Originally Posted by
kittyray
I'm a software engineer in the tech industry and lost my job at A Big Company end of last year. I decided to enjoy the holidays and the search this year has been rough. I've had multiple recruiters I'd been working with get laid off themselves, and even more conversations end with the process getting paused for hiring freezes or "we're not actually hiring right now, we just want to start the process for when we are" or the like. I'm competing with every other software engineer who got laid off or forced out of big companies with 1-3 YOE, and ultimately it feels pretty dejecting.
It definitely varies a lot of role/experience, though. People I know with several more years than me, especially those coming from smaller companies or had jumped around startups, didn't have nearly as much trouble, especially the ones I knew who voluntarily downleveld to adjust career trajectory. I can't speak to software engineers primarily working outside of tech companies at all.
I also have some non-engineer people I know in other fields (healthcare, corporate investment stuff, marketing, education) who have had difficulty finding new roles while still employed at their old ones.