What SWE job hunting is like right now

[eglove]

I'm a contractor, things were strange during COVID. I worked on project rewrites that got abandoned, and made the mistake of doing test consulting for companies that had never tested before. I will never do that again.

It used to take two-weeks max to find a new position. It's now been two months, and I have no leads. I will call out the exact situation I've run into.

I have received nearly 20 calls from a dozen different recruiting firms all for the same two back-fill jobs at Charter in St. Louis. I interviewed with them once, and it's not a match. .NET, Knockout, and TSQL... They weren't interested in me either. I'm not exactly offended by that.

I get two calls a day about Charter at this point. I've been told, "they just finished a round of interviews, and didn't find anyone." At this point, I have to ask straight away to anyone that calls me about a position, "Is this for Charter?" It's always yes, and I always say, I've already interviewed and I'm not interested.

One of these firms told me they don't want to work with Charter anymore because they've basically gone through everyone, and still haven't hired for these two back-fill positions they've been interviewing for. And they seem to be the only company in the city that's hiring. Or pretending to hire, because they've been giving everyone the runaround for months. I asked to add a note for me in their system that I don't want anymore calls for Charter. They added it and told me they have a shared system with a few other organizations.

That same firm told me they are focusing more on remote positions instead of St. Louis. Which is the least safe city in the country, which includes financial security.

I've always struggled with St. Louis overall. Enterprise is ancient here. When I'm told, "But we have Boeing, Centene, and Bayer!" I have to groan a bit. I'm not talking about tech stack, it's all old as far as I'm concerned, I'm talking about mentality. Nobody tests, CI automation is unheard of. And everyone rolls their eyes at the web. These companies want to build web applications, but they don't want to use the tools of the trade, they want to use desktop tools and pretend browsers don't exist. It's like building a skyscraper with nothing but wood planks and screw driver. I won't get into that at the risk of a much longer rant.

This place feels like a barren wasteland. But I know people in other areas are struggling to find work too. I'm open to move at this point, but I haven't decided which market to focus on. Is there anywhere that's actually growing right now?

[hn_throwaway_99]

There is a lot in your comment to unpack, so I hope this is helpful:

1. Yes, there is an industry-wide downturn in tech. There was just massive over-hiring during the pandemic, and then a huge number of layoffs, which means there are tons of people on the market. Many people have been reporting a strong shift in mentality, lead times, etc. in the tech job market.

2. There is, however, still a lot of demand for tech workers, even if still less than the ZIRP years. Many companies and institutions simply couldn't compete with high paying FAANGs and startups for tech talent, but their need to tech work didn't go away. So in places like government, consumer-focused companies, non-profits, etc. are still hiring. Salaries are often considerably lower than pure tech companies.

3. Despite the huge number of remote jobs, location still matters, primarily because relationships still matter, and those are easier to build face-to-face. This is not unique to tech. If you want to make it big in the fashion industry, there are maybe 4 -ish cities worldwide where you should live. Movie-making, pretty obvious. So while tech is just an overall much, much larger industry, it's not surprising you're disillusioned by St. Louis.

You say that you're a contractor. What does this mean exactly? I.e. are you a contractor by choice, or would you prefer a full time job? How do you normally find jobs (is there a recruiter you usually work with, do you do your own searching, get jobs from past contacts, etc.)? The answer to these questions is important when it comes to optimizing your job search.

[cj]

As a hiring manager for a relatively small company, a major problem is misaligned salary expectations.

Real world example: I recently interviewed an engineer hit by layoffs at Shopify/UPS. The candidate had 4 years of total work experience, and was making $175k in the role that she was let go from, and they won’t accept anything less when looking for a new role. With 4 years of total experience in the workforce.

I would have loved to hire them at $120-140k, but for $175k I can easily find people with 5x more years of experience.

It’s a tough pill to swallow but it is possible to get offers, but they might not be at the salary levels from 2-3 years ago.

Edit: Above anecdote is for 100% remote in US. Full stack node/react/mongo.

Edit 2: Another anecdote to share. The recruiter our company works with (who sources all our candidates) used to only work on a 25% commission of first year salary. About a year ago we were able to negotiate that down to 20%. And a couple months ago we negotiated it down to $90/hr with 0% commission (which comes to roughly 10% or less of first year salary on average). The market for engaging recruiters is a good proxy for the overall supply/demand of the job market.

[mathgeek]

> It’s a tough pill to swallow but it is possible to get offers, but they might not be at the salary levels from 2-3 years ago.

This goes both ways. People teams will prefer to pay less than they have before, and engineers should usually ask for more than they currently make.

Anecdotally as a hiring manager, I would always encourage folks to have savings to cover the time it takes to avoid settling for lower salaries if they lose their role. The folks not making that much already should be moving up to those “lower paying” positions.

[lolinder]

That this is a remote position makes a huge difference that most people seem to be missing—by going remote you're able to draw talent that would otherwise be looking at earning a very respectable $80k from a local company. In those areas (which represent most of the US), $140k is a solidly upper-middle-class salary that enables a very comfortable lifestyle. If coastal residents won't take it, there are plenty of people in the middle of America who will.

[flandish]

I don’t understand some of the dynamics sometimes. For instance, I am 44, been coding professionally since 18. Zero college.

I make 106k in CT in a position focused 75% with Java/Spring for modbus/motion control. (Industrial automation) My other 25% is in what I could label “big data” but is really ETL for a crap ton of near real time transactions.

I enjoy it. I would love to make more money; 106 is hard with a family and such.

But when I look and align my skills, history, and ability to speak in front of anyone - I see listings for 150k+ - and I totally don’t feel “worth” that at all.

Not just because I’m self taught, or have a history doing almost all “it roles”, it’s because I’ve spent 90% of my time in the gloriously underpaid healthcare sector. (Still there.)

What is it like making an offer to someone for 150k for a fully remote position? I could never imagine.

[seanmcdirmid]

> I would have loved to hire them at $120-140k, but for $175k I can easily find people with 5x more years of experience.

Where are you easily finding someone with 20 years experience for 175k?

[altdataseller]

Did you post a salary range in the job posting?

[greatpostman]

120k is bottom of the barrel wages.

[garlandkey]

4 years experience at 140k is an insult IMHO. You claim you can easily find ppl w 5+ years experience, but I find that claim dubious. What you're willing to pay and what value we add seem to be vastly different.

[anonreeeeplor]

My opinion is DEI hires are way out of whack with the market.

Low skilled / low talent in many cases and lower competence but in a ZIRP environment I saw so many situations where women and minorities were hired and given leadership roles, with massively streamlined hiring processes.

When the bottom line doesn’t matter these kinds of hires really proliferated.

I wonder if we will see a hard reset back to competence as the most in demand quality.

And yes I am assuming she is a DEI hire, $180K for four years of experience unless she was like a backend or ai engineer is crazy.

[anonreeeeplor]

I have been interviewing. Everyone is confused right now. Hiring companies are confused. Recruits are confused.

My opinion is we are at a severe dislocation period.

I have noticed massive changes in the emerging skills, tools and platforms. Pretty much no code, low code and AI.

Everything else looks useless or outdated.

Meanwhile, tons of startups and big tech companies are dying and laying off.

The skills those people have are dramatically out of whack with what the market actually wants.

They are also dramatically out of whack compensation wise from what the current market will tolerate.

It means we have a flood of garbage and ultra talented people who can’t plug in anywhere.

The ultra talented person will laugh at the offers that employers are willing to make right now and turn them down.

Employers are not staffing senior or skilled hires and want to low ball the ultra talented people who want nothing to do with these corny offers and companies.

So basically employers think they will get someone “good” and underpay them and people who are actually good are not yet willing to capitulate.

And salaries are dropping by like 20-30%.

And anyone in the market who has seen their bills going up due to inflation will not tolerate a salary drop on top of a downlevel / demotion.

People who have debt and a family think the idea of a salary cut is crazy.

So with all the dead and dying startups, tons of people flooding the market, interview process going to hell, people getting upset about the salary and skills disconnects, rapid change in which projects are getting funded and which skills are in demand.

If you are unemployed right now you are likely to be in pain for six months and you will likely need a salary or career reset and you will likely need to reskill and possibly relocate.

That’s where we are.

[scarface_74]

What you’re missing is that you don’t need someone “good” to do your bog standard enterprise framework dev. You just need someone “good enough”.

And since many if not most people in the higher income tax brackets own their homes with fix rate mortgages and they aren’t spending every penny they make, they aren’t really seeing the full affects of inflation.

[CoastalCoder]

I think that's an excellent analysis. There's another issue I'm not seeing anyone talk about:

I'm currently unemployed. But given my life circumstances, I need to make about $170k/year to avoid long-term money problems.

I've seen a few jobs in the $140k-$150k range that I'm pretty sure are mine for the asking. But I know that once the market improves, I'd need to move on to other companies for better pay.

I'm avoiding applying for those jobs because it feels slimy: I'd have to deceive the employer about my intentions to stay.

[cvccvroomvroom]

> The ultra talented person will laugh at the offers that employers are willing to make right now and turn them down.

I'm unmotivated to look for this reason. As an IC6 SRE, I won't get out of bed for less than $250k TC. I have a TC negotiator and an IP employment lawyer to pay before accepting any offer.

If were temporarily unable to find employment, monetizing SaaS product(s) would be my backup plan because there's plenty of potential upside by choosing the category and market fit with solid pricing.

[lylejantzi3rd]

What skills do you think are in demand?

[scarface_74]

I’m going to say something that at first is going to sound really insulting. But please hear me out.

If you’re just another enterprise CRUD developer like most of the 2.7 million developers in the US, there are literally thousands who can do the job good enough.

When I worked and lived in Atlanta pre-Covid, I could throw my resume in the air and reach out to local recruiters I had worked with for years and have multiple offers within less than a month. This was for your standard Enterprise CRUD jobs.

This was my life from 1996-2018.

A remote job at AWS working in the Professional Services department (full time) consulting fell into my lap in 2020.

I got Amazoned a couple of months ago.

As a backup plan, I started spamming my resume on LinkedIn Easy Apply for bog standard C# CRUD jobs. I never do this. But I had time on my hands this time so why not? I applied for 70 jobs this way and most of my applications weren’t even looked at and my resume was only downloaded twice. LinkedIn shows you this. I heard crickets from doing this.

I had 15 years of C# experience including 7 leading projects and 3 leading projects at AWS in the consulting department. Every job I applied to had 100s of applications.

Before when I was looking I was only competing in the local market. Now I’m competing nationwide.

From my prior network, most companies wanted hybrid or in office.

Don’t cry for me. I had three interviews and two offers within the two weeks for full time consulting jobs that paid around 20% less than I was making in all at Amazon. But one was because of a referral for a mid size company as a “staff architect” and the other two interviews were interested because I was the third highest contributor to a popular complex open source “AWS Solution”.

But, if you take away my AWS account, I turn back into your bog standard “enterprise dev” with above average soft skills

Edit: I see the comment is dead now. But when I was “carrying Amazon’s water” I guess they were referring to a month ago - I had already been Amazoned then.

Amazon was my 8th company in 27 years I’m now on my ninth. It was just another method to exchange labor for money.

I’ve been consistent in my distrust of government power whether it was targeting Amazon, Apple or Google.

[tekchip]

This isn't unique to your role.

John Deere is the same here. They directly posted 2 IT Admin jobs. I applied and was denied. Now I get spammed with phone calls, emails, and texts many times a week from recruiters who insist I'm ideal for the position but never get beyond the recruiter. It's been months at this point.

US Army, via one of their contractors, is the same. Open rolls didn't fill. Now the contractor seems to have these rolls perpetually open and staffing agencies hiring constantly resulting in...nothing.

Truly bizarre and frustrating.

[hipadev23]

Your problem is using recruiters. There’s a shitload of remote jobs available. Just look at HN Who’s Hiring.

Also drop the CI/tests attitude. Many modern startups don’t bother with security-theater either.

[and0]

I sent out plenty of resumes with nice cover letters to jobs I felt overqualified for over the 4 months I was just looking, and had maybe one response.. from a recruiter.

But I worked with a recruiter for a few of those months and they got me to a few final rounds. I think having a proper recruiter, who knows the hiring manager, is pretty powerful. Them shaving whatever % of the top is lame but it's better than being unemployed.

[cjk]

The last time I switched jobs was in October of 2020, so I haven’t experienced this personally, but I have a lot of friends in the same boat.

Lots of said friends were affected by layoffs at various tech companies over the last couple years, but I also have some junior dev friends that are finding it basically impossible to even get callbacks. Everyone seems to only want senior devs at the moment.

[lylejantzi3rd]

I'm a senior dev and I'm also finding it hard to get callbacks. I've come to the conclusion that cold applying to positions is no longer viable. You won't even get a callback if you don't have a referral.

[danesparza]

Are you just looking for local to St Louis? How much experience do you have? Do you have a broad skillset or are you pretty focused? Each of these things has a huge effect on your job search, and you didn't really mention any of them.

[solardev]

I can't speak to St. Louis, but about the tech stack, my personal experience is that the bigger the company (outside of formal tech companies), the older/slower/more bloated the stack. They tend to choose stability and longevity over modernity, so a lot of Oracle, Microsoft, etc., and whatever their people were using ten years ago. It kinda makes sense at their scale. It's not the core of their business, and they don't like change for change's sake.

If you want a more nimble tech stack, small companies are where it's at -- the ones who don't have much to lose, who are often working on greenfield projects and have both the personnel and the lack of legacy baggage to be able to explore more modern stacks. But even then, you're probably just catching them at the start of a cycle, and if they survive 5-10 years, they'll probably be using an old (by then) tech stack.

I will say this: You can have a lot more sway about the stack once you're hired, especially if you're a full employee. I've convinced several companies to modernize their stacks only after working with them for a year or two, doing good work on their old (terrible) stacks, and then showing a demo of how much easier a new stack could be for the people involved. On the other hand, if I go in swinging during an interview and say "your stack sucks, I want to rewrite it right away" they'll never hire me. Makes sense, because I don't know their pain points and workflows yet; I'm not in a position to make that sort of judgment call from the outside.

Just my 2¢.

[cvccvroomvroom]

You're painting with a broad brush a religious view of an idealized tech stack rather than the problem of motivations at different scales that aren't equal or necessary for each.

Large companies reward resume-grade impact, not cleaning up code, because there is literally no value added (that can be claimed) unless code is used or directly saves money. So spending expensive engineering time refactoring code for future hypothetical concerns isn't viewed as achieving anything, even if it sounds good. It's a shitty reality but necessary to collapse the often disconnect between software engineering and business.

Very large companies also have the staff to roll their own custom everything because COTS FOSS just can't scale up or out well enough at a reasonable cost.

By contrast, startups lack standards and working infrastructure, and are often forced to rely on force multipliers such as potentially expensive SaaS services where they own nothing, not even their data. The upside of startup startups is that there's nowhere for average or lazy engineers to hide: everyone must produce and do things in a maintainable manner or face the consequences of poor operations or paying the price of tech debt.

There are no free lunches, religions, or perfect solutions in real-world web ops. There is only minimizing classes of fires and being able to respond to them in a lasting manner in order to move forward.

[MattGaiser]

> Nobody tests, CI automation is unheard of.

This seems like a very dangerous attitude from a plane maker, a drug maker, and a healthcare data provider.

[zdragnar]

Automated testing is only as good as the tests you write. Most of those industries have very strict formal specification and verification that doesn't lend itself well to the "move fast and break things" attitude of the 2010's web.

In fact, the major health org I am working with second-hand (customer of the company I work for) has a hard code freeze mid-November. The remaining 6 weeks of the year prior to Jan 1 is nothing but QA, then QA'ing bug fixes, rinse and repeat.

It is very un-agile, and it isn't likely to change. The closest they will ever get is back to true waterfall, which is planned iterations.

[eglove]

They are more documentation driven. Every line of code and every change is meticulously documented and reviewed. This is the pre-agile, pre-automation way of doing things.

[jehb]

Easy - just build everything on top of "enterprise" platforms that offer indemnification clauses. Then nothing is ever your fault, it's always the vendor.

[wredue]

>not interested in the tools of the trade etc

You’re looking at this wrong. Enterprise tools of the trade are not the same as start up tools of the trade.

You’re not going to get in to an enterprise order management codebase and be pitching nodejs and huge lift and shifts. It just won’t happen.

[sys_64738]

I went to St Louis for contract work several times in the late 90s. It was a horrible place back then and I am glad I never went back. Seems it hasn't improved.

[CoastalCoder]

I'm 7 months into unemployment, so I've been doing a lot of job searching as well.

I too have noticed multiple, unrelated recruiting agencies advertising for the same position. This is the first time I recall seeing that. No idea what changed.

Location also seems to matter more than it did a few years ago. There definitely seem to be fewer employers open to fully-remote work.

[yieldcrv]

yeah I occasionally meet recruiters in the midwest for jobs in the midwest, and they don’t seem to understand how ridiculous and nonstandard their approaches are to anything. the recruiter or the organization with the role.

[garlandkey]

I've lived there and tried to find work when I was at a Junior level and had no luck. That was during Covid. I had more luck just networking a lot and trying to make connections with people who work remotely.

[m3kw9]

I call this write up the St Louis blues

[zmgsabst]

> It used to take two-weeks max to find a new position. It's now been two months, and I have no leads.

I’ve had a similar experience, albeit with different details.

[rossdavidh]

Just FYI one data point, I live in Austin, Texas, I'm a contract python programmer, and the details are different but I am in the same boat right now. I'm taking the opportunity to learn new stuff at home, and if finances get tight I'll take a non-SWE position and wait it out until the software job market comes back, but right now it's definitely not just you and not just St. Louis.

[selimthegrim]

Doesn’t Bayer’s Ag division have a data science org out of St. Louis

[user_named]

Is that a question?

[aldarisbm]

Bayer has a lot of modern stacks, literally cutting edge, on some of their departments. Depends on the department and what you're doing.

[eglove]

"modern stacks" yeah... they use GraphQL sometimes. I'm sure they'll say Node is cutting edge too. That was exactly my point about tech stack. Dangling shiny keys in front of me in the form of technologies doesn't really cut it. I'm sure it helps for the recent grads though.

[lizardking]

Try looking in Kansas City, there has been quite the uptick here recently. I’d be happy to put you in touch with recruiters I trust.

[tennisflyi]

This is basically every other industry.

[thry48593]

Somewhat related, I heard from a contact that Accenture needed consultants with my skills in the US/Canada. I got a referral, and put was contacted by someone in HR.

I said I wanted to work in the US. They told me that they aren't sponsoring visas in the US right now. I was thinking, they're Accenture, how can this be possible?

[ChrisArchitect]

Tell HN:

[jzig]

St. Louis is a wasteland if you’re looking for more modern software jobs. And the employers haven’t learned their lesson. You can though, by looking for remote work.

[moneywoes]

Have you looked for any remote opportunities?

in the same boat

[saluki]

What's your ideal tech stack or position you're looking for?