Ask HN: People who were laid off or quit recently, how are you doing?

Now I'm left with a mortgage, debt and other payments that Unemployment can't begin to cover.

I asked if I could keep my job or get relocated to another dept- 'No'.

Everything is frozen- everything is stagnate and people are afraid of more layoffs happening for both contract workers and direct-hires.

I tried for years beforehand- to get moving up, but told it wasn't possible(yet). I even tried playing the 'I have another offer elsewhere' lie card, with nothing to show for it.

What's additionally frustrating, is that many local retail places won't hire me.

My experience at the company has cut me off from other work- for fear that I may not stick around for the long-term.

DoorDash is no longer taking applications in my area(that was a shock). Retailers wont take me because of my accomplished work history. Lyft/Uber wont allow me to work for them because my car is too old.

I have applied to soo many Craiglist, HN, Dice, Linkedin, Indeed, Gov and GlassDoor jobs that I my feeling of self-worth had diminished what has felt like eons ago. It's not that I don't get decent offers- it's that I get turned down relatively quickly despite my time at Semiconductor Co.

I'm at the point where I just want any income- the desperation to feed and provide for my wife and kids is what's driving me right now.

I have had a few companies reply to my applications with an "email interview" questionnaire, but after I reply I usually hear nothing back. One actually scheduled a video interview, but the day before it was to occur, they emailed to say nevermind, the position was filled.

It's so odd. Some of these job descriptions are an exact match for my skill set. I suspect that ageism is a major contributor given that I am over 40. I am starting to look into other industries, but it feels like such a waste to abandon my cultivated experience.

Got hired over the last week as Founding Prompt Engineer at an AI company! May 1st start date. Extremely excited to be playing with LLMs for money!!!

But I'm doing great!

Without asking, I received a few job offers from friends-of-friends in my network.

Instead of jumping back into the workforce, I'm building my own startup. Almost finished with my MVP, and then going to pursue funding :)

No feelings about the industry, that’s commerce. They have no obligation to pay me if I can’t perform.

Executives at my company in a non-tech industry who are running a skeleton crew in the IT department are using the economy and tech industry layoffs to try and withhold bonuses and treating employees like disposable garbage.

They seem to think that the 2-3 people doing the work for 10 is OK and that somehow low key insinuating that current tech industry changes like chatGPT will replace our jobs, even though they don't know the difference between IT roles vs Software Engineer's roles and responsibilities.

I wonder if this is true for other non-tech company's IT departments where the execs are clueless in terms of how technology actually works.

If I had the financial stability to quit today and take a year off I would, hoping I can get there by end of year.

I spent the first month or two only half-heartedly looking for work. I sent out enough cold applications to meet UI work search requirements, and I was applying to jobs I was truly interested in and would have accepted, but I've never had good luck with cold apps and didn't expect any different this time.

Updating my LinkedIn is what turned the tide. The week before I accepted a new job, I was interviewing at 9 places. Two turned me down, I ended two others midway through, and ended up with 5 offers, the most I've ever had.

Three months after being laid off I started a job I'm really excited about and it's going well so far. Managed to get a slight pay bump over my last job, but I also turned down a much larger potential increase.I think this market might be the best it's ever been for a specific kind of engineer: 10+ yrs experience, ML-adjacent, looking for all-remote at early startups.

My big lesson is that cold apps aren't even worth the time to send. I got 1 positive responses out of dozens of apps (mostly no response, a few no's), including on YC's Work At A Startup.

As for the industry, I'm very excited about the general industry, especially the ML ecosystem, but I expect tough times ahead for all the companies that peaked before 2023.

It's not going great. I was made redundant a month ago. I've been in software almost 12 years and this is the first time I've been unemployed. I knew the search would be tough but I didn't think I'd still be looking a month later.

I've done a lot of phone screens, first interviews, and coding tests plus a few second rounds. I've gotten the whole range of responses: ghosted, received useful feedback, and feedback that makes me doubt the interviewers were paying attention at all.

I don't know if it's just the redundancy vs. deciding to search while employed or the general mood in the industry but it feels a lot tougher this time. I'm also the main breadwinner for an immigrant family in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I've got a bit of runway left but I hope I find something soon. Good luck to all of us!

0) remote

1) highly technically challenging

2) supported by an extremely competent team

3) payed great

I interviewed at every company I could find that seemed to fulfill those requirements. I averaged 0-3 interviews per month for just over a year. If I'm remembering correctly, I typically did between 0 and 5 applications per month.

In the end, I found a position on the software team with a company bringing up new silicon for accelerating deep learning inference. It fulfills (1) and (2) in spades; I've never done hardware before (let alone TFLOP scale semiconductors), and the team is largely 30 year+ career engineers. I had to cave on (3) .. I took about a 50% pay cut from my last position, which was hard to swallow, but I still make a very comfortable living. I'd do it again, without even pausing to think about it.

I had multiple offers over the year I was looking, but didn't get one that fulfilled (0) through (3). I had more trouble than usual getting offers, but I was also much more stringent in sticking to my 'morals', which I think was the major contributor. In terms of comp, the offer I accepted was the worst, by a lot. Most offers I got were for >200k USD, with options, and generally mediocre ancillary benefits (which I mostly don't care about).

To keep myself busy during my job search I have a few long-running side projects, which I payed significant attention to. I also traveled a fair bit, and spent ~8 months in Central America where I learned to surf, and speak very broken Spanish.

> How have your feelings about the industry changed?

From what I can tell, the demand for folks who are highly motivated to do interesting and challenging work has not waned.

Somehow, things have gone even worse than I imagined. Four months later, there’s still no end in sight. Referrals from people enthusiastic about working with me again have ended either after the recruiter screen or with ghosting. I’ve had founders reach out to me after HN posts, but I’ve either failed to advance or been ghosted altogether.

And of course, the usual stream of cold applications has led to the predictable stream of “thank you for your interest” emails, some after a recruiter call, most without one.

As to “am I doing all right” – not really, to be honest. Financially I’m holding on despite the unpleasant hit to savings, but the hit to self-confidence has been pretty severe. I’ve really enjoyed my career in product design up to this point, and now I have this terrible, creeping worry that I’ve somehow hit my expiration date.

Best thing to happen to my career in a decade.

Thinking about changing careers and becoming a psychotherapist myself.

I blame the recruiters. I think a lot of them were let go in the first wave of layoffs. Good riddance IMHO, they seem to have turned the whole get a job thing into a 'Got Talent' contest or worse. Hopefully someone will devise a fitting process for hiring recruiters, and they can taste their own medicine.

On a side note this whole ghost culture just makes me want to smack someone. I tried installing xcode on an older macbook running Monterey today. The installer at least pops up 'requires mac os Ventura', but of course with no option to install an older version of Xcode. So I then go to upgrade to Ventura, and it's simply not an option, anywhere. Googling, the macbook is too old. I mean just say so, instead of leading me on a merry dance to google the fact, and then try to find an old xcode version that will work etc, etc. And Xcode itself, when I go to apple, and click Xcode downloads it gives me page with 'No OS found' or something.

I was laid off this year (it was a tiny business that lost it's only client, so not exactly something in my control). I was doing schematic capture, board design, and RF testing.

I was hired two weeks later by another company for something I've only been doing for ~1.5 years: FPGA design. At a 30% higher salary!

I've enjoyed working on / improving my skills at the creative aspects I wouldn't normally get to do just coding (art, music)

I have no idea what the job landscape will be like when I'm done the game but oddly don't feel too worried about it. Ideally I'd never work for another employer again if I can figure out an income stream viable enough. Overall I'm probably a little more jaded towards the industry than I was pre-layoff (this wasn't my first layoff however).

I'd always been hoping to do a startup, having read all of the varying experiences here. The opportunity arose during the EthDenver hackathon where I hacked up a winning proof of concept. The decision to set off was easy since I felt if I didn't at least try to make secure serverless for web3 work, I'd regret never taking the opportunity.

So far, with ChatGPT as my legal and marketing assistant, things are progressing and I remain optimistic about controversial things like trusted hardware, blockchain, and human-AI interaction. Actually, what I would really love is an AutoGPT for bizdev if anyone has that...

[0]: https://enshrine.substack.com/p/enshrine-computing

People who were laid off or quit recently, how are you doing? -See above. Im making it. Would much rather be doing what I have been doing for the past 10+ years, which is Creative Director - Motion Graphics.

How have your feelings about the industry changed? More jaded than ever.

1) Some companies have had the same job ads open for well over a year. Did they forget to close the role? Do they even have a People team reviewing applications? My guess is they're not actually hiring, and that the roles are listed to make it seem like the company is healthy and growing.

2) Every now and then I'll receive almost an instant decline from the ATS—my guess is that the application didn't pass a filter, or they're not able to hire in a specific state, so it's an automatic no. I try to hone in on the "this role is available in these states" sentence before I bother with an application. Often times it's not listed.

3) Recruiters who I chatted with three months ago, who were new to the company at the time, have now moved on to another company. These conversations are always difficult, because it's clear the recruiter doesn't know anything about the work to be done, or the company, nor do they posses the language to ask good and relevant questions. And now, these people aren't even at the company. Had the hiring manager or team lead handled the first interview, things might have gone differently. We miss out on a lot of great roles and opportunities due to recruiting stupidity.

4) I'm "getting older" and I'm finding it difficult to chat with some of the younger folks in the interview process. They've all bought in to the same VC rule book for hiring and team building and it just doesn't resonate with me at this point in my career. And, I've seen a lot of weird camera setups that make it challenging to have a conversation. I had a video call recently where the recruiters camera was pointing at the side of the his face—full on side view—and he was looking at my video on his screen positioned directly in front of him for the whole meeting. He never once looked at or in the direction of his camera. Bizarre.

5) I was using my HEY.com email address for applications, wasn't getting any traction, switched back to my Gmail address and got a few first-replies almost right away. My sense is that HEY is still seen as a "novelty" address, or similar to seeing a Yahoo or AOL address on an application—you make a quick judgement about someone based on their email address.

6) I had been linking off to my website that has an expanded profile and work history, but almost no one clicked through to read. It has had minimal visits, only one person has referenced the site during an interview, so I've stopped including it on applications. And in general, I think it's possible to "share too much" ahead of a first interview. The website might do more harm than good.

7) I've got a lot of work experience, so my résumé has always been a neat two pages. I switched back to a one-pager and seem to get more hits with the one page format.

I also changed jobs during the .com crash, and this feels by far better. Recruiters are still reaching out and returning messages, companies are interviewing. There's a ton of laughably low ball spam. During .com is was pure crickets. That said, I'm also 20 years on in my career and have skills/experience that are in demand.

Taking a break has been the best thing ever. I get to spend time with my son, I'm learning rust and doing Advent of Code, and took a 1day/week contract with a former employer. They want me to review and better document systems I built for them years ago. This gives me the opportunity to see how they've aged, what we did well and what we should have done better, and I'm being paid to learn this. :)

Then: up at 3am worried about work Now: sleeping well again

Thoughts on the industry: why does tech have terrible founder worship and terrible sr+ managers. Do we really need a director to be able to code, or should they be focused on the 150+ people?

> How did you feel then vs now? Are you doing alright?

At the time, I wasn’t worried. I was a little relieved in fact. I didn’t care for the job all that much it just paid well enough. I wasn’t aware of how the job market was going to be. Since then it’s not been great. It would cost a ton of money and effort to move right now, and of the 4 interviews of done, only one position has been remote.

> Are you looking for/have you found work? How do pay/benefits (remote, etc.) compare?

Yes, but not nearly like I should. I’m burnt out on the job search. The leads I get fizzle out. As I mentioned, I’ve had about 4 interviews, only one of them was a job I would actually want, and only one of them made it to the next round (ironically it was the most antagonistic interview I’ve had recently). Recruiter reach out is really low, maybe around 5 per month and job applications are just a void, assuming LinkedIn doesn’t just show me the same “Promoted” jobs it did 6 months ago that already rejected me. As far as pay, it seems remote roles are paying a less than a couple years ago.

> How have your feelings about the industry changed?

Sort of, I never wanted to really be in this industry, but the intertidal required to do anything else non totally miserable was too high. I was planning on leaving eventually once I put enough money together to survive for a while, but I’m spending all that on bills and a seriously of events that happened right after the layoff. I did admittedly commit the industry mortal sin of letting myself stagnate (in terms of keeping up with trends, hype, and framework/language/whatever of the week) over the years. I still learn a lot, it’s just mostly “useless” stuff.

Honestly, I expected I was either going to burn out or get sized out of the industry eventually, and had started to work on plans for that, but I thought I had a few more years at least.

I've got a week left on my Contract that didn't get picked up. It's been relatively rough and really giving me 2001 (.com bubble bursting everywhere) vibes. I've been looking for a few weeks now, since I found out. Been looking at roughly a 10-20% pay drop to broaden the available jobs as literally only 3 have been at the pay I am currently at.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10qPeczFPaJJKmINZBCbiPbiUKpR...

oh and reading up on neural nets and LLMs

Another place made an offer, but then failed to raise what they hoped on Series B, and pulled the offer.

Applied to lots of other places, lowered expectations, etc, mainly just getting ghosted now. Even the personal network has dried up, everyone is circling wagons. I can't really put my finger on what's gone so wrong.

My self-confidence has definitely taken a hit. Some days I'm pretty low. But I'm turning a side hustle into a proper bootstrap startup and enjoying that. MVP done and I have my first customer! I have a few months cash left before I start having to sell things... :( fingers crossed.

I've definitely become more cynical about the industry than before. One thing that I'm really cynical about is big tech companies, especially but not only in the consulting space, that show off their social justice credentials, e.g. International Womens Day, diverse hiring, etc. That's all a big fat lie.

I survived 2001 quite well, I had a PE-backed startup then, and made it to late 2002 before it got shut down by the PE guys. By that time the market was picking up again and I've never had trouble getting good, well-paid work ... until now.

I'm doing OK. Applying to 10-15 jobs per week. I'm in my mid-50s and having a FAANG company on my resume I think is a real show stopper. Recruiters/Employers see that and immediately think I want the same salary. My resume shows the past 15 years of direct hands-on experience to many of the positions I've applied to. Out of 40+ resumes I've had one recruiter call me then ghosted, 4 companies sent the "thanks but no thanks" email, the rest crickets. When I was a hiring manager, I responded to all applicants. I see those days are gone.

I spent a couple of weeks loosing my sh1t then realized how much better I felt. It was a routine 55+ hrs/week and on-call 24/7. Without even trying I lost 10 pounds. I'm over the shock of a bi-weekly paycheck. I live frugally and saved 18 months of living expenses. I started my own company working with non-technical small business owners that have exceeded what GoDaddy can provide. I realized stuff like holiday/vacation pay isn't that big of a deal. I can schedule my day as I wish, provided all my client's work is on target. Pay out-of-pocket for health care isn't all that bad either, it's a tax deduction anyway. I still work full time, if I'm not billing clients, I'm working on improving my skills and writing blog posts.

The bottom line is that all these companies that are laying off IT employees just don't understand that the amount of work that needs to be done is still the same and it's going to bite them hard down the road. All these companies are doing is pleasing their board of directors & VCs to get stock prices up, etc. All of this is done on the backs of people that have families, mortgages, and other bills just to keep their four walls up.

Been looking for a new role since February, and I have to say it's more difficult than I expected.

Compared to 2019, last time I switched jobs, I'm getting fewer interviews and fewer proposals from recruiters. I wouldn't entirely put it on the market changes though. My salary expectations went up and with that companies are more shy and want more assurance that I'll be a good fit. I'm also more picky with who I apply for.

I've been ramping up the time spent on selling myself, writing descriptions of my work and trying to build a portfolio. I hope it pays off because I'd much rather be working on pet projects and developing my product building skills than spending time on personal branding.

Have been working as software engineer for over 10 years now. Started small, working for local web agencies, and slowly progressed into bigger corporations.

Recently was laid off from one of the main CPaaS in the market and I while I truly enjoyed the culture and working with my team, this has proven to be the best things for me:

- Got a good severance package (12 weeks) - 6 weeks of garden leave to prepare for interviews and currently on vacation

Most importantly, almost doubled my base salary because for the first time I actually spent time researching companies, benchmarking salaries, preparing for interviews, etc.

I usually tend to stick around at jobs for long time and when I jumped ship it was because someone came to me with a good offer in a moment I was open to consider a change.

This time I didn't have anyone waiting for me, I needed a change so I went and looked for the best offer I could get.

I hope my experience can help many to look at things from a new angle.

> How did you feel then vs now? Are you doing alright?

At the time they cut us I felt like it was all futility. We were working on something that could save save power by making certain workloads run much more efficiently, seemed like something worthwhile, but there was no money for it anymore.

Doing OK, just feel kind of 'meh' about looking for work... interviewing in tech really is the worst and TBH I have a lot of what I call "interviewing PTSD".

> Are you looking for/have you found work?

I have been sort of half-heartedly looking for work - basically just doing the minimum 5 contacts/week to keep my unemployment coming in. We paid off our house at the end of last year so not feeling really particularly worried as my wife is still working and we get our health insurance from her job.

I've had 3 interviews in the last 4 months. In two of them I ended up saying "I think this is not going to be a good fit for either of us".

> How do pay/benefits (remote, etc.) compare?

Not sure, haven't gotten to any salary negotiation stage.

> How have your feelings about the industry changed?

I've been in the "industry" for over 30 years, I'd say my feelings about the industry changed about 10 years ago when "tech" became synonymous with "social media". Silicon Valley hasn't been about silicon for quite a while now. When I was younger I was really excited about new tech developments, but now I'm just not sure that we're doing good for the world anymore, in fact it seems like there's more bad than good coming from our industry in that last several years.

I'm lucky to be in a financial position to be very picky about what I work on - I have to find it interesting and it needs to seem beneficial somehow. I'll probably just consider myself semi-retired if I don't find something that fits my criteria in about 6 months.

How am I doing? I'm fine. I'm now an independent contractor. Income is comparable to before, but I'm working a lot less than before (40 hour week vs 60 hour week).

Have my feelings for the industry changed? Not really, I was already plenty cynical. But my feelings towards my former employer certainly have changed...

A handful of us were laid off in Feb from a global advertising agency's SF office. They had a lot of notable SF clients including a well known bank in the area that made some headlines, so ya know... A few other tech clients really tightened up their retainers as well.

Q2 part 1: How did you feel then vs now? I was burnt out at work. Layoffs started almost a year ago and so we were working leaner and leaner. Weekend work expectations were just standard, expectations to pick up work from disappeared colleagues was expected. So by the time I was laid off it felt like finally the death march would end!

Q2: part 2: Are you doing alright? (this is redundant to your Q1). I am doing fine. I am taking this time to level up and am just throwing as many applications out as possible. You cant catch a fish if your line isn't in the water. And it helps to have multiple lines out at one time! I apply, make a note of what and when I applied in a doc, then move on and forget about it unless I get the recruiter call. Focusing on how many jobs I have applied for wont' help me towards actually getting one.

Q3: Are you looking for/have you found work? I got to final rounds with 2 companies. One experience was me sitting in a room with all men while my would be manager made a joke about how if you sit 9 women in a room that doesn't mean they would get pregnant. The culture beyond dumb unprofessional analogies was fortran meets office space-- so I kinda just wanted to get out of the building asap before they started destroying their fax machines with bats. The second round I had two system design questions where I needed to design and implement -- and I just wasn't able to complete implementation. So I am still looking and I am OK with that. Life isn't just about my job and I am kept aloft with enjoying my family, friends and volunteer work while I study during the workday for the next interview.

Q4: How have your feelings about the industry changed? No, my feelings haven't changed. Look, we are fungible, always were. We are there until the company no longer needs us. As Steve Martin said in the Jerk "Its a profit deal!". The one thing I am glad I did was keep the health of my life outside of work as much as possible. I kept my marriage healthy, my kids healthy , and I followed up with friends. So the company no longer needed me (no I never had a bad review, kept getting praise and got handed increasingly larger leadership opportunities), and I am glad I didn't kill myself on Saturday night to get the PR in a day early. I got it in on Monday 9am and it didn't impact our users one bit.

No.