Are tech companies even hiring?

21 points by KernelPryanic 47 days ago | 23 comments

I'm Backend / DevOps engineer with 12 years of official professional experience. Have been looking for a job for about half a year. Went through about 15-20 interviews, passed ALL technical ones. But in the end I hear almost the same things all the time: "we really liked your technical expertise, but there was no personal fit with the team", "we appreciate deep knowledge you have, but decided to proceed with another candidate", etc. Are tech companies even hiring right now or most of them have just dummy openings for internal procedures/investor reports? Anybody with the same/different experience? P.S. I'm based in the Netherlands, picture in France looks the same.

journal 47 days ago |

Certainly HR wants you to think so, otherwise even they are not safe. So, you'll see jobs and interviews for vacancies that don't exist so those still left in HR can seem busy, because they are next in masses.

Betelbuddy 47 days ago |

I know well the EMEA market and work in several languages. No companies are hiring and all jobs are fake. I can guarantee you. The few that take somebody are doing internships for young graduates, or government subsidized employment programs, notably in France and Spain.

Sometimes, some companies, will hire if they find a interesting candidate but few are able to evaluate what a suitable candidate is.

Agencies simply collect data and will consume your time with intake interviews. This keeps their metrics up and allows them to claim they have such and such number of CVs, on their databases. The less scrupulous just do it, to sell your private data.

Also upskilling or workforce skill development has grounded to a halt. Companies assume you are supposed to become a Rust expert or do your AWS certifications on your own time and cost...

Dont know your background but particularly in Belgium and the Netherlands if you get too many: "...there was no personal fit with the team..." it just means you are not blonde and are too ethnic for their environment.

KernelPryanic 47 days ago | |

Yeah, by all signs this is how hiring works (or actually doesn't work) right now. I have info from Datadog (France) that they don't hire anybody right now despite lots of openings on their career board. And yeah, originally I'm from Russia, though in EU for almost 8 years by now...

qsera 46 days ago | |

>No companies are hiring and all jobs are fake. I can guarantee you.

I didn't understand how you can guarantee this?

cableshaft 47 days ago |

I'm not looking at the moment, but I did notice I haven't gotten a ping from a recruiter in a long time (at least six months, maybe a year at this point). In the past I'd usually get at least one a month, but lately it's been nothing.

Doesn't make me eager to jump back into the job search even though I probably should start looking for something else soon, I've been at my current role for almost five years now, and have been getting the itch. But I suspect it's going to be a pain to find something new.

drrob 46 days ago |

In the UK tech hiring is fairly buoyant at the moment, and the salaries being offered have got some long-needed growth (over this last year we've begun seeing 6 figure senior developer jobs in the east midlands, whereas a couple of years ago getting a £60k salary for a senior in the east midlands was quite the achievement).

KernelPryanic 46 days ago | |

Hmm, interesting, maybe I should look into the UK market then... Because I often see open positions in the UK segment on the company job boards, just didn't know if it's mostly fake ones as in NL and FR.

drrob 46 days ago | | |

The ones I see coming up repeatedly on LinkedIn are real jobs, but for places with high staff churn - Bet365 in Stoke for instance have a voracious appetite for recruiting System Development Managers, mainly because they can't get anyone to stay in the role more than a month.

mmarian 46 days ago | | |

Unlikely they'll hire people requiring visas though. Unless you're exceptional talent, of course.

gib444 44 days ago | |

Woah the £100k glass (class) ceiling was broken in the east midlands? Does it involve commuting to London?

drrob 44 days ago | | |

Fortunately it does not. I'm in Nottinghamshire, and the only way I used to be able to do £100k round here was contracting, but the times they are a changing it seems.

kypro 46 days ago |

Not really. Lots of companies are cutting traditional SWE roles though...

I think there are roles available for other types of skill-sets, For example, "Product Engineer" seems to be the new full-stack. Now anyone with some technical background can vibe code anything in a few hours companies are starting to merge product and engineering into one, cutting those who can't or are unwilling to do both.

There's also some demand for skilled AI Engineers.

Anyone whose just a frontend or backend guy is going likely going to really struggle to find anything in this new world. I'd consider trying to rebrand your skills a little and seeing if you have any luck.

I've been saying this since late 2022 at this point, but people need to assume this is their last SWE job. You might still be able to find work in tech, but you'll struggle to find traditional SWE jobs going forward.

Also, being unemployed for 6+ months is stupid unless you genuinely don't need the money. You're better off just taking a job for 50-60% of your previous salary if you're going to be out of work for the majority of the year.

drstewart 46 days ago | |

You've been saying it since 2022 but many people have changed jobs multiple times in that time frame, so you're clearly wrong about it.

cableshaft 46 days ago | | |

Some people have the right message but the wrong timing (i.e. too early). And for some people this could already be true.

I'm already assuming I have maybe one more job change in me as a software engineer and then it might be extremely difficult to find any future jobs in the field.

Especially considering I'm old enough that at least some companies were likely going to be discriminating against me because of my age.

Doubly so now that they probably assume I'm too old or set in my ways to handle the shift to coding with A.I. agents, which isn't the case.

ostefani 42 days ago |

They are firing :)

_adq2 45 days ago |

If you've heard "no personal fit" more than once, consider whether your "vibes" may need some work.

colesantiago 47 days ago |

Have you thought about building your own business?

KernelPryanic 47 days ago | |

Yes, I have such thoughts. I'm building something constantly, have a history of attempting different projects, some of them got into startups fueled purely by passion and lasted for years, but didn't attract investments. Currently I'm working on MASS - Modular AI Scheduling System, basically it's a scheduler and package manager for AI-native applications/services. As I see a huge part of future AI as dedicated small fine-tuned models, local to user and on-site programs and services. But it's another story :)

shivang2607 47 days ago | |

With the quality of code that claude generates. Everyone now, even non-tech background is trying to build a SaaS. I wonder if everyone is building then who is consuming ?

KernelPryanic 37 days ago | | |

Quality of generated code is honestly trash, Claude can build you a thing that will work somehow, but under the hood is unmaintainable, entangled, dirty, full of workarounds code :) You need to spend a lot of time controlling every its move to achieve decent code quality.

zonementale 46 days ago | | |

Worst idea to build a saas right now