Linkedin revenues probably had a nice bump in the past 24 hours.

Game developers are still a pretty tight-knit group. It's not like getting laid off from a Wal-Mart.

It's all about working with a range of people who value your skillset, and having a skillset that's valuable to a lot of people in useful ways and not setting off alarm bells, and understanding truly what other companies do (so they know you know what you'd be getting into without a lengthy interview/whatever process).

Giving talks at conferences, user groups, and helping people randomly (small amounts) for free on places like mailing lists builds tremendous goodwill in this arena and demonstrates your mannerisms, knowledge, and community relationships to everyone observing it.

--

On the other side of it, I have a list of people if I know they sound unhappy in their jobs or got laid off or fired, I'd thrust them in front of 3-5 people in front of my network INSTANTLY as I know they're not the sort of people you get by any other means. The golden handcuff type employees.

Really depends on how small the particular world is. When I was in Hollywood, it wasn't uncommon for a high-level exec to be fired from Paramount one morning and walk into work at Warner Bros the next day. Of course, that business is particularly incestuous, everyone knows each other, and the same people trade jobs the way schoolchildren play musical chairs.

Of course, things are probably a little bit more rigorous in this case. There might be a big talent grab in the wake of mass closures or layoffs -- but it seems unlikely that just anybody walks off with a legitimate job offer in supershort order. Known commodities and highest performers? Maybe. Those with great networks and recruiter relationships? Also possible. Anyone else? They'll get some halo and attention from the announcement, but they're not going to auto-convert that attention into an offer in a few hours. I suspect the part about "...had new jobs lined up by the time they left the building" is a slight exaggeration.

While it's often something of a surprise when you finally do get the axe, you usually have a sense of impending doom, and a feeling that bad things are going down, before it happens. Projects stop getting traction. Upper management stops caring as much about what you're working on. Everyone becomes very apathetic. You get a rash of invites on LinkedIn, and people start updating their resumes.

So, it's rarely a complete surprise, and people often already have some idea of where they're going to go, or are ready to start looking.

When I was working at chumby industries and it was imploding, it occurred to me that somebody could probably write a really good predictor of imminent company failure by scrapping LinkedIn data and watching for sudden surges of activity from people working at the same company.

I'd be surprised if someone (or multiple someones) doesn't already have something like that running, even if just for their own private purposes.

(BTW thanks for Chumby while it lasted. Great product.)

(You're welcome for what bits of chumby I touched. Of course I was just one developer in a team of wonderful developers and hardware designers. It was a great job and a lot of fun. I still haven't decided if we were a bit too late (introduction of iPhone and Android) or too early (explosion in hackable maker devices like Raspberry Pi). I guess a bit of both.

I ended up accepting a new job offer later that day and rescheduling my return trip. It's still weird for me to think about that.

I definitely got lucky with that one.

Networking and contacts (and I mean legitimate networking) really play a big part in your overall success.

I'm in a large city, but nothing like NYC or the Valley either.

  | I mean legitimate networking

Networking and relationship building is huge. I got laid off from my previous $DAYJOB back in Jan '12. I showed up at the office at ~9:30am, got called into my manager's office almost immediately, left by 10:00am, made 2 phone calls from my car on the way home... by ~3:00pm that afternoon I had a new job all but lined up (had to interview and everything as a formality, but the job was essentially offered already).

Why? Because I take networking seriously, get to know a lot of people, participate in a lot of groups, do some public speaking, organize Meetups, etc., and more than a few people in my area know who I am and what my skills are. And I also knew exactly who was looking for the same reasons. So the 2 phone calls I made were extremely targeted, as I specifically knew those firms were looking to hire.

Now it might not always work out that way, but I absolutely endorse the idea that networking is crucial.

Psa: if you're a smart engineer in NYC and you're not being paid market rate, please get a new job now, your equity has a median value of zero anyways. The lowest I've seen a smart junior engineer take at a non startup was 90k, and that depressed salary is sortah compensated by the mentoring learning opportunities at that organization.

One could say the position would be either; Senior Software Engineer or Technical Lead.

It may a little bit of negotiation finesse (or more realistically, holding several offers in hand at once and willing to play them against each other).

A lot of my acquaintances are working at those various Wall Street firms earning about $85k.

Finally, I have a friend who switched to Google NYC after about 9 months at a Wall Street firm (at $85k). Google started him off at $150k. But um, that's Google...

I didn't know people made so much in NYC. I thoughts these $200k jobs were only found in the Californian wonderland of Silicon Valley :-/

I even have a friend who did Computer Engineering (not CS) at college, and found a job involving low-level assembly/C programming for embedded systems. The company said they'd pay him $18/hour for the first few months; and if they liked him, they'd hire him for real at $60k. Phew. (This company is actually in Long Island.)

I'm always bemused by the sky-high consulting rates & salaries I hear on HN. I'm not sure if I live on the same planet...

Seriously though, $60K in NYC is extremely below market for almost any type of programming work. The only scenario I can imagine that happening is if you're writing VB6 Excel macros. Hell, even that in NYC is probably more than $60K.

$85K is also very below market. In fact, unless you're working in a niche that's extremely under-demanded, anything below six-figures I'd consider very suspect. If you have experience with something in demand (web, mobile, data, etc) hitting six figures should be a matter of course, and anyone giving that type of work for below $100K in NYC is ripping you off (or giving you an oil tanker of equity).

Embedded is a different ball game - demand for that type of work is pretty low in the NYC area. If you are proficient in standard enterprisey stacks (.NET, Java, etc) or "Valley" stacks (Rails, Node, etc) you can make quite a bit of money here.

Google NYC pays on the high end, but they are not a huge outlier. Remember that they are competing for the same talent pool as everyone else who wants capable hackers. I've seen plenty of startups and companies play in the mid-$100Ks range.

My email is in my profile. Feel free to drop me a line and I can put you in touch with a couple of recruiters I trust (and aren't slimy).

All I can say about those who make 60-90k is good luck, it's harder to work your way up to the rate that you deserve organically starting at that low of a rate.

let him help you :)

I live in the Denver/Boulder area, and I'm 90% confident that if I were laid off today I could have an approximately equal job in less than 3 months. I wouldn't say I have a new job lined up, but somebody could spin it that way.

Also, I'd imagine people from a well known company like OMGPOP, in a big tech hub like SF or NYC, would have an easier time finding something new.

It's a surreal place.