A list of all the great engineers laid off. Help them land on their feet | Hacker News Reader

A list of all the great engineers laid off. Help them land on their feet

parachutelist.com

117 pointswakahiu53 comments

> Where is this sourced from? - We rely on a combination of verified sources at companies, submissions/tips, tech blogs, as well as public lists.

If I am reading this right, some (most?) of these people might not even know they are listed on this site? I am assuming all of the info is already available since linked in profile is required, but this is still a bit creepy.

I agree that it is weird if it's coming from a secondary source rather than the engineer themselves. It's a violation of their privacy.

Getting data from public lists, blogs, etc seems perfectly fine.

It's an incredibly naive project. I can see that it probably has been done with good intentions, and that's blindsided them.

All of the people in Berlin, Germany on the list can fly right off, probably a GDPR violation to list them.

Great tool if you're laid off and your name is first in the list according to whatever arbitrary sorting function is being used here.

At a glance it looks like it's sorted first by layoff date descending, then alphabetically on name.

Andrew Alexander Anthony Aadien Arthur?

edit: I know this is nonserious, but hell, if you wanted to do that and you live in the UK, you only have to fill out a deed poll and get it signed by someone :)

Surely you mean Aadien Alexander Andrew Anthony Artur? ;)

Long ago I worked in support on a government contract where the first name in the email directory was Alan Aaron. There was no such person, but the account got plenty of email because it was so easy to include by mistake. The COTR's staff would go in now and then to clear it out.

Suddenly I'm getting a throwback to the "Aaron A Aaron" scene from Hot Fuzz

https://youtu.be/pT6hEQ-ktNQ

I was thinking Maybe Aaron Aable.

> <changes name to AAAAAISL>

Welcome to the world of being first author of a publication in particle physics.

A colleague of mine took the name of is wife to gain the A as first letter.

To me it looks like it's sorted by company (but not alphabetically), then by job function (also not alphabetically), then by first name alphabetically.

Ah, interesting. You are right that it's not sorted by layoff date first -- I thought that because the Opendoor layoffs were 4/16 and the Uber ones 3/26, but then there are some ones with no date from Uber included.

Maybe it's by Company with companies with more recent layoffs first?

Why am I looking at this lol.....

Maybe we can randomize the ordering?

My name is Aaron A. Aaronson!

You did good, kid.

Tah.

I'm more interested in tracking the companies that have laid off (and don't have an ability to help hire individuals), so I'm just watching https://layoffs.fyi/ instead of this page. That is more geared to following the trends in layoffs. If anyone knows other compilations I'd be interested to know!

Could we also have a list of all the crappy engineers laid off? :-)

Anyone can add themself to the list, so those will be in there too. (:

There's a lot of companies that won't come out of this, but some will, and they'll be in the position of having to hire again.

I'm sure that a few companies may have tried some way to keep their furloughed employees "close to the back door," so they can get them back, when things open up, but a lot of companies will be in the position of having to start over from scratch.

I saw an ad for a "Senior React Native" developer, in the SF area, for $25,000 -> $80,000.

Oof. Different world, indeed.

I get why it uses LinkedIn, but that's not something that represents my actual CV or skill level. Most of the stuff I've done I don't really know (thanks to their abysmal and dark-pattern-based UI) how to put it on there in the first place.

Not gonna defend LinkedIn, their dark patterns are well documented and awful. But don't you have basically a free form input text for each job description where you can put whatever you want?

Right, but these are projects I've done on my own time. My job history (because of prior burnout that I've recovered from) doesn't describe what I am capable of now, and the things I've done to improve my skill. How do I add:

- That I reverse engineered an android app, fully replicated their API and engaged in successful responsible disclosure for the service?

- The Lisp with the ELF header I've handwritten in assembler?

- The wrapper language for HTML I then built my website and a business website for family with (In pure HTML+CSS, they aren't React projects that will get me hired but, that framework would have been overpowered for the client's needs. Also it's worth stating that it's not just a 'website for family', but the person is very qualified and accomplished at their artwork and the website is the major platform for showcasing their work).

- The robust file tagging system I worked on.

- The time I dug into the function call hierarchy of the linux kernel because one of the setattr family of functions was passing back an undocumented return code, and the subsequent patch to the man-doc project I contributed.

These sound rhetorical but they're very much not, if you or anyone else knows a way to accomplish this please comment!

There's a free form introduction page, as well as extracurriculars, as well as you can simply make a job called "Independent".

Hmm, that's an interesting approach and I guess it's pretty common (and seems blatantly, embarassingly obvious in retrospect!). That gives me a lead to look at what the standard practice is, and also a rough phrasing to search for on google. Thank you!

I like the first 2/3, the last can be interpreted as padding by some eyes. I’ve had that for most of my career and never had it called that. I do have a short and dense resume tho, so I think the total package must be considered with each option.

I always do intro/cover letters tho, and have something like “Professional Contributions,” and Education listing F/LOSS with my mid-career CS degree, like extra-curriculars from coding.

I got that vibe from it too to be quite honest. It was mostly put there with an "it can't hurt to put it in" attitude, but it might be worth taking it out as I already have an article about it on my website.

Hm, yeah. I don't really have much of a formal education to rely on, I was unschooled. It's an awkward thing. Personally I don't feel that my work is particularly good, especially since I don't have a specific yardstick to work off, but the people I've worked alongside or have shown it to have told be that I'm 'very knowledgable', which feels weird.

I've been wondering about spending on some AWS certifications and the like just to improve the 'qualifications' section, or hiring someone to look at my CV and give a professional opinion on it.

Also there's a projects section!

To be fair, nobody serious enough cares about every single shot you enlist if your overall picture is crystal clear, coherent and fair... after that, it’s a fit / no-fit game. The opposite is true: you use your profile proactively and cold contact people working at places you like, in order to make acquaintances and get intros.

The things you've listed are pretty much impossible for potential employers to digest on a LinkedIn scale. You should be trying to get noticed, not assessed. Details like this are for resumes.

1) Put that you're looking for opportunities in your headline

2) Stuff as many keyword skills into your page as you can

While I'm not going to call it a goldmine opportunity to find a job, I wouldn't say you should expect yourself to be any worse off than others within the platform

Add Profile Section -> Accomplishments -> Projects

Attaching it to a specific position is possible but optional.

It allows you to put a time frame, link, and text description.

I believe that should serve your needs perfectly?

I sympathize, because Linkedin's ui is SHIT, and I've worked on both sides of it - recruiter and engineer. It sucks to search, it sucks to present yourself, it rewards bad practice.

That being said, that's the game. If you can't get it done, someone else will get hired through linkedin, and you won't. Linkedin is in my experience the most popular way to find candidates when your application pipeline isn't yielding the candidates you need.

> That being said, that's the game. If you can't get it done, someone else will get hired through linkedin, and you won't.

But it's not the game here. Recruiters are being introduced to these candidates outside of LinkedIn. The requirement to direct them back to LinkedIn is self-imposed and arbitrary. It would have been a perfect opportunity to allow submitters to choose a link that they feel best represents them.

This is Rocket crowdsourcing data for their own use.

No location at all? Isnt that fairly important?

It's on there. You have to scroll.

It's not a list of "great" engineers. It's just a list of engineers. Anyone can add themself to the list.

Saw a bunch of Amazon layoffs. I know they regularly hire and fire people, but this seems like a really shitty time to do that to people.

I saw 19/6563 and only 6 of them are software engineers.

I wouldn't say that is a bunch in this time, more like regular process.

Yeah, 5-10% of the workforce is fired yearly at Amazon due to forced attrition from stack ranking.

The about claims this list is for covid19 layoffs?

I work for Amazon, and (afaik) we’re not doing covid-related layoffs right now, so it seems a bit disingenuous to use this list if you were laid off for PIP/dev plan or other reasons.

That said, the market is in a rough place right now, so I can’t blame anyone for doing what they can, but yeah.

Is there a list of companies that are still hiring (and haven't hugely slowed down hiring like Google?).

I started a job search just before shelter-in-place took hold. I think most well-funded startups that aren’t obviously directly impacted are hiring as usual, but that’s anecdotal and based on a pretty small sample size.

My anecdata is a fortune 500 financial institution, DOJ, and DOD contractors. Finance is in a hiring freeze, we dropped some contractors. DOJ and DOD contractors looking for multiple candidates each.

Coinbase is still actively hiring: https://www.coinbase.com/careers/positions

Shopify is hiring. https://www.shopify.com/careers

Hiring freezes and non-freezes: https://candor.co/hiring-freezes/

https://levels.fyi/still-hiring

How very convenient that you can blacklist companies like Uber with a simple click of a checkbox.

We're still hiring! I passed this link off to our head of talent acquisition.

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