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Rant About Tech Hiring in 2024

The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied.

— Stephen King, The Gunslinger

It’s surprising how much the tech job market has changed just over the last two years.

The last time when I was looking for a job in 2022 I sent about ten job applications and got one offer that took me less than a month to get. Most of the companies where I sent my applications called me back and wanted to arrange an interview.

In 2018 I spent one and a half months, but got two job offers from which I could choose the best.

In 2024 it has been already 3 months into the wild, with several dozens of applications, few interviews and no job offers so far.

My Advice For Those Who Have a Job

If the last time you were actively looking for a new job before 2023, better to forget everything that you knew about IT job hunting and hiring.

Finding a new software engineering job nowadays is a very long and tedious process. The time when you could get several job offers in a couple of weeks is gone. Now you are lucky to get a few HR calls in a couple of months.

Denial

I had conversations with several developers (who have jobs right now) and realized that many of them are still in denial or even haven’t heard about the current state of affairs. I wanted to say “surprisingly many”, but honestly it’s not a surprise.

The software industry is extremely competitive and praises the cult of elitism. If you can’t find a job, something is wrong with you, right? Probably you just a newbie without much experience? Or maybe you have no marketing skills and no idea how to write a CV and apply for jobs?

Wrong. The market is shrinking and cooling down. The 2023 had the biggest amounts of layoffs since the dotcom bubble burst and in 2024 this trend only continues.

Job Fair with no jobs At least they cancelled this one
Job Fair HackerX

“Good News”

The “good news” is that the tech market is not completely dead 🧟. There are still companies that hire people and some jobs are appearing now and then. The “bad news” are:

  • Not all jobs are real. There a tonnes of “Ghost Jobs” that are posted without intent to hire people, just to collect the information.

  • The number of job seekers is much higher than the number of job opportunities, and those job seekers are not newbies, but mature developers. It’s common to compete with 50-100 people to just get to the first interview.

  • Even for the jobs where companies seem to hire for real and you were lucky to get through the initial filter and go to the pipeline, the hiring process takes forever.

Honestly, the last thing is the most frustrating.

Just a few years ago (2016-2018) it was a common thing to be hired based on just one 1.5-hour interview. Nowadays such practice is simply extinct and getting a job involves about 4 interviews on average.

When I tell my wife stories about how hiring used to be just a couple of years ago I feel like this old man

Behavioral Interviews Limbo

I remember once in 2016 I came to an interview and the first thing the interviewer asked (before introducing himself or asking me for an introduction) was to write a declaration of a pointer to a class method 😆

For those who are not a C++ programmer, this syntax is one of the obscure features of C++. It’s used chiefly inside libraries and if you are a “normie” business logic programmer, the chances to type it in your code (and remember by heart) are close to zero.

That’s the syntax, btw:

class ClassName {
 void Method(int param);
};

typedef void (ClassName::*TMethod)(int param);

I still have Vietnam War flashbacks from that interview. To this day before going to an interview for a C++ position I repeat this syntax as a “charm”.

But I’ve never needed it again. In 2024 interviews when you were asked to demonstrate hard skills or answer technical questions simply stopped being a thing.

Nowadays in the first few interviews, an interviewer tells in great detail about the company, product and team (where you will never be working, because they are not going to hire you). Then they ask you to tell about your experience, but without trying to check if you actually know what you pretend to know. Just tell them stories, like a novel 🤷.

Another thing that plagues interviews is abstract “behavioral” questions like “Tell us the last time when you disagreed with your manager” or even “What is easy to do for you but difficult for other people”.

I would shake the hand of a person who just asked me anything about technologies that are mentioned on my CV 🤷

And again, the timeline. It’s at least 4 interviews and the mandatory gap between interviews is between 1 and 2 weeks. So, to be rejected from the 3rd stage takes about 2 months 🤷

Rejection Feedbacks

Almost always rejections have no useful feedback. It’s usually something dull “We got a lot of ppl and despite your qualifications being great, we decided to proceed with other candidates”.

Sometimes these vacancies get re-opened again in several weeks. Okay, what happened to all the “other candidates”? I get vague suspicions that the number of candidates was not the main reason for rejection.

One rejection that came to me recently was about “We decided to change the scope of the role and despite your technical skills making a lot of impressions, we can’t proceed with you”.

Okay, I would buy it if the same position wasn’t still open on your website and reposted on LinkedIn (with the exact same requirements) 🤷

Sometimes you hit all the bars (literally all buzzwords and your previous experience are literally the job that you are going to do) … but then they just disappear with “we can’t provide any feedback on this early stage” 😄

Wrapping Up

Sorry for the sad blog post today.

If you have a job don’t quit without finding a new one. If you are in the same boat with me, good luck to us! 🤞