📈 Open Jobs Growing! 🤝 Referral Scripts 🧲, 🏝️25 Remote-first Cos 💰, 🎂 Colin's VR BDay 🥽

Feb 19, 2024 - Tech jobs are rising! No fear-mongering in this newsletter...

Originally posted on the Top Tech Newsletter. Subscribe today for more weekly job search tips, deep dives, guest posts, and video interviews.

As we predicted, tech jobs are going up! There’s only hope in this newsletter…

1. 📈 Tech jobs are up +25% from Feb ‘23 low and accelerating
2. 🥳🤝 My bday was in VR, but I’ll help you IRL with a script to request referrals
3. 🏝️ Let’s get you a remote job or referral this week

Here we go…

📋 Table of Contents

💼 Hiring Trends

• Open jobs at tech companies are up +25.3% since the low last February, and the NASDAQ is up +37.3%, so we’re due for even more…right?

💸 Take action. Get Hired.

• 💸 Tip: How to ask for a referral?
• 🔥 Company Power Rankings: Hot & Recently-funded
• 💼 Who’s Hiring? 25 Remote-first companies hiring today
• ⏱️ IPO Watch: Track who is and isn’t going public in 2024

💼 Hiring Trends

🏀 The 3-Pointer

1. Tech job openings grew +10% in the last 30 days, the fastest rate since early 2022.We predicted despite mass layoffs, tech leaders were hoping to hire moreThat is starting to come true
2. Tech job openings grew +25.3% from their low a year ago …but not all sectors saw the same improvement % change in job openings year-over-year:💳 Fintech: 🔻 Shrunk by -0.9% — e.g., FIS, Stripe🧠 AI/ML: 🟢 Up by +62.9% — e.g., Nvidia, Databricks🌌 GenAI: 🟢 Surged by +198.9% — e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face🚘 Autonomous Vehicles: 🔻 Decreased -11.2% — e.g., Cruise, Zoox🛍️ Marketplaces: 🟢 Increased +10.6%, really accelerating this year 🔥 — e.g., Uber, Doordash, Carvana, Shopee📦 Direct-to-Consumer: 🔻 -11.4% — e.g., Peloton, Hellofresh, Stitch Fix💰 Crypto: 🔻 Fell by -8.1% — e.g., OKX, Crypto.com, Binance, Coinbase
3. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, had something to say about Layoffs:It was obviously really tough…but in some ways actually becoming leaner kind of makes the company more effective.

Tech stocks grew +37.3%, and tech job openings also grew +25.3%…

…but the Magnificent 7 are soaring way higher than the Nasdaq

…and FAANG+ laid off many before and after that stock surge

🤞Let’s hope the jobs rally continues and the layoffs decline continues!

Forward Top Tech to a friend! Everyone should be building their job options in 2024.

Share

💸 Get Hired

🧰 Job Search amp; Negotiation Tips: Script to Ask for Referrals 🤝

Tip: What works on me and I see working for others when asking for a referral…

a) Hook: Your headline or first line is catchy, relevant, and easy to understand.

Long-time Airbnb Superhost and Product Manager looking for a PM Lead role…

Tip: You may also use a shared background - same company, school, city, career switch.

b) Authority: Only your best foot forward. Big brand or impressive relevant win

Hey Amal, I’m a PM at Upwork who scaled a talent marketplace product +62% in 2 years while also staying an Airbnb Superhost. I would love a chance to build at Airbnb.

c) Value: Provide some personalized value.

For them personally:

I also loved your LinkedIn post recently on experimenting for diversity. I left a comment on the post and think it would get a lot of engagement if you showed some of the data in a visual chart. I can design one up if you send me the data.

For their role:

I have a bunch of feedback on the platform and new features as I started growing after a plateau. Mind if I send them over or set up a quick chat to discuss them?

d) Follow-up: As a leader, I get busy. Don’t take silence as a “no.”

• You NEED to follow up to get my (or any manager’s) attention
• Email me, LinkedIn connect, InMail me, send a short follow-up
• Try something more impressive. Try to get a warm intro to me

I’m writing some deep dives on outreach and networking. What else would be valuable? Let me know by leaving a comment.

Leave a comment

💰 Salary Spotlight

I’m cooking up some quick ways to give you companies that pay well for your level and function, are hiring, and are generally good job search targets…

…more to come.

🎉 My Birthday Party was in VR 🥽

Inspired by the Apple Vision Pro release, 12 of us hit up Sandbox VR room in Seattle for my birthday to play a little Squid Games VR.

We can now see the future. It is both beautiful and terrifying…

📈 Company Power Rankings

Now it's time to take action… Here are this week's company power rankings, so go start those reach-outs!

Legend:

💸 Pays top of market

💰 Pays competitively

🔥 Heating Up

Tip: Consider these as targets

• Coinbase - Posted first profit in 2 years causing shares to surge
• Nvidia - Surpassed Alphabet/Google to become the 3rd most valuable US company
• Apple - Opening $1b new campus in North Carolina to create 1000s of jobs

💵 Raised Funds This Week

Tip: Should be hiring soon. Reach out to hiring managers before they even post the jobs

• 🔥 Bugcrowd - $102M round for security vulnerability platform 💸
• 💰 Lambda - $320M for cloud computing at $1.5B valuation
• 💵 Lilac Solutions - $145M round for lithium extraction 💧
• 💰 Bold - $50M round for Colombia fintech 💸
• 👀 Higharc - $53M Series B for home design software 🏠
• 💸 LeoLabs - $29M to track satellites 🛰️
• 💸 Scribe - $25M for process documentation 📝
• 🔥 Alembic - $14M for marketing analytics 📈
• 💵 Clarity - $16M for deepfake detection 🚨
• 👀 Duetti - $15M+$75M debt for music licensing 🎵
• 💰 Flower Labs - $20M for federated learning 🤖

☁️ Proceed with Caution

• Cisco laid off 4250 this week
• Toast laid off 550 this week
• Instacart laid off 250

🚀 Whos Hiring

Companies posting new roles this week

🏡 25 Remote-first Companies Who Are Hiring and Pay Well

🏢 - Remote-first or friendly, 🌍 - Fully distributed, 💵 - Pays the same everywhere

1. CrowdStrike (346 jobs): 🏢 - Cybersecurity
2. Atlassian (345 jobs): 🏢 - Business collaboration software
3. Remote (136 jobs): 🌍 - HR for distributed teams
4. GitLab (127 jobs): 🌍 - DevOps tools
5. Block (Square) (125 jobs): 🏢 - Payment and point-of-sale solutions
6. Affirm (111 jobs): - Consumer installment loans
7. Coinbase (106 jobs): 🏢 - Cryptocurrency exchange
8. Mozilla (85 jobs): 🏢 - Firefox browser and other internet apps
9. Chainlink Labs (85 jobs): 🏢 - Smart contracts
10. Twilio (81 jobs): 🏢 - Cloud communication APIs
11. Insightsoftware (65 jobs): 🏢 - Financial reporting software
12. Stripe (64 jobs): 🏢 - Payments infrastructure
13. Grafana (62 jobs): 🏢 - Open source analytics & monitoring
14. Autodesk (61 jobs): 🏢 - CAD software
15. Reddit (59 jobs): 🏢 💵 - Online communities
16. Apollo.io (59 jobs): 🌍 - Sales intelligence
17. Cloudbees (55 jobs): 🏢 - Continuous deployment software
18. Dropbox (52 jobs): 🏢 - File storage
19. Wikimedia (52 jobs): 🏢 - Runs Wikipedia
20. GitHub (52 jobs): 🌍 - Git version control
21. Cribl (48 jobs): 🏢 - Data management and access
22. Zillow (48 jobs): 💵 - Real estate marketplace
23. 1Password (47 jobs): 🏢 - Password manager
24. Shopify (44 jobs):🏢 - E-commerce platform
25. Salesforce (42 jobs): 🏢 - SaaS business applications

BONUS: Webflow (13 jobs): 🌍 💵 - Website design and hosting

🕒 IPO Watch

🟢 Promising

• 💸 Plaid has a new President, possibly hinting at IPO plans
• Reddit hasn't released its public IPO filing yet, but Bloomberg reports that the social networking site did $800 million in revenue in 2023, a 20% jump over 2022.
• Circle - Major USDC stablecoin developer confidentially filed for IPO
• Shein - Chinese fast fashion giant seeking approval for US IPO, but Beijing investigating
• Zeekr - Chinese electric vehicle company planning 2024 IPO
• Rubrik - Data management and security company pushed back plans to Spring 2024 or later
• SeatGeek - Sports/concert ticket marketplace filed for IPO in April 2023, expected in 2024
• Turo - Car-sharing startup has delayed IPO plans a few times, but could go public in 2024

🟡 Still waiting

• Unfortunately, 💸 Databricks, SpaceX, and 💸 Stripe have all allowed employees to sell shares to investors recently to delay the need for an IPO
• Navan, Fanatics, and Klarna have all been quieter after earlier IPO speculation

📈 Recent IPOs:

• 🔥 Arm (+89.65% since IPO!) England-based chip designer → Stock soared +48% in a single day this week!
• 📉 Klaviyo (-9.34%, but rebounding) Marketing automation platform
• 📉 Instacart (-11.33%, but rebounding) Grocery delivery
• Oddity (-13.17%) Direct-to-consumer beauty brand

Originally posted on the Top Tech Newsletter. Subscribe today for more weekly job search tips, deep dives, guest posts, and video interviews.

Help us improve this newsletter by responding to our Reader Survey