[spamizbad]

I’m a hiring manager. My company did a round of contractor layoffs in 2023 and made a smaller number of FTE hires backfills.

My advice is to hang in there. Often we have 3 strong candidates per open position. The people we reject aren’t getting rejected because they aren’t a good fit or lack skills - it’s just that someone else was a little better. If I had the budget I’d hire all the great people I have the privilege of interviewing.

For what it’s worth I think the industry is starting to run a little too lean. Teams are getting pushed to their limit, there’s no “slack” left for additional output. Contrary to the buzz you see on sites like HN, in the real world AI coding tools are completely underwhelming. The pendulum is losing momentum and I suspect orgs will realize they either need to grow their headcount or downsize their product offerings - meanwhile they’re letting certain products languish because they don’t have the headcount to work on it. And risk appetite for entering new markets is waaay down. The business culture is becoming more conservative (not politically/culturally, but rather in terms of its approach to operations and product development)

This means more opportunities for entrepreneurs and new companies soon. “What if big tech company X just copies you?” — oh you think they’re going to get budget to do that? You think they’re going to hire 50 devs to just copy your random startup? In THIS market? With THIS amount of Wall street scrutiny against quixotic projects? Hah! If you see a gap build it and fill it. The big dogs are all tied up in meetings with finance trying to save their datadog subscription from the chopping block - they won’t notice you until it’s too late.

[lucasyvas]

I think you may be right. Though, depending on where you live the supports for starting something vary wildly. And many people are in a position where it is riskier than ever financially to strike it out on their own.

It definitely feels like it's time for next wave of entrepreneurship, but the current environment may make it difficult to realize it.

I was laid off in the summer and tried some smaller ideas for a few months, but it is very hard to be a solo founder in my experience - way too much work wearing all hats. Fortunately I bagged a job to get income stream back in line, but in my gut I feel like I'm missing an opportunity.

I found that I just have too many financial responsibilities to take the leap without either/both a co-founder and seed funding (despite desperately clutching to the notion that bootstrapping is better). And that's hard for many right now.

[spamizbad]

For what it's worth, I'm not suggesting anyone who doesn't want to an entrepreneur to become one. For those who always wanted to do it, I'd say take your shot now while everyone's guard is down. Those efforts will ultimately create more engineering jobs and put more devs back to work - so for those folks who are ICs there's downstream benefits (if you're comfortable working at a startup that is)

[abirch]

Paul Graham agrees with you https://www.paulgraham.com/badeconomy.html

[codegeek]

"The people we reject aren’t getting rejected because they aren’t a good fit or lack skills - it’s just that someone else was a little better."

yes and no. I was just hiring as a founder of a small company. I just filled in that role after receiving like 250 resumes in 1 month. Now, 235 of them were totally irrelevant and people just applying. Remaining 15, I was able to interview 7-8 for Round 1 and then 3-4 made it to Round 2. Out of those, we really like 2 candidates and it was close and since we could only hire 1, we had to say no to the others. Tough but no choice.

It is tough for candidates right now but honestly, majority of people applying are lazy and don't do any homework. Yes it is hard and you cant spend time on every company but if you are applying to small/startups, you have to research a bit. It is harder right now but as an employer, I wouldn't respond if all you did was send a generic resume and worse, applied to a role you have no qualifications for.

[samstave]

>>>people we reject aren’t getting rejected because they aren’t a good fit or lack skills - it’s just that someone else was a little better.

This is one of the most disheartening negative impacts for looking for work when you have decades of success in your career:

"We appreciate you applying, but we found others who are better than you. Thank anyway, loser"

These emails, are lose-lose-lose; You lose by getting the email, you lose by the feeling it imbues, you lose because you dont have RHFL to your actions.

I would like a reverse RHFL - an AIRHL (which is what AI is meant to do) (AI Reinforced Human Learning)

Dont tell me I am rejected, I want to know where to improve...

This would be a wonderful triage app for AI going forward - is just a site such as linkedin, should have a GPT that reads your profile/CV and just constantly asks you Continuous Education questions, and gives you credits for answering correctly, and builds training modules for you...

[spamizbad]

I don't give this kind of feedback unprompted unless it's asked for by the candidate in which case I will happily oblige. But early in my career I would do this by default the first few times until someone screamed "F--- YOU" and hung up the phone at which point I decided its best to just let people ask instead of giving it out freely.

[samstave]

Yeah, I suppose thats true for the 'givers of advice'.... It just sucks not knowing what one may be doing wrong, which is why I mentioned that an GPT will eventually be a good trainer bot.