It’s always been recruiters reaching out to me. I can’t see it being much different now.

I’ve never, ever, gotten a human response from any company that I cold applied. Either ignored, or get the automated rejection email.

Recruiters that I could cold contact usually tell me thanks for reaching out, and that they’ll be in touch if they’re interested. They never are.

I could probably get -a- job through networking, but probably not a job I’d be very interested in. I have a network, but very few people work somewhere that I’d like to work at. The few that do would at best guarantee I get fed into the leetcode pipeline and then it would all be on me to leetcode my way in.

I know some master networkers that can get offers and switch jobs via their network at the drop of a hat. Again, the catch here is that they have to be very unpicky. Overall, many of the best places to work are gatekeeped with leetcode.

I’m currently at what I consider an “endgame” company. I wouldn’t mind if this is the last company I work at (I’m 40). If I can last here until I’m late 40s or early 50s, then I’d rather semi-retire instead of putting myself through the leetcode gauntlet again.

What makes this an endgame company, exactly?

Probably $$$

I've never reached out to recruiters either. I just receive a few messages from them per week, and maybe a dozen connection requests, which I always deny. I don't like "connections" with people I've never met.

Can you help me understand what you mean by "leetcode"?

Now the term generally means the interview requires passing some type of coding challenge, typically very algorithmic. There are many sites to prep for this (e.g. https://leetcode.com, which probably is the source of the phrase), but “grinding” through many problems in one’s free time just to prep for an interview is often something interviewees want to avoid, especially if they have are more experience and/or other options open.

I have 30+ years experience, all as a programmer/IC (never management). 2023 and 2024 were the worst tech job environment since 2001/2002. I wouldn't judge anything based on hiring in the last 2 years.

In 2021, I extensively used LinkedIn and got several job offers, so it's fairly useful in my opinion.

Do you think it’s gonna get better or is this the new norm?

I can’t help shake the feeling it’s the latter - rates might be higher for longer and tons of companies have jumped on the south-america/eastern-eu hiring bandwagon

As a 15 year JavaScript developer who knows. The profession, if you can even call it that, is extremely immature. Most of the people doing this work are extremely overpaid and deliver very little at poor quality. At some point employers are likely to expect a better ROE, but until then there is a tremendous level of insecurity and poor performance in that line of work.

I can see, moving into the future, employers no longer wanting to easily hire unqualified people. That will mean great disruptions for the people currently performing the work.

Sorry though revenue per employee is still massive for a lot of companies. The folks who own the companies are even more overpaid. Also the insecurity really does reduce quality when you have people performing what used to be 3 peoples roles and everyone who’s left is told to tighten their belts (read: burnout within a few years)

For almost all large employers that make primary use of JavaScript as a core component of their business there are only two revenue streams: e-commerce and ad impressions. The margins and overhead per developer employee are dramatically lower in e-commerce than for business primarily reliant on ad revenue. The reason for that distinction is that developers are always a cost center while the money makers are always sales, but in ad revenue based businesses those lines are blurred and ad based business scale their revenue disproportionately to their headcount far more so than e-commerce.

As a result developers in e-commerce type businesses tend to reach compensation caps faster than employees in ad revenue type businesses. What is counter-intuitive about that is that the user facing code from ad revenue type businesses tends to be extremely low quality compared to equivalent code from e-commerce type businesses, because that code more directly impacts user engagement on the e-commerce side and user engagement is more critical for sales conversion on the e-commerce side. I am not saying the code on the e-commerce side is great either.

There's the zero-interest-rate era and the post-zero-interest-rate era. I think there's still going to be adjustments to come, and it will get a little better as orgs get more used to working in a PZIR environment, but I don't think it'll ever be like the peak ZIR hiring situation unless we get back down to zero interest rates.

Hard to say. I think there will always be new companies that need good programmers but there was such a glut hired during there pandemic there might be more cuts needed.

At 20y you will do better reaching out to people who respect you, especially people who were more junior that are now advanced in their careers, and see if they know of opportunities. While you might get something from a recruiter still, they usually don’t fill senior roles from cold outreach on LinkedIn. It happens but usually even then it’s a reference from someone you worked with in the past.

This. My current job I found vía linkedin, but from someone I would had never imagined . After the previous company I was at, burned to the ground (figuratively... kind of) I wrote a short text in linkedin saying that I was looking for a new job.

A guy I've barely met (he is cofounder/ceo of a friend of mine who is CTO at their startup) wrote to me via LI message telling me about someone (VC fund with new project) he knew was looking for a CTO. Turns out I knew them from before, and my friends co-founder referred me, so I got in easy.

Point is, you write in linkedin not only for recruiters. Actually in my experience, recruiters are mostly useless and waste of time for candidates. Instead you write there so that your network and extended network see you, and your work search get mor reach.

It's this. At this stage in one's career you're much better off relying on your personal network than anything else. The last few times I was looking 100% of my conversations were either people I knew or from intros by people I knew.

I feel like this is probably the best approach for me. I've maintained connections on LinkedIn with people I've worked with, many of whom would likely be able to help me find work.

Perhaps I'll reach out to a few of them and just see what they have going on. :) Thanks for the comment.

Good luck! I wouldn’t just reach out to a few I’d reach out to everyone that you know had a positive view of your work and abilities. Lead with a normal catching up and ask if they want to meet on zoom or something. Then in that conversation lead into your search. Prioritize in small batches to keep your sanity, weighting by their proximity to things you want to be doing (employers, tech, domains, etc). Go in knowing the role you want and other constraints (remote, etc) and have answers … “I don’t know whatever you’ve got” isn’t the right way to start a discussion. When negotiating you always should be the first one to lay out what you need. Whoever offers something first establishes a ceiling, and the respondent establishes the floor. You should always be the one setting the ceiling.

Also, I would suggest once a year as you near or pass your work anniversary do it again. First this makes sure you don’t end up settling due to inertia, keeps you sharp in terms of what’s out there, and keeps your network robust. In those annual revisits you don’t have to have a goal, it can just be catching up and see what others are doing. Invariably folks will offer stuff along the way and how you feel about it tells you whether you’re ready to move on.

I think this is really good advice. Everything you've said makes a lot of sense.

I'll have to take stock of my connections and consider who among them I think might really have a positive view of my work and our previous interactions. I'm not the most social person and struggle to establish meaningful connections with people, but I'm confident that there are a handful of people who have appreciated working with me and would recommend me for positions that open up around them.

I've already settled due to inertia, but it's a hole I can dig myself out of with enough effort. I think it'll mostly just require a better understanding of what I am looking for, beyond just something new, challenging, and fulfilling. But I'll have to do some more thinking on that end.

Thanks for your comment. :) I really appreciate it.

surprised that no one suggested something obvious and relatively easy: friends and family. these folks know you well and may (surprisingly) know folks within your field that you didn't know about. i got a job from an acquaintance who knew someone at their church... again, surprise.

25 yoe slacker here. Before now, I've interviewed about 10 times in my career. The last time I interviewed was about 12 years ago. Man, what a difference does 12 years make. I remember the days when you'd give a resume, get an interview, go into a short interview and have an offer in a few days.

Luckily, I made enough in this industry that I can ride it out indefinitely. But, I currently fear that I won't work in this field anymore. I'm just not motivated to study for interviews.

Anyone else dropping out of this field? What are you going into next?

I’m on the same boat. Non clue what I’ll do next. But the thought of writing code for money again makes me ill.

To not be cliche at all, I’d love to find a good SaaS idea and bootstrap that solo but it’s kind of a running joke amongst developer’s because who doesn’t secretly want that.

For now, I’m taking a 6–12 months break to go travel and see what fresh ideas I can get out of it.

20 years as a founder and web dev here. The market for an IC is so bad right now that I am literally considering starting a new company as an easier alternative to getting hired anywhere for a reasonable rate.

Companies can be as choosy as they want right now. I feel like if I'm missing 1 item from a tech stack I might as well not bother applying.

> Anyone else dropping out of this field? What are you going into next?

Already out.

Haven't decided what next, but I am 100% done with being a fullstack or backend dev.

I'll be honest this is almost me as well. I have 10 YoE and I got laid off at the start of this cratering and have been since. About two ish years now. If I could do anything else and that something else paid anywhere near what this field does (did) I'd probably have left. I've been in the first or second round of layoffs at several companies and have had to job hop where I haven't to get paid decently. It's soul crushing but there's nothing I can do. I've always had great reviews, I'm decently personable, and all the normal office politics jazz. Anyway, I just wanted to empathize. Hope you find success wherever you end up.

Thanks.

How come you are done with it?

A series of bad experiences. Hard to explain in a comment.

Networking and marketing. Many opportunities come through LinkedIn. Plus several other smaller channels. I engage recruiters in conversation, but not one of them has ever come to me with an opportunity that is worth a damn that I would consider leaving my current position for. I've always viewed recruiters as a means for job seekers who don't want to pursue the opportunities themselves.

Of the times I have used a recruiter get get a new job (maybe four or five times over my entire career, only once in the past 23 years), not once have any of them helped in the negotiation or pushed the process forward. I got the feeling they just submitted my C.V. and then collected the cheque once I got hired.

Not much advice I know, and what works for me doesn't necessarily mean it will work for other people.

This was basically my experience with the recruiter I mentioned in my post. He didn't help much at all beyond establishing the connection between the employer and me. I did my own research, interview preparations, and salary negotiations.

I've been quite unimpressed by IT recruiters overall, but perhaps I should entertain their messages on LinkedIn a bit more than I do, as I tend to just ignore them.

Most of them are glorified salespeople. I sometimes look at their work history to gauge whether it’s even worth answering. The ones that were sales rep before this job and will move on from this one to be another kind of sales rep in 6 months because they didn’t meet their quotas are a complete waste of time: they work for cut throat companies that only care about whether they cost money or make money and is a revolving door of unskilled and clueless about tech sales types who are looking for a quick buck.

Recruiters reach out to me on LinkedIn and thats the only channel thats landed me interviews and offers

The companies on hackernews “whose hiring page” are too disorganized and havent figured out to use third party recruiters yet, some it’s even questionable if they’re hiring since they’re back every month despite their rejection emails suggesting they had a candidate that more closely matched yada yada

Recruitment platforms are all crap, like ones where the candidate signs up and passes some tests, theyre all broken and dead for me

Cold applying is pretty bad

Applying over linkedin is even worse

For me only thing that works are recruiter’s bots hitting me up in Linkedin DMs. if that dries up couldnt tell you

but prior co-workers have become decision makers and still liked me too, old fashioned and human connections are the only common denominator here

>So in your experience, how does one find employment opportunities in 2024? Is it all about networking? Are things just really tough in the IT world lately?

I'm much newer to this industry than you so don't have any personal info to share, but the data does seem to show it's not just you, and that programming and IT are in the trough of a contraction right now. Indeed seems to have around only three quarters as many available (US) positions "floating" right now, so to speak, as it did even in Feb 2020, which was before the tech crunch and explosion most agreed was temporary and unsustainable; it's also markedly lower than the whole (US) economy, which is at least still positive (although I'd also guess without looking Indeed is more heavily used by the tech industry than the economy as a whole). It seems job hunting in the tech industry is going to be tougher for a time, and more intentional networking and hunting opportunities than before will be necessary: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1hG1R

I think one area people miss out on is local meetups in a tech area you know and want to work with. Networking with those people you’ll discover which companies are good/bad/etc and then also know someone there.

The local, in-person meetup scene was an absolute treasure! It didn't really recover after COVID; I'm still trying to find where those networking opportunities moved to.

Second this. Local meetups really didn’t survive COVID.

give it time, or go start something. in many places local meetups saw a huge revival since last summer

Around me most attendees are people looking for a job, with zero engagement in any other way.

I did _one_ virtual meetup. After the presentation we were paired into small breakout rooms. Two of the four guys in my room just gave a quick summary of their background and said they were looking for work -- they had nothing else to say.

(a) it ruined the networking time for everyone else and (b) if I had an opening, I'd be less likely to interview them than before.

i haven't been in this particular situation, but people who don't know what to say are all to common. i am not the most sociable guy myself, but i learned to get people talking by asking lots of question, searching for common interests, or simply anything interesting about them. it is a lot of work though, and after such conversations i tend to be exhausted. the irony is that if they didn't want to talk, but get me talking instead, all they would need is to ask a few open questions and then i'd be able to fill the space.

The other participant and I had a pleasant conversation, but the dynamic was weird for the other two who basically said "give me work" without saying anything else.

that sounds frustrating.

This used to be a really good thing. I feel like meetups have not recovered since Covid. I would love to see the meetup scene come back.

Now that you mention it, I've had my eye on a handful of meetups in my area. I've never gone, however, as I'm really not a very social person and would probably end up leaning against the wall, giving off antisocial vibes.

But perhaps I should give this a shot, just to put myself out there and see what happens.

Mostly been checking LinkedIn, ask HN: who’s hiring, and workatastartup

It is still a pain to read through everything to try and find a match

So I built a scraper and added a bit of AI with GPT, to match my resume and ideal job description to the job descriptions

It saves me hours, going from hundreds or thousands of potential matches, to only the best almost instantly

The results include a summary of the role, why it’s a good fit, and instructions on how to apply

Next I want to make it easier to personalize my resume for the application and keep track of the application processes (which I’m doing in a spreadsheet)

That's really impressive. I've been meaning to spend more time with this technology and implement it in a sample project to improve my understanding.

Would you tell potential employers that you found them this way? I feel like it'd be worth mentioning if the position in question was IT-related.

Thank you!

The interviewers don’t seem to care very much. They mostly want me to talk about big company projects with similar difficulties to what they are going through now or experienced in the past

I think if I was applying to more junior positions it would be a great way to show that I can actually build something. But for more senior roles, I have the impression they want candidates to just have experience in bigger/more complicated projects that match what the hiring company is doing more closely

In any case, it’s been a lot of fun building this, learning a lot and enjoying the process

Here’s a short video of the interface: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39562221

In the first comments there’s also links to the sources for the scraping and the gpt-processing scripts in python

Right on. That makes perfect sense. In my experience, you're right about interviewers in that they are far more concerned with matters relevant to the position, as well as their company and its projects. And rightfully so, unless they are concerned that the candidate may be too inexperienced to actually build something from the ground up as you have.

The project looks very interesting. Nicely done! I'd really like to learn to put the pieces together for such a project. Too focused on other things at the moment however.

Thank you for checking it out!

ChatGPT helped a lot. I had no experience working with ncurses for example, and gpt has been great at providing boilerplate code, as well as at iterating over smaller bits of code, to refactor or add features

It’s amazing how fast you can go if you can rely on some intuition from your experience but use the speed of the LLMs to iterate quickly with coding, especially when using something new

Hesitant to share. What if I need them??

But really, people I've built big things for outside of my field are interested in working with me. That's my primary solace. It can be tough staying poised for offers through the years in case not all roads lead to Rome, but not worse than the feeling of seeing a nest egg fail to hatch.

I research companies I'd want to work for, look at their site's job page for open positions that match what I want to do, and if there are any, I apply for them through whatever mechanism the company provides.

I have been searching for jobs since last 2-3 months but current scenario being a fresher doesn't seems uplifting. There are companies claiming layoffs and financial reasons. Very less companies I would like to work with have open positions. I have applied to more than 80 companies and startups even those recently funded but received a rejection mail or no response.

I thought I could land my first job based on talent alone but now this seems difficult. I have been developing as a side hobby while I was in school now I am graduating. I feel like I have done enough projects that I can do almost any thing.

Maybe it's that the tech industry is facing change since AI and No-Code build tools. idk. Sometimes it seems that it's not the same tech industry which excited me as a kid.

The change with the biggest impact on the industry is the interest free money faucet being turned off.

Usually I reach out to recruiters on LinkedIn after applying for a job, or even better, reach out to a mutual connection at the company. Even if I haven’t spoken to them in years, people are usually happy to help. You can also just make connections at meetups and tech talks and reach out to them when the time comes. Besides that, I get headhunter emails often enough, with multiple follow ups.

LinkedIn is as commonly used and popular as it ever was.

(Whether you are wasting your time, IDK, but no one migrated from LinkedIn to ____.)

I am at a bit over 15 years of experience and have generally had a steady influx of recruiters and internal HR reaching out through LinkedIn. When I briefly listed myself as Open to Work (for recruiter view) last month the flood gates really opened. I ended up signing with one of the companies that reached out to me recently.

If you are getting nothing through LinkedIn, I wonder if it's something in how your past experience is reflected?

However, this is actually the first time a LinkedIn "cold" outreach resulted in me signing. I have not job hopped that much, but in the past it's been either ex-coworkers recommending a company reach out or me reaching out to an ex-coworker and learning that they have some relevant positions open at his new place. As others have said, your existing network may get you higher quality and more targeted leads overall.

I had a recruiter teach me a trick for LinkedIn that seems to be working. Turn off your "Open To Work" every couple of weeks for at least 48 hours. Then turn it back on. It shoots you back to the top of search results for recruiters. I did it when I was looking and my contacts from recruiters increased significantly every time I turned it back on. One of those recruiters got me the job I landed.

I agree with previous responders on cold applying. My experience here is twofold. As an applicant, I have landed one job by applying for it, and I believe that was a fluke. As a hiring manager, the applicant systems are jam-packed with hundreds of applicants. There isn't enough time to look through all of them, and when you do, you aren't looking closely.

I don't hate the idea of networking, and I have helped contacts get jobs. Networking has many pluses outside of the job search.

The most important thing is to keep interviewing every chance you get, even if you aren't serious about the job or the pay is too low. When I got laid off in June, my first few interviews were disasters. I was out of practice and ill-prepared. About ten interviews later, I'm poised and practiced. My elevator speech is short and on point, and I sound like I know what I'm talking about.

I found my current job on a niche job site called swissdevjobs so I’d say it’s definitely worth looking outside linkedin. There are a ton of other job boards out there, some of them pretty huge like indeed, dice, glassdoor, builtin. I’m actually working on a tool that can scrape jobs from 10+ sites and notify you when something new pops up. You can give it a try here https://first2apply.com/

I usually switch jobs every 2-3 years. Usually when I get a new job I stop speaking to recruiters for about 12-18 months, and then I open up again and start responding to Linkedin pings again, just to see what's out there. Same at my current job, where I'm coming up on 4 years. However, the last 3-6 months there just haven't been many Linkedin pings. Fortunately I wouldn't want to switch anyway right now, so I'm not concerned, but I still notice. This is in the Middle East (in the past I worked in Europe, London, US, FAANG). As others have said, [cold] applying to jobs [via forms] is a waste of time, zero conversion rate; I also know this as a hiring manager on the other side.

American here, YMMV. I deleted my linkedin in 2014. Recruiters never follow through. Only for my very first job was my professional network involved beyond verifying my identity (they told me the job was open but could not really put their thumb on the scale or even act as a reference). Every other job I’ve had has been via email or webform through Craigslist or some other job board. Networking is really inefficient compared to just sending out apps to jobs that interest you. Middle men just waste resources.

Recruiters via LinkedIn. In a pretty niche area so pretty small world vibes. Also means there is no BS like filling in forms with duplicate info in cv or fake postings

I know the experience is different for others, but I personally find a job posting I think I'll be a good fit for and apply on the company's careers page. Been doing this for 15 years, and have had a 100% callback rate for an interview.

HN's Who is Hiring is always a great place to look at! I built a small site that gets all the posts from it (as well as some other places) and puts into a searchable db.

It's free, you can check out here: https://gettjalerts.com/

You can even create an email alert to get notified of any new positions that require your skillset.

2023, not 2024. I put my resume on Monster and Indeed. I called a few headhunters. (I had kept a list of headhunters I respected, built up over 20+ years. Much of it was out of date, but there were still some gems.) And that was enough.

Glad to hear Monster is still around!

Indeed, Monster works for contract roles better than other because it is less expensive than LinkedIn for recruiters and has active candidates. Start contracting and convert to Fte is what I’d recommend

Western Europe: linkedin mainly. Still works fine for me (I have around 15 years of working experience and I’m not picky about languages/frameworks)

I worry about privacy (CV farmers), and (current) employer snooping. Western Europe too, always get messages from recruiters asking for CVs even though I got everything on LinkedIn. I am curious if a personal website with an online CV is better or more private.

I worry about that too, because of that I'm very hesitant to give out my CV.

I also wonder what advantage they get by having my CV when my work history is public on my linkedin. What do CV farmers gain from having a pdf of my CV? Couldn't they just copy-paste the information from my linkedin if they really wanted to?

Didn't get why you worry about giving out your CV - just don't put any sensitive info, like you would not put it on your personal website.

My "instead" meant instead of putting my info on LinkedIn (open for CV farmers), rather create a personal website/CV that you have more control over who can see it (more private), as you choose to share it only with specific employers.

Because LinkedIn profiles are usually sparse compared with resumes. I get job applications so I can compare the two.

If you send your CV, it shows an actual intent: you really are looking for a job.

I used to think that, but then I decided no, I'll just make it public (GitHub public repo) and then I don't have to feel anything about updating it, if I move into a new role or whatever at present company I'm just factually updating that doesn't (and quite literally hasn't) mean I'm actively looking, it's just maintenance.

I always assumed it was internal metrics or a requirement the tool its fed into.

I think the assumption is that a CV will be at least as, or even more, up to date than a LinkedIn profile if given. So, instead of assuming the LinkedIn profile is up to date, you get asked for a CV.

What's there to farm on your CV if everything is on LinkedIn?

> CV farmers

What does this mean?

people who plant CV seeds and then harvest them

Companies that advertise on big job sites get lots of applicants.

You want the diamond in the rough. Those jibs are only on a company's web site or are similarly hidden so that nobody finds them.

Someone should start indexing them and sell access to the database.

Remember: Good pay and stability comes not from how good you are, but by how profitable your employer is and how much they can leverage your output into profitability

That’s why rank and file at faang can pull down 300k+ TC

Yes but you speak of it as if I can 'choose' to work at such company. Their interview processes are a mess and basically a random lottery. They don't test your engineering ability. They don't correspond to the job.

Personally I also have concerns about ethics which has hindered my ability to convey genuine enthusiasm when speaking with interviewers at such companies.

I find now I identify the companies and roles I want to do and then go after them. Either find someone you know, apply online or find an in-house recruiter on LinkedIn and talk to them directly.

Networking online and with former colleagues / friends will always yield good results. After you've exhausted 'warm' leads traditional job boards are the way to go. We built https://levels.fyi/jobs to help filter jobs by things most people care about (pay, benefits, etc.). This (and other job boards) shouldn't be seen as a replacement for networking though. Reach out to hiring manager, friends of friends at the company, etc.

Pretend to be an AI

The IT market was in a boom for a few years and has cooled off in the past year or two.

These three ways still work, and they are not new:

- Networking

- Recruiters

- Job ads

Some of them are "inbound" in that they come to you. Friends telling you about jobs and recruiters sending you emails are two such inbound ways.

You can look at job boards. They're still a thing. Indeed. Monster. As well as a hundred-and-one more specific boards around types of work, industries, and regions.

Looking at it from the perspective of someone who hires, I use all three ways of getting candidates. They are all still alive and kicking in 2024.

Spoiler alert: Everyone is replaceable labor.

If you think you are a special unique snowflake that is irreplaceable, think again. There are a few handful of individuals in the entire world that might be exceptions to the rule and those people are not irreplacable because of their knowledge or talent but because of their charisma and vision.

If you have a special skill or knowledge or talent... someone else has it too.

Lots of people do that, and everyone is replaceable, so are you.

There's no relation between updating the profile and being replaceable.

when hiring i always look at performatory signals vs actual signals and a great linkedin profile is usually a negative signal.

Also:

10x engineers: get hired by FAANG for "dev relations" projects that eventually get sunsetted

100x engineers: are unapproachable except through their OnlyFans accounts and their anonymous P.O. box where companies can send speculative gifts and offerings

so wise and humble

sensing sarcasm, I wonder how you see this as lacking humility. there are no claims about myself here

read the topic of the post, then read your comment. do you really think you're being helpful in any way?

what you said is about as helpful as saying the sky is blue. your comment is a non-sequitur.

Wow!