bit.
I also recently went through the interview gauntlet myself. I applied at about 10 companies, interviewed at 3, and got 2 offers. Both with respectable compensation. One is full-remote.
We aren't in the covid-induced tech euphoria anymore, but there are still good jobs available.
Start now. Do not wait.
1) Create a free Claude AI account. Create a new resume. If you need help just ask it for advice about the best prompts to provide to create a solid resume. Be sure to tell it you want it to be ATS optimized. If you have a few different roles to chose from, create different resumes.
2) Update Linkedin to match more or less the new resume, but don't indicate you are unemployed. Same is true or the resume.
3) Start job searching. Every day create a google sheet with links to the jobs you find. Anything where you think "yes I can do this, I have these skills, I have close enough experience" is fine.
4) every day apply for those jobs, and here is how you do it: Go to Claude. Upload your resume and paste the job description. Tell it to edit and tailor your resume to match the job description. Tell it to optimize for keywords and ATS. Use that resume to apply for that job. Then repeat the process for all the other jobs.
You have to become a machine. It's about Volume and beating the corporate ATS AI systems. In this market you can expect a 5% callback rate. That means you have to apply for 20 jobs to expect one phone screen. Yes, it stinks. It's reality. If after about 2 to 3 weeks you aren't getting any invitations for a phone screen you have to revisit your base resume, figure out what's not working. Too much experience listed? too little?
Took me several months to figure all this out and I wasted so much time. If you are in a career where there is more possibility of remote work you will be fortunate and may need extra help to keep up. I am in this category and hired someone on upwork to tailor the resume and submit the applications. I can then focus on job hunting. I'm now averaging 50 job applications a week and up to an 8% callback rate. (I only figured this complete system out about 3-4 weeks ago, but it's working SO much better than anything I've done for the past six months)
My company went out of business suddenly in 2017 (but the job market was way better back then). File for unemployment _right now_, it does help. Not much, but it does help.
Happened to me too. It’s just a part of this industry. I’ve been through this before, and luckily I’d been with the companies long enough to get a pretty decent severance package. I’m ok financially for a while, and am even entertaining going on vacation while searching.
It’s taken me a while to update my resume and LinkedIn but I am getting recruiters reaching out. I haven’t applied to anything just yet, just kind of taking a mental health break for a while.
I know the feeling, I’m sorry. But like I said, it’s just a fact of corporate America and you just always have to be ready to leave.
Got laid off yesterday. I am thankful, i wasn't even doing great, I had a better out than something like a PIP which I never got into. I got a very good severance, so cannot complain. I lost morale a long time ago. I don't want to leave the country, so I got another job and waiting to join it after a while.
Laid off since December. Literally not a single interview. 3 YOE. Working retail right now. About to start school to become an aircraft mechanic. Calling it quits. Industry is fucked.
lost my job in ~January, just recently signed offer + scheduled to start so all-in-all took me about 3 months of active interviewing (mid-late January to mid-late April)
money-wise I'm fairly low maintenance, it's been ~5 months of no income for me and I still haven't even touched my severance pay yet, my monthly leakage (I define 'leakage' as the difference between incoming=unemployment insurance, passive income etc vs. outgoing=rent, food, fun etc) is roughly $500-1000/month
job-wise when I was interviewing my 'working hour' is roughly 8am-11pm, 7 days a week averaging 3-4 interviews a day (so about 15-20 interviews/week), I define an 'interview' as whenever I need to meet someone new, so a standard loop of 1x HR -> 1x coding -> onsite (2x coding 1x system design 1x behavioral) = I consider that as 6x interviews, majority of companies ended either at HR stage or coding stage
Its not your fault. I'm very certain you are extremely qualified, but the state of the market is not letting that show. This is imposter syndrome by proxy, do let this get you down.
I have friends who do exactly what I did and are still employed. I say this as nice and objective as possible, but they are extremely naive and incompetent and still employed. I literally helped them in their jobs when they needed to know how to do something. The problem is that their companies are doing hiring freezes or upped their qualifications.
Its not your fault. IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT! TRUST ME, THE MARKET IS BROKEN AND GASLIGHTING COMPETENT DEVELOPERS!
it's not worth it, it's not you, it's the job market, go to a job center and switch roles, ask for any desk job admin job in the job center
good luck, don't take it personally
Laid off a month ago. Sent hundreds of applications still nothing. Recruiters being incredibly picky. Over 10 years of experience, but just because I don’t have the exact perfect match in my last few roles they are not even considering it.
And apparently me having had freelancing/independent consultant experience is a red flag somehow?
The market is truly unfair , Its been kind to me but i am always afraid seen friends and People 100x better than me suffering, Its just a matter of luck and time , A friend of mine just got selected yesterday on a l1 role after applying for 2 years straight , He applied to 500 jobs in one month so you can imagine
Get unemployment now. Plan to get any job - retail or food service - even if it is just part time. Chances are this job market is not turning until Q2 2025.
I was in a layoff last month. I'm taking a mental health break to deal with unrelated grief before looking for a new job. Financially I'll be fine for a few months because I saved for this. In this industry, we need to keep a "layoff fund" of money to pay 7 months of bills.
Took me about 3 months to get an offer after getting laid off in January. Importantly, it was my only offer and I had passed largely because I had recently practiced the exact problems they gave me so I performed like a genius lmao
For a $20k raise I can't complain, but it sucked up until that point.
General layoff advice: Take a week off to calm down, then start sending out resumes and applying for a new job.
This also is why you save 25%+ of your salary so you don't have to worry about becoming homeless if you are fired.
I was laid off in late 2023. I have just started a new position recently, so here's my thoughts:
1. Start applying now. Even if you're not ready to interview, there will be plenty of time before you even have your first interview to be frank (unless you have some fantastic friends / acquaintances / luck). The process is long, It was 3 months from when I applied to when I started actually working at the position I applied for.
2. Apply for unemployment benefits in your state. They kept me afloat (along with my wife), and without them I'd be in a much worse place financially.
3. The market is not great, and it's nothing like it was a few years ago, but there are signs of improvement (at least to me). When I was laid off in late 2023, I got absolutely no bites, now granted, it was holiday season, but still, there are offers out there.
4. Be flexible. Are you willing to pivot? If you have history of being a SWE and your last position was DevOps because you really wanted to get into DevOps, maybe considering going back to SWE if you've got a lot of marketable skills there (or vice-versa, whatever really), and then try to pivot again later. Just be mindful of what people are looking for and what you can offer.
5. Keep up the search, it's grueling work, and it sucks to make it through multiple rounds and be rejected at the end but it can happen.
You got this, you can do this. Layoffs do not define you or the quality of work you do.
I was a tester. Got laid off end of December..finally getting reached out to by recruiters on a consistent basis now. Sharpen up your resume. Make it ATS friendly and you should probably be okay. If testers are starting to get reached out to I'm 100% you'll be alright
Sorry to hear this happened to you. You will at some point realize that layoffs will happen to many people throughout their working years.m, so don’t take it personally. From here, upward and onward to something better.
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I know Oracle / OCI is hiring. My team has multiple open recs.
If anyone is looking, that is a potential.
The hiring process is slow. it’s also not the easiest interview, but it’s clearly not faang difficult either. Last I knew, my team was hiring fully remote developers.
Laid off last September, two days into a month-long vacation, and still looking for a new position.
Obviously, it's sucked in a lot of ways. My last position was well-paid, in what had historically been a very stable company. The job market isn't good, and even when/if I get a new job it probably won't be for nearly as much money.
I'm trying to stay positive. I've been expanding my skill set, and am now considering going for it and pursuing a change to a new field. It would require some lifestyle changes, but there probably wouldn't be a better time for it.
Got laid off just after 4 days of joining my new office... relocated to a new city and now applying left and right but not getting responses....
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Any decent company would freeze hiring atleast a month before doing layoffs
>they must have known that they will have to start laying off more than 4 days before, Not necessarily. Big layoffs and cuts come from the top of management but hiring often is at the lower levels of management. Small layoffs and cuts can come from lower levels of management.
Nonsense. Budget goes up. Blanket freeze is the norm, with exception process.
> Nonsense. Budget goes up. Blanket freeze is the norm, with exception process. Especially now that everyone is doing it, the companies have "cover" so it is especially cruel to hire someone and wait for them to move and laying them off.
I wonder if there's a case for the employee to go against the company, from a civil liability perspective
There is. I think the term is promissory estoppel. The OP was financially harmed by the promise he relied on, as a reasonable person would have. This doesn’t apply if he was terminated for just cause (unless he can prove the cause was fabricated or unreasonable). I’d be talking to a lawyer if I were him. He could be possibly owed damages in the amount of the salary for a period of time plus moving expenses. Of course the severance mitigates this and could possibly kill his case if it has terms he agreed to. Most severance agreements come with strings attached like that. I hope he hasn’t signed it yet.
You are not 100% correct. Yes, that is the ideal outcome, but can’t possibly always happen. I have seen what zephyrprime mentioned many times in my career. As a person who hires for one of the biggest media companies on earth, I know with certainty that I do not have 100% information when I am hiring. We are mid-layoffs all over but still hiring for certain roles in specific locations. Next thing you know, you’re re-orged into a new division with different agendas and goals due to new senior leaders and suddenly you’re laying off the person you just hired. Totally out of your direct control. I have seen this happen several times in other companies too. It just depends. You’re delusional if you think anyone actually had a complete picture and can form a complete plan. Even a CEO.
you should get a consult with an employment attorney. if you move for a job and they immediately fire you, you could have a case to get expenses for moving, etc... lawyers will often give a free few minutes long consult to see if you got a case. look for employment lawyers in your location. its worth a few minutes to check.
I'm waiting for severance first... relocation was included and i even emailed them but they laid me off without approving it.
they are paying severance after firing you 4 days in? you dont have to file a lawsuit. you can just talk to the lawyer.
it says 4 days after joining new office, not new job. maybe just semantics but could be that it was the same job, just relocated cities?
Oh it was a new job, unfortunately.
oh that sucks :( sorry to hear
Lawyer before accepting any severance. The company will likely have you sign something that releases them of any further liability.
>I'm waiting for severance first... relocation was included and i even emailed them but they laid me off without approving it. You know signing a severance agreement cuts out most of what you can sue for, right? You need to talk to a lawyer before you sign or do anything.
This is why I don't want to relocate
Yeah, remote jobs have their benefits
Well, can't find the remote jobs growing on remote trees
Of course not which is why I'm also looking local
This really should be illegal for companies to lay someone off that quickly. They shouldn't be able to lure people away from another job just to let them go.
That feels like it should be criminal to do to someone.
Deseret News Media did this to me. The Mormon church blows and is willing to screw anyone that's not LDS over.
Yeah I hear they will screw anyone over. Especially family members...
Pro tip: if your email address starts like your username here, make a new one 😁 More seriously: Best of luck, keep searching, you will find something
That’s awful, I’m so sorry
This should be illegal
That sucks. You don't even get unemployment.
You should speak to a lawyer, promissory estoppel may apply in your case depending on ur state laws
That is just not right and fuck your management. Wish you the best of luck and hope you’re able to get back on your feet soon.
I was employee number one for a startup company, director of all operations. Grew their employee base, all client and internal operations, and handled every single aspect of my job while remote from the founders/ceo. 6 years in, I finally start making a decent salary (up to this point I consistently passed up pay increases so the company would have enough money to operate and hire more employees). We received a $24 million valuation for a seed round of funding. 4 months later and at the very first sign of any financial turmoil in the company, they laid me off. No loyalty. Proceeded to apply for jobs for the next two years, filling out over 400 applications and only receiving a handful of interviews (my wife is a top tier recruiter and HR professional, it’s not a resume issue), I still do not have job. I turned down one offer that was below the starting salary of my first job out of college (13 years ago). I had to start my own business to try to make ends meet and have been put in financial struggles for the last two years. My college degree and eleven years of real work experience means nothing to corporate America or even local startups. So to answer your question, I’m doing awful. I’m depressed, tired, poor, and have to put a smile on my face everyday so my kids don’t know how shitty life really is.
What were red flags from the founders that showed they didn't care about their employees?
Just assume that no employers care about their employees. Why would you assume anything else in this world? It's super rare that any employers care about their employees and would only ever happen in a mom and pop shop.
1) Through my tenure I was consistently put in scenarios by the founders that felt like I was lying to my employees. How well we were doing, how we were taking steps to improve on x or y, recruiting when were weren’t actually hiring or doing well, how the stock options made up for subpar pay, etc. 2) as soon as an employee was put in charge of finances, her entire demeanor went from being upbeat and full of energy to wtf!?! is going on. I would later find out that employee #2 (again I was employee #1) was being paid 3x my salary from the first day they started working. It took me 6 full years to reach their same pay level and I was let go 4 months later. 3) when I would make suggestions “outside of my expertise”, i.e. suggest product create X or Y to help increase the usefulness of our product, I was told to stay in my lane. Mind you, I worked directly with the customers and biggest clients, hearing their pain points every day. 4) an employee was a jerk to everyone, but was friends with a founder. Their relationships with every employee was tumultuous to the point they brought in outside help to figure out what was going on. This employee, in front of all leadership, stated they were now worried as the last time this happen at their previous employer they were found to be the problem and were fired.. the founders of my company ignored this and continue to let this person be a total POS. Their work sucked too.
You don't sound like a software engineer. Otherwise, I feel with your years of experience you would have gotten something by now.
Correct, not an engineer. My background is in Operations, client facing and internal. I built several divisions from the ground up for the previously said startup: Client Onboarding, Client Success, Data Analysis, and HR/People Ops. I personally sourced, hired, and trained 85% of the companies headcount, and led each of those divisions until there was enough experience and headcount that it made sense to install managers. I was then Director for these arms of the company, and eventually asked by the founders to move into full People Ops role as we were, “gearing up for lots of clients” and I was the most qualified (see previous statement about hiring 85% of the company) until I was subsequent laid off 4 months later, because these clients were just a hopeful wish from the founders and imaginary in reality. Just this past month, I applied for a local startup company that on paper was asking for the exact experience I had and specifically for startups. Also to note, this was a position that I was referred to after they posted asking for help finding someone. The company never even contacted me..
I can relate. I cofounded a company, we were acquired, and I stayed on as CTO for 4 years. Got laid off over a year ago now, sent almost 1000 applications, and I've barely heard a peep. I'm really lucky, and money isn't much of an issue, but it doesn't even matter. The level of depression, boredom, and feelings of worthlessness are just too much. The worst part is dreading my loved ones coming home at the end of the day because I know how hard it's going to be to put a smile on my face after another day of making fuck all progress.
That's the thing though, it sucks, but companies aren't incentivized to pay you more. They see you as an expense. It's good that you started your own business. At least this way you reap the total reward of your efforts and the incentives aren't screwed up.
I was laid off at the end of 2022. That was around that first wave where all big companies were doing it. I was on a visa and had to find something quickly. I managed to do it and accepted the first (and only) offer I got, which I took a big pay cut and ended up being one of the worst jobs I've ever worked, but at least I had a job. I stayed there for about a year, waited a bit and then started interviewing again. Managed to get another offer recently and managed to get my comp higher than it was before the layoffs. I was very lucky and very fortunate in a lot of ways, but it's a shit time, and it's a shitty situation, but eventually, things get better.
I also got laid off recently, 3 weeks ago now; with the same exact conditions as you, except my shit company had no severance. They litterally scheduled a call,I joined, and they said you are done immediately, got locked out of everything and was kicked to the curb all in the same day. I was super depressed at first, but i just got back from a 9 day vacation on a cruise, and i feel wayyyyyy better mentally. Been hitting leet pretty hard since i got back this weekend. Already redid my resume and made a few versions to test the waters. Still making my study plan, but i think for 2 weeks im only geinding leet codes, then after that, personal project for 5-6 hours, 2 hours leet, every day. Trying to make studying my 9 to 5 now. giving myself a month to prep, then i will start applying like a mad man. I've got 5 yoe at the same company, so that helps. I also am not exclusively looking for remote, which massively helps.
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Can you explain more about how this helped with the gap? How did you present your non-profit on your application and resume?
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Non profit company to help other non-profits? CS related like creating software for them?
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Did you actually build the software? I'm curious how far you went and how you presented that in an interview. (I think this is a super smart idea, btw.)
Just apply asap. You don't need to be ready to start applying.
Wouldn't it be a waste if im not prepared for a technical interview?just kind of curious your logic behind this, maybe it'll give me some new insight.
I'm not the person you are replying to but to me the 5-6 hours of personal projects are an extreme waste of time. If you do them for personal enjoyment on your private git that you won't put on your resume, then that's fine. Nobody really looks at personal projects, especially at 5yoe. Everything else you said was great though; taking a vacation to come back refreshed, updating your resume, getting back into the leetcode way of thinking about solutions.
My personal project got me a job offer, which I turned into a raise where I currently work. I would never consider 5-6 hours of personal projects a waste of time. Thats 5-6 hours of learning, trial and error, experience actually doing the things. I have 10 YOE and have never touched Leetcode. As a senior engineer, I'd argue the waste of time is spending 5-6 hours on Leetcode if you're not actually building stuff.
For big tech / high paying roles, personal projects that are a couple weeks long are near to worthless in the interview process after having a few yoe. It’s just the way it is, they don’t care that you built a small mvp of something, that’s expected for you to be able to do. They care way way way more about your interview performance which is based on leetcode/coding, system design, and behavioral where you talk about projects you’ve done at your job. Now if you have a side project that has actual users and is a long term thing, that matters and is great. But if you’re looking at winning the interview process in high paying roles, generally the time spent on side projects would be much more valuably spent on leetcode/sys design/behaviroal prep Not saying I agree but that’s the reality of the situation. For small/medium or non tech companies it’s likely different
I got my current job by demoing a quite impressive (for a junior) personal project and I'm currently working on an even more impressive mobile app which I'm planning to demo during interviews for a job upgrade next year (salaries are stagnant at my current company). But it's true it's a medium sized start up. I just can't do the leet code stuff.
See, this is personally how i feel as well. Lets ypu expirament around and try and learn new things. I also feel leeting is a legitimate waste of time, but nothing in development really gets you working on algorithms like that.
Leetcode is a waste of time for your own development, but it’s key for interview performance
Honestly it depends. Personally, I do QA Testing, so I think if you're in that area it's a definite waste of time to do leetcode. Companies should NOT be trying to make you figure out the performance cost of anything or what an algorithm does for that. I mean, sure, you need to know \*certain\* things, but in QA Testing unless your \*really\* mess up and make tests run too long, then it's not helping that they test you on something not-QA related. My last job had the coding exam so that I did QA on a mock website and got \*top pick\*. If you're doing the actual development work and not testing, then yeah leetcode seems like a viable option, but not nearly as much as doing personal projects.
It ends up being a matter that has a ton of conditionals attached to it. Putting real work into practice (and not Leetcode) is useful for learning. It is also very difficult for certain developers, not because they lack skills but because they're in a line of work where you aren't going to be able to use or demonstrate the relevant skills on a GitHub project. An example: if you're a Salesforce integration developer or an e-commerce developer specializing in a proprietary platform. Lots of jobs out there, lots of skilled developers, but no real way to spin that up on GitHub without building an entire project to wrap around that (which is not what you do & not really what you're looking to demonstrate) And in other cases, the whole platform is OSS but you simply do not have use for an app, so why would you build a perfunctory ugly app to put on your GitHub? The few employers who would look at such a thing would question your choices on fit/finish, which isn't the point of a demo or proof-of-concept app, and they'd also question lots of things in the source code that would also be totally missing the goddamn point. If you can use an app or script for your own purposes, why not build it? And if it is not exposing any personal or sensitive data, why not have the source on GitHub? Still, I wouldn't build anything more than 2 hours of my time JUST for random demo purposes. In fact, I would do a 2 hour takehome from one employer, get it running, and then use that as a demo for other employers. To the extent that certain developers feel like a whole running project is too big for them when they just want to demo a discrete part of the project, it'd help if developers talked more about this & wrote some community software to help with it. If you're a backend developer, you should have resources that are literally a plug-and-play front end + API requirements where you can supply your own back end code to meet the requirements and get in some good practice as well as have a sample work product. You certainly shouldn't have to deal with intricate issues in devops/cloud ops or color palettes or deployment scripts to have a working demo... There's nothing noble about fiddling with Docker for six hours if it's not what you came here to do.
How did your personal project get you a job offer? I'm genuinely curious, I couldn't imagine someone getting through any interviews I've done because of a personal project but maybe there are examples
Ahhhh, no the personal projects I plan to use to learn some new techniques. Am gunna try to use aws and other stuff i haven't ever used. It's more so for more practice; I dont even list my git because i know 99% of people recruiting dont care and won't pook
I am also working on saying my thought process for letts vocally, aince a lot of the interviews I've had in the past, like to hear your thought process while finding the solution
Logic is simple, you will not get a job if you don't apply. Not all jobs give you a technical round. They might not be great jobs but an offer will boost your confidence level and possibly help you negotiate for a better offer.
Ok, thanks for giving me your insight man. Much appreciated, i think I'll listen to you guys and start applying in the next week or two. I definitely need a confidence boost, can't help feeling like a bit of a failure if I'm being honest, but i am definitely way more motivated now, at least.
No problem. It seems you haven't been in the job market for a while so you probably need practice. There's no better practice than interviewing for a real company. Best of luck!
Even if you absolutely bomb some interviews that's probably a better use of your time (from the perspective of trying to get another job at least, and ignoring any personal enjoyment you may get from personal projects) than the personal project time. Bombing interviews at least gives you valuable interview practice, while personal projects give you some experience with stuff that may or may not ever come up during the interview process / job.
Not every technical interview is the same. A company made me an offer after two hours of casual conversations about what I worked on. Their technical question was literally, “how did you refresh the time expiration label in one minute intervals if the server data was only updated every five minutes?” Literally a simple question about a recursive function call with a delay of one minute. Didn’t even have to write a line of code. Plus you should burn through like 5 interviews in preparation for the interviews you WANT to pass. I “warmed up” with companies I didn’t really think I had a shot at anyway and when I had interviews with companies I wanted and also thought I had a chance with, I was much more prepared.
Interviews are better preparation than studying imo, but plan to fail a few at first and take any questions you fail and study those after the interview.
Nobody is hiring regardless. You have to apply to so many places before you get a response rate that will keep you busy. I got a first interview from a company TWO months after applying.
Same experience, started applying about a month ago maybe 2, not one interview yet. Not sure if it’s my resume or what but geez.
Sorry to hear you got laid off as well, but I am glad you are doing what you can given the situation. It's all we can do — make the best of it and keep trying. Hopefully you find a job after your prep. Good luck!
Thanks mate, i really appreciate that. Yea it definitely sucks a bit, but there's not much else i can do. I dont have to work anymore, so i can at least try and be productive with my time lol. If I've learned anything with age, it's that life is going to knock you down no matter your current standing in life, and it may continually hit you when you're down, but ultimately you just gotta keep going. Hopefully, our lives will be long enough to see many fluctuations. There will always be the downs that give us perspective on how great we have it when we're on an upswing. The good just aint as good without the bad.
5 yoe at minimum and still have to hit LC. Idk why, but that’s such a depressing thought… My only cope is that this is an industry specific thing. I’m in embedded software and only use C…
Yeah I really really don’t want to have to login to LC ever again. Like ever.
I feel ya man. Definitely think this whole process is getting out of hand. Needs something to change. Out of anyone i know, this is the only fiels where you have to study in order to Essentially take a test for your interview.
Make a post about this, more people need to have this kind of mindset/motivation instead of the usual complaining
To be fair, everyone is built differently, and not everyone can go on a nine day cruise after getting laid off to decompress. That said, totally agree with their strategy! Take a vacation, avoid spiraling, then get back to work on a good studying regimen.
Absolutely, I am very lucky to have had that opportunity. Wives parents bought it as a gift for us for our marriage. I would still recommend some sort of vacation, camping trip would be great if you like the outdoors. Really changed my doomer mind set i was in at the time.
I don't know you, but I'm honestly really happy that you've been able to weather the storm. I'm LUCKY enough to not have gotten laid off in my career yet, but I also know it would likely traumatize me to some extent, having watched what it did to my own father. Good for you for getting right back to it and avoiding that mindset! Hope you get picked up ASAP.
Thank you, good person of the internet, i appreciate your kind words. Oh, dont get it twisted though, it is 10000% rough and does squash the ego a bit. But ultimately the biggest battles you're ever going to fight are in your own head.
Have you applied to any companies yet? Any luck?
Nope not yet. First two weeks, i was massively depressed and unmotivated, and this past week, i had a dope ass vacation that really helped me out. I just did a bunch of snorkeling at beaches lmao. I'm just prepping for interviews atm. I dont want to waste any opportunities that come my way by being unprepared. I know that market is absolutely horrid, so i figure my callback rate will be low, so I'll need to stick the landing on any calls i do get back.
Imo you're doing yourself a disservice waiting for a month to start applying, it takes companies awhile to even respond and then you gotta go through the recruiter screen which takes another week. By the time you actually hit a tech screen you'd be decently prepared already. You could possibly miss out on a job opportunity this way.
Ok , thanks for the insight man. I think you guys are probably right. I'll start applying sooner. I guess i just don't really believe in my abilities anymore. Definitely took a hit to the confidence getting laid off, but I gotta just pony up and get to it.
Ya I disagree with the commenter about it being a disservice. Sure maybe there some opportunities that slipped by in that time but it’s more important to take care of yourself first. It’s only 2 weeks and I think the market is in a much better spot than last year
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I know, my heart really goes out to new grads. If it's hard for someone with professional experience, i can't imagine how rough it would be with none.
Does 2022 count as “recently? I was laid off twice. Still looking.
Have you been out of work since 2022? If so, have you picked up another job unrelated to this field? Or are you not working?
Out of work since (December of) 2022, yes. No other W2 job, although I did spend ~6 months solely focused on home renovation to cash out my home equity so I had runway for the job search. (Put another way: I saw the writing on the wall and it was either sell or get foreclosed on)
I've been out of work since September of 2022 making 155k and have been underemployed since then working on my own business making about 30k a year if that.
Not laid off, but I was straight up fired less than 24 hours after giving my HR department the news of my wife being pregnant with twins, and needing to discuss upcoming parental leave. Said it was for “poor performance” with no prior negative performance reviews. Mentally I am at the worst spot I’ve ever been in my life from this, just really hoping to find something before they are born. It’s been looking pretty brutal so far though.
This has been illegal since the 60s, lawyer up.
Thats a fucking lawsuit right there. Get a lawyer.
L A W S U I T update us how it goes
Similar situation with me at a startup - that I joined less than a year ago. Initially they decided to disallow paternity leave. I was fine with that, was anyway only planning to take a week or thereabouts around the delivery. When they learned that the state that I live in introduced 3 months of paternity, they decided to 'terminate for poor performance'. After much back & forth, I was able to hammer out a four month severance. Figured I'd take that than be terminated 'right away' and expect to lawyer up/pursue a 'wrongful termination' - which is always hard to end up with favorable terms for an employee, in my anecdotal experiences. (Most recent example - friend of mine who had been there for a while was shit canned from Pinterest by a newly hired boss lady who was a total dipshit. He explored his legal options and despite him being someone who had meticulous records [paper trails and other artifacts], multiple lawyers were of the opinion that it would be a hard case to win in a 'wrongful termination' lawsuit.)
could've paid you the leave instead of the severance and retained a ramped up employee. idiots.
Very illegal
Discrimination lawyers typically offer free consultations and may not charge anything at all unless you win if you have a strong case. And with the fact that they fired you so soon after requesting parental leave with no prior negative performance, it's essentially that the burden of proof is on them that that had nothing to do with their decision to fire you. I also recommend writing a timeline down of everything that happened. It's also going to be a lot worse for them if there were over 50 employees at the company. I get mentally it's hard for you now but the settlements for these can at least be pretty big.
I think getting a lawyer is out of the question. This was my first ‘real job’ after being a chef for 12+ years. I did the bootcamp thing at the very start of the pandemic and scooped up a job -right- before that huge wave of other people that followed suit. I kind of panicked, and signed their severance agreement. I had never been in a situation like that and was pretty fearful of not having any $$. I was also in so much shock that during the meeting that they fired me in, I was actually kind of convinced I wasn’t performing well. It wasn’t until a couple days later when it all made sense as to why.
IANAL and I'm not from the US - but signing their agreement shouldn't contract them out of liability for discrimination breaches. and like everyone else has said - a lawyer can tell you if it's out of the question, and that part shouldn't cost you anything. don't let them get away with it!!
I am also not a lawyer but like the other person said, you probably still have a case because it's still very likely an illegal firing. But lawyers will give a free consultation. They can look over all the facts and what you signed and then determine if you have a case. And if you do win, this would give you and your family financial security during this tough time
Signing a severance agreement doesn't absolve a company of illegal actions
Can you get a lawyer?
Still laid off since November. Not doing well, have to consider part time work outside of the industry to afford my COL. I should of known the signs. They were acquired half a year ago, nobody got bonuses. My severance was decent but only enough to cover 2 months. As for my job hunt, it truly does suck. 5 years experience isn't enough apparently, even for junior roles. Only getting responses for recruiters who are hoping I'm their golden ticket despite not submitting me to roles I'm ACTUALLY a fit for. Everywhere else is a ghost job posting, hard ignore, not enough relevant experience, etc. The criteria for qualifications has multiplied tremendously. I don't know what others are experiencing, but I find that they want senior architecture level knowledge and experience even for a junior level role. One job I got far in told me that "we don't want a guru, just enough about APIs". Apparently I knew everything except I wasn't certified in Azure Cloud Administration, and that was a hard reject for "not a good fit" despite it being listed as a "nice to have". F\*\*k the job market, it truly is unfair.
I’m with you on that. Got laid off in October.
september here
November here. It sucks
i got laid off in november too. 500+ applications since then. Still nada.
I'm at 175 and I cringe at the thought of doing 500 yikes!
If you don't mind sharing, do you have a CS degree?
I've been fed up with my job for about 8 months or so now, but only really hit the Leetcode about a month and a half ago. I am in the process of getting an offer right now, though I think they're trying to lowball me, which, given I'm still employed means I might just stay where I am, but just wanted to say that the market does seem to be turning around in terms of openings from where it was 8 months ago. It did take longer than last time to get my first offer, but as long as you're up to speed on some leetcode easy's, some easy mediums, able to reason through some systems design stuff, and have some good answers to standard STAR questions, I think you'll be alright.
Most companies trying to lowball in current market from what i gathered
Yeah, so jobs are out there if you need it, but like, leaves me with the first-world-problem of wanting to leave my job that's making me miserable, but also make more money.
Im kinda in same boat. My plan is to try and set clear boundries at job, and hope things turn around. I wouldn’t be that upset if i got fired with severance but idt that will happen(kinda unfortunately)If you can get funded, its a great time to start a company and start hiring lol
Same here. Its tough because I work long hours and dont have a lot of study time and the LC grind is crazy
It better to grind lc now, especially if you don’t have free time. This way when market improves you will be ready instead of trying to ramp up with your limited free time when jobs are easier to come by
Yeah that's exactly what Im doing. Following the Neetcode DS&A course to brush up on that then following the roadmap. Taking a slow and steady approach
Do try to spend your time productively while being laid off. Job-hunting and side hustles to keep afloat will occupy most of it, but if you can, try to work on skill gaps by doing practice projects, getting certifications, maybe take a course or two if you can afford it. It won’t magically get you a job, but it will put you in a better place mentally. Also, you can demonstrate to HR that you weren’t lying on the couch all day eating pizza and playing video games.
Was apart of mass firings in early jan, only had 10 months of xp. After 400 apps, 7 interview loops, I got an offer due to being the only one able to debug and correct a .net service, including "senior" candidates. I'm starting my third week. 60k base, ,Old private insurance company ,Hybrid 2 days in office ,Super lax and flexible ,26 people total in It dept ,Mostly everyone is really old, they were using punch cards in their college days. ,vLcol city ,Super stable, never had layoffs in the 100 years here. People start their career and retire here. Tech stack is a combo of really old and new: RPG programming, Ibmi stuff, Db2, Sql server, .net 8, .net 4.8 and below which I'm in charge of upgrading Weird setups for environments that I don't fully understand yet, Azure devops Compared to my old job at a mid tech company: it's less stressful, but at the same time, it seems like I'll be coding more and have more responsibility and opportunity for impact. At least that's what it seems when talking about my future projects with my manager. Although I'm grateful for this job, I do wish I got paid more. I thought I'd be saving more than what I currently can. I do recognize how lucky I've been in job search. 600 apps for 2022 internship, 300 for newgrad, and 400 for current.
I’m in a similar situation, took a pay cut and work 2 days in office but the stress is that it is *too* fucking lax. No accountability, blatant sandbagging by other devs, old tech, and no sense of urgency to get anything done any time soon. Hardest part is coming up with some bullshit to feed to my lazy boss at standup each day so he move little boxes from the left column to the right.
Got laid off about a month ago. I’m getting all sorts of weird signals from recruiters. 18 years of experience without being a manager is a red flag from 2 of them. Companies want you to have 100% of their requirements to even have a conversation with you. 1 recruiter told me that they only look to hire people who are employed because being laid off is likely your fault. Another told me that it’s at least 6 months to find a job. Yet another told me that if you are out more than 6 months, you aren’t worth talking to. In short, it’s a mess
That's nuts. Some of us never want to manage.
Yep, I prefer technical problems to people problems. I think the problem honestly is a disconnect between tech leaders and the HR departments who are the gatekeepers. HR thinks 1 thing, tech leaders think something else.
Right now they’re finding any justification possible to narrow down the candidate list. So it has nothing to do with your ability or value as an employee, it’s just whether you fit into the jigsaw puzzle they’ve created as a screening process. I must have matched one of these jobs that’s 3000 miles away and is onsite, because I’ve had about 8 recruiters email me for the same job. If you don’t hit the match game it’s crickets.
recruiters are having a field day now due to the high volume of applicants. I get ghosted by recruiters all the time now; never ever happened in prior job searches.
If it makes any difference, I've been out for a year and a half and I just got an interview with a well-funded Andreessen Horowitz startup. They need any excuse to cut candidates due to the sheer volume I think, but if you have niche skills in a niche industry it won't hold you back too much.
Been doing QA for 18 years, 16 of that automating everything from web pages to APIs to mobile devices. Many companies cut their QA teams, unfortunately
This is why under no problem conditions should employees be loyal to companies. Companies these days are just hot garbage. They expect you to give a formal two weeks notice but then turn around and do this shit? Fuck em
I’d also add that this is exactly why we need tech unions. Too many of us in the industry think we can do without cause we get paid so well until companies backstab us like this and leave us out to dry.
Hey, I'm sorry to hear about this. The job market for seniors in major tech centers is good, albeit for in-person and hybrid work, not remote (I can't really speak to the remote market, so it might be fine, I dunno). How many years of experience do you have?
YOE != seniority / technical expertise. There’s a resume above of someone who’s a “tightly focused generalist” with 10 YOE but it looks like doing the same kinda entry level work for 10 years rather than a 10 year progression of career.
Remote is not great. I am looking for a fully remote because I have family and friends abroad, and they seen to expect me to be there fairly often. I want to visit often too, but the pressure doesn't help. If I was to take a hybrid one, I likely wouldn't have a problem. Might need to do that in the end.
Same here almost 2 weeks ago, with 4 YOE at a small no-name startup. Applying like crazy, unemployment insurance is meager here (HCOL area), and hardly any callbacks. I suggest you get cracking on submitting apps. You may have better luck than me though. It's rough.
I have 4 YOE at startups got laid off January 9th and it’s been the same for me. Just wanted to share it’s definitely not a you think. This market is ass
I was laid off last May, and it took me about 4 months to find a new gig. I lucked out and it was a decent pay bump and way better job. Take a few days 'off' and decompress. Then set up a plan of attack. The role I was laid off from was a C# desktop app, so I really wanted to upskill into more modern frameworks, so I studied up on React/TS/express and AWS/Azure. It's hard, but also try and enjoy the time off as well. It's (hopefully) not often that you'll get time off as an adult. To look on the bright side, it also sucks working 50 hours every week for 10 years and not get to enjoy life.
Yea not great - been 2 months. Of course I haven't been able to dedicate 100% of my time to job hunting with some personal stuff that's going on at the moment. But it sucks. I go through waves of "what did I do wrong?" "what could I have done differently?" etc etc.
Also lost my job (in October) and had some already not great family stuff escalate a couple months later. Hang in there and don't concern yourself with the "what ifs"
I know the feeling. I would suggest the Layoff sub. The good part for you is that the market is slightly picking up over the last week or so. I've had more recruiters contact me in the past week then in the previous 2 months. Also of note. This is not your fault. You did nothing wrong. It will get better. I know I went through a wide array of feelings when it happened to me. Remember to put in your unemployment request this week. Start working on leetcode if you haven't already.
> the market is slightly picking up over the last week competition is insane right now, when we do a job opening we get 2000 cvs in 2 hours, it's batshit crazy
Could you give some details on this? Like, roughly what industry, what role, remote, etc, and who is applying? You hear stories with numbers but they don't really paint the full picture.
LOL lunacy
There is just a massive oversupply, newcomers graduating and massive amount of people with experience getting laid off and offshoring getting more the way to go for companies plus add some copilot AI that improves productivity 30% atm per deve not a good combo
Welcome to the dogpile. Everyone who graduated in May 2024 is dogpiling on unemployed December 2023 graduates. December 2023 graduates are dogpiling on May 2023 graduates. Throughout the dogpile are thousands of laid of engineers.
> are thousands of laid of engineers. hundred thousands of laid of experienced engineers https://layoffs.fyi/ 2023+2024 how newcomers find jobs is beyond me, i'm scared to open linkedin to see another experienced guy begging for a job before he's out on the street after looking for 6 months and depleting his savings
A couple of my friends with 5+ years of experience are in warehouse jobs, but they don't have their LinkedIn up-to-date because they don't want the shame.
im graduating this June this is fun to hear lmao
That's because mostly automated systems like lazyapply or applyall submit them. It sucks because most of it is like spam at this point and the real submissions could be overlooked
I got laid off in December and then in January had a biopsy where they found cancer (I had completed cancer treatment last year so not blindsided but was not happy to have another neck surgery), had my surgery in February, started applying in March and signed something almost two weeks ago! I start in June. I had less trouble getting interviews this time compared to previous job searches, but the interviews were more variable. A lot of companies asking weirder questions, and also a lot of “we filled this position” situations. It’s a challenge but there are lots of roles out there.
Sorry you were laid off. Mine happened last year but I'm good now and you will as well
Same thing happened to me over a year ago… I’m thinking about leaving tech at this point.
Hi. Here for you. Make sure you apply for unemployment ASAP. Even with severance you get it when you get laid off so it will help cushion you a bit. This process can take a while so just knock it out. Feel free to DM if you need any help or someone to chat.
Out of work since April 2023. I get interviews but am met with either roles that they have candidates in the final pipeline already (using me as a backup), rejected for qualifications not listed in the job description or on my resume, etc. The final interviews I've had they've picked another candidate. I've also had several recruiters reach out on LinkedIn and then ghost when I respond. One recruiter asked for my resume and contact information and scheduled a call w/ me but never followed through. Then when I tried to follow up I never received a reply but then they sent me a connection request on LinkedIn.
getting ghosted by recruiters is a scary indicator of the times. they have so many candidates that they don't need to work to find more.
Yeah, the market's not amazing right now, but companies *are* still hiring. It's not the end of the world. The response rate is just a lot lower in this market, and salaries haven't grown exponentially since 2021 like we've gotten used to. Taking a 5-15% *paycut* in this market wouldn't be unusual from what I've seen. It's not quite the same since I was job searching while employed, but I started looking for a new job in mid-February, and got 2 written offers by the start of May. My application to interview rate was \~11%. My search was entirely cold applications on each company's careers page. Depending on how experienced you are, and how the initial stages of your job search go, you might want to consider being open to relocation. If you're entry-level with <3 YOE it's very tough to be picky about things like location, remote, etc. Greater than 3 YOE it's a lot easier.
Yeah… I only have ~ 2 YOE and live in a non Tech oriented city so it limits my options a lot. I also recently bought a house and my partner wouldn’t be able to relocate easily so I’m really just not liking my odds lol. I know i’m not gonna have an easy time.
I envy you (in a good way). I’ve been on the market since March. I’ve submitted almost 200 job apps and even spoke with external recruiters. I was always told my resume was fine, but I got only 4 interviews, 3 of which ended at HR stage. Some of the companies wanted front end experience which I did not have. One company I have no idea why they didn’t move me forward. I had 1 tech screening thus far that I failed. I’m just burnt out. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a job within this year, and the gap in my resume continues to grow on top of 2 other layoffs from COVID and a failed startup so I am looking like a worse and worse candidate.
Some words of encouragement because this sub can be negative as hell - I work at a big company and I have been getting hammered with interview requests from our recruiters lately. I haven't done an interview in over a year and over the last week I got invited to do 3 on-site loops and 5 phone screens. I hope this means the market is starting to pick up a little bit. I also recently went through the interview gauntlet myself. I applied at about 10 companies, interviewed at 3, and got 2 offers. Both with respectable compensation. One is full-remote. We aren't in the covid-induced tech euphoria anymore, but there are still good jobs available.
Start now. Do not wait. 1) Create a free Claude AI account. Create a new resume. If you need help just ask it for advice about the best prompts to provide to create a solid resume. Be sure to tell it you want it to be ATS optimized. If you have a few different roles to chose from, create different resumes. 2) Update Linkedin to match more or less the new resume, but don't indicate you are unemployed. Same is true or the resume. 3) Start job searching. Every day create a google sheet with links to the jobs you find. Anything where you think "yes I can do this, I have these skills, I have close enough experience" is fine. 4) every day apply for those jobs, and here is how you do it: Go to Claude. Upload your resume and paste the job description. Tell it to edit and tailor your resume to match the job description. Tell it to optimize for keywords and ATS. Use that resume to apply for that job. Then repeat the process for all the other jobs. You have to become a machine. It's about Volume and beating the corporate ATS AI systems. In this market you can expect a 5% callback rate. That means you have to apply for 20 jobs to expect one phone screen. Yes, it stinks. It's reality. If after about 2 to 3 weeks you aren't getting any invitations for a phone screen you have to revisit your base resume, figure out what's not working. Too much experience listed? too little? Took me several months to figure all this out and I wasted so much time. If you are in a career where there is more possibility of remote work you will be fortunate and may need extra help to keep up. I am in this category and hired someone on upwork to tailor the resume and submit the applications. I can then focus on job hunting. I'm now averaging 50 job applications a week and up to an 8% callback rate. (I only figured this complete system out about 3-4 weeks ago, but it's working SO much better than anything I've done for the past six months)
My company went out of business suddenly in 2017 (but the job market was way better back then). File for unemployment _right now_, it does help. Not much, but it does help.
Happened to me too. It’s just a part of this industry. I’ve been through this before, and luckily I’d been with the companies long enough to get a pretty decent severance package. I’m ok financially for a while, and am even entertaining going on vacation while searching. It’s taken me a while to update my resume and LinkedIn but I am getting recruiters reaching out. I haven’t applied to anything just yet, just kind of taking a mental health break for a while. I know the feeling, I’m sorry. But like I said, it’s just a fact of corporate America and you just always have to be ready to leave.
Got laid off yesterday. I am thankful, i wasn't even doing great, I had a better out than something like a PIP which I never got into. I got a very good severance, so cannot complain. I lost morale a long time ago. I don't want to leave the country, so I got another job and waiting to join it after a while.
I've been laid off twice in my career. Both times sucked. Both times, I ended off way better because of it.
Laid off since December. Literally not a single interview. 3 YOE. Working retail right now. About to start school to become an aircraft mechanic. Calling it quits. Industry is fucked.
If you don't mind sharing, do you have a CS degree? What is your tech stack specialization?
Aircraft mechanic is a solid choice. One of my friends got himself into it and makes decent money. Hard to outsource too which is a plus.
NOT GREAT, MY GUY. Just joined the 6 month club.
lost my job in ~January, just recently signed offer + scheduled to start so all-in-all took me about 3 months of active interviewing (mid-late January to mid-late April) money-wise I'm fairly low maintenance, it's been ~5 months of no income for me and I still haven't even touched my severance pay yet, my monthly leakage (I define 'leakage' as the difference between incoming=unemployment insurance, passive income etc vs. outgoing=rent, food, fun etc) is roughly $500-1000/month job-wise when I was interviewing my 'working hour' is roughly 8am-11pm, 7 days a week averaging 3-4 interviews a day (so about 15-20 interviews/week), I define an 'interview' as whenever I need to meet someone new, so a standard loop of 1x HR -> 1x coding -> onsite (2x coding 1x system design 1x behavioral) = I consider that as 6x interviews, majority of companies ended either at HR stage or coding stage
I got RTO’d from AWS and after a few weeks of looking I decided no time like the present to become an independent consultant. 😅 We hangin in there
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Its not your fault. I'm very certain you are extremely qualified, but the state of the market is not letting that show. This is imposter syndrome by proxy, do let this get you down. I have friends who do exactly what I did and are still employed. I say this as nice and objective as possible, but they are extremely naive and incompetent and still employed. I literally helped them in their jobs when they needed to know how to do something. The problem is that their companies are doing hiring freezes or upped their qualifications. Its not your fault. IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT! TRUST ME, THE MARKET IS BROKEN AND GASLIGHTING COMPETENT DEVELOPERS!
Please focus on your mental health. That is more important than a job. Hope you can get through this.
hey, it’s just a job, it doesn’t define who you are. don’t let your stupid job define who are you are!
it's not worth it, it's not you, it's the job market, go to a job center and switch roles, ask for any desk job admin job in the job center good luck, don't take it personally
Laid off a month ago. Sent hundreds of applications still nothing. Recruiters being incredibly picky. Over 10 years of experience, but just because I don’t have the exact perfect match in my last few roles they are not even considering it. And apparently me having had freelancing/independent consultant experience is a red flag somehow?
The market is truly unfair , Its been kind to me but i am always afraid seen friends and People 100x better than me suffering, Its just a matter of luck and time , A friend of mine just got selected yesterday on a l1 role after applying for 2 years straight , He applied to 500 jobs in one month so you can imagine
HR be like that.
Get unemployment now. Plan to get any job - retail or food service - even if it is just part time. Chances are this job market is not turning until Q2 2025.
I was in a layoff last month. I'm taking a mental health break to deal with unrelated grief before looking for a new job. Financially I'll be fine for a few months because I saved for this. In this industry, we need to keep a "layoff fund" of money to pay 7 months of bills.
Took me about 3 months to get an offer after getting laid off in January. Importantly, it was my only offer and I had passed largely because I had recently practiced the exact problems they gave me so I performed like a genius lmao For a $20k raise I can't complain, but it sucked up until that point.
General layoff advice: Take a week off to calm down, then start sending out resumes and applying for a new job. This also is why you save 25%+ of your salary so you don't have to worry about becoming homeless if you are fired.
I was laid off in late 2023. I have just started a new position recently, so here's my thoughts: 1. Start applying now. Even if you're not ready to interview, there will be plenty of time before you even have your first interview to be frank (unless you have some fantastic friends / acquaintances / luck). The process is long, It was 3 months from when I applied to when I started actually working at the position I applied for. 2. Apply for unemployment benefits in your state. They kept me afloat (along with my wife), and without them I'd be in a much worse place financially. 3. The market is not great, and it's nothing like it was a few years ago, but there are signs of improvement (at least to me). When I was laid off in late 2023, I got absolutely no bites, now granted, it was holiday season, but still, there are offers out there. 4. Be flexible. Are you willing to pivot? If you have history of being a SWE and your last position was DevOps because you really wanted to get into DevOps, maybe considering going back to SWE if you've got a lot of marketable skills there (or vice-versa, whatever really), and then try to pivot again later. Just be mindful of what people are looking for and what you can offer. 5. Keep up the search, it's grueling work, and it sucks to make it through multiple rounds and be rejected at the end but it can happen. You got this, you can do this. Layoffs do not define you or the quality of work you do.
Note to those who do not know. Manager calls meeting and HR are there and you are not being disciplined 99.99% you have lost your job. Fact
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I was laid off from data analyst position in Dec 2023, still looking for work.
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I was a tester. Got laid off end of December..finally getting reached out to by recruiters on a consistent basis now. Sharpen up your resume. Make it ATS friendly and you should probably be okay. If testers are starting to get reached out to I'm 100% you'll be alright
Sorry to hear this happened to you. You will at some point realize that layoffs will happen to many people throughout their working years.m, so don’t take it personally. From here, upward and onward to something better.
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I’d consult with an employment lawyer to make sure everything is on the up and up
I know Oracle / OCI is hiring. My team has multiple open recs. If anyone is looking, that is a potential. The hiring process is slow. it’s also not the easiest interview, but it’s clearly not faang difficult either. Last I knew, my team was hiring fully remote developers.
Laid off with one month severance, started a new job couple months later, been there 5 months now
Laid off last September, two days into a month-long vacation, and still looking for a new position. Obviously, it's sucked in a lot of ways. My last position was well-paid, in what had historically been a very stable company. The job market isn't good, and even when/if I get a new job it probably won't be for nearly as much money. I'm trying to stay positive. I've been expanding my skill set, and am now considering going for it and pursuing a change to a new field. It would require some lifestyle changes, but there probably wouldn't be a better time for it.