I was laid off. Have been trying to find a new job, but no luck so far. I have a strange feeling that many companies I applied to actually have no clue what they are looking for. Everything is in some strange fluid state. I can understand that, with all layoffs and consolidation under way. But I can not afford to be jobless for much longer. What are your experiences?
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Someone brought this up in another post (just below). I thought I would start a new topic based on the following points.
"I have a strange feeling that many companies I applied to actually have no clue what they are looking for. Everything is in some strange fluid state. I can understand that, with all layoffs and consolidation under way."
Rember these points
- Many job postings out there are fake and purely used by companies to see how low they can pay new employees and get rid of older, more expensive ones. If a company posts a job for a SDE and receives 100 qualified applicants to do the same job at 1/3 of the cost of a current employee like at Google, why would they not lay off their employee and hire a much less expensive one?
- Many Indian offshore staffing agencies are fake. They steal personal information from desperate US job seekers or sell them "work laptops" and then disappear. They stole over 14 million dollars from US job seekers in 2023, and Federal Trade Commission even posted a warning about it given how widespread the fraud by Indian recruiters has become.
- Yes, companies are swamped with new applicants and hiring managers are running around like headless chickens and keep changing job requirements. The trend I am seeing is combining two or three distinct responsibilities and expecting to pay for only one employee (e.g., both a backend developer and frontend developers in one).
- The IT industry in US is going through the same evolutionary process as in manufacturing--jobs offshored to the lowest regions especially in India and Singapore. There is a reason the US national debt is going up parabolically—the tax base is being destroyed.
- There is clearly no shortage of IT workers in the US. It is a lie to import more H1Bs to lower salaries (and to keep slave labor from job hopping), and to encourage more Americans to pay for a degree with the lies that they will all end up rich.
- Companies in the US now hardly product any value. Netflix to watch cr-ppy shows or Facebook for narcissists to post pictures of themselves. Their stock price and success is only dependent on money printing and low interest rates which cannot continue forever.
"I have a strange feeling that many companies I applied to actually have no clue what they are looking for. Everything is in some strange fluid state. I can understand that, with all layoffs and consolidation under way."
Rember these points
- Many job postings out there are fake and purely used by companies to see how low they can pay new employees and get rid of older, more expensive ones. If a company posts a job for a SDE and receives 100 qualified applicants to do the same job at 1/3 of the cost of a current employee like at Google, why would they not lay off their employee and hire a much less expensive one?
- Many Indian offshore staffing agencies are fake. They steal personal information from desperate US job seekers or sell them "work laptops" and then disappear. They stole over 14 million dollars from US job seekers in 2022, and Federal Trade Commission even posted a warning about it given how widespread the fraud by Indian recruiters has become.
- Yes, companies are swamped with new applicants and hiring managers are running around like headless chickens and keep changing job requirements. The trend I am seeing is combining two or three distinct responsibilities and expecting to pay for only one employee (e.g., both a backend developer and frontend developers in one).
- The IT in US is going through the same evolutionary process as in manufacturing--jobs offshored to the lowest regions especially in India and Singapore. There is a reason the US national debt is going up parabolically—the tax base is being destroyed.
We need at least 80,000 more h1b visas per year to solve these labor shortages.
If I get layed-off by Google. I'd head back South to get back into my old job in Construction being a Framer. You can make very good money working Construction jobs if you aren't afraid of hard work. The best thing I miss about being a Contruction Framer is I didn't sit in an office cubical all day staring at a computer screen.
You could finally get out of Seattle and move to West Viriginia and probably get a job there in one day as a Coal Miner. West Virginia has over 100 working Coal Mines. They have plenty of open jobs and any Coal Minning outfit would probably hire you and have you start work the very next day. As a Coal Miner, the work is hard, but the pay is very good $50-80 an hour plus overtime.
You probably will feel for the first time in your miserable life that you are finally doing something that contributes rather than your useless job at Goggle writing bug prone cr-ppy code.
Tech surplus is in. The gravy train is slowing down. Layoffs will happen for high comp and more tenure employees. Hiring will be the lower cost and younger resources to reduce OPEX.
build your own thing and scape the slavery
Long overdue for the companies to admit that supply of (tech/engineering folks) have long surpassed demand.