UK IT job searching broken
Its been a year of searching, a handful of interviews at best, recent interviews have had disinterested interviewers reading a script and not listening to answers.
Having worked and consulted over the past decade, I just don't understsnd how broken things are.
how are people surviving in this environment, I feel being pushed to the edge and ready to snap.
Oh, I know your pain all too well. As a fellow UK dev that spent the last year or so looking for a new job before finding one, the market here is absolutely brutal for developers and software engineers. As you said yourself, the majority of roles seem to be fake (or not taken seriously), the few that do interview do a poor job of it and then if you're lucky you'll find one of the few jobs that are actually real at the end of it.
My advice would be as follows:
1. If you can leave the UK, do so. I hate to say it, but it feels like the economy here is just getting worse by the day, and the cost of living is ridiculous compared to the wages companies are trying to pay. Not sure where to recommend though, the US is currently in political meltdown and many other parts of the world pay rather low wages in this field as well.
2. Don't be afraid to take a temporary pay cut, or go for a job that's beneath you for a while. The hiring situation in tech is an absolute car crash at the moment, and companies aren't exactly throwing crazy FAANG level money around in most situations. Best to find a way to stay off the market for a few years or so until the situation corrects itself.
3. Avoid relying too much on job listing sites in general. The majority of listings there are either fake, dupes or flooded with applications to the point hardly anyone gets noticed. If you have a network, that's the best way to get hired, but recruiters and direct applications to companies are likely the 2nd and 3rd best options right now.
4. Be willing to accept roles outside of the company too. Yes a lot of companies only hire remote in their region, but some don't, and those could be pay better/offer better conditions than UK based ones.
> the majority of roles seem to be fake
I think in the UK most good posts are not well advertised, just sourced through recruiters. The trick is to connect with and follow good recruiters for your particular niche on LinkedIn.
Job searching, or the reverse Hiring, is always broken, depending on the market mood. This is baked into all industries and comes down to supply and demand.
At this point in the cycle, the supply overwhelms demand. So naturally lots of people are not having success, and so the system is broken in that direction.
The best advice I can give is that in an up-cycle find a place that you like to work at, that likely pays less than big tech, that hires slowly and fires slower. Dig in, and build a long career there. Stop job hopping. Job hoppers are very vulnerable to market mood.
Of course that's useless advice now and will be mostly ignored in an upcycle when FANG is throwing FANG money around.
In a down cycle my advice is to stand out from the crowd. Do something that gives you a leg up. Show an employer some initiative, creativity, work ethic etc.
That doesn’t work either. The market changes and eventually when they need to lay you off then what? Those slow growth companies either die or get taken over by private equity or sold off.
I would much rather make $300K for two or three years, live like I’m making $150K, bank the rest, get laid off with a fat severance and then look for another job after a period of unemployment than make $150K, stay at a job too long and then stil get laid off after a few years.
I’m 50, started really job hopping in 2008 and have 8 jobs since then after stating at my second “stable” job for 9 years getting 3% raises and seeing my bonuses decrease.
When I was looking for a job not by choice last year and the year before it took three weeks.
It was much easier finding a job based on my experience in BigTech than it would have been if my experience had just been a regular old enterprise CRUD developer like I was before 2020.
I’ve had similar unexpected experiences recently while searching for a software developer role. I found this article very interesting in that regard: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineer-jobs-fi...
It could just be a phase, especially with the potential rethinking of IT infrastructure and dependencies on US products in Europe. However, the recent economic uncertainty in the US doesn’t help either. That said, there are still plenty of digitization needs worldwide that will continue for a long time.
In my opinion, it’s always best to apply to companies directly. Online maps have been a great and effective search tool for me.
Wishing you all the best
I got lucky with a US startup.
At first I wasn't satisfied with working their hours, so I kept applying for UK firms.
(I've since adjusted with lazy mornings and no sociability in the evenings.)
But there's nothing. I mean nothing. Lots of companies putting out the exact same job listings, month after month, and I refuse to believe that they haven't found the right candidate after 6 months of continuous interviews.
They're either projecting growth but not actually hiring, or are waiting for someone to tell them that they'd happily work for almost nothing.
Then there's the horror stories of the major re-orgs happening at large companies, and the hire-and-dump schemes that seem to be prevalent. Who would have thought that small startups were the stable ones? It's a shitshow.
Back when we had the government ran labor bureau in the Netherlands the slightest unserious behaviour would get a company kicked out for a few years. Perhaps one day there will be a similarly serious job platform.
The bureau did other hilarious things like pick 2-3 candidates for you then act offended if you didn't like any of them. Something like, we do have more qualified people but that level of skill is not required for the job you offer.
If you fire the new hire (even few years later) they wanted to talk with you and learn why that is. Don't show op or the excuses are insufficient? You won't be listing job offers for a while.
Applicants got their social support cut for not acting professionaly.
They would set the time and date for the interview. Hiring people is more important than whatever other activities you think should take priority.
It wasn't cheap either. In today's money 1000 euro per job listing.
They took the job very seriously. Get people out of social support and make the economy work.
Part time jobs, temporary work or zero hour contracts were allowed but the applicant had to specificaly ask for it. You didn't have to apply and it didn't count for your minimum number of monthly interviews.
We need something like this again. It's ridiculous to expect new applicants to have every minor skill covered, so I do understand the government offering the minimum viable candidate - training juniors needs to be a thing again.
Glad I’m not alone in this; I’ve seen niche roles up for 16 months. Do these roles even exist? Are they waiting on the most golden of geese?
It's the whole world (or at least most of) and not just the UK.
is it just interest rates causing this? Seems almost impossible to be seen let alone heard. I've been thinking the ATS is causing lots of issues, but I've noticed how narrow roles and requirements have become.
> is it just interest rates causing this?
Partly. It's mostly poor decision making. Those that thought it was a good idea to massively over hire during COVID (a likely temporary event) caused this. There was a surge in salaries across the board and huge confusion as teams tried to scale.
The hiring criteria dropped. A lot of people that otherwise wouldn't have made it got hired.
Many large companies today are still not yet down to below COVID levels in employees.
Boom bust cycle I guess. Programmers have had a easy time. Getting a good job for normal people have been hard for a long time.
Listen.
Leave the UK.
There is nothing here and no tech jobs at all.
Nothing will change unless you leave the country and search for other opportunities.
Well, same here... :(
I think there's a lot of things that's hurting the job market for tech workers right now (the large influx of code camp and sci-comp graduates being a big one), but in my opinion the main thing is this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/255146/number-of-interne...
The number of people from poorer countries who are now on the internet has grown at an astounding rate of the last few years. Many of these people have been acquiring IT skills in recent years and they're now competing with Western tech workers.
Most tech jobs are just digital IO and the pandemic proved to us that you don't need to find tech workers from the local area to get things done. In theory tech jobs should be far easier to outsource than manufacturing job since you don't need build factories abroad, nor do you need to ship products around the world And since most processes are digital so there's little to no friction in outsourcing.
Economists largely agree that well paid manufacturing jobs going abroad where wages were "more competitive" was good for Western economies because we got cheaper products. Presumably they'll say the same about todays well paid digital jobs. Going forward it's going to be much cheaper for companies build apps and websites if they use foreign labour.
Personally I suspect that economists are wrong and their theories only work when you assume labour competition is happening within an even playing field, but I guess we'll find out.
AI and SaaS products are also eroding the demand for tech workers to some degree. It's become relatively easier for someone with limited tech skills to create websites, mobile apps and launch ecommerce stores than it used to be. Again, I hear this is also going to be good for workers somehow. It's certainly good for Shopify anyway.
Imo tech workers should look to reskill ASAP. It's fairly obvious where this is going and I'd bet on the Western tech job market entering a sustained secular decline. I see no reason to believe there's any alternative.
My family are poor and from a ex-industrial town. If you think anyone here is better off today because all the factories have closed and have replaced with restaurants and flats then you're kidding yourself. The only people who have won in recent decades are those whose jobs avoided outsourcing (mainly upper-middle class people with university degrees, many of whom work in tech) and it seems to me that even this cohort is about to get hit by outsourcing and AI now.
I'm not going to spin you a positive narrative because you can't help people by lying about reality. I think if you're struggling to make ends meet you need to start to consider a different career. I'm sorry.
I think you're quite wrong. I'm not going to give up over a decade of skilled work because of a downturn. I'm not a fair weather dev.
when software is a fully outsourced function we'll see the same with marketing, sales, management, product. You won't need anyone locally.
This won't happen because of the problems culturally diverse teams experience.
I'm not being outsourced by AI, I'm being hit by projects going on hold because of budget constraints, and people not willing to hire a consultant because "they'll leave when the market improves".
Your coldness stems from ignorance not understanding.
Most of the product companies that hire remote hire within their country. At most they hire within 2-3 h of timezone difference. So, it’s not that “poor” talent from abroad is taking jobs from Americans/Europeans. Consultancy companies is another story (but who wants to work for them anyway?)
I’d say the global economy is in a bind right now. However, might be tougher in the UK because of Brexit?
I really doubt that. I saw the market imorove and rates were higher, could be I came of a certain amount of experience at that time though.
I've found things have seriously taken a hit after IR35, but after interest rates increased saw the market truly become a desert.
Work offshored, look up eastern Europe/SEA if you still wanna work as a coder...
Hardly better here. A few years ago recruiters were begging me to go on interviews and ... sometimes providing recordings with the interview questions, wink wink :) Well OK, it didn't happen for serious "product" companies, but outsourcing was largely a scam where all the company cared was showing headcount, I honestly don't know how the whole system worked and mostly why, never did outsourcing, only "product". At least we're getting rid of those leeches now.
Two years ago shit hit the fan here too, I was laid off along with the entire team (some 150 people) when the US company closed the office. Without wasting a second I applied to jobs on LinkedId and sure enough I got a few interviews. Got an offer, was contemplating "should I take it or not.." when the hiring manager told me, "better hurry up coze it's not like we have a lack of candidates". Again, a few years ago there 2-3-10 people applying for a job. So I took a look on LinkedIn and saw "100 people already applied for this job", therefore I made my mind in an instant and accepted the offer.
Ever since I haven't seen anything but "100 people already applied for this job", with layoffs left and right (those who outsourced for German companies are hit the worst). We got two people leave to other companies (it still happens), so they posted job openings, interviewed people, chose the candidates to be hired but ... waiting approval for sending the actual offer. It's been a month and still waiting ... imagine what the candidates on the receiving end feels. Those who got the "you're great, we're hiring you!" message post-interviews.
It's a shit market and I don't expect it to recover anytime soon.
where would one begin looking for SEA?
Look on linkedin jobs in Bangkok offering relocation
I’m sorry friend but reading to the end of your post I hope you are ok. Please take care of yourself.
thank you.
me too
[dead]
I've had enough of the UK.
I'm leaving to start a startup on the Isle of Man. A wonderful island between England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland. It's also a tax haven many UK style taxes just don't exist there and the GDP/Standard of living is a lot better -> See you tube. 6th safest country in the world. Beautiful place.
We are looking for c# .NET Core developers up-to about 50K GDP initially + pension, relocation. We're doing some hot development with AI, Voice, ollama, llama, whisper etc. Willing for bright people to join us who can learn on the job and grow with the company.