Here's the flip side: I was hiring (at a stealth vc-funded startup).
I reached out to every designer and coder laid off from Twitter and Amazon (one of my investors sent me a spreadsheet that those laid off folks added their contact info to).
I didn't receive a single interested response to my reach outs. Now granted, I'm sure they were bombarded with lots of startup offers and being picky what company/stage they were responding to, or were still in grief mode and not ready to start looking, or maybe (probably!) my reach-out finesse was lacking.
But I'm just pointing out that their are definitely companies like mine who are hiring and it's not all doom and gloom for laid off folks.
I ended up hiring via ads on LinkedIn and job posts on eng message boards.
Being real for a minute: There is definitely a perspective among hiring companies that regular lay offs are sometimes packaged alongside bottom performers, but I think that is something they would just do diligence on during an interview process.
Senior SWE, 20+ years of experience, based in the bay area, laid off from Meta in November. I reached out to my network and had a couple applications in same-day. One of those panned out and I just started this week.
I also did a bunch of cold job applications, but didn't get a callback from any of them. The whole process led to a ton of anxiety and was really nerve-wracking, especially reading about layoffs from other tech firms in the same time period. I kept worrying that my new company was going to hit layoffs and that my offer would be rescinded, especially when the recruiter told me they were reducing hiring. Having it take about 3 months just drug that anxiety out.
I still have a bit of anxiety about getting laid off, but no more than I'd have anywhere else.
Man, there's definitely something broken with the cold application process. I'd estimate my success rate of getting an interview from a cold application is something like 1-5%. I almost always resort to referrals or getting lucky networking with recruiters.
Same experience with cold applications, despite similarly “prestigious” CV. Did the same thing two years ago and had about 80% hit rate, this time it was close to 0%. My only hits have been through network and responding to recruiters on LinkedIn.
I think part of it is that I was applying to a lot of larger companies with efficient hiring pipelines, none of which are currently hiring.
> I reached out to my network and had a couple applications in same-day.
> I also did a bunch of cold job applications, but didn't get a callback from any of them.
This was my experience when I was let go in Mar 2020 (not from any place as prominent as Meta, however). The network of people you have worked with and know has been by far the best way I've found to get a job. Even when you're senior, cold applications are a low-chance bet.
I was laid off in June. This coincided with my mom being diagnosed with cancer, and because I had a fair amount of saving, I took some time to support family and work on some personal projects.
I started looking again at the start of this year, and it's been rough, at least compared to my last job search where I had multiple offers in under two weeks. I've submitted ~50 applications so far, most with a non-generic cover letter. Most haven't responded, several declined to interview, and just one scheduled an interview.
Using my referral network hasn't been that effective. Most of my former colleagues are working at large companies that either aren't hiring or are in midst of layoffs themself. I was able to get 4 references at hiring companies through my network, but of those, 3 haven't responded and 1 declined to interview.
I have had a decent amount of interviews through 3rd-party recruiting agencies. I've gotten to final interview stages with a few companies, but no offers. Most of these places were very early seed-stage companies. I'm actively interviewing with a handful now.
When companies decline to even interview, it's discouraging and stressful for sure. It's easy for imposter syndrome to creep in. But overall, I'm still relatively optimistic that I will find something soon-ish.
I can see how hiring companies must be inundated now, but it also seems a bit strange that nearly every company I connect with through a recruiter wants to interview, but my success rate submitting applications myself is basically 0%.
Laid off from a US remote backend/data role in a large, FAANG-adjacent tech company in early January. I have always had a high callback rate with 20+ years of experience and a CS degree from a tier 1 university. This time, my only callbacks were through internal referrals from my network or introductions made through recruiters. I ended up with two offers by the end of January, one from a growing startup and the other from a mid-market company with a conservative business model. Given the slowdown in the market, I'm thankful to have found something so quickly.
My take is that this is not nearly as bad as the dotcom crash in the early 2000s, but the red hot tech market of 2021 where companies were hiring as fast as they could with incredible comp packages is gone. There are still a good number of roles out there, but companies are being more careful in their hiring and they are not trying to compete with (the no longer hiring) FAANGs when it comes to compensation.
I was a senior dev at a big tech and got laid off in November. I have applied to hundreds of places. Not a lot of responses. I have been doing interview preps the whole time. It has been very demoralizing and I am thinking of switching careers to something else. I have been considering skilled trades. I like carpentry in particular.
I moved to France at 60. For more than 20 years, I have developed software in vb and SQL, don't laugh. Two years ago, I found a job as a freelancer. It seems that my client is happy, month after month the contract is renewed. The daily rate is not among the highest but let me have a good life in France. I don't know how long this will last. The only problem is that I don't have time for my passion, woodworking with manual tools. Conclusion, there, there must be a solution for you as well.
As someone with more carpentry experience (paid) than dev experience, but strong interests in both worlds, I’m curious how you would reconcile taking an approximate 50% reduction in comp. Don’t know the numbers for your area but knowing Bay Area salaries, senior devs make 2-2.5x journeyman carpenters.
I was laid off in November. I've applied to dozens, probably hundreds of jobs. I've had two interviews (one bigtechco) and a YC startup. Both did not work out as they went with more senior candidates. I decided to take a different approach and tailor my resume to each job and narrow the types of jobs I applied too. This has led to an increase in recruiter calls and I'm setting up interviews now.
However it does seem there is still a lot of flux, especially with larger companies who are still trying to allocate headcount. I've had calls with Google that were basically like: "we're interested, but we don't know HC yet, let's circle back in 3 weeks".
US, looking for remote. 15+ years experience been looking since early January, and I still don't feel like I have traction. Worst job market for engineers I've seen in a long time. I have hope it'll improve in March when budgets are finalized, but at the same time I'm preparing for it to be a long one. First unemployment in my career, up until now I had employers coming to me.
We're hiring at our company. We've had a lot of people come through from the recent waves of layoffs, and usually so far there has been a mix of too high expectations, remote work mismatches as well as just lots of people not making the bar (we are a small company).
Still on the lookout for senior rust engineers who want to work at a company that's remote-first with a minimal-meetings culture.
I was a Staff-level engineer that a BigCo@Bay area laid off in November. My network immediately went into overdrive connecting me with great opportunities, which I am VERY thankful for. Got in pipeline for 7 companies, interviewed for 4 roles, got 3 offers (two startups and one public company), declined the other 3 interviews and decided to take the public company offer.
I recently got laid off in the UK and it was really hard to find something decent. There's jobs out there, but most aren't all that great and the interviews were much harder to come by. I was ghosted by recruiters countless times after being told I would be put forward for certain roles which has never happened to me before...
Firstly, I'm really sorry to everyone who has been laid off. It's such an awful experience, and I'm sorry you're going through it. You're not alone, and everyone is cheering for you! Take care of yourself. You'll get through this.
The macro environment looks to be improving, and companies are mostly doing this to put downward pressures on salaries or because they overzealously hired during the pandemic. There are lots of things being built right now that need to be scaled.
I hope this doesn't come off tonally bad - I'm able to contract to hire a few (3-5) folks. I'm building an at-home Hollywood studio, and I'm looking for remote engineers with the following skills:
- Rust/Actix for backend, web services (and a real time desktop app we've yet to launch). This is my #1 need.
- Unreal Engine engineers, preferably with animation and C++ experience. This will help us tremendously. Longer term we'd like to explore Godot, but that's less immediate - more Q3/4.
- ML, especially with generative media experience. We've got a good sized team, but we're always looking to expand it. Experience with audio, images, LLMs/NLP, video a plus.
I'm financing this myself, and we have considerable runway financed from my last exit. There will be equity and full time offers extended if you're interested in sticking with us.
Germany. I wasn't exactly laid off, just left in a bad time. Zero applications, just recruiters reaching out, I started 8 processes, 4 are still ongoing, on 2 I got ghosted, but got 2 offers so far which I gotta answer till next week.
EDIT: I got 18 years of experience, web full stack (react/vue/golang/rails/C#/haskell) + devops, if that matters.
I was laid off in november, in vc. Looking for PM/Ops roles. Applied to a ton of stuff where I was a great fit, no answer or immediate rejection lol. I'm 8 years out of school and am not applying for roles that are unrealistic.
I think the entire hiring/search process is so broken. Different applications, formats. Don't get me started on having to fill out sections in a form that are just resume sections (work experience, schools etc.).
Going across big VC firm portfolio openings also super fragmented. It's opened my eyes to how awful the process of hiring is from both sides.
Doing consulting/contract work, advisory, and side projects as I hang on cofounder matching and apply to jobs on workatastartup, wellfound, and linkedin. Pretty dismal job search process.
>"Don't get me started on having to fill out sections in a form that are just resume sections"
I haven't been laid off but I've been dipping my toe in the past few months because I'm a bit bored in my current role.
The process is much more fiddly than it needs to be. When I run into those 'fill this out again for our system' forms, often times it's after a long day and I will just save it to come back to it later...and I never do.
I wonder how much talent mobility there'd be if someone really solved the issues of repetative job search data entry and just proving to strangers that you can excel in a role without running through an obstacle course that may or may not represent the actual job.
Anecdotally I see very few junior/low level positions open, most jobs seem to be senior+. Salary ranges are all a bit higher than I remember them being 3 years ago. I am still a long way from being scared enough to take something I don't like or that doesn't pay well, still optimistic things will swing back eventually.
i'm curious, from what you can tell, has anyone cared about your voluntary break or is it all the same to them?
i quit/retired about 4 years ago and often wonder if i applied places how much it would be held against me wanting to have control over my life like that.
Sr. Software Dev with some hardware background. Laid off in early December. Started looking about a month ago. One phone interview so far with a startup that seemed a bit sketchy (didn't know where the funding was coming from) and in a very inconvenient timezone (I'd likely have to wake up at 3AM for meetings).
Many recruiter pings/week, but mostly not great fits (they glom onto a keyword that doesn't mean what they think it does) and often it's easy to tell that several emails from different recruiters are for the same exact job. Hardware verification and FPGA seems to be in great demand, but it's been too many years since I worked in that space so I don't feel like my experience would still be relevant for those.
Talked to a recruiter today who said things are starting to slow down on his end - not getting as many jobs to recruit for. This is to be expected, I think.
So far it's pretty easy to make my 5 contacts/week as required by the unemployment dept.
I was laid off in early December. I applied to a couple hundred positions, interviewed with around 10%, and received two offers at the beginning of this month.
The market is pretty rough. I had a lot of good interviews fizzle out into rejections after the final round. I assume this is because I was competing with several other recently laid off engineers. My new salary is 33% less than my previous and I’m getting much less equity. It sucks but I’m happy to be employed.
I think the rough 100:10:1 ratio was the standard for a long time. That certainly describes my job hunting experience prior to say 2012. The whole 5:4:3 ratio was an aberration during our recent, unprecedented bull market.
In practice, that 33% salary drop is bumped up by the fact that you're employed while receiving severance, right? Or is that not how it is structured? (I've never laid off anyone or been laid off)
Will be interesting to see what happens when the market starts lifting again and all these companies who are scoring people at a discount suddenly are struggling to keep them. 33% drop is significant in an economy that is squeezing the rank and file with higher interest rates.
(this is all presuming the profession isn't in the process of downgrading to a trade level as a result of constant pressure to remove humans from high value work)
Laid off Jan 18th from Microsoft, not really the unicorn type I would say but well above average in my field (imo)
Applied to a couple positions ~5-6 and got a couple automated rejections, no interviews or initial calls through this process. I think not having a degree makes it difficult to get past the initial screening
About 2-3 recruiter messages per day on linkedin. I responded to around 10 or so, of which 7 I had initial interviews with the company after my resume was passed up. Had 2 rejections and 3 offers, only 1 of which was under my current salary. I interviewed for mostly 100% remote, I think only 1 company of the ones I was looking at required 2-3 days in office
Not laid off but I've just ended a year long sabbatical. Looking for work now is a terrible experience. A lot of ghosting, recruiters absolutely useless, agencies not looking for new talent. I have done two dozen interviews, twice as many resumes sent to interested recruiters, and only one offer, which I was not very excited about and declined.
I'm focusing on my SaaS project, and trying to market myself outside the box instead of the old resume as my 16 years long career doesn't seem to impress anyone. Sorry, I will not elaborate further as you're all my competition here.
I wasn’t laid off but was bored enough at my job to be looking. Interviews dialed back in quantity around august but I was able to find and interview with another company or two every week and accepted a position in December(was waiting to come across the right job, not just any job). We’re still hiring too and not just for technical positions. I have friends at several other companies who are as well.
The FAANGs gobbled up so much talent just to deny it to their competition that it sucked all the oxygen out of the industry and now that the people are available there’s still companies desperate to hire even with the higher cost of capital and inflation
I’m based in SF Bay Area and I was laid off from my Engineering Management position in October. I had MAANG offer at the time which took about 2-3 months when the process started in July. But as they started reviewing budgets it was cancelled even though Recruiter verbally agreed on the number. Then I interviewed with several companies in Oct-Dec. One startup was willing to proceed with VP/Director level offer but the President said he needs to wait until January to get it approved from the board. But they never got back to me. The interviews dried up since mid-Dec and I am still looking. I’m also on H1B so that makes it more challenging.
[+] [-] jaxomlotus|3 years ago|reply
I reached out to every designer and coder laid off from Twitter and Amazon (one of my investors sent me a spreadsheet that those laid off folks added their contact info to).
I didn't receive a single interested response to my reach outs. Now granted, I'm sure they were bombarded with lots of startup offers and being picky what company/stage they were responding to, or were still in grief mode and not ready to start looking, or maybe (probably!) my reach-out finesse was lacking.
But I'm just pointing out that their are definitely companies like mine who are hiring and it's not all doom and gloom for laid off folks.
I ended up hiring via ads on LinkedIn and job posts on eng message boards.
Being real for a minute: There is definitely a perspective among hiring companies that regular lay offs are sometimes packaged alongside bottom performers, but I think that is something they would just do diligence on during an interview process.
[+] [-] shaftway|3 years ago|reply
I also did a bunch of cold job applications, but didn't get a callback from any of them. The whole process led to a ton of anxiety and was really nerve-wracking, especially reading about layoffs from other tech firms in the same time period. I kept worrying that my new company was going to hit layoffs and that my offer would be rescinded, especially when the recruiter told me they were reducing hiring. Having it take about 3 months just drug that anxiety out.
I still have a bit of anxiety about getting laid off, but no more than I'd have anywhere else.
[+] [-] metadaemon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] titanomachy|3 years ago|reply
I think part of it is that I was applying to a lot of larger companies with efficient hiring pipelines, none of which are currently hiring.
[+] [-] mooreds|3 years ago|reply
> I also did a bunch of cold job applications, but didn't get a callback from any of them.
This was my experience when I was let go in Mar 2020 (not from any place as prominent as Meta, however). The network of people you have worked with and know has been by far the best way I've found to get a job. Even when you're senior, cold applications are a low-chance bet.
[+] [-] 8b16380d|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nfw2|3 years ago|reply
I started looking again at the start of this year, and it's been rough, at least compared to my last job search where I had multiple offers in under two weeks. I've submitted ~50 applications so far, most with a non-generic cover letter. Most haven't responded, several declined to interview, and just one scheduled an interview.
Using my referral network hasn't been that effective. Most of my former colleagues are working at large companies that either aren't hiring or are in midst of layoffs themself. I was able to get 4 references at hiring companies through my network, but of those, 3 haven't responded and 1 declined to interview.
I have had a decent amount of interviews through 3rd-party recruiting agencies. I've gotten to final interview stages with a few companies, but no offers. Most of these places were very early seed-stage companies. I'm actively interviewing with a handful now.
When companies decline to even interview, it's discouraging and stressful for sure. It's easy for imposter syndrome to creep in. But overall, I'm still relatively optimistic that I will find something soon-ish.
I can see how hiring companies must be inundated now, but it also seems a bit strange that nearly every company I connect with through a recruiter wants to interview, but my success rate submitting applications myself is basically 0%.
[+] [-] anon8056|3 years ago|reply
My take is that this is not nearly as bad as the dotcom crash in the early 2000s, but the red hot tech market of 2021 where companies were hiring as fast as they could with incredible comp packages is gone. There are still a good number of roles out there, but companies are being more careful in their hiring and they are not trying to compete with (the no longer hiring) FAANGs when it comes to compensation.
[+] [-] bugbuddy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moffkalast|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FrenchDadon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeg8|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 40acres|3 years ago|reply
However it does seem there is still a lot of flux, especially with larger companies who are still trying to allocate headcount. I've had calls with Google that were basically like: "we're interested, but we don't know HC yet, let's circle back in 3 weeks".
[+] [-] sublinear|3 years ago|reply
It's always been like this. Most businesses have permanently listed "openings" that don't necessarily mean they're hiring.
[+] [-] Volundr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jommi|3 years ago|reply
Still on the lookout for senior rust engineers who want to work at a company that's remote-first with a minimal-meetings culture.
You can message me on telegram @jommi for info
[+] [-] nsenifty|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kypro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] echelon|3 years ago|reply
The macro environment looks to be improving, and companies are mostly doing this to put downward pressures on salaries or because they overzealously hired during the pandemic. There are lots of things being built right now that need to be scaled.
I hope this doesn't come off tonally bad - I'm able to contract to hire a few (3-5) folks. I'm building an at-home Hollywood studio, and I'm looking for remote engineers with the following skills:
- Rust/Actix for backend, web services (and a real time desktop app we've yet to launch). This is my #1 need.
- Unreal Engine engineers, preferably with animation and C++ experience. This will help us tremendously. Longer term we'd like to explore Godot, but that's less immediate - more Q3/4.
- ML, especially with generative media experience. We've got a good sized team, but we're always looking to expand it. Experience with audio, images, LLMs/NLP, video a plus.
I'm financing this myself, and we have considerable runway financed from my last exit. There will be equity and full time offers extended if you're interested in sticking with us.
[+] [-] tayo42|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whstl|3 years ago|reply
EDIT: I got 18 years of experience, web full stack (react/vue/golang/rails/C#/haskell) + devops, if that matters.
[+] [-] Ncarpentieri4|3 years ago|reply
I think the entire hiring/search process is so broken. Different applications, formats. Don't get me started on having to fill out sections in a form that are just resume sections (work experience, schools etc.).
Going across big VC firm portfolio openings also super fragmented. It's opened my eyes to how awful the process of hiring is from both sides.
Doing consulting/contract work, advisory, and side projects as I hang on cofounder matching and apply to jobs on workatastartup, wellfound, and linkedin. Pretty dismal job search process.
[+] [-] clavalle|3 years ago|reply
I haven't been laid off but I've been dipping my toe in the past few months because I'm a bit bored in my current role.
The process is much more fiddly than it needs to be. When I run into those 'fill this out again for our system' forms, often times it's after a long day and I will just save it to come back to it later...and I never do.
I wonder how much talent mobility there'd be if someone really solved the issues of repetative job search data entry and just proving to strangers that you can excel in a role without running through an obstacle course that may or may not represent the actual job.
[+] [-] ericmcer|3 years ago|reply
10 applications, 2 rejections, 1 initial phone screen
Anecdotally I see very few junior/low level positions open, most jobs seem to be senior+. Salary ranges are all a bit higher than I remember them being 3 years ago. I am still a long way from being scared enough to take something I don't like or that doesn't pay well, still optimistic things will swing back eventually.
[+] [-] elif|3 years ago|reply
i quit/retired about 4 years ago and often wonder if i applied places how much it would be held against me wanting to have control over my life like that.
[+] [-] UncleOxidant|3 years ago|reply
Many recruiter pings/week, but mostly not great fits (they glom onto a keyword that doesn't mean what they think it does) and often it's easy to tell that several emails from different recruiters are for the same exact job. Hardware verification and FPGA seems to be in great demand, but it's been too many years since I worked in that space so I don't feel like my experience would still be relevant for those.
Talked to a recruiter today who said things are starting to slow down on his end - not getting as many jobs to recruit for. This is to be expected, I think.
So far it's pretty easy to make my 5 contacts/week as required by the unemployment dept.
[+] [-] Yoric|3 years ago|reply
Is that standard?
[+] [-] sosodev|3 years ago|reply
The market is pretty rough. I had a lot of good interviews fizzle out into rejections after the final round. I assume this is because I was competing with several other recently laid off engineers. My new salary is 33% less than my previous and I’m getting much less equity. It sucks but I’m happy to be employed.
[+] [-] ryandrake|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] renewiltord|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blindhippo|3 years ago|reply
(this is all presuming the profession isn't in the process of downgrading to a trade level as a result of constant pressure to remove humans from high value work)
[+] [-] badstreff|3 years ago|reply
Applied to a couple positions ~5-6 and got a couple automated rejections, no interviews or initial calls through this process. I think not having a degree makes it difficult to get past the initial screening
About 2-3 recruiter messages per day on linkedin. I responded to around 10 or so, of which 7 I had initial interviews with the company after my resume was passed up. Had 2 rejections and 3 offers, only 1 of which was under my current salary. I interviewed for mostly 100% remote, I think only 1 company of the ones I was looking at required 2-3 days in office
[+] [-] sph|3 years ago|reply
I'm focusing on my SaaS project, and trying to market myself outside the box instead of the old resume as my 16 years long career doesn't seem to impress anyone. Sorry, I will not elaborate further as you're all my competition here.
[+] [-] lovich|3 years ago|reply
The FAANGs gobbled up so much talent just to deny it to their competition that it sucked all the oxygen out of the industry and now that the people are available there’s still companies desperate to hire even with the higher cost of capital and inflation
[+] [-] webosdude|3 years ago|reply