Tech Hiring: Resources for Candidates and Hiring Managers

This morning, Uber announced it was laying off 3,700 people, with more layoffs likely to happen in the next couple of weeks. Yesterday, Airbnb laid off 1,900 employees (25% of its workforce).

The travel/local space has been hit especially hard with Uber, Groupon, Airbnb, Toast, Yelp, and TripAdvisor among the companies hardest hit. I was particularly hard hit by the layoffs at TripAdvisor -- it is a company I know and love. I spent five years there and recount those years as some of the best in my life -- personally and professionally.

According to Layoffs.fyi, over 375 tech companies have laid off over 42,000 employees.

But things are not entirely bleak. Today, tech is a tale of two cities. There have been tens of thousands of layoffs, but there are also companies hiring -- some urgently as they rush to address newfound demand generated due to social distancing.

I've talked extensively to both hiring managers and candidates who are navigating the most challenging job market I've ever seen in tech. Candidates aren't having a great experience -- there's a lot of ghosting and volatility. Hiring managers are being pulled in many directions and trying to hire over Zoom -- something new to many.

I fear that companies will wait to hire because they don't know how to hire remotely. But we can't afford that. We need to get the job market going again.

Resources for Candidates

If you are a candidate, I recommend checking out Candor's live, crowdsourced database of who's hiring and who isn't. It's a phenomenal resource and can help you focus your energies on the right companies.

Candor's list is the most comprehensive I've found, but there are other good resources:

• Blind: Who's Hiring
• themuse: Companies Are Still Hiring During COVID-19
• WFH But Hiring (filterable by Product, Engineering, etc.)
• Levels.fyi Still Hiring (filterable by Product, Engineering, etc.)
• Layoffs.fyi's Companies Still Hiring Airtable (filterable by Product, Engineering, etc.)

Resources for Hiring Managers

If you are a hiring manager, I published a comprehensive guide to remote hiring this morning, which can help you set up an effective hiring process and give you the confidence to move forward with remote offers. It is specific to hiring product managers, but can easily be repurposed to other functions.

I'm here to help.

Over the course of my career, I've hired nearly 100 PMs and interviewed thousands of people. One of the things I'm most proud of is helping people level up their teams and themselves.

If you are a hiring manager looking for help recruiting great PMs or a PM looking for your next role, please feel free to connect.

As hard as it is right now, I'm optimistic. I recently watched a YouTube Q&A with billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio. Ray is the rare financier who looks at trends over centuries, not quarters. He said that the one, unrelenting constant over the last 500 years is human ingenuity.

Even cataclysmic events, like The Great Depression and WWII, are barely noticeable on a 500-year measure of economic productivity. What is noticeable is a steady march "up and to the right" as humans continue to find new ways to be better -- year after year, decade after decade, and century after century.

We will get through this. We always have, and never have we had so much scientific and technological insight to help us find our way.

???? Share this with a hiring manager or candidate.

Please share this with anyone you know who is hiring or looking for a new role. They may find the resources here helpful, and I'm happy to see if I can help people navigating today's market.

Stay well, Ravi.