[Paul-Craft]

That literally cannot be true unless the supposed "more or less qualified" applicants actually aren't qualified. Now, I suppose it's possible that thousands of people are lying on their resumes just to get a chance to work at Dropbox, but given this year's layoffs, I find it far, far more likely that people on the hiring side have gone off the deep end.

You can disagree with me on that, and that's fine, but stay with me for a second here... if there's an open role, presumably they'd be better off with someone filling it than having it stay open for months on end, right? And, given that the candidate pool has been recently enriched with people who were recently employed and would not normally be out on the job market (remember, these are "more or less qualified" candidates, at least according to their resumes), I have a hard time believing the disconnect isn't that companies either think it's a good time to go unicorn hunting, or they don't actually want to hire at all for some reason.

But, again, unicorn hunting only works out in a tiny percentage of cases, because the supply of unicorns is low, and the real unicorns probably are not the ones out there pounding the pavement. I can't even begin to explain why any sane company would post a job listing in good faith and then never hire anyone for it, given that they're supposedly inundated with reasonable-looking candidates.

So, what's the deal here? If you have the explanation, I'd love to hear it, because I've been on the hiring side, and you can damn well bet I wouldn't devote my time to resume screening and interviewing if I didn't think we were actually going to hire anyone.

[kleinsch]

This seem pretty simple to me. Dropbox opens a role. They get 1000 applications. They hire one person. 999 people post on forums that they're getting rejected everywhere they apply.

Going more macro, there are 1000 people out of work applying to every job. There are only 100 jobs open across all companies. The same 1000 people apply to all of them, only 100 get hired. 900 people post on forums they can't get a job.

This doesn't need to be a conspiracy theory. If there are fewer jobs than there were last year (particularly in sectors like junior dev and FE eng) there are going to be people who don't get hired.

[dudul]

Man, that's some serious black belt level overthinking.

One open position, 1000 resumes received, pick a handful to interview, hire 1 after a few weeks, 999 come to HN to ask if the job market is tough and say they can't get hired anywhere.

No need for some weird conspiracy theory.

[Cthulhu_]

The person posting did not say they had trouble filling the position, only that for positions that do open up they get thousands of applicants.

[Paul-Craft]

The person posting didn't have to. Everyone else is saying they aren't getting hired. Who do you think is on the other side of these transactions?

[lizardking]

Hiring a single candidate for a single position is what’s on the other side of these transactions, typically.

[offices]

> having it stay open for months on end, right

I stayed with you. Here's the non-sequitur. New positions appear on an ongoing basis and the latency from opening to accepted offer is non-zero.

[Paul-Craft]

You know this isn't about 1 person at 1 company hiring for 1 role, right? This is about the job market as a whole. Who do you think is on the other end of these transactions?

Context. Seriously.

[dmvdoug]

The context was you responding to somebody specifically at Dropbox. You glommed onto their comment as the opening wedge for a point you wanted to make that is about the job market as a whole, not Dropbox. Then you seem puzzled (at least) if not positively affronted that people responded by saying you seemed to be missing the point Dropbox-dude was making.

Context. Seriously.