I worked for a company that kept one job posting open for more than 4 years. They've used it to hire more than 100 people, but unless you worked there you wouldn't know.
Does this take into account whether the posted is actually using those applications from the end of the window?
It wouldn't surprise me at all to see "Oh, I'm still getting emails about this listing, guess I should close it" when candidates are already in round 2.
The only notable data point is the precipitous drop for software engineering from 40-60 days historical averages. lt basically says that tech has become just like the rest of the job market, competitive for applicants and heavily gatekept by insiders, and that will be quite a reckoning for those who never experienced in their professional life a "normal" job seeking process.
I actually think there is a different effect at play which is the technical need is growing in seniority and complexity as people have large established software systems. The junior market has high accessibility but the senior actually takes a while to get anyone through the door. My current job had been advertised for 6 months, it needed a relatively insane set of knowledge and skills where I only really had maybe 50-60% of the ask. I literally had to learn all of GCP from scratch and I was still a better fit than you're likely to find. I think this is also the same trend AI is making worse as the demand for junior also goes down you'll see these averages climb as most hiring becomes more senior.
There is little debate the tech job market is currently bad, for juniors worse but for seniors too, widespread layoffs from large companies, etc.
What you are describing sounds more like the extreme pigeonholing the industry has been practicing for years, where companies expect 100% productivity from day one, use automated screening for keywords like "MongoDB" or "GCP" etc. How much effort does it really take to learn GCP enough to handle a certain given product, perhaps string together a few Cloud Run instances, a PR triggered CI pipeline with Cloud Build, add a few Compute Engine workers, bind everything together and protect it with Armor and IDS etc.? Not the entire GCP, just what a given company would need; it's adult Lego for god's sake. It's beyond insulting to take a candidate with good swe foundation, that also list advanced degrees with mathematics and quantum physics, or perhaps a top grade in philosophy, and think they won't be able to handle the Google Cloud GUI.
The industry moved away from "smart and get things done" because companies were unwilling to invest the few months to half a year required to get a new person to peak productivity, since the labor was so mobile and relatively expensive. Maybe with a less mobile workforce, this will change but I won't hold my breath.
From what I could see, big retailers have a lot of "evergreen" openings which makes sense as they can have multiple locations and there is a lot of churn. And there are obvious outlier sub-categories like warehouse workers etc which have median times <7d, I didn't break it down in the blog as it's too much data to present. But other than that, I don't have enough search data to draw meaningful conclusions. (say around supply/demand)
Intriguing: Product/Design roles linger longest (median 30.5 days). Remote-heavy categories like Customer Success at 27.8 days? Great for targeted applications in security ops.
SDE jobs are usually deliberately kept open to satisfy the H1B/PERM testing. Most big tech company does it so they can hire H1Bs and in turn do day 1 PERM sponsor as an incentive for H1B hires
cool dataset. one thing i'd love to see: distribution tails (p50/p90/p99 open days) split by remote vs onsite and by seniority keywords. also how are you handling reposts/refreshes (same role relisted) vs truly new openings? that can skew average open time a lot.
I would not recommend the standard resume -> job portal -> application pipeline to anyone seriously looking for gainful employment. The signal:noise ratio is not in your favor. The current meta for tech jobs is an OSS portfolio, sponsored competitions, self-produced apps, and technical blogposts, roughly in that order. You will get much farther by solving real problems with public visibility.
Some people just want a job, not to package themselves like a sales pitch. It’s about putting bread on the table, not performing personal branding theater — yet the job market has become wildly disproportionate to the reality of the work.
The reality of any matching market is based around first impressions and theater. Dating, college apps, hiring, real estate transactions, etc.
Some people just want to buy or sell a house. FSBO with some cheap cellphone pictures will sell far slower than a staged house with professional photos, MLS listing, and a launch party for local agents.
Do many high schoolers care about volunteer work, taking a second language, etc? No. Is it expected to be a part of their application and essay for a good school? Yes.
> Do many high schoolers care about volunteer work, taking a second language, etc? No. Is it expected to be a part of their application and essay for a good school? Yes.
Note that this is only true in countries where the first priority of the "good school" is to obscure their admission goals.
But no employer has ever said "I just want an employee". So only someone naive in the extreme would imagine with the power dynamic in play the sales pitch isn't necessary. That a job is even advertised means the hardest part of the sell has already been done for you internally, but also probably has less favourable terms. If all you ever think is "I just want a job" you will almost always undersell yourself and have the worst jobs. The best ones aren't even advertised and are created purely on your own salesmanship.
People keep parroting this point, but I don't think it actually applies, it's just one of those things that gets reposted a lot on the internet. When we're hiring a candidate, I generally don't go through their Github repos or blogs. I talk to them about what they've worked on and what they've done. Hobby projects can be a good starting point to talk about that, as can be blogs, but really you could start with anything. Most people start with their current day job and that's perfectly fine. You don't have to be coding both inside and outside of working hours do be a good applicant.
I'd go as far as saying it's counter-productive. I have a hobby-level project with actual users earning me some money on the side while requiring very little day-to-day involvement (roughly 2h per week) and there's no quicker way to get my door shut doing interviews than by mentioning it.
There's simply no way to package that which doesn't make the other side think that I'm gonna steal company's time at best and that I'm only looking for like a temporary gig until it takes off at worst.
I've never had a potential job reference a single thing on my github, and I've been a user since 2007. Usually I had to point out, when trying to get a job using e.g. Rails, that I had contributed significant code that they were using in production.
happy to display that I'm clued-out, but what does 'meta' mean in this context? Clearly not the company, nor the general 'meta' modifier to something to describe qualifying criteria about it, like meta data for phone calls.
it sounds closer to the term 'alpha' that investors use to describe competitive advantage (and even that term I wonder about).
Meta is short for metagame. In videogames, and even in some sports, there are decisions made above/outside of the typical strategy of the game which players call metagame. For example, drafting players in football is metagaming. Or choosing what pickleball paddle to use is metagame.
An expanded view of that is that there's usually a "current" meta strategy that people tend to adhere to, kind of like a convention. And if you stray from that, you lose, even if your strategy would succeed in a vacuum.
For example, if the current meta is for employers to mainly use referrals/networking to hire, it would be a bad strategy to apply to postings.
Huh? Im over 40 its only getting easier to get hired... Not sure where the ageism meme came from other than perhaps older generations who learned compsci pre the internet got left behind a little bit in the made takeoff of software. I am over 40 without a family or partner though, so I suspect the bias is far more about how much of your life is work energy.
Agree the standard resume -> application etc. is tough. It has always been tough even at the best of times.
Most jobs are through friends/network etc. If you really think you're a great fit but lack the network try figuring out who the right person is and reach out directly.
I worked for a company that kept one job posting open for more than 4 years. They've used it to hire more than 100 people, but unless you worked there you wouldn't know.
Interesting to hear this data point because everyone would just claim it was a sham job that some companies post to get a feel of the market.
Does this take into account whether the posted is actually using those applications from the end of the window?
It wouldn't surprise me at all to see "Oh, I'm still getting emails about this listing, guess I should close it" when candidates are already in round 2.
Admin & Office : 18 days
Software Dev : 22 days
Retail & Hospitality: 33 days
Would love to understand why.
- few jobs, much supply = can afford to be picky to get the best
- not much difference between applicants = hire first that meets requirements
- switching costs are high = be picky
- high impact on team/culture = be picky
None of these explain the data.
The only notable data point is the precipitous drop for software engineering from 40-60 days historical averages. lt basically says that tech has become just like the rest of the job market, competitive for applicants and heavily gatekept by insiders, and that will be quite a reckoning for those who never experienced in their professional life a "normal" job seeking process.
The rest are just noise.
I actually think there is a different effect at play which is the technical need is growing in seniority and complexity as people have large established software systems. The junior market has high accessibility but the senior actually takes a while to get anyone through the door. My current job had been advertised for 6 months, it needed a relatively insane set of knowledge and skills where I only really had maybe 50-60% of the ask. I literally had to learn all of GCP from scratch and I was still a better fit than you're likely to find. I think this is also the same trend AI is making worse as the demand for junior also goes down you'll see these averages climb as most hiring becomes more senior.
There is little debate the tech job market is currently bad, for juniors worse but for seniors too, widespread layoffs from large companies, etc.
What you are describing sounds more like the extreme pigeonholing the industry has been practicing for years, where companies expect 100% productivity from day one, use automated screening for keywords like "MongoDB" or "GCP" etc. How much effort does it really take to learn GCP enough to handle a certain given product, perhaps string together a few Cloud Run instances, a PR triggered CI pipeline with Cloud Build, add a few Compute Engine workers, bind everything together and protect it with Armor and IDS etc.? Not the entire GCP, just what a given company would need; it's adult Lego for god's sake. It's beyond insulting to take a candidate with good swe foundation, that also list advanced degrees with mathematics and quantum physics, or perhaps a top grade in philosophy, and think they won't be able to handle the Google Cloud GUI.
The industry moved away from "smart and get things done" because companies were unwilling to invest the few months to half a year required to get a new person to peak productivity, since the labor was so mobile and relatively expensive. Maybe with a less mobile workforce, this will change but I won't hold my breath.
From what I could see, big retailers have a lot of "evergreen" openings which makes sense as they can have multiple locations and there is a lot of churn. And there are obvious outlier sub-categories like warehouse workers etc which have median times <7d, I didn't break it down in the blog as it's too much data to present. But other than that, I don't have enough search data to draw meaningful conclusions. (say around supply/demand)
I think hospitality can sometimes struggle to get strong candidates at all so might leave positions open longer hoping for better applicants.
Intriguing: Product/Design roles linger longest (median 30.5 days). Remote-heavy categories like Customer Success at 27.8 days? Great for targeted applications in security ops.
SDE jobs are usually deliberately kept open to satisfy the H1B/PERM testing. Most big tech company does it so they can hire H1Bs and in turn do day 1 PERM sponsor as an incentive for H1B hires
cool dataset. one thing i'd love to see: distribution tails (p50/p90/p99 open days) split by remote vs onsite and by seniority keywords. also how are you handling reposts/refreshes (same role relisted) vs truly new openings? that can skew average open time a lot.
I would not recommend the standard resume -> job portal -> application pipeline to anyone seriously looking for gainful employment. The signal:noise ratio is not in your favor. The current meta for tech jobs is an OSS portfolio, sponsored competitions, self-produced apps, and technical blogposts, roughly in that order. You will get much farther by solving real problems with public visibility.
Some people just want a job, not to package themselves like a sales pitch. It’s about putting bread on the table, not performing personal branding theater — yet the job market has become wildly disproportionate to the reality of the work.
The reality of any matching market is based around first impressions and theater. Dating, college apps, hiring, real estate transactions, etc.
Some people just want to buy or sell a house. FSBO with some cheap cellphone pictures will sell far slower than a staged house with professional photos, MLS listing, and a launch party for local agents.
Do many high schoolers care about volunteer work, taking a second language, etc? No. Is it expected to be a part of their application and essay for a good school? Yes.
> Do many high schoolers care about volunteer work, taking a second language, etc? No. Is it expected to be a part of their application and essay for a good school? Yes.
Note that this is only true in countries where the first priority of the "good school" is to obscure their admission goals.
But no employer has ever said "I just want an employee". So only someone naive in the extreme would imagine with the power dynamic in play the sales pitch isn't necessary. That a job is even advertised means the hardest part of the sell has already been done for you internally, but also probably has less favourable terms. If all you ever think is "I just want a job" you will almost always undersell yourself and have the worst jobs. The best ones aren't even advertised and are created purely on your own salesmanship.
People keep parroting this point, but I don't think it actually applies, it's just one of those things that gets reposted a lot on the internet. When we're hiring a candidate, I generally don't go through their Github repos or blogs. I talk to them about what they've worked on and what they've done. Hobby projects can be a good starting point to talk about that, as can be blogs, but really you could start with anything. Most people start with their current day job and that's perfectly fine. You don't have to be coding both inside and outside of working hours do be a good applicant.
I'd go as far as saying it's counter-productive. I have a hobby-level project with actual users earning me some money on the side while requiring very little day-to-day involvement (roughly 2h per week) and there's no quicker way to get my door shut doing interviews than by mentioning it.
There's simply no way to package that which doesn't make the other side think that I'm gonna steal company's time at best and that I'm only looking for like a temporary gig until it takes off at worst.
You assume hiring managers are looking at OSS?
In my experience, they don’t. They might click to see the GitHub profile but rarely open any repo to check the code.
I've never had a potential job reference a single thing on my github, and I've been a user since 2007. Usually I had to point out, when trying to get a job using e.g. Rails, that I had contributed significant code that they were using in production.
happy to display that I'm clued-out, but what does 'meta' mean in this context? Clearly not the company, nor the general 'meta' modifier to something to describe qualifying criteria about it, like meta data for phone calls. it sounds closer to the term 'alpha' that investors use to describe competitive advantage (and even that term I wonder about).
Meta is short for metagame. In videogames, and even in some sports, there are decisions made above/outside of the typical strategy of the game which players call metagame. For example, drafting players in football is metagaming. Or choosing what pickleball paddle to use is metagame.
An expanded view of that is that there's usually a "current" meta strategy that people tend to adhere to, kind of like a convention. And if you stray from that, you lose, even if your strategy would succeed in a vacuum.
For example, if the current meta is for employers to mainly use referrals/networking to hire, it would be a bad strategy to apply to postings.
Thank you! Very helpful clarity, indeed sounds like an incredibly useful term!
Very popular term in gaming
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/what-does-meta-mean-in-...
Thank you! (Starts down fresh rabbit-hole...)
If someone does that, how do they then convert it into a job?
Also, be under 40.
Huh? Im over 40 its only getting easier to get hired... Not sure where the ageism meme came from other than perhaps older generations who learned compsci pre the internet got left behind a little bit in the made takeoff of software. I am over 40 without a family or partner though, so I suspect the bias is far more about how much of your life is work energy.
Agree the standard resume -> application etc. is tough. It has always been tough even at the best of times.
Most jobs are through friends/network etc. If you really think you're a great fit but lack the network try figuring out who the right person is and reach out directly.
If you're a new grad then internships etc.
> If you're a new grad then internships etc.
If you're a new grad, haven't you lost the status of "current student" that most-to-all internships require?