<story><title>Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession</title><text>I’ve been job hunting and I was going to get interviewed on Friday for a SWE role at a small startup and today I received an email from the PM canceling the interview and letting me know the company has decided to stop the recruitment process for all roles due to the markets situation. She also attached a tweet about a YC email to all their founders, here’s the link: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;refsrc&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1527238287471292417&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;refsrc&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1527238287471292417&lt;/a&gt;. I checked the company webpage and in fact they have closed all the open positions, there were like 6.&lt;p&gt;From all the rejections I’ve got so far this is the first time the reason is markets turmoil &amp;#x2F; recession threat. To be honest is my first time job hunting since I graduated in 2019.&lt;p&gt;Screen shots: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;t.co&amp;#x2F;wSx5IR44nK&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;t.co&amp;#x2F;wSx5IR44nK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will be this the situation for most tech companies or just start ups? I know the unprofitable over valuated ones will most likely get rekt first but I wanna know if during recessions recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies.&lt;p&gt;What companies or roles will be more resilient?&lt;p&gt;And how as a SWE &amp;#x2F; tech industry professional, specially the ones starting their careers like me, can prepare?&lt;p&gt;I hope some experienced people in the industry can give some hope and advice. Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market. First pandemic, then recession? F...</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>eastbound</author><text>At risk? We’ll just stop having overinflated salaries. The current situation is insane for employers:&lt;p&gt;- Employees are not willing to put a little extra (paid extra, I mean - and we’re at the 35hrs week here),&lt;p&gt;- Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,&lt;p&gt;- Not willing to work on legacy products where we pay them 40% more.&lt;p&gt;- In the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -&amp;gt; 50 -&amp;gt; +10k bonus, and they’ll leave for a job at 65 going 75 with a tech stack that ticks all boxes.&lt;p&gt;- You can teach them React + SpringBoot + Kubernetes, and they’ll still leave because company XYZ does AWS + Neo4j + AI… while still not fixing spelling mistakes in the UI and still in the habit of downloading and entire DB tables and filter them in the Java side, and seeing no problem asking for a microservices architecture.&lt;p&gt;This developer market is batshit crazy and isn’t tight enough to make people want to serve the needs of customers. “Do something hard and get a house in exchange” isn’t a persuasive argument today, they’ll get rich anyway. Instead, they serve their resume, which I perfectly respect and understand, it needs to be done too, but at one point, it’s a disconnect between customers, employers and developers.&lt;p&gt;A crisis is unfortunate but I can’t wait for it.</text></item><item><author>Solvitieg</author><text>&amp;gt; Overall, I&amp;#x27;d say relax a bit. You&amp;#x27;re still in a good situation. Recessions are hard for many, but software engineers were among the best off during the last one and I expect will be this time also.&lt;p&gt;The demand for software engineers was driven partly by zombie app and saas companies all competing for &amp;quot;top talent&amp;quot;, dependent entirely on free cash but without  sustainable business models.&lt;p&gt;On top of that, the &amp;quot;demand&amp;quot; narrative led to an influx of new software engineers that will mature over the next 1-3 years.&lt;p&gt;These two factors I believe put our industry at risk if there&amp;#x27;s a recession.</text></item><item><author>scottlamb</author><text>&amp;gt; I hope some experienced people in the industry can give some hope and advice. Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market. First pandemic, then recession? F...&lt;p&gt;Overall, I&amp;#x27;d say relax a bit. You&amp;#x27;re still in a good situation. Recessions are hard for many, but software engineers were among the best off during the last one and I expect will be this time also.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I wanna know if during recessions recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies.&lt;p&gt;I remember Google&amp;#x27;s recruiting slowed down in ~2008. [edit: 2009? Maybe not right at the start of the recession.] [1] So sometimes yes. On the bright side, it&amp;#x27;s rare for profitable large tech companies to lay off software engineers, so if you get in, you&amp;#x27;re pretty safe.&lt;p&gt;Even at startups, I don&amp;#x27;t expect a universal freeze. I asked an external recruiter (that is, someone who recruits for a variety of startups) a couple days ago about the present situation. She told me some companies she works with have done hiring freezes, others are still desperate to hire. There are opportunities. I&amp;#x27;m not a good enough business person to give you solid general advice about which startups will be most resilient, though.&lt;p&gt;If you are good enough and&amp;#x2F;or persistent enough, my feeling is there will be a place for you in tech. (Even if, for example, you freeze up during coding interviews. Some companies do these, others don&amp;#x27;t. There&amp;#x27;s enough variety that you can still be okay if you don&amp;#x27;t have your sights set on a particular company.)&lt;p&gt;If you are not, there&amp;#x27;s almost certainly still a place for you as a software engineer in a stable, non-tech company or government position. Non-tech typically isn&amp;#x27;t as lucrative, but you can be comfortable. My feeling is many of these places have a tremendous need for just basic automation. Arguably more so during a recession, although they may not all realize this.&lt;p&gt;I started my career not long before the last recession. I didn&amp;#x27;t have any real existing savings to lose. Then I was earning far in excess of my needs and investing much of the rest in index funds (e.g. VTI) when stock prices were low. The recession ended and stock prices soared. I feel scummy saying this about many people&amp;#x27;s suffering, but the recession worked out well for me.&lt;p&gt;[1] Personally I think this was a mistake. They could have hired a lot of great people during this time. &amp;quot;Be bold when others are fearful.&amp;quot; They had solid financial footing for hiring, and if nothing else, they could have put a fair number of folks on efficiency projects that would have more than paid their way in machine costs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckNorris89</author><text>Where are you located that you have a 35h week while enjoying such great benefits like employer investing in your training?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d like to move there.&lt;p&gt;In my EU country the working hours are 38.5 which isn&amp;#x27;t as good as 35h, but it isn&amp;#x27;t that bad, but no employer hires you to invest in your training. Every company wants only seniors, preferably for junior wages, and scream there&amp;#x27;s a shortage while offering no WFH because &amp;quot;management doesn&amp;#x27;t believe in WFH&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;the culture of working in the office is better&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tell HN: Job interview canceled due to looming recession</title><text>I’ve been job hunting and I was going to get interviewed on Friday for a SWE role at a small startup and today I received an email from the PM canceling the interview and letting me know the company has decided to stop the recruitment process for all roles due to the markets situation. She also attached a tweet about a YC email to all their founders, here’s the link: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;refsrc&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1527238287471292417&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;refsrc&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1527238287471292417&lt;/a&gt;. I checked the company webpage and in fact they have closed all the open positions, there were like 6.&lt;p&gt;From all the rejections I’ve got so far this is the first time the reason is markets turmoil &amp;#x2F; recession threat. To be honest is my first time job hunting since I graduated in 2019.&lt;p&gt;Screen shots: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;t.co&amp;#x2F;wSx5IR44nK&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;t.co&amp;#x2F;wSx5IR44nK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will be this the situation for most tech companies or just start ups? I know the unprofitable over valuated ones will most likely get rekt first but I wanna know if during recessions recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies.&lt;p&gt;What companies or roles will be more resilient?&lt;p&gt;And how as a SWE &amp;#x2F; tech industry professional, specially the ones starting their careers like me, can prepare?&lt;p&gt;I hope some experienced people in the industry can give some hope and advice. Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market. First pandemic, then recession? F...</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>eastbound</author><text>At risk? We’ll just stop having overinflated salaries. The current situation is insane for employers:&lt;p&gt;- Employees are not willing to put a little extra (paid extra, I mean - and we’re at the 35hrs week here),&lt;p&gt;- Not willing to study afterwork to improve their career,&lt;p&gt;- Not willing to work on legacy products where we pay them 40% more.&lt;p&gt;- In the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -&amp;gt; 50 -&amp;gt; +10k bonus, and they’ll leave for a job at 65 going 75 with a tech stack that ticks all boxes.&lt;p&gt;- You can teach them React + SpringBoot + Kubernetes, and they’ll still leave because company XYZ does AWS + Neo4j + AI… while still not fixing spelling mistakes in the UI and still in the habit of downloading and entire DB tables and filter them in the Java side, and seeing no problem asking for a microservices architecture.&lt;p&gt;This developer market is batshit crazy and isn’t tight enough to make people want to serve the needs of customers. “Do something hard and get a house in exchange” isn’t a persuasive argument today, they’ll get rich anyway. Instead, they serve their resume, which I perfectly respect and understand, it needs to be done too, but at one point, it’s a disconnect between customers, employers and developers.&lt;p&gt;A crisis is unfortunate but I can’t wait for it.</text></item><item><author>Solvitieg</author><text>&amp;gt; Overall, I&amp;#x27;d say relax a bit. You&amp;#x27;re still in a good situation. Recessions are hard for many, but software engineers were among the best off during the last one and I expect will be this time also.&lt;p&gt;The demand for software engineers was driven partly by zombie app and saas companies all competing for &amp;quot;top talent&amp;quot;, dependent entirely on free cash but without  sustainable business models.&lt;p&gt;On top of that, the &amp;quot;demand&amp;quot; narrative led to an influx of new software engineers that will mature over the next 1-3 years.&lt;p&gt;These two factors I believe put our industry at risk if there&amp;#x27;s a recession.</text></item><item><author>scottlamb</author><text>&amp;gt; I hope some experienced people in the industry can give some hope and advice. Is demoralizing to find out I spent 4 years in school just to get into a really harsh job market. First pandemic, then recession? F...&lt;p&gt;Overall, I&amp;#x27;d say relax a bit. You&amp;#x27;re still in a good situation. Recessions are hard for many, but software engineers were among the best off during the last one and I expect will be this time also.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I wanna know if during recessions recruiting slows down even for big profitable companies.&lt;p&gt;I remember Google&amp;#x27;s recruiting slowed down in ~2008. [edit: 2009? Maybe not right at the start of the recession.] [1] So sometimes yes. On the bright side, it&amp;#x27;s rare for profitable large tech companies to lay off software engineers, so if you get in, you&amp;#x27;re pretty safe.&lt;p&gt;Even at startups, I don&amp;#x27;t expect a universal freeze. I asked an external recruiter (that is, someone who recruits for a variety of startups) a couple days ago about the present situation. She told me some companies she works with have done hiring freezes, others are still desperate to hire. There are opportunities. I&amp;#x27;m not a good enough business person to give you solid general advice about which startups will be most resilient, though.&lt;p&gt;If you are good enough and&amp;#x2F;or persistent enough, my feeling is there will be a place for you in tech. (Even if, for example, you freeze up during coding interviews. Some companies do these, others don&amp;#x27;t. There&amp;#x27;s enough variety that you can still be okay if you don&amp;#x27;t have your sights set on a particular company.)&lt;p&gt;If you are not, there&amp;#x27;s almost certainly still a place for you as a software engineer in a stable, non-tech company or government position. Non-tech typically isn&amp;#x27;t as lucrative, but you can be comfortable. My feeling is many of these places have a tremendous need for just basic automation. Arguably more so during a recession, although they may not all realize this.&lt;p&gt;I started my career not long before the last recession. I didn&amp;#x27;t have any real existing savings to lose. Then I was earning far in excess of my needs and investing much of the rest in index funds (e.g. VTI) when stock prices were low. The recession ended and stock prices soared. I feel scummy saying this about many people&amp;#x27;s suffering, but the recession worked out well for me.&lt;p&gt;[1] Personally I think this was a mistake. They could have hired a lot of great people during this time. &amp;quot;Be bold when others are fearful.&amp;quot; They had solid financial footing for hiring, and if nothing else, they could have put a fair number of folks on efficiency projects that would have more than paid their way in machine costs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kortilla</author><text>&amp;gt; the first 2 years, I can pay someone 35 -&amp;gt; 50 -&amp;gt; +10k bonus&lt;p&gt;You pay them such terrible wages and you’re surprised they leave? You can make $35k at in-n-out shilling beef on a bun.</text></comment>