I can barely remember the last time I had to look for a job. It must have been at least 15 years ago. But the time has come.
Getting too comfortable
As I mentioned, I have not had to look for work for a very long time. Even when I changed jobs, the opportunity usually found me.
I remembered it as taking days, or at most weeks, for a developer to find work. I also thought it would be even easier now: I have accumulated a huge amount of experience, and surely that would help.
Of course, I had read on forums that developers can be out of work for months. I assumed they were exaggerating, or being too picky.
First impressions
Not long ago – about a month ago – my job ended rather unexpectedly because of layoffs. There was also a chance that it might continue after all, so I spent that month just chilling.
Today, though, I decided to take a proper dive into this whole job-search thing. I opened good old LinkedIn, where I had been bombarded with job opportunities every week for years. Even when my profile clearly said that I already had a job and was not looking to change.
What I encountered while searching felt pretty foreign to me.
Most job ads are:
- From the Hungarian subsidiaries of multinationals
- Looking for fluent English for a Hungarian team (wtf?!)
- Still caught up in the full-stack craze – often expecting several languages or systems on top of that
- Run through some recruitment agency
- Scraped listings
I could barely find any small or medium-sized businesses. Where are the Hungarian companies?
The expectations I see are so unrealistic that my hair stands on end. I am happy to learn new languages, but when a five-line list of requirements includes four languages and six frameworks, my eyes widen.
I looked at No Fluff Jobs too, but there is not much on offer there either.
Why does this frustrate me?
For one thing, my English mostly works in writing and reading. I have never needed to use it out loud, so expressing myself verbally in English is quite difficult. :/
For another, if I am not to burn out completely – and I am already close – I want to work with a stack I like, not one that turns my stomach.
Third, I was a full-stack developer for more than 13 years, and I realised fairly quickly that you cannot maximise your knowledge in two areas, backend and frontend, at the same time – especially not keep both fully up to date. You can be mediocre at both frontend and backend, but I am rather perfectionist.
Honestly, corporate culture is not my world either. I worked at a medium-sized company of around 150 people that was already trying to play at being a corporation. No thanks; I am too old for that.
With all that in mind, these are immediate deal-breakers for me:
- Spoken English is mandatory
- React (JSX is my kryptonite; it reminds me too much of 1990s PHP templates – familiar?
<ul><? foreach($items as $item) { ?><li><?= $item; ?></li><? } ?></ul>) - Any backend language other than Node.js (I have used Python, PHP and Java plenty, but I would rather skip them now)
- Places that expect a university degree and eight diplomas
- Large companies and multinationals
I have worked fully remote for years and like it, but even having to go to an office four days a week would not rule a job out.
Just let me work with a language I like (JS/TS), a good framework (Vue/Svelte, or Angular with a grimace), and sensible people.
Interviews
I have not got this far yet, but I keep hearing about endless interview rounds. Why?! Why is it good to waste each other’s time? Interview processes that take several months? What on earth is happening here?!
I have probably been to six or seven interviews in my life. Only one had two rounds, and the second was more of an informal chat than an interview. I have never been afraid of interviews or stressed about them because I always say up front, honestly, what I can do and what I cannot. If I lied about something, it would come out eventually, and we would only be wasting each other’s time.
What next?
I am not panicking yet; it is only the first day. Still, the initial picture is strange: the market has changed a little.
We will see. I do not want to be overly selective, because my savings are finite, unfortunately, and I do not know what to expect if I start getting interviews.
Maybe I will also get serious about English so I can practise speaking it and widen the field a little. Still, I would rather speak my native language with my coworkers. If a multinational, multicultural environment appealed to me that much, I would not still be living in Hungary.
Of course, I have not even begun to explore a tenth of the possibilities – sites, groups and people I know. For now, I have saved a few job ads. Tomorrow I will start collecting my applications and their statuses in an Excel or Numbers spreadsheet.