<story><title>Ask HN: Is the job market brutal? or is it just me?</title><text>Former Apple&amp;#x2F;Facebook engineer, been leading engineering and product teams at startups the last few years. Have normally found a new job within a few weeks, but this time it has been 4 months.&lt;p&gt;Submitted 150 job applications last week. Got one interview with a recruiter. Had a few interview rounds over the last few months through old coworkers, they all lasted several months with long pauses - one still going 4 months in.&lt;p&gt;How is it going for everyone else searching right now? Is it just me?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>skyyler</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;afghanistan-drone-strike-video.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;afghanistan-d...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anyone that gets into defense because of this thread, remember that the technologies you develop will be used to slaughter the innocent.</text></item><item><author>howmayiannoyyou</author><text>Yeah, would be great to live in a magic land, where the US has no competitors, adversaries and sworn enemies. But this isn&amp;#x27;t magic land. US defense contractors are very much for profit and deliver a product that deters or kills some very bad people, more and more discriminating between collateral damage and intended targets - far more than can be said of Russian in Ukraine, for example.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s an entire generation in this country that thinks the US is safe, a villain even. How wrong they are, and how much they stand to lose if the US loses.</text></item><item><author>wunderland</author><text>Damn this is the most depressing comment in this whole comments section</text></item><item><author>gautamdivgi</author><text>If you are a US citizen try defense  companies.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I should have explained my reasoning. They have a much smaller eligible applicant pool - US citizens who are eligible for security clearance. Because of this they’re continuously looking for good talent.</text></item><item><author>moosedev</author><text>Not just you. I would guess, optimistically, I’m averaging a 5% conversion rate of applications to recruiter chats&amp;#x2F;“stage 0 interviews”. That is, ~95% of applications yield silence or a generic email rejection without any human contact.&lt;p&gt;~15 YOE, FAANG experience, usually only applying to roles I feel I’m at least a halfway good fit for (i.e. not a complete scattergun approach).&lt;p&gt;I’m (financially) fine for now, which is very fortunate. I wasn’t even laid off - I quit voluntarily and took a sabbatical while the good times were rollin’. But since I started looking seriously again, it’s been hard to shake the sense of time disappearing with nothing to show for it. I’m better at Leetcode (ugh) than I’ve ever been, but so is everyone else, and with the slow drip of actual interviews, I only get to demonstrate it once or twice a month :)&lt;p&gt;ETA: A few of the recruiters I have talked with have mentioned that they’re getting hundreds of applications within hours of a posting going live. So there is likely a “lost in volume” effect as another commenter mentioned. In fact, for some of the roles where I thought I was a great fit but got a generic rejection without a recruiter call, I’ve had some eventual success simply reapplying for the same role, at least when the recruiting platform allows it (some don’t). For reasons of culture and upbringing, it took me a while to get comfortable not taking that initial, faceless “no” for an answer, but it has worked at least twice so far.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>FooBarBizBazz</author><text>Dude, you don&amp;#x27;t need high tech to slaughter the innocent, any fool can do that. What gold-plated weapons systems do is credibly deter a Chinese landing force from showing up in Taipei, or help the Ukranians achieve the 5+ K&amp;#x2F;D ratios they need to survive as an independent nation.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d be happier to know that my code would let a shaped charge target a J20 cockpit in the unlikely event of Really Bad Decision Making, than to know that it was targeting teenage girls with contagious mental illness.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I can give you plenty of reasons not to work in defense. They don&amp;#x27;t pay enough for you to ever own a house in a desirable place; security clearances are an invasive relic of the J. Edgar Hoover days (and your sensitive data will get hacked by China anyway); it&amp;#x27;s assumed that you don&amp;#x27;t know &amp;quot;foreign persons&amp;quot; (hint: This is actually now a mark of the lower-class and uneducated.); a software engineer without an advanced degree is basically nobody; cloud stuff is mostly off limits; work may happen in windowless rooms; perks are non-existent; and it&amp;#x27;s embarrassing to answer &amp;quot;so what do you do for a living&amp;quot; if you&amp;#x27;re trying to exist in blue-state society.&lt;p&gt;But ethics? Compared to FAANG? I wouldn&amp;#x27;t worry about that.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Is the job market brutal? or is it just me?</title><text>Former Apple&amp;#x2F;Facebook engineer, been leading engineering and product teams at startups the last few years. Have normally found a new job within a few weeks, but this time it has been 4 months.&lt;p&gt;Submitted 150 job applications last week. Got one interview with a recruiter. Had a few interview rounds over the last few months through old coworkers, they all lasted several months with long pauses - one still going 4 months in.&lt;p&gt;How is it going for everyone else searching right now? Is it just me?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>skyyler</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;afghanistan-drone-strike-video.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;afghanistan-d...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anyone that gets into defense because of this thread, remember that the technologies you develop will be used to slaughter the innocent.</text></item><item><author>howmayiannoyyou</author><text>Yeah, would be great to live in a magic land, where the US has no competitors, adversaries and sworn enemies. But this isn&amp;#x27;t magic land. US defense contractors are very much for profit and deliver a product that deters or kills some very bad people, more and more discriminating between collateral damage and intended targets - far more than can be said of Russian in Ukraine, for example.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s an entire generation in this country that thinks the US is safe, a villain even. How wrong they are, and how much they stand to lose if the US loses.</text></item><item><author>wunderland</author><text>Damn this is the most depressing comment in this whole comments section</text></item><item><author>gautamdivgi</author><text>If you are a US citizen try defense  companies.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I should have explained my reasoning. They have a much smaller eligible applicant pool - US citizens who are eligible for security clearance. Because of this they’re continuously looking for good talent.</text></item><item><author>moosedev</author><text>Not just you. I would guess, optimistically, I’m averaging a 5% conversion rate of applications to recruiter chats&amp;#x2F;“stage 0 interviews”. That is, ~95% of applications yield silence or a generic email rejection without any human contact.&lt;p&gt;~15 YOE, FAANG experience, usually only applying to roles I feel I’m at least a halfway good fit for (i.e. not a complete scattergun approach).&lt;p&gt;I’m (financially) fine for now, which is very fortunate. I wasn’t even laid off - I quit voluntarily and took a sabbatical while the good times were rollin’. But since I started looking seriously again, it’s been hard to shake the sense of time disappearing with nothing to show for it. I’m better at Leetcode (ugh) than I’ve ever been, but so is everyone else, and with the slow drip of actual interviews, I only get to demonstrate it once or twice a month :)&lt;p&gt;ETA: A few of the recruiters I have talked with have mentioned that they’re getting hundreds of applications within hours of a posting going live. So there is likely a “lost in volume” effect as another commenter mentioned. In fact, for some of the roles where I thought I was a great fit but got a generic rejection without a recruiter call, I’ve had some eventual success simply reapplying for the same role, at least when the recruiting platform allows it (some don’t). For reasons of culture and upbringing, it took me a while to get comfortable not taking that initial, faceless “no” for an answer, but it has worked at least twice so far.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Our_Benefactors</author><text>For a more balanced take, “Why I chose a gun” &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ted.com&amp;#x2F;talks&amp;#x2F;peter_van_uhm_why_i_chose_a_gun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ted.com&amp;#x2F;talks&amp;#x2F;peter_van_uhm_why_i_chose_a_gun&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>