[HN Gopher] Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SW...
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Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
Author : sbuccini
Score : 767 points
Date : 2022-12-28 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.stevenbuccini.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.stevenbuccini.com)
| adamwong246 wrote:
| Gosh it's so hard these days. So much of the past 10 years was
| easy speculation and I have certainly let that go to my head.
| Even as a fresh grad, I had people beating down my door.
| Suddenly, it's all quiet. I'm reduced to working at the grocery
| store- a humbling experience for sure.
| mikestaszel wrote:
| Coincidentally(?), "Laid off tech workers quickly find new jobs"
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34161528) is also on the HN
| front page right now.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| It very much depends on their specialty. Some niche position
| are available once a year or less, in my country, while regular
| developers are hired by the thousand every month.
| nijave wrote:
| >Do not disclose the current status of your interviewing process
|
| Not sure exactly what this means but it's pretty common for
| recruiters to check your timeline and try to work around it. For
| instance, they'll try to expedite you if you already have offers
| on the table or relax the timeline so it fits with interviews.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| I strongly recommend only sharing minimal information about
| your job search with employers. Don't share when you started
| looking, because if it's been a while then you'll look bad.
| Don't share that you think you're far along in the process at
| some other place, because if that falls through then you'll be
| embarrassed if it comes up again or it might look like you were
| lying to put pressure on them.
|
| The fact that an employer could speed things up for you if you
| have active prospects elsewhere is a little insulting because
| it's the flip side of saying we know we can put you on the
| backburner because you're unemployed and struggling.
|
| You can say whether you're actively or passive looking, or if
| you have a firm offer on the table, or if you're especially
| interested in employers in some particular area if it makes you
| look good with this employer. Otherwise don't bring your search
| up and politely deflect questions if you can.
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| There's a big difference between telling (third-party)
| recruiters and employers these things.
| inthepipe wrote:
| [dead]
| pronlover723 wrote:
| #1 it's lonely? April 2020, 1 month into the pandemic.
|
| I found the pandemic lonely. I saw less than 1 person a month for
| the first 14 months of the pandemic. And i find WFH incredibly
| lonely. I haven't recovered. I'm utterly alone most weeks. I see
| no one. Even if I go to work, no one is there. I moved cities a
| year ago and have only 1 friend and 2 acquaintances in the new
| city. 2 of those 3 are married and I see them maybe once a month,
| if I'm lucky. The 3rd I haven't seen since August. The pandemic
| as killed meetup.com. It used to be full of activities. I don't
| think there is 1/20th of the activities there used to be.
| 0xmarcin wrote:
| Loneliness is bad in itself, but it can get worse if you are:
|
| - Not going outside every day
|
| - Not keeping yourself fit
|
| - Eating junk food
|
| In my region there is a lot of office only/mostly hybrid (3+
| days in the office) jobs, probably for the reason that you
| mention. Of course when I ask why I need to be in the office
| people tell me about culture and stuff... But the true reason
| is probably more along the lines: loneliness, small baby crying
| at home, apartment not appropriate for remote work, annoying
| roommates/spouse/during divorce.
|
| Maybe changing jobs right now is not the best idea - so I will
| not suggest it. I will only suggest to get real human contact,
| as being on-line and talking on forums/social media does not
| work (at least in my case).
|
| If you have a chance you may try to find some meetup for
| startup entrepreneurs, even if you are not interested in
| startups. I find people there to be really hyped and full of
| positive energy. Usually there is also a motivational speaker
| there. YMMV but in my city there are some free and open
| meetings like this.
| nijave wrote:
| Also
|
| - Not exercising
| sbuccini wrote:
| Hey, author here. I get it, trust me. This post meant to
| encapsulate my feelings during the one year I spent unemployed.
| During that entire time, I was alone. I had a falling out with
| my parents. I moved to a foreign country where I knew no one in
| order to stretch my savings. I totally get it.
|
| If you need to chat with someone, I'm happy to lend an ear.
| Contact info is in my profile.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > I moved to a foreign country where I knew no one in order
| to stretch my savings
|
| I have found NomadList (nomadlist.com) and NomadSphere
| (nomadsphere.io) invaluable for meeting up with people when
| abroad, although usually people who are there to work
| remotely.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Could you work "from home" from somewhere with a thriving
| community of remote workers, like Mexico City? Or lookup Wifi
| Tribe or similar?
| mattmanser wrote:
| Another option for meeting people is volunteering.
|
| And almost any sport, appreciate you may not play any, but a
| group of the same people go to the same thing week in week out.
| You can even pick something where you can get lessons first
| then join a club.
|
| Sometimes there are more social sports clubs that aren't really
| competitive. Here in the UK for example there are social
| badminton clubs and competitive badminton clubs. You will get a
| real mix of skill levels at the social clubs, and these might
| have regular meetups outside of the badminton. The one I'm part
| of do meals, theatre, outdoor events, etc. together. It depends
| on the people running it.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Loneliness is a killer[0]. And we're doing ourselves no favours
| with the way increasingly we meet people through apps and not
| face to face.
|
| I'd be lost without the friends I made in education settings.
| This might sound silly but any chance you could swap a meetup
| group with some sort of class? Art, writing especially
| something that involves discussion?
|
| [0]
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/loneliness...
| cableshaft wrote:
| Meetup.com seems to be sort of back where I'm at (Chicago
| area). Some of the groups are now toast (including the one I
| used to admin), but several are back to regular events again,
| and there have been some new groups since.
|
| I've tried to be a little careful still (still haven't gotten
| Covid as far as I know, I don't know if I'll be asymptomatic or
| end up in the hospital or something in between), and yet I've
| gone to several picnics, hikes, board game nights, outdoor
| hangouts, karaoke, movie nights, trivia, dinners, etc. via
| Meetup.com this past year.
|
| Also supplemented that with Facebook events and the local
| forest preserve and local library's posted events.
|
| I still have a core friend group (who I met thanks to
| Meetup.com many years ago), but several of my other friends
| have drifted off since the pandemic started (married and
| started having children), so I started doing meetup more again
| to compensate.
| brightball wrote:
| For what it's worth, I've been working from home for about 8
| years now. The only way to make it work for me was deliberate
| social activities with my neighbors, people from church or
| local charity orgs (Rotary, etc).
|
| I met them, I got their numbers and I started asking them to
| lunch at least once a week (sometimes more). That small, very
| determined activity just leads to more. You have to do it very
| consistently.
|
| Hosting a poker night is very similar. It will start small and
| sometimes not happen, but you have to be relentlessly
| consistent to get it established.
| burntalmonds wrote:
| This is why striving for financial independence is important.
| heb3rt wrote:
| chichi caca
| mildweed wrote:
| > Hard Truth #1: Getting laid off is a profoundly lonely
| experience.
|
| When I was laid off, it was very comforting to rebuild community
| with others who were laid off at the same time.
|
| We started a Slack instance where we:
|
| * shared resources with each other
|
| * complained and vented and healed together
|
| * celebrated each other's new jobs
|
| * continued the network for years after
| kyrra wrote:
| 100%. My last layoff was in 2011, but at that time they closed
| the entire office I was in at the time (50 of us laid off). We
| helped eachother find places to interview and met up once a
| week to have lunch. I ended up working remotely with 3 of my
| old co-workers.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| I'd take #7 with a grain of salt: You're far more desirable once
| you secure a job, than when you're unemployed.
|
| If the company is mid-size or better _AND_ it's not a sweat shop,
| take it while you assess your next move.
|
| Don't make the mistake of staying put, however, unless the team
| or company aligns with your interests.
|
| Context: I took a break, got married, and started looking for SWE
| work just when the "great recession" was looming.
|
| It took me six months and some unpopular niche skills just
| happened to open some opportunities. Just barely.
| spikej wrote:
| What were those niche skills, if you don't mind?
| deeptote wrote:
| The lesson here is to be overemployed, do at least one interview
| process a quarter, and understand that companies don't give AF
| about you.
| rr808 wrote:
| That is a big lesson I learned. I worked at a job for 8 years
| without looking elsewhere and when I got laid off I was really
| stuck because the market and interviewing circuit had
| completely changed.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| I'm not sure it's a good trade-off to interview constantly
| even when you have a job just to remove a bit of the learning
| curve if you lose your job unexpectedly.
| raydev wrote:
| I recommend it. For me, unused skills will become
| inaccessible relatively quickly, and interviews require a
| specific set that aren't used at all in any of my jobs over
| the years.
|
| Once, I did heavy interview prep because I was bored with
| my job at the time, I got good at it, and landed another
| better job.
|
| A year later my company deleted entire orgs of people, and
| I quickly realized that I was in bad shape when my third
| rejection rolled in.
|
| Interviews are high pressure situations. Better to be used
| to the flow, coding, and conversation style (again, think
| "sales") than to be caught off guard, worrying about
| whether you've solved a Leetcode question fast enough to
| satisfy another human with their own grading quirks.
|
| Oh, and that person is standing between you and a steady
| paycheck. That's the part I have to practice anyway,
| solving stupid university final problems when my livelihood
| is on the line.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| It's a good idea to practice if you're trying to get up
| the nerve to make the jump to a better job. But during a
| job search, you'll either get so many rejections that
| you'll get back up to speed quickly enough without
| needing to also obsess about it while you're employed, or
| you're hireable enough that you didn't need to worry
| about it either way.
| whoIsYou wrote:
| My experience was a bit different. Got laid off the week after
| thanksgiving. Being laid off was absolutely panic inducing. Got a
| new job before Christmas thanks to intense focus and the decision
| to accept a 3% paycut
| senjin wrote:
| Thank you for writing this. I have the sinking feeling I will be
| laid off within the next 6 months and I am already starting to
| get worried about the job search ahead. This is great preemptive
| information, now I need the "so you're about to be laid off..."
| post for someone who hasn't had to interview for a job in 15
| years.
| mouly wrote:
| The article makes me wonder if a support group (nonprofit) for
| laif off tech professionals with the goal of alleviating the
| loneliness. It could be as simple as a weekly call with others
| who have been laid off.
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _Maybe even Java._
|
| Personally, I'd love to get to work with Java, after (many) years
| of C++. Such an amazing technology and ecosystem.
| [deleted]
| kagakuninja wrote:
| I switched from C++ to Java 20 years ago, and never looked
| back. Although I've been using Scala the last 7 years.
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| Grass is always greener!
| mortenjorck wrote:
| I just had the fourth layoff of my career earlier this month.
|
| It doesn't get easier per se, but you do start to develop a
| process, and having a process makes the whole ordeal a lot less
| daunting.
|
| Perhaps the most daunting part for me right now is that I've
| spent the better part of a decade getting hired by people I
| worked with before, and this is the first time no one in my
| immediate network has a req open. Still, the value of a network
| is paramount: To paraphrase another comment here, do good work
| and be good to work with, and you will have people out there
| looking for a reason to get you in the door.
| sjellen wrote:
| Being laid off can and will forever change your career risk
| tolerance. When I got laid off in 2008, I stayed at the next job
| probably 10 years longer than I should have because of effects of
| being laid off.
| shade wrote:
| That's a good point, and I had a similar reaction. I got laid
| off from my first job out of college in late 2006. Unemployed
| for 3 months, found a role with a new company 2 hours away,
| moved, and stayed there over 12 years because I didn't want to
| take the risk of moving. That, and I let myself be too
| intimidated by the interview process.
|
| I eventually got laid off from there and found a new job after
| a ~2 month stint of unemployment; stayed with my new company
| for about 18 months and then changed to my current job of my
| own volition to find something I was happier with rather than
| sitting around being miserable.
| rr808 wrote:
| 7 years later after getting laid off and I'm still paranoid
| about performance reviews and layoff rumors in the press. I
| never used to be nervous about talking to people about my work
| but it really affected me.
| the_only_law wrote:
| On the other hand, the aftermath of this layoff is making it
| pretty clear to me that going I got this field was a mistake
| and I was trying to get a career going for five years that was
| just going to end up nowhere. This might be what I need to get
| out for good.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| > Don't discount the physical aspect of loneliness either. If
| you're like me, work is the primary shaper of your life. Work
| gives your life rhythm. It is the gravitational center around
| which the other activities in your life revolve. Then, one day,
| poof--it's gone.
|
| Exhibit A of why not to take your day job too seriously. Be
| professional -- but that's as far as it goes.
|
| > Come up with a more, uh, positive reason for why you're
| interviewing instead of disclosing that you were laid off.
|
| There's nothing wrong with being laid off. I was, last week. Saw
| it coming from a mile away. Told my new employer about it.
|
| Here's the secret for getting a job you're happy with. Try to
| have competing offers. I would have had to take over a 60%
| reduction in salary if I hadn't had one. But I did, and so it was
| merely a 37% reduction. I'm very happy with it.
|
| This is an area where I have to give tptacek lots of credit. I
| sort of shuffled from job to job until he posted this nugget of
| wisdom, and it's quite true. None of the points in the article
| applied to me because of a fundamental shift in mindset. It
| happened around 7 years ago.
|
| I think the loneliness aspect is intertwined with the reason why
| most people don't try to go interview while you already have a
| job. You see your job as something more. It's not just a job; it
| gives your life rhythm.
|
| Maybe so. But in my experience, the way to be happy is not to
| care so darn much about it. Do a good job. But try to get a
| better one. And when you're on the market, _try to get multiple_.
|
| The recent thread about the engineer who got their offer
| rescinded from two different YC companies is exhibit B. They
| mentioned that they stopped looking for new jobs after things
| seemed to be going well during the pre-offer phase. Don't do
| this. You should be doing a breadth-first search of all possible
| opportunities: talk to as many people as possible, and spend your
| time weighted by expected outcome.
| p1esk wrote:
| _it was merely a 37% reduction. I'm very happy with it._
|
| You took 37% paycut and you're happy with it? Why?
| highwaylights wrote:
| OP didn't take a pay cut. OP's pay was zero.
|
| OP took a job that would provide an income that happened to
| be 37% less than the one OP had before.
| ulfw wrote:
| By that argument he could have taken a job at McDonald's
| flipping burgers and would be better off than 'zero'.
|
| He did take a pay cut. 37% can be felt by anyone earning an
| income. It's often the decider if you have money left over
| after living expenses or not.
|
| Let's say you earn 200K. 100k goes away for taxes et al (I
| am simplifying here), leaving you 100K for expenses. If
| your living expenses are 60K for rent, food,
| transportation, fun, family, you can save 40K a year for
| retirement. Let's say you earn 37% less. That's 126K. 60k
| goes away for taxes et al (I am simplifying here), leaving
| you 66K for expenses. If your living expenses are 60K for
| rent, food, transportation, fun, family, you can save 6K a
| year for retirement. Your savings just dropped by 85%,
| putting your retirement in danger.
|
| Not saying OP shouldn't have accepted the offer. But let's
| not pretend this wasn't a significant pay cut.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| It was $400k to $250k. Significant, but given the
| recession, it's a nice position to be in.
|
| There's a fella on TikTok named Frank Niu. He made $500k
| at Netflix, and his job was basically to run around
| fixing things when they broke. It was a nice reminder
| that the good times can be very good, and the bad times
| are worth scaling back one's expectations appropriately.
| I doubt he'd still be in the $500k bracket if he were
| still working, but you never know.
|
| Also, don't scale your living expenses! It's tempting,
| but my current employer almost didn't make me an offer
| because they assumed I was living at a $400k lifestyle.
| In reality we were just paying off our house and driving
| the same old car.
| p1esk wrote:
| But you took the offer within one week from being laid
| off. You don't feel like you could've gotten a better
| offer if you waited?
| eat wrote:
| I'm not the person you're asking, but the answer seems to be
| quite obvious (unless you think they're lying about being
| happy about the situation)-- they were making more money than
| they need by at least 37%.
| rr808 wrote:
| The last 5-10 years have seen crazy money. I think most of us
| will see pay cuts sooner or later. Definitely when you get in
| your 40s+ you're likely to get a pay cut for each new job,
| unless you're management or architect or similar.
| bumby wrote:
| They seem to have their loss-aversion in check.
| silvestrov wrote:
| > Exhibit A of why not to take your day job too seriously.
|
| This can be more difficult when you have been part of
| transforming a company for 20 years instead of job-hopping
| every few years. When you have advocated for changes and they
| have been implemented, there are parts of "you" in the company.
|
| Also the CV looks very empty in this case, even when having
| implemented many interesting things.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Exhibit A of why not to take your day job too seriously. Be
| professional -- but that's as far as it goes.
|
| I think that's the wrong message to take away from this. The
| author's problems wouldn't have been solved by remaining more
| distant from his job and coworkers - he'd just be lonely all of
| the time!
|
| The real answer is that you need to cultivate relationships and
| a life outside of work, too. By all means, become friendly with
| and get to know your coworkers, but don't let work be your
| _only_ source of relationships.
| gpgn wrote:
| > This is an area where I have to give tptacek lots of credit.
|
| Any specific thread that might be particularly
| enlightening/interesting?
| [deleted]
| librish wrote:
| > Exhibit A of why not to take your day job too seriously. Be
| professional -- but that's as far as it goes.
|
| People spend 8 hours + lunch and commuting every weekday on
| their job. It's almost 50% of the time you spend conscious
| during a week. Most people want more out of that than just a
| chore that needs to be done.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Embrace distributed WFH and you can spend 4 hours in the
| morning, have a nice picnic, play some basketball, have a
| couple beers, then retire to your room to do another 4hrs. Or
| just fuck off some days and counterbalance it by doing hyper
| focused 12hrs days some other time.
|
| Also: unless you're genuinely curing cancer or flying food to
| starving African villages or something, 95% of software
| companies are pretty damn useless and any impact a SWE
| imagines is basically just a mental fantasy that helps one
| keep working. No one is genuinely happier because another API
| is created or some rich person has a better way of managing
| which products he's selling to other rich people. It's all
| basically useless and just a way to make money.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| That wasn't an option until a few years ago, and it being
| an option coincided with the crescendo of a 14 year bull
| market. Having a few beers before your afternoon shift
| isn't likely to viable for long.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Exactly. They wonder why there are layoffs and they are
| one of them. Or like in the article, they think they'll
| land another gig in 3 months or less.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Harsh words, but likely unfounded. You don't know their
| reason for being laid off, it could be that their company
| didn't product a profit (since in a bull run they don't
| need to), it could be that a competitor caught up to
| them, it could be that their division was no longer
| needed, and so on. Poor performance attributable to WFH
| necessarily is not very high on the list of why people
| are laid off, generally speaking.
| Volundr wrote:
| Heh TBH in most cases I doubt an individual has much if
| any control over a) if there are layoffs, and b) if they
| are part of one. I've had the "privilege" of seeing the
| internals of a few large layoffs, and being caught in
| one, and from my experience they are usually tied to
| business decisions outside of the control of your average
| IC (currently interests rates are putting a major pinch
| on companies that hold a lot of debt for example) and
| performance is rarely an actual factor in who goes. In
| most the large layoffs I've seen the list of who is going
| is handed down from C or VP level execs with none of
| management below having any say (which explains why so
| many take out key resources). Only in one case have I
| actually seen managers select who to keep.
|
| The whole "layoffs happen because employees are lazy, and
| affect lazy employees" is a nice narrative of your a
| business owner to keep the rank and file "motivated", but
| it's rarely an accurate portrayal of the situation.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Haven't missed a deadline in more than a year, which is
| more than I can say for most of my coworkers. It turns
| out that work with a fresh morning brain for 4 hours, a
| long break, and then later on more work with a refreshed
| brain is much more efficient than sitting for 8 hrs in an
| office for no reason.
|
| If I choose to refresh myself via mid-day beer, so what?
| The code doesn't care how long I sit inside an office. It
| cares how well my brain works.
|
| (..yes, too much beer and it won't work anymore.
| Everything in moderation.)
| cahoot_bird wrote:
| Counter opinion: You're going to be one of many applicant
| because everyone else is embracing WFH trend too, so you
| are competing with everyone, especially with some much
| experience to show, or a portfolio of trending
| technologies.
|
| It might be that a dev that has a money cushion and is
| willing and able to relocate can compete on a level others
| can't because competition would only be localized.
|
| OP was unemployed a year. Time adds up, that's a lot of
| money.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| > OP was unemployed a year. Time adds up, that's a lot of
| money.
|
| Luckily my government gives me a full year of
| unemployment benefits at 2/3rds of my salary besides my
| savings. Obviously, I don't wish to test my luck
| regardless, but not everywhere is as cutthroat as the US.
| kjksf wrote:
| More accurately: your government takes your money and
| then, maybe, gives it back to you in the form of
| unemployment benefits and the like, minus significant
| processing fees.
|
| The alternative is to use the money the government
| doesn't take and save it for your future "unemployment
| benefit".
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| The government would give me more than I would be able to
| save myself in a year. Over multiple years, I would be
| able to save more efficiently than the government, true.
| That's assuming everything goes perfectly however, so I
| view it as a form of insurance: I make less in order to
| have less anxiety that I will not be able to provide for
| myself and my dependents if the overlords decide I am no
| longer worthy of my job. It's a tradeoff, but one that I
| will gladly make. As a social good, that money also goes
| into helping those that were not as lucky as me to be
| able to make good easy money. And perhaps one day I might
| be like them too, who knows?
| gabereiser wrote:
| I think the OP is saying that there's no expectation that the
| company provide more than what they seek from you. Keeping it
| professional allows you to compartmentalize the fact that you
| are there because you add value and nothing more. You can
| form friendships. You can form guilds/clans/clubs/practices
| within. You can provide culture and mentorship beyond the
| duty of the role. At the end of the day though, it's not a
| day care and you are there to provide value to the business
| objectives. My professional colleagues I deeply respect. My
| friends are sometimes idiots. That's how I see it.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Work is exclusively a method for me to exchange labor for
| money to support my addiction to food and shelter.
| willio58 wrote:
| I think there's a benefit for some people in letting go a
| bit. Even if you love your job, you need to understand that
| the system we work in is purpose-built to exploit workers.
| It's great to be focused on your work when you're working,
| but once you're done for the day you should unplug as much as
| you can. Taking PTO? Don't check slack or emails.
|
| I love what I do, but I've found that even still if I let
| that fact convince me to work more than what is required of
| me I will eventually feel burnt out and eventually depressed.
| Maybe this isn't the case for everyone, but it's life outside
| of work that brings true meaning and purpose to my life. Time
| with friends and loved ones, going outside into nature and
| having new experiences, these are all things that make me
| actually happy. Loving my work just means I'm not sad when
| I'm at work.
| ufmace wrote:
| > Exhibit A of why not to take your day job too seriously. Be
| professional -- but that's as far as it goes.
|
| +1 on this. His #1 is exactly why you should not let work, and
| especially work social events, become the "primary shaper of
| your life" - they can and will get rid of you anytime they
| think it might be convenient for them. It may not have anything
| to do with your skills or productivity, it may be just what
| someone high above you felt like doing for reasons that have
| nothing to do with you.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| Being spoiled for choice with offers is great if you can manage
| it, but not very useful if you're OP who couldn't find
| something for a year.
|
| Also, having a job gives you a basic social identity to use to
| interact with people, and positive cash flow lets you be
| expansive and outgoing. It's very easy to take this for
| granted, or assume focusing on work is ultra-materialist, if
| you don't have a lot of experience going without. I agree that
| it's healthy to not worry so much about the day-to-day minutiae
| of a specific job, but this is a lot different from the
| inevitable decline that comes with not having any job at all.
| prismatix wrote:
| Also, if you can't find a job in a year then maybe you need
| to lower your standards somewhere. Even as a self-taught,
| very junior (at the time) engineer it only took me 4 months
| to receive (competitive) competing offers.
| bumby wrote:
| > _a job gives you a basic social identity_
|
| Just because this is a norm doesn't make it healthy. When
| your identity is rooted in something that can easily go away,
| it makes for a weak foundation. Lot of examples of jobs that
| are relatively short-lived (athletes, military, etc.) can
| show how difficult transitioning is when your identity is
| tied to your job.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| We need to distinguish between being at some particular job
| and being in a profession or similarly in any job at all.
|
| I think it's unhealthy to have your identity tied to your
| specific employer, job title and tasks that you do for
| them. You as a person should not be defined by the tickets
| in your current sprint.
|
| However not having a profession or any job is much
| different and worse. Unless you're older and retired, or
| independently wealthy, then it means you're going to cut
| back on everything. You won't socialize with other people
| society deems successful, you won't date, you won't grow a
| family, you won't travel or do anything other than continue
| to exist. All parts of your situation will shrink and
| decline. You are running out the clock toward total
| destitution.
|
| I'm making this point because it's easy for people who are
| having a successful career to say, oh, of course I'm not my
| job, while missing entirely that they see themselves as a
| person who has a good job and will likely get another good
| job if their current job ends. They don't mean that they
| see themselves equally as a software developer or a
| dishwasher or on the street and it's all the same to them,
| so sharing the perspective that you are not your job in a
| discussion about extended unemployment is maybe not very
| appropriate.
|
| Whether this latter reality is healthy or not, I don't
| know, but people have identified themselves as successful
| based on their trade or other social categorization for
| thousands of years, so at least we can say it's not new.
| bumby wrote:
| Part of the distinction I was trying to make is that it's
| dangerous to have one's identity tied primarily to any
| singular thing. In western culture, it just seems like a
| job/profession is the easiest identifier.
|
| Will Storr writes about this much better than I can
| explain it here. But his point is essentially that the
| healthiest approach is to have your identity tied to many
| disparate parts of your life so that if one falters, the
| way you view your status doesn't hinge on that one
| failure. Just like you stated that "people identified
| themselves as successful", is a measure of status. If
| your esteem/status is based on that one domain, you're
| putting yourself at greater risk. It doesn't matter if a
| buggy-whip maker was the best tradesman around, he's
| status is still at risk when cars become popular.
|
| The other part is that I believe research shows it's
| typically unhealthy to have one's social circle centered
| around work because those aren't very tight bonds. Again,
| it's a point to spread your social circle across shared
| interests and values rather than a job.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| What I'm really talking about when I'm talking about the
| threat of extended unemployment is the threat of losing
| socioeconomic class. So much depends on class: where you
| live, what you eat, where you worship if anywhere, where
| your kids go to school, who your friends are. Almost
| everything. It's very difficult to diversify your social
| and professional network outside of your class.
|
| In most cases switching from one tech job to another will
| keep you in the same middle-to-upper-middle class even if
| you have to take a relatively large pay cut. You can even
| lose your job without something else lined up and it's
| not a big problem as long as you're confident you'll find
| something similar soon.
|
| All of that is at risk with extended unemployment or
| being forced to indefinitely work for lower pay in a
| different field. Consider all the life changes someone
| might have to make if they have to change from being a
| software developer making $150k to being a rideshare
| driver making $40k, after six months, a year, or five
| years. I don't know about buggy-whip makers but probably
| they'd be okay with losing their jobs if they were
| guaranteed equal work in the new car factories. What they
| really dreaded was having to work for less pay in the new
| factories, or becoming day laborers or similar. This is
| what motivated the original Luddites.
| ptkanchi wrote:
| Getting laid off absolutely sucks and it could potentially happen
| to anyone, thus it's important everyone has some sort of nest
| egg.
|
| And please... network, network, network! I know not everyone has
| this opportunity, but if you leave a good lasting impression and
| make friends with strong coworkers, over time they will get
| promoted to higher and higher positions making it incredibly
| easier to find a job when needed.
| wklm wrote:
| > when all the talking heads were saying a recession was
| inevitable. Sound familiar?
|
| This is the very same recession we've been talking about :)
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Getting laid off is a great introduction into class solidarity
| with your fellow workers. We have literally nothing in common
| with the capitalists at the top. You are closer to homelessness
| than you are to being a billionaire.
| bilvar wrote:
| Most capitalists are not billionaires or even millionaires, the
| divide you are creating is outdated and frankly asinine.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Reading your other comments, you've aggressively decided to
| dismiss the historical definition of the capitalist class
| because it doesn't suit your worldview. In that case there's
| essentially no conversation to be had because you're already
| operating from an alternative reality.
| bilvar wrote:
| Why do you think that Marx's definition of capitalist is
| the 'historical definition'? The term predates Marx.
|
| Moreover, words progressively change definitions depending
| on cultural and intellectual trends.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Because... I wrote the comment, and in the context of my
| comment, I am referring to the traditional idea of a
| "capitalist class". There's also no new revised
| understanding of "capitalists" that includes everyone
| with a small business. Even in "21st century economics",
| a capitalist is still traditionally considered someone
| who owns the means of production at the absolute top of
| the supply chain (the owners and controllers of capital).
| Your local grocery story owner is still literally buying
| his inventory from a supplier. You follow that supply
| chain long enough, there's more than likely a billionaire
| at the end of it. That's the actual capitalist.
| bilvar wrote:
| Again, a capitalist is someone who deploys capital to
| provide a product or service. Not someone who is at the
| top of a supply chain. This is only the definition in
| Marxian 19th century economic theories. Saying that it's
| the historical definition shows lack of intellectual
| diversification.
|
| Supplying yourself X & Y goods from the market to produce
| Z good or service does not make you a labourer. By that
| logic is someone who owns a car factory NOT a capitalist
| because he needs to supply himself steel from another
| capitalist whose factories produce steel? Or is the steel
| factory owner NOT a capitalist because he needs to
| provide himself with tools from another capitalist? That
| makes completely no sense.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| You're saying a lot to say nothing, while being wildly
| incorrect with anything you do say. That's pretty
| impressive, considering you could just google your way
| out of this ignorance. Anyway, enjoy your alternate
| reality.
| bilvar wrote:
| Classic Marxist response when it's demonstrated that
| their logic produces 1+1=3. Talk about alternative
| realities :)
| oldstrangers wrote:
| It's pretty hilarious that you've managed to mention Marx
| multiple times and throw in an "extreme left-wing echo
| chamber" unprovoked. Turn off the Fox News buddy, take a
| deep breath. The woke cancel culture isn't out to get you
| and the government isn't trying to implant chips in your
| arm.
| bilvar wrote:
| Commenter: _Spouts Marxist drivel_
|
| Reply: _Points out that the Marxist drivel is drivel_
|
| Commenter: _Suprised Pikachu face_ "You must be watching
| too much Fox News to be bringing up Marx !11!!1" (No
| matter I don't even have Fox News in my country, being
| from ex-Soviet block, but that's Americans for you). And
| what's wokeness and government wanting to implant chips
| have to do with Marxism? You seem a bit confused.
|
| Anyway, very banal reaction, mostly inducing a yawn.
|
| But no worries, keep the meltdown you're having for
| everyone to see.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| My buddy, you're literally writing in memes... You need
| to get a hold of yourself.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Most capitalists are not billionaires or even millionaires,
|
| Yes, they are, if one is referring to the capitalist _class_
| (the haut bourgeoisie), those who relate to the economy
| primarily through capital to which other's rented labor is
| applied, not "everyone with some, however incidental,
| capital". Heck, even most of the middle class (petit
| bourgeoisie, who either apply their own labor to their own
| capital or who otherwise are supported significantly by both
| labor and capital) are at least millionaires. The working
| class, who obligatorily depend on renting out their labor to
| capitalists may have some incidental capital and not be
| millionaires, but they very much are not capitalists.
| bilvar wrote:
| I'm referring to the capitalists as thought of in 21st
| century economics, not some outdated 19th century
| Marxist/extreme left-wing echo chamber (lol, 'haute
| bourgeoisie', are you even listening to yourself?). People
| who deploy and risk their capital to produce services or
| products are capitalists. e.g My local grocer is a
| capitalist or my grandfather running a family farm is a
| capitalist. I can tell you for sure my grandfather is not a
| millionaire, I'm not so sure about my local grocer, but I
| doubt it.
| SergeAx wrote:
| I was laid off 3 times in my almost 30 years career. Every time
| it was difficult experiences, but I got some lessons from that.
|
| I still member of two active "ex-..." communities. Those are most
| helpful and useful, especially when other people are getting
| there after me and it was a perfect cause to get back in touch,
| meet for drinks or get back on track with common hobby.
|
| After first one I always open my piggy bank and do the things I
| wanted for a long time but had no time to do. Like getting a
| sailboat skipper licence and do a couple of gigs like deckhand on
| a voyage, repair or long haul. Or travel for a distant
| destination for a month.
|
| Time between jobs is always great to get in touch with own body
| and mind, like doing a health checkup or visit short-term
| psychology group.
|
| And of course it is a perfect time to spend more time with
| parents, relatives and friends.
| octobus2021 wrote:
| Was laid off in March 2020 (senior dev/lead), took 1.5 years to
| find another job. Share author's disbelief in "job market in
| unbelievably strong", "people quit jobs because they are unhappy
| and hop to better positions", "employers cannot have enough IT
| workers" and similar statements.
|
| By extension wondering how accurate overall job market statistics
| are; "Employers are scrambling to find workers" while layoffs
| have been in full swing for months now.
| hcks wrote:
| This person doesn't sounds neither professional nor very
| talented, no wonder it took them a year to get back on tracks.
| mustafabisic1 wrote:
| Happy it worked out for you. I had a similar experience only my
| wife had just gotten pregnant with my second child.
|
| That game me urgency like crazy and with a bit of luck I found my
| dream job in 3 months.
|
| I agree with everything you've mentioned but the biggest +1 for
| me is that it's lonely. I'd add that all job searches are lonely
| in my experience.
| [deleted]
| bickett wrote:
| This is a high interest rate phenomenon. They'd be writing a very
| different article if written in July 2021.
| tester756 wrote:
| >You're going to have to grind Leetcode. Yes, even the dynamic
| programming problems.
|
| Why there isn't this much problem with having to learn yet
| another JS framework,
|
| get familiarity with database of the month, learn some tool like
| docker/k8s/ansible/vagrant/blabla or yet another proprietary
| toolchain like AWS/Azure/GCP
|
| but foundational cs/programming knowledge is top hated thing,
| that people even call it "discriminatory for people with
| families" or something like that
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| My feeling is that the fundamentals are difficult in their own
| way: requiring math, logic, creativity, seemingly arbitrary
| constraints. Learning the flavor of the month on stack X is
| often just learning their jargon, keywords, and matching common
| patterns one probably already knows.
|
| All that said, sentiment against stack churn is significant and
| a common theme here on HN.
| weakfortress wrote:
| Because after a successful, productive, 5-10 years at a company
| you tend to forget the algorithms you don't use. I can remember
| enough about the knapsack problem to talk intelligently about
| it. I can't remember how to do the dynamic programming. In 90%
| of cases given infinite time I can eventually arrive at the
| solution to most med-hard questions. However, you don't have
| infinite time. I find problems like optimizing how much water
| goes into buckets to the point I can solve it in 4 minutes with
| variations so far below me it doesn't even register on my
| radar. For the record, I have over a decade in this industry.
| Having to do these problems makes me feel like that hard earned
| decade may as well had not happened.
|
| For those of us with lives, hobbies, etc grinding leetcode is
| exhausting. Moreover, you can't just grind it. You have to
| grind it to the point you literally can brain dump answers in
| an interview.
|
| Interviewers rarely care about your accomplishments. No one
| cares you did staff eng. at XYZ, managed engineers, have
| familiarity with all sorts of frameworks, etc. This is the only
| industry where every time you look for a job you're treated
| like don't have a resume. I think many (if not most) people are
| insulted by this because the people in charge are belittling
| them. I would bet even Knuth would struggle to tackle a modern
| programming interview. That's a problem.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| In my experience you're overstating the need to be able to
| instantly brain dump complex algorithms, except maybe at the
| FAANG level where I have no experience. It's far more
| important to be comfortable solving any simple coding
| challenge on demand in front of people in a high-stakes
| situation like an interview.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Because companies tend to let you learn those on the job.
| Nobody complains if I don't quite know Flask in interviews if I
| know Django. Certainly nobody cares if you know the details
| inside out or want to refer to docs.
|
| Algos is a skill you do not use on the job and companies are
| extremely picky about you getting the correct answer.
| tester756 wrote:
| How can you use algos if you aren't aware which places in
| your code you could significantly improve if you had that
| algo intuition?
| rajin444 wrote:
| You're hired for your problem solving ability which
| includes being able to learn and apply specific algorithms
| if needed.
|
| Asking questions that chat GPT can easily answer gives 0
| insight into problem solving ability.
| tester756 wrote:
| Sounds cool in theory, but the question stands
|
| How are you going to improve existing codebase / new code
| if you aren't aware of the foundations, tools and basic
| primitives?
|
| How many problems could be solved by just usage of z3 if
| you were aware of it?
|
| How many problems could be solved by applying most
| popular combinatorial optimization methods/approaches
|
| instead of writing something times, times slower, but
| eventually hacked enough to make it work?
| eropple wrote:
| You're assuming that that awareness of how to solve a
| problem and immediate hands-on-keyboard test for
| materially different success rates while actually
| employed. My experience is that by the time you've gotten
| the job, most of the crammed-in Leetcode specifics have
| leaked back out and you're in the same place as somebody
| who knows the thing from school or from using it in prior
| projects, but didn't have it in their fingertips during
| the interview--you're looking it up again, because you
| know what you need but don't have the details top-of-
| mind.
|
| The insistence on being able to spew out code-first
| answers to contrived problems during an interview
| situation is silly gatekeeping, but it makes the people
| who pass _feel good_ , and that's why it persists.
| projectazorian wrote:
| For 99% of the roles out there, needing to drop into
| algorithms all the time is an anti pattern that
| demonstrates lack of knowledge of your tech stack. I've
| had to clean up a lot of code written by people who
| wanted to show off their algo knowledge to solve a
| problem that should have been addressed with a few lines
| of SQL.
| kowlo wrote:
| I had this article left on my screen to read after making a cup
| of tea. Wife was a bit confused, she'd only read "8 Hard Truths I
| learned when I got laid"...
| Octokiddie wrote:
| > Companies may be looking to reset expectations around
| compensation and working conditions. Offers are extended, but
| with extremely unpalatable terms compared to prior jobs. For
| unsavvy candidates, this won't become apparent until late in the
| interview process.
|
| This seems like something that will become especially prevalent
| this time around given the much higher level to which salaries
| were pushed during the bubble.
| devmor wrote:
| I've survived several layoffs, a couple firings and a couple
| quittings and I don't really identify with much of what the
| author says here in any of these situations.
|
| I've never considered leaving a job for any reason to be
| "lonely", nor does it take very long to find another position
| that suits me well. If I let one of the recruiters I talk to know
| that I'm looking for work, I've usually got multiple interviews
| within 3-5 days.
|
| The only thing I'd really agree with is the bit about honesty and
| transparency - I've definitely been a bit too honest about my
| faults before and it's cost me an interview or two.
|
| I don't know if I'm an odd duck, or the author is just very poor
| at networking - but it seems like the latter to me.
| ummonk wrote:
| I don't understand the thinking behind #7, especially when it
| contradicts #2-#4... Surely if the job market is so tight, it
| might be worthwhile to take what jobs you can get?
| jorblumesea wrote:
| This is why people do LC problems daily and interview regularly.
| You will find that you need to constantly play the game if you
| want to stay in the game. It's a sliding scale of preparedness.
| Those out of step with the interview meta and out of practice
| will find it more painful.
|
| The biggest mistake is losing your job, then having to prep to
| get a new one.
| clutchdude wrote:
| Biggest mistake is thinking you have to grind in leetcode
| outside of work to edge out others.
|
| If your job right now isn't preparing you for your next job,
| then you are in the wrong job.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| I survived the dot com crash (yes I'm old).
|
| I have hired (interviewing team member, or hiring manager)
| hundreds of engineers.
|
| If you are hearing "let me know if I can help" (number 5) you
| might be doing something wrong. You should be hearing some
| version of " I will talk to my boss" or "I will call for you" or
| "XXX person I know is looking".
|
| I have a list of about 30 people who if they call me I'm going to
| go out of my way to get them a job. That means make a spot for
| them on my team. Or I will reach into the non overlapping parts
| of our networks to see if someone is hiring.
|
| Im going to do this because they are good, because they don't
| suck, because they will get the job done. They will make me look
| good as the person who brought them in/onboard.
|
| Those of us who survived the bubble did so on hard work and a
| network. We brought along the people we thought were the best,
| who we got along with, who would get the job done.
|
| Its the new year, it is the perfect excuse to figure out who your
| network is, and what they can do for you. Make a list of folks
| you know, call them up, tell them your thinking of changing jobs.
| If you don't hear a lot of "send me your resume"/"is your
| linked/site in up to date" then you need to make some changes.
| atkailash wrote:
| This is very generational and depends on what sort of work
| circle you're in too. There's people I know would do this sort
| of thing for me but they literally couldn't. This sounds like
| the equivalent of "hit the pavement with your resume" advice
| 300bps wrote:
| I thrived in the dotcom crash while I watched many of my
| friends go to companies with generic names like "Global Digital
| Media" with silly business plans like putting Internet kiosks
| in U.S. airports. It was incredible - their entire business
| plan was to ramp up over the next 5 years with a massive
| capital outlay just in time for smart phones to make them
| completely obsolete. This is an actual example:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/22/technology/the-web-withou...
|
| I thrived by staying put. I got retention bonuses while my
| friends got tons of equity in companies that became 0. When
| they lowered their salaries to conserve money, they gave them
| more equity to compensate. Again, all the equity became 0.
|
| Everything you said about networking is spot on. I would add to
| it - don't waste time. Don't think, "I'm going to ride on my
| severance and unemployment for six months and start on x date."
| Start literally today. If it's the holidays and nobody is
| hiring, get a certification. Learn a new technology. Work on
| networking. Exercise. Do 8 hours of productive _something_
| every day.
|
| I have a friend who has been unemployed the last 2.5 years. He
| now wishes he didn't take a year off without improving himself
| / looking for a job.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I would add to it - don't waste time.
|
| In the dotcom crash, when I was laid off I think the first
| email I sent the next day was to someone who we were a client
| of at a previous employer. And we had stayed in touch because
| I had moved onto a competitor of his (until I was laid off).
| Just a "Hey. I was laid off. Love to pick your brain." sort
| of thing. Took me out to lunch with his COO the next week.
| Discussed some contracting but they ended up making me an
| offer in about of month.
|
| Things got rocky for the company later. And it was touch and
| go for a bit. Not the greatest period for me financially but
| I was never really unemployed and it was a pretty great job
| in a lot of ways which set me up for my current one. Had I
| decided to take the autumn off, I could easily see myself
| being unemployed for 2 or 3 years. Other people I knew never
| really recovered from the dotcom bubble bursting.
| adamzerner wrote:
| This advice boils down to "be the best of the best" because
| you'd only go out of your way for someone if they're that good.
|
| I don't think people who haven't reached that bar are
| necessarily doing something "wrong". It takes hard work to
| reach it and some people prioritize other things in life over
| hustling. Others simply don't have the talent to reach it.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Mainly agree, but maybe can be a bit more generous.
|
| "30" sounds low to me, having worked in large companies for
| many years. Sure, the number of people you worked super-closely
| with for years is maybe in double digits but you probably know
| a lot of other people by reputation (which is still good
| signal) and there may be low effort things you can do for them.
| I try to, anyway.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Im going to do this because they are good, because they don
| 't suck, because they will get the job done. They will make me
| look good as the person who brought them in/onboard._
|
| This maybe makes sense from a hiring manager's perspective, but
| I think a lot of the people who say "let me know if I can help"
| are non-management peers. At most companies, the best they can
| do is enter their recently-laid-off colleagues information and
| resume into the internal referral system. Yes, that's usually
| better than going in through the "random applicant from the
| internet" funnel, but it's still limited. Even if they have a
| good relationship with the hiring manager, often the applicant
| still has to go through the funnel, and it's easy to get lost
| there. This usually isn't an issue with smaller companies that
| have less process, though.
|
| Regardless, on the few occasions where I (as a non-manager)
| have referred someone and they've been hired, I don't think it
| gave me much of a reputation boost as someone who brought
| someone good onboard. Regardless, there are certainly some
| people for whom I'd go above and beyond to try to help them get
| an interview, but I'd do that because they are close friends
| whom I want to help, not because I of any professional perks of
| successfully referring someone, which I absolutely don't care
| about.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| I wrote the comment your replying to...
|
| > This maybe makes sense from a hiring manager's perspective,
| but I think a lot of the people who say "let me know if I can
| help" are non-management peers.
|
| A good number of my management gigs were PEERS hiring me in
| as a fellow engineer, and me getting promoted to be their
| boss. Much of the hiring I have done is peers of the good
| engineers on my team. If your peers think your great, that
| your going to make them look good by doing well then your
| name will come up.
|
| Every manager is different, "hire this person" with some sort
| of resume is going to get my attention! Your peer can do that
| for you!
| [deleted]
| w10-1 wrote:
| "We brought along the people we thought were the best, who we
| got along with, who would get the job done"
|
| I really appreciate the sentiment. In my experience such
| networks have been self-serving and mostly exclusionary,
| rewarding loyalty more than competence.
|
| "You need to make some changes" is not particularly helpful
| when you're outside the fold. What's typically unstated is
| something about loyalty, esp. not disclosing the mistakes of
| others.
|
| The best advice someone could give?
|
| 1. Achieve impressive things
|
| 2. Never give anyone a reason to dislike you
| beckingz wrote:
| That's pretty good advice. Get stuff done and be likable is
| good.
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| I have a colleague who almost feels like he's actively
| trying to make me hate him by throwing completely unrelated
| to work off-hand remarks in the most basic thing I do, like
| telling people that I'm gonna take a lunch break or just
| opening up a terminal prompt while we pair program.
|
| I know it's off-topic but It's hard for me to try to be
| likeable with people who are actively trying stuff like
| that, and I don't know what else to do. It feels like I'm
| sitting on a table and the other side ignores their table
| manners because they're just that valuable to the company
| that they can.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think I don't fully understand the opening up a
| terminal prompt part of that comment.
| eric-hu wrote:
| Not the one or replying to, but I've encountered this
| too. Some pair programming takes the form of two people
| operating one computer. When I've done this style and I'm
| driving, certain people wouldn't let me finish my thought
| on what I'm doing. They'll grab their keyboard or mouse
| and change programs, or just start typing in stuff while
| I'm typing too.
| programmarchy wrote:
| Have you told this person what they're doing bothers you
| and asked them to stop? If you haven't, then you are
| partially to blame for not speaking up for yourself. Good
| opportunity for you to learn how to tactfully set
| boundaries with people.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| I think you are discounting the social aspect of the advice.
| Most people do great things, but very few can stand out only
| on the strength of their work. So for the vast majority doing
| good work has to be coupled with having a network that knows
| about one's work.
|
| And frankly looking for a job is probably one of the most
| self-serving efforts in one's life, by definition. That is a
| good thing.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Something I noticed in tech is that loyalty is generally a
| consequence of competence.
|
| If competent people are valued, recognized and promoted that
| leads to more interesting projects and compensation. That's
| how you build loyalty.
|
| We all know software shops that are always whining about the
| "tech talent shortage" and whose technical employees don't
| stay more than two years. And we know why nobody is loyal to
| those!
| [deleted]
| parineum wrote:
| > In my experience such networks have been self-serving and
| mostly exclusionary, rewarding loyalty more than competence.
|
| I think that's all true except for the "more than competence"
| part and it's a good thing. Competence is directly related to
| loyalty. When you recommend someone for a job and they excel,
| it makes you look good. It makes you loyal to them and giving
| the opportunity makes them more loyal to you. If someone
| isn't recommended you for job openings they know about, it's
| because they think you might make them look bad, either
| through experience with you or the lack thereof.
| Unfortunately, it takes time to prove you're competent and
| gain that loyalty.
|
| Sometimes nepotism can creep in and someone can use their
| influence to get someone under qualified into a position they
| shouldn't but that influence was, generally, built through
| competence, including a history of recommended qualified and
| competent people.
|
| > The best advice someone could give? > 1. Achieve impressive
| things > 2. Never give anyone a reason to dislike you
|
| I think the real advice is be reliable and don't be abrasive.
| A recommendation for a position goes a long way because it
| alleviates the risk of hiring an unknown person that may be
| unreliable or not be able to work with other people.
| whoIsYou wrote:
| Seconding this. I'm wondering if the person you are
| replying to might be having a bit of a dunning kruger issue
|
| I only recommend the people that I have worked with that I
| would want to work with again. Not because of loyalty, but
| because they are good, and will make me look good for
| recommending them
| sokoloff wrote:
| The people whom I'd recommend are not on the basis of loyalty
| but rather on some dot product of competence and
| willingness/propensity to do hard work.
|
| It's true that a network referral will inherently be of
| someone that I worked with (or have other [rare] reason to
| vouch for). That's the value of it: if you know me enough to
| trust my judgment, that vouch has information value for you.
|
| I don't see any other way it could work more effectively.
| mtc010170 wrote:
| > 2. Never give anyone a reason to dislike you
|
| I'm someone who tends to get along and work well with others.
| That part definitely has its advantages for employability
| (and life in general), and is recommended. However, taking it
| to this extreme is just dangerous advice. Constantly being a
| people pleaser can carry enormous risks, especially (but not
| limited to) to yourself. It's important to learn to be ok
| with people disliking you sometimes.
| ferrumfist wrote:
| People pleasers can cause people to dislike them in a
| workplace, ironically. Being a people pleaser in software
| dev very often means you will over-burden yourself because
| you'd rather say "yes, I can do that for you" than "no, I
| don't have the bandwidth for that".
|
| I'd rather a teammate who is honest about their current
| limitations than someone who tells me what I want to hear.
| If someone admits they are stretched thin, it's now an "us
| versus the problem" to find why you are so overtasked. If
| someone consistently takes on too much (because they can't
| say no) and causes the team to miss deadlines, it's now an
| "us versus you" problem.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Everyone has different and possibly ridiculous
| expectations;w whether they dislike you or not is not
| really within your control.
|
| Edit: I'd maybe clarify that trying to get people above you
| not to dislike you is essentially the nature the politics
| of careerist ladder climbing. If you get laid off, it's
| just pretty common for people to see themselves as
| inherently superior because they weren't let go, and
| therefore think, right or wrong, that you'll reflect poorly
| on them, because they're careerist ladder climbers. So
| maybe it's best to carefully cultivate the people from the
| very start of meeting them which ones still have souls.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >In my experience such networks have been self-serving and
| mostly exclusionary, rewarding loyalty more than competence.
|
| The point being? That is how human social network and
| constructs work. The ultimate point is to help yourself and
| not based on some ephemeral grand concept. No matter how
| competent someone is why would I want to work with them if
| they will stab me in the back one day? Incompetent people
| will indirectly stab you in the back eventually so you really
| want an adequate level of competence and loyalty.
|
| Dislike and loyalty are also very different things so not
| sure why you're equating them. There's people who do things I
| dislike that will support others that support them. There are
| people I like greatly who have a record of stabbing others in
| the back even if they were helped by that person. Guess which
| ones I'd recommend for a job?
| naasking wrote:
| Loyalty is not a quality that should be selected for.
| Someone could be "stabbing you in the back" because you're
| doing something wrong, either morally or because your
| choices are not good for the business, which is ostensibly
| what you both should be working towards. Demanding or
| expecting loyalty blinds you to important signals.
|
| Loyalty is a huge failure of human reasoning, and it's
| frankly bizarre that people see it as a moral virtue given
| how easily it can be and has been exploited in the past.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > Come up with a more, uh, positive reason for why you're
| interviewing instead of disclosing that you were laid off.
|
| I don't understand this assertion, unless "laid off" now means
| "fired with cause". People are laid off all the time, for no
| reason other than the company wants to reduce their labor costs.
|
| Perhaps the author is _assuming_ that the company is also making
| a judgement about their skills, e.g. that they're somehow not up
| to some arbitrary standard? (I think that it is very easy to make
| this assumption, especially when laid off the first time.)
|
| Anyway, there should be no need to give a potential employer a
| reason about why you were let go other than the position was
| eliminated.
| ejb999 wrote:
| yes and no - unless companies laid off everybody, or an entire
| division/location for example, they already made some sort of
| decision on who would stay and who would go - if you find
| yourself in the 'let go' category, than someone likely made a
| judgement about you already and found you less desirable than
| the 'keep' category - thats just the unfortunate reality.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > ... than someone likely made a judgement...
|
| Of course someone made a judgement, you just don't know what
| criteria they used, so it could be anything from "didn't like
| his face" all the way to "had the highest salary".
|
| Furthermore, how does it help in any way to assume that the
| reason for the layoff was because of a personal shortcoming?
| And why should we assume _in advance and without evidence_
| that a potential employer won 't consider us because of this?
| geekbird wrote:
| IME it's arbitrary criteria - either last hired, first fired,
| or most expensive people, or older people (illegal, but they
| use other proxies for age to hide it), or most of a division
| because they're pivoting/no profitable, or you don't want to
| work 100 hour weeks sitting on the floor near your new CEOs
| office, or...
|
| Getting laid off from some places is a badge of honor, IMO.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| "Laid off" should be one of the safest reasons to give for
| leaving an employer, right up there with giving birth to a
| child or taking care of a sick loved one. Layoffs from big
| companies are in the news now and there's rumors about how
| employees were chosen, but by and large saying you were laid
| off from some random company shouldn't mean anything other
| than that employer restructured and you had bad luck.
| Certainly you as a job applicant are under no obligation to
| speculate during an interview about why you specifically were
| let go.
| granshaw wrote:
| OP is a really good writer / articulator and I found this to be a
| great piece - with that in mind the fact that he took a full year
| to find something tells me he must've had red flags elsewhere, or
| was just really fussy or had a high bar?
| nvarsj wrote:
| I was laid off in 2010 and I can relate with a lot of these
| points. Especially how long it took me to find a new job. Despite
| what I thought was a great CV it took me nearly 6 months. I
| thought I'd find a job easily when I got laid off.
|
| It was an incredibly humbling experience - reaching out to tens
| of companies and barely getting any responses. Took me 3 months
| to just secure my first on-site.
|
| I've generally always gotten jobs from reach outs while employed
| - making me feel special - when in reality it was my skills
| simply lining up with some open headcount at that time.
|
| When you're laid off suddenly it's a whole different ballgame.
| It's largely luck trying to find matching roles with open
| headcount. In a downturn this is especially rough (like now).
|
| It taught me some things: don't stay anywhere too long (it
| restricts your network), make sure your skills are not too niche,
| and ensure you are following industry trends so you remain widely
| employable.
| jchw wrote:
| Regarding #6: I've found through experimentation that it's
| totally OK for me to just be opaque about my identity online. I'm
| not anonymous at all, just that if a prospective employer were to
| Google me, they'd not find my meager internet presence. It's not
| that I'm hiding anything, but in the spirit of #6, not hiding
| something doesn't mean you have to advertise it either. I've
| never had an employer give enough of a shit to see my social
| media accounts. And while I admit this is probably a position of
| privilege in some ways, I feel like almost anyone in SWE or
| wanting to get into SWE is better off this way anyways.
|
| Again, it's not about deception. If I were asked, I'd say I don't
| have any professional internet presence (which is true, I don't.
| This is me as a person here, not me as an employee.) I of course
| will link my GitHub, but links from my internet presence only
| point in the direction of my GitHub, and not the other way
| around. So if you were really curious, you could dig. Nobody
| cares to do that, though. I think employers that search are
| mostly just looking for blatant red flags to try to simplify
| their lives, and thus it's mutually beneficial to keep a lower
| profile online even if you don't do anything wrong.
|
| Of course, in my case, it also helps to have a super common name
| :) But still. Being "just" a pseudonym most places is fine.
| chinabot wrote:
| Though I don't actively hide my presence on-line as my
| professional email address and sarcastic writing style never
| changes, I do love the shock of some co-workers when they find
| I have no accounts for linkedin, twitter, facebook, github etc
| and generally create new throwaway accounts every time I get a
| new laptop.
|
| It comes as quite a shock when I find an old comment or post
| that I recognise and now don't agree with and because of this
| rarely judge others history, lets face it we have all posted
| comments we wish we could take back in hindsight.
| lkrubner wrote:
| About this:
|
| "If you had asked me right after I got laid off how long it would
| take me to get back to work, I would have said three months -
| including two months of vacation. It took me a year."
|
| That is fascinating. I'm glad they shared this experience. It is
| very different than my own experience. I'm trying to imagine what
| that would be like, to go a year looking for a job.
|
| Here in New York City, at the end of 2022, I am still seeing very
| strong hiring of software developers. I was recently hiring at
| FutureStay.com. And I recently had a friend lose their job and
| they found another job after 6 weeks, of which 3 weeks was pure
| vacation.
|
| The one group that I see struggle is new developers who have just
| graduated from dev bootcamps. Some of these developers struggle 6
| to 12 months to find a software development jobs.
|
| But of experienced software developers? Going a year without
| finding employment? I heard of such stories during the recession
| of 2001, though I never saw it among my personal circle. And this
| was very much true in the aftermath of the crisis of 2008 -- it
| wasn't till about 2011 or 2012 that things got back to normal.
| But even then, when I went looking for a job in 2010, it only
| took me 4 weeks to find a job.
|
| A year without a job?
|
| I will say the industry has gotten slower about hiring, with more
| and more rounds of interviews. In the extreme case, some
| companies now have 9 or 10 rounds of interviews, which is far
| past the point where the Law Of Diminish Returns sets in. By
| contrast, when I was hired at WineSpectator.com in 2010 the CTO
| interviewed me for 2 hours and then hired me on the spot, I
| didn't have to talk to anyone else. Likewise when Mark
| Herschberg, the CTO of ShermansTravel.com, hired me in 2011.
|
| I feel like the industry is driving away possible talent by
| adding in so many layers of testing and recruitment.
|
| There is absolutely no good reason why an experienced software
| developer should go a year without a job. That such a thing can
| happen suggests something is broken with our current hiring
| processes.
| pm90 wrote:
| I found this a bit strange as well. A year seems a bit
| excessive. The most I've seen is 4 months, with an average of
| much less than that.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| I can relate to #2 the most. My job search was 11 months, and
| this was in 2021 during the supposedly ridiculously good market.
| I think I had 50 applications and 7 on-sites before getting an
| offer
| blagie wrote:
| My advice:
|
| Have one or more side projects going all the time. If you get
| laid off, immediately start doing a startup, open-source project,
| or volunteering full time. A year of unemployment? Lonely,
| depressing, and not good on a resume.
|
| A year of launching an unsuccessful venture? Running coding
| classes for the underserved? Focusing full-time on contributing
| to pytorch? That's a lot better, both at the time and in
| retrospect.
|
| Side projects are also a good way to get hired. You meet people.
|
| You also learn stuff, and stuff of the type you can't learn in a
| job.
|
| You can also do the equivalent of an acquihire. If you want to
| work for the world's #1 drubble maker, and you spend 6 months
| developing a drubble startup, guess who'll come out the most
| knowledgeable and passionate about drubbles at the interview? And
| perhaps even bring in some helpful IP?
|
| Your back story is "I tried to go it alone; I think I can do a
| lot more good with the backing of a company."
| awillen wrote:
| I've taken time off between jobs without taking on any
| meaningful projects, and I generally haven't found it to be an
| issue. When I tell recruiters I just wanted time off to relax,
| they're sometimes skeptical, but hiring managers more often
| than not either respond with some variety of "Oh yeah, I did
| that too and it was amazing" or "Oh man that sounds so great,
| I'm jealous."
|
| I do apply almost entirely to smaller startups, so that may
| skew the response vs. what you'd get in the more process-
| oriented recruiting flows of a larger company. Also it probably
| helps that my resume has a couple of jobs where I was a very
| early employee at startups that went on to be extremely
| successful.
|
| I also really like to just be left alone and read books, so
| it's something I enjoy - I recognize that many folks need the
| structure of work, and that's fair.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| It's important to quantify how long your time off was for
| this anecdote to be meaningful. No good employer will bat an
| eye if you worked at a place for five years then spent three
| months on a tropical beach. A year spent job searching with
| no luck like the OP is a different situation altogether.
| awillen wrote:
| I actually don't think that's as much of a problem as you'd
| think - I did nine months off after 2.5 years. I just
| wouldn't say you've been searching and not getting jobs -
| much better to say that you've interviewed at a few places,
| but you're very focused on finding a company whose mission
| and team you're excited about (particularly if that's
| true). If they accept that as true, then you're creating a
| positive sort of scarcity of yourself, as opposed to
| framing it as jobs being scarce and you being desperate for
| one.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _hiring managers more often than not either respond with some
| variety of "Oh yeah, I did that too and it was amazing" or
| "Oh man that sounds so great, I'm jealous."_
|
| This only works if you get to even talk to a hiring manager.
|
| Most applications are filtered by automatic systems. Many of
| those will penalize or discard your application for gaps.
|
| The same AI bots we built when we were employed are now being
| used against us.
| awillen wrote:
| True, though I don't think it has anything to do with AI -
| the filtering mechanisms are much simpler than that.
|
| That said, I like early-stage startups, so less of a
| problem with that kind of thing.
| tayo42 wrote:
| > A year of unemployment? Lonely, depressing, and not good on a
| resume.
|
| I'm 4 months into a break from work and the only thing that is
| depressing is the idea of going back to work.
|
| I think if this quote resonates with you, you probably need a
| break from work and analyze your life.
| rychco wrote:
| I see other comments aggressively criticizing this suggestion
| (& I'm happy to see it) but I think staying busy with
| _something_ fulfilling outside of your job is generally good
| advice. It doesn 't need to be resume filler. The constant
| grindset-mindset is toxic, but staying engaged/fulfilled with
| _something_ can be tremendously beneficial for your mental
| health & happiness during a period of setbacks & struggle.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| This is a live-to-work attitude. Have some other hobbies and
| goals, and a year of unemployment will be neither lonely nor
| depressing. Personally I've gone farther in the work-to-live
| direction, with an easygoing, "boring" (still fulfilling enough
| to see some javascript doodad come to life, but not world
| changing) WFH job I perform well in that supports my
| homesteading and other hobbies.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| The author anyway had this mentality:
|
| > If you're like me, work is the primary shaper of your life.
| Work gives your life rhythm. It is the gravitational center
| around which the other activities in your life revolve.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think this happens to a lot of people. Especially for
| people who really enjoy the work they do, rather than see
| it as a necessary evil to put a roof over their head.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I guess that depends on how much you enjoy your side
| projects.
|
| Over the Christmas holidays, I rooted the vacuum robot, built
| a workstation from parts, worked on a new compression
| algorithm, and enhanced my papwrcraft design software...
| Because that's what I enjoy doing in my free time.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I've gotten back into enjoying tech projects again too. I
| just try to make sure my life isn't revolving around
| employment.
| Aloha wrote:
| I work a job to pay for my side projects. If I could just
| work on those, taking care of the house, etc, and still
| make a living, I'd be very happy.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| This late in my career, I've found 5 of my 7 SIEMs are gone,
| and the last one is on life support. The one I'm managing now
| will not be around by the time I retire.
|
| You start to see the patterns and futility and cycles and
| think 'maybe my career is not making things better, it's
| keeping the mortgage paid?'
|
| That and while I'm I can get rehired past 50...do I really
| want to do that dance again?
| rwmj wrote:
| SIEM?
| sciurus wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_information_and_
| eve...
| miramba wrote:
| Same here, past 50 and while my job doesn't fulfill me, I
| can do it with little effort and it pays the bills. I'm too
| tired and lazy to try something new, rather look for
| fulfillment in my spare time. Actually, all my previous
| experiences say that every job sucks, no matter how
| promising it looked like at the start.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Or its "if you enjoy what you do you will never work"
| attidude
|
| I have met soo many sysadmins and devs that absolutely hate
| computers, hate programming, hate everything about IT. They
| were in some career fair at some point in high school and
| simply picked that because it had high pay with out the 6 or
| 8 years being a Doctor or lawyer took, and it seemed easier
| than Electrical Engineering or something.
|
| Me, I have always loved programming and computers. They are
| both my work and my hobby
| Siddarth1977 wrote:
| Two other factors to consider: 1) people grow and change
| and 2) working a job is very different than doing "the
| same" activity as a hobby.
|
| I enjoy gardening and cooking as hobbies, but I don't want
| to work a job as a landscaper or line chef. After 20+ years
| of coding, I absolutely hate it despite having started out
| loving it, but I recognize that my cushy job is less hours
| for more pay than I could get doing anything else.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > I have met soo many sysadmins and devs that absolutely
| hate computers, hate programming, hate everything about IT
|
| > Me, I have always loved programming and computers. They
| are both my work and my hobby
|
| I think you're being too harsh, and clearly, you've never
| experienced burnout, which will make you loathe programming
| as work _and_ as a hobby. Unless you are self employed, it
| is possible to hate your programming job while enjoying
| coding at home, without being in it for the money.
|
| "If you enjoy what you do you will never work" is such bs,
| and leads to exploitation (see AAA games' low pay and
| crunching, or underpaid airline pilots)
| doubled112 wrote:
| This is incredibly true for me.
|
| I like problems, but mostly the technical ones. Starting
| programming young, loved computers and networking. Became
| a sysadmin.
|
| Turns out that at work, the problems are often different
| to what I want to be solving. Approvals and process can
| be a real downer. Some problems are people problems and
| not technical problems at all. Waiting on somebody else
| to complete their part while you wait sucks. These are
| the things that burn me out.
|
| At home, I am the approval process. Maintenance is
| whenever I think is reasonable. Don't like a service/app,
| throw it away. Found a new project, tinker away.
| Something is down, I'll get around to it.
|
| Completely different.
| harshalizee wrote:
| This is terrible, possibly toxic advice. Software devs are
| people too. They burn out, take time off to travel, reflect,
| take care of family, or just down on their luck being
| unemployed.
|
| The only advice I'd consider paramount is to take stock of
| themselves financially and mentally, to assure themselves that
| they can take on the chaos and uncertainty that follows.
|
| Honestly, if someone showed up with a gap in their resume and
| claimed that they were doing start-up, open source, etc. for an
| interview, I'd dig deep into that hard. The open source
| contribution/project would have to have a sufficiently high bar
| for it to be even considered. Else, I'd just assume they were
| being less than honest. I'd rather someone tell me they spent a
| year working on themselves, playing video games, hiking, etc.
| Ialdaboth wrote:
| Terrible advice. One year of lazing around and playing
| videogames is a good way to lose any self-discipline you
| would been building up to this point. There is nothing toxic
| in working to improve yourself and/or building projects you
| are passionate about - quite the contrary. The feeling of
| accomplishment can do wonders to one's mental health.
| kelnos wrote:
| Speaking of toxicity, this idea that the primary means of
| valuing ourselves and being "healthy" should be through our
| job or independent job-related work... ugh, super toxic.
|
| I don't think the grandparent was suggesting they literally
| sit around for a year and do nothing buy play video games.
| But, hell, taking time off between jobs is a _great_ idea,
| and if video games are your thing, spending a chunk of that
| time off playing sounds like it could be great for your
| mental health. But, just like anything else, moderation!
| thunky wrote:
| > One year of lazing around and playing videogames is a
| good way to lose any self-discipline you would been
| building up to this point
|
| Do you really want people to devote their life to their
| jobs, even while unemployed?
|
| I don't see a thing wrong with spending your down time
| doing whatever makes you happy.
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| > This is terrible, possibly toxic advice.
|
| [Continuing working] is the single biggest thing someone can
| do to avoid depression after a layoff. The best idea is a
| paying job because it fills both requirements.
|
| It also keeps you ready to interview and ready to start
| immediately. When you're on the couch it's always easy to
| wait till tomorrow.
|
| > I'd rather someone tell me they spent a year working on
| themselves, playing video games, hiking, etc.
|
| If they were independently wealthy that might be okay but for
| most people this is self-destructive behavior.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Honestly, if someone showed up with a gap in their resume
| and claimed that they were doing start-up, open source, etc.
| for an interview, I'd dig deep into that hard
|
| Hah, and you called gp's advice toxic! Taking stock if your
| financial well-being _after_ being laid off is too late. I
| fear your advice (take time off) may be toxic - depending on
| circumstances. My advice is this: as a general rule, avoid
| interviewing while desperate. Getting an offer generally
| takes longer than one might think, so interview early and
| often, before you get near the end of your mental /financial
| runway.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think we're abusing the word "toxic" here. Sure, for
| someone who hasn't planned out their finances and built a
| cushion, advising them to take some time off would be...
| well, bad advice. But "toxic"? That's a bit hyperbolic.
| yoyonamite wrote:
| > Honestly, if someone showed up with a gap in their resume
| and claimed that they were doing start-up, open source, etc.
| for an interview, I'd dig deep into that hard.
|
| This is just as, if not more toxic than the advice that
| you're opposed to. I've had similar experiences with
| interviewers for non-technical questions, and it comes off as
| aggressive, antagonistic and traumatizing; especially in your
| example where they left it off their resume as a gap. The
| interviewee's perspective might have been to say that they've
| been spending some of their spare time keeping their skills
| sharp and now you're hammering them to see if a project left
| off their resume qualifies for some "high bar," while all
| they see is a negative and dismissive attitude.
|
| Personally, I would much rather be programming my own
| projects or doing leetcode than play video games, but I
| wouldn't judge someone negatively if they told me they played
| games on their own time.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _This is terrible, possibly toxic advice._
|
| There are two sides to every coin. Possibly toxic advice for
| some, but why should anyone give up platforms or avenues that
| make them standout from the crowd? OP's suggestion is a
| perfectly valid piece of advice for anyone who has the
| energy, time, resources, ability, will, and integrity to keep
| chopping at a meaningful side project. It is not easy, sure.
| But I don't think we can say it is toxic, either.
|
| > _The open source contribution /project would have to have a
| sufficiently high bar for it to be even considered._
|
| We'd do well to not write this advice off by subjecting it to
| the most extreme possible treatment?
| drewcoo wrote:
| > There are two sides to every coin
|
| And there are six sides to every cube. In a world of
| tortured dichotomies, nobody ever mentions those.
| undreren wrote:
| I couldn't have said it better myself.
|
| With three kids, my current side project is my _day job_
| , at least if measuring by workload. Taking on more work,
| voluntarily or not, will be at a significant personal
| cost for me.
|
| I don't get the constant peddling of hussle porn in SWE
| circles.
| harshalizee wrote:
| Edit/Addendum : Uff this blew up. If I came on too strong,
| that wasn't my intention and I'm sorry.
|
| I was primarily replying to this particular line from OP : >
| If you get laid off, immediately start doing a startup, open-
| source project, or volunteering full time.
|
| The 'immediately' didn't really jive with me. A job loss can
| be very traumatic to an individual, and I still believe in
| taking time to recuperate from it rather than diving head
| long into yet another thing.
|
| I've interviewed quite a lot for my employers, big and small,
| including two of FAANMG companies for about 7 years now. From
| my perspective, I'm interviewing a candidate to see if
| they're a competent engineer and a pleasant team member. I
| have absolutely no issues with passion projects / open-source
| and startups, just not if it's aim is to be a resume filler.
|
| >Focusing full-time on contributing to pytorch?
|
| Yes! That is amazing and I already know that they're a far
| more adept engineer than I am. But, if we were to dive in and
| I find out it was mostly fixing typos and nits in the
| codebase to show GitHub greens, then someone else who did
| something else entirely during their time off would come off
| better.
| brailsafe wrote:
| As someone who's been in that position at least twice (been
| fired or laid off and haven't been able to find _anything_
| for over a year), I wouldn't go so far as to say it's wholly
| terrible or toxic, but at least partially so, or a little
| naive in some way. I'd say you should take at least a few
| months of personal time if you can afford it, and it's worth
| having _something_ to chip away on eventually, but not
| necessarily to have something on your resume. Doing this
| full-time is borderline stupid advice, it will very likely
| not be worth trading your otherwise personal time for, unless
| you 're literally charging for consulting services or
| something. Even still, if you're aiming for employment, just
| take your time.
|
| Looking back on the times I've had to deal with this, and
| looking forward to the times I almost certainly will again,
| I'd do nothing different than what you've recommended or that
| I've done, with the exception of haplessly paying rent hoping
| for that next absurdly long and thoughtlessly designed
| interview process to work out.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| What if they showed up with a gap and simply said "I have
| plenty of money and took the time to myself, my family and my
| interests"?
|
| (I've never had a resume gap but that's going to be my
| explanation if/when I do.)
| Beaver117 wrote:
| It's bad to say that. Companies don't want their employees
| to be financially secure and have the leverage to quit at
| any time.
| chadash wrote:
| > Honestly, if someone showed up with a gap in their resume
| and claimed that they were doing start-up, open source, etc.
| for an interview, I'd dig deep into that hard.
|
| As a counterpoint, I probably _wouldn 't_ dig into this too
| much. But even if I did, would I find it strange that someone
| got laid off and then used their time to build up a company
| that didn't work out? Probably not. And if I realized that it
| was a half-assed effort... so what? Why is that worse than
| time spent playing video games? Sure, if you told me you were
| working on building a company and you didn't have _any_
| progress, I might feel that you were dishonest. But if you
| 've got at least something to show for it (a basic product,
| even with zero sales), I think it's fair game.
| optymizer wrote:
| If you're not passionate about coding, that advice isn't for
| you. There is a class of people for whom coding is 'work', as
| in the actual act of coding is work and they would prefer to
| be doing anything else, but they have bills to pay.
|
| There is another class of developers who like to code so
| much, that 'work' is merely a project that they don't have
| directional control over, but the act of coding is a relaxing
| activity. I know because I'm one of them. I am pretty relaxed
| at work when I can just sit down and code, then I go home and
| if I get some free time to work on my own code, I find it
| relaxing too. It's not that I don't enjoy work and have to
| supplement with a personal project, I just like the feeling
| of having absolute control over the project and trying to
| write the best code possible, because making money or
| providing some shareholder value is not the goal.
|
| For people like me, I think this is a great advice. I am
| always thinking of side-projects that can become startups
| anyway, and I'm tinkering every day to the extent that time
| allows. I've been doing that for 20+ years. If I ever got
| laid off, my only hope is that at that point I will have a
| side-project that can magically be launched to make enough
| money to keep paying the bills.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| > _There is another class of developers who like to code so
| much, that 'work' is merely a project that they don't have
| directional control over, but the act of coding is a
| relaxing activity._
|
| I'm in the middle. Imagine you like playing football. You
| do it for fun. But, if you do it too much, you'll be
| exhausted and maybe strain a muscle or something. I code
| for fun, but it still wears me out; it's still a kind of
| "work" psychologically distinct from, and more taxing than,
| watching a show.
|
| The only way I would describe it as "relaxing" is if I put
| little-to-no thought into it, but that's how you end up
| with very buggy code.
| throwuwu wrote:
| > The open source contribution/project would have to have a
| sufficiently high bar for it to be even considered. Else, I'd
| just assume they were being less than honest. I'd rather
| someone tell me they spent a year working on themselves,
| playing video games, hiking, etc.
|
| You think working on a passion project and trying out a
| startup is toxic and then you come out with this pessimistic
| bucket crab viewpoint? You'd be doing people a favour not
| hiring them, I'd feel bad for anyone working for you.
| the_af wrote:
| The comment you're replying to said the _advice_ was toxic,
| not the activity itself. That is, making people feel guilty
| for not doing "enough" (contributing to side projects,
| open source, etc) is the arguably toxic thing.
|
| I don't know if I agree, but let's not twist the words of
| the comment.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Did you get a job this way? Do you know anyone who got a job
| this way?
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Almost every single job I've ever gotten is because of a side
| project or because I incorporated a small company to
| legitamise a side-project I was hacking on.
|
| Over the years:
|
| I built a video capture system for the Commodore Amiga as a
| neat side project for that lead to me working on Transputers
| that formed the heart of a non-linear editing system (no
| interview)
|
| The Transputers were really fast, so I wrote some neat 3D
| demos that ran on the Transputer boards in the Amiga & PC =>
| contract work with SGI (no interview)
|
| Wrote a demo for the SGI video capture system to scan a
| magazine at high resolution => machine vision & robotics that
| was changing the printing industry (no interview)
|
| Wrote a C compiler for an 8-bit micro so I could learn C =>
| leads to writing a C compiler for a 16-bit micro at a company
| (no interview)
|
| Created a "smart home dashboard" for a side-project => leads
| to writing a mobile app to manage a WiFi router => leads to
| becoming Lead Firmware Engineer on the project (no interview)
|
| I wrote some stuff on the Unity3D forums => game development
| job offer (no interview)
|
| Ran a number of in-person developer meet-ups over the years
| => various jobs & offers & contract gigs (no interview)
|
| Got asked by a friend to teach a class on device driver
| development at USC, video recorded it, he sent it to his
| friend at Intel => wind up teaching many, many week long,
| rocket-science level classes on Linux & Android & device
| driver development & board bring-up at Intel (no interview)
|
| Recorded all of my lectures at Intel, shared them with a
| friend at Facebook who was trying to get in to device driver
| development => Which lead to me teaching a couple of classes
| at Facebook (no interview)
|
| Asked to critique a ReactNative class at Facebook due to my
| other teaching there => Which lead to me
| consulting/contracting for Facebook for a few years (no
| interview)
|
| Video tape my classes at Facebook, which get shared with
| people at Microsoft & Apple without my knowledge => end up
| consulting and teaching at both Microsoft & Apple (no
| interview)
|
| Created a bot for a popular MMORPG coupled with machine
| vision and some AI techniques => contract job to detect bots
| in the self-same popular MMORPG (no interview)
|
| I created a C# package and published it that done some fancy
| stuff with random numbers => company hired me to work on
| their project that used the library (that was an
| "interesting" interview)
|
| I wrote some SONY PlayStation developer tools => leads to
| getting a job at a game development company creating a PSX
| game (no interview)
|
| Create some tools to theme websites and pull data from a
| database => accidentally create an adult entertainment empire
| (no interview)
|
| Document how the Gameboy works, write some developer tools,
| maintain some developer tools => multiple jobs developing
| Gameboy games (no interview)
|
| Port MAME to a bunch of consoles, write emulators as side-
| projects for other consoles => hired to write emulator of
| their classic consoles for "big console development company"
| (no interview)
|
| Hacked on some gstreamer code => connection with a guy at a
| Canadian who says "if you're ever looking to move to
| Canada..."
|
| There's lot of other examples in my career where building a
| side-project leads to an interview or a straight-up offer.
| [deleted]
| scarface74 wrote:
| This is a statistically horrible idea. The chance that your
| startup is going to replace even the compensation of entry
| level grad in any large city in the US doing enterprise
| development is almost 0.
|
| The "story" that has worked for me is that "no I'm not going to
| reverse a binary tree on the whiteboard while juggling bowling
| balls riding a unicycle on a tightrope. What we can do is talk
| like adults and we can discuss your real world business
| problems and see if I can bring my skills and experience to the
| table to help you solve those problems in exchange for money"
|
| I'm not going to spend 40 hours a week working and more time on
| the side working on a side project.
| itake wrote:
| Just wondering, what is your TC? My understanding is that
| story works at Tier 3 companies that lack a structured
| interview process and are desperate for candidates (e.g.
| startups).
| scarface74 wrote:
| Seeing that I work at the alphabetically sorted first "A"
| in FAANG, I don't think it could be considered a "tier 3"
| company.
|
| When a recruiter from Amazon Retail reached out to me about
| an SDE position, I wasn't interested in either relocating,
| working as a _software developer_ at any large company or
| doing the prerequisite DS &A monkey dance.
|
| We kept talking and she suggested that I apply for a fully
| remote role consulting (yes it's a full time position) in
| AWS Professional Services.
|
| I specialize in "application modernization" which is a
| fancy term for cloud enterprise application development +
| "Devops" + the standard type of work architects do at other
| companies.
|
| But as far as the startup I worked for being "desperate". I
| got hired at my previous company because of an informal
| lunch with the then new CTO who needed someone to lead the
| effort to make the company more "cloud native" and help
| them pivot toward a micro service architecture because they
| wanted to sell the services as backend to large health care
| companies.
|
| Hint: I did that well enough to go from never opening the
| AWS console in mid 2018 to working at AWS two years later.
|
| My interview was all behavioral where I talked through some
| of my previous company changing successes at a startup and
| a company where I led the integration effort when they were
| on an acquisition spree.
|
| My "TC" is fine. It would be better if my unvested AMZN
| RSUs didn't drop by half since I got hired.
|
| (Yes I knew the gatekeeping was going to start when i wrote
| the first post above)
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| That's a long story to hide the fact that by refusing to
| do LeetCode interviews you were not offered a software
| engineering position.
|
| You most likely are an SA, which is a position open even
| to business degree holders and is barely technical, no
| wonder you didn't have to LeetCode.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You mean not being "offered" a position I didn't want? I
| have never had any desire to be a software developer at a
| large company. I _like_ being able to:
|
| - be on pre-sales calls with customers
|
| - writing the proposals/statements of work
|
| - deal with the decision makers from the customers side
|
| - architect the entire solution from the development side
| and the infrastructure/"dev ops side"
|
| - do the actual work
|
| - lead the user acceptance testing
|
| - move on to another project
|
| You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I care
| about titles? I go to work to exchange labor for money to
| support my addiction to food and shelter. My "TC" allows
| me to do that very well.
|
| I a not an "SA". I do hands on billable software
| development that goes in production at the client site.
| In the past two years I've done hands on keyboard coding
| in Python, C#, JavaScript, and Go.
|
| BTW, by the time I graduated from college in 1996, I had
| been a hobbyist programmer in 4 different assembly
| languages. I've maintained proprietary compiler tool
| chains for Windows CE devices and spent half my career
| bit twiddling in C and C++ with a little inline assembly.
|
| I doubt that you're going to "out geek" me.
| anon7725 wrote:
| Just for context, people in scarface's type of role can
| "out-TC" many platform/product engineers of the
| equivalent level, depending on how rewards are
| structured.
|
| The downside that I've noticed is that field roles tend
| to be cut first in response to market weather/customer
| focus. But a skilled engineer doing field work is a
| valued commodity in general.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yes and No.
|
| If I worked for an outside consulting company that would
| be true - with the inherent risks you stated.
|
| Working at AWS in ProServe, our compensation structure is
| the same as SDEs - 4 year initial offer, large prorated
| signing bonus, 5/15/40/40 RSU vesting schedule. It's
| different for sales.
|
| The bright side is that there is always work. Worse case,
| I can be "hired" by another internal team that needs
| someone to implement a solution to show off a new
| service.
| itake wrote:
| I think you're misrepresenting your story in your
| original comment. If you want to be an SDE at a Tier 1,
| you have to leetcode. There is no persuading the
| interviewer to pass you without testing your leetcode.
|
| If you are comfortable taking a non-SDE role, then there
| are opportunities at tech companies that don't require
| programming skills or leetcode.
|
| I'm happy you have found an alternative career path, but
| you're comparing apples and oranges.
| scarface74 wrote:
| There are 2.7 million developers in the US. Most don't
| work at a tier 1 tech company.
|
| My original story said nothing about where I work. I was
| originally referring to my process to get a software
| development job from 1996-2018.
|
| But it's not an accident I make "FAANG money" without
| doing "leetCode". While I fell into a position at AWS,
| high level consultants make more with the same skillset
| than your typical BigTech SDE once they build a base.
| It's higher risk and more hustle though.
|
| I only brought up where I work now when someone brought
| up the r/cscareerquestions type reply of "TC".
|
| I am very sincere about my lack of desire to ever be a
| software engineer for a large company. I would give up my
| current compensation and jump back over to the enterprise
| dev/architect side of compensation before I ever did
| that.
|
| Again, I already had the big house in the burbs,
| retirement savings, etc before AWS ever reached out to
| me.
|
| If I leave my current job at the time of my choosing, it
| will probably be a compensation cut and probably for some
| unknown company.
|
| I know for a fact that I could call up a few former
| managers who now work at different companies and they
| would give me a job faster than I could say "I am looking
| for..."
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I don't care that you have software engineering
| experience, you are answering to a thread talking about
| leetcode interviews by saying you didn't have to leetcode
| because you took a non-software engineering job. Good for
| you, but nobody cares.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I didn't do leetCode in:
|
| 2008: when the director of software was looking for
| someone with a weird combination of VB6, C#, and low
| level C and C++
|
| 2014: when the new director of software engineering was
| looking for someone to be on a "tiger team" to go after a
| new vertical
|
| 2016: when the new director of IT was looking for someone
| who could lead the effort to move from PowerBuilder to C#
| and JS and to lead the integration efforts as they were
| acquiring companies
|
| 2018: when the new CTO was looking for a developer to
| lead the effort to make their development and CI/CD
| processes cloud native
|
| 2020: current job.
|
| From 2008-2020 it was mostly developing in C# and
| JavaScript with a little C++ early on.
|
| In 2018 I started getting into Python.
|
| It's amazing what you kind of crap you can avoid when you
| have 12 years of professional experience (in 2008) and a
| good network.
|
| Yes my career before 2008 was unremarkable and there is a
| pattern that I gravitated toward positions where I was
| one of the first technical hires by a new manager.
|
| Each of the jobs I mentioned between 2008-2018 were a
| recruiter reaching out to me that I knew from network
| where the director/CxO was looking for someone to help
| them with some type of strategic initiative. All of them
| were more interested in my ability to technically lead
| strategic initiatives than whether I could reverse a
| binary tree on the whiteboard.
|
| When you can talk to a technical director about how you
| optimized 65C02 code as a hobby in the 80s and how you
| wrote inline x86 assembly to speed up a batch processing
| system, they don't wonder can you maintain a compiler for
| Windows CE devices.
| [deleted]
| selimthegrim wrote:
| If you read his past post history he has had what you
| would call "technical" jobs before, even if you don't
| count this one.
| hinkley wrote:
| Reversing a binary tree is a reference to a FAANG
| interview.
|
| Money makes life easier. It isn't the goal of your life. We
| aren't playing a video game where the person who made the
| most money "wins" at life.
| itake wrote:
| I've worked at small startups and dev shops with low
| hiring hiring bars and I find way more "princesses" than
| I have working at Tier 2 companies with leetcode
| interviews.
|
| "Princess" - people that don't take feedback, are
| extremely opinionated about their work, and act
| irrationally in regards to career or business decisions.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So do you consider a "low hiring bar" the director
| talking about strategy and finding out from the
| candidates past history that he can probably solve their
| real world issues?
|
| If he needs to be at two potential customers sites (large
| health care companies) does he need someone who can
| "grind leetcode" or does he need someone that can talk to
| the CxO, the infrastructure team, the development team,
| etc without embarrassing himself?
| scarface74 wrote:
| See my other reply for more context.
|
| But given a choice in 2020 of working at any large
| company _as a software developer_ where I would have had
| to relocate and staying at smaller companies, I would
| have definitely chosen smaller companies.
|
| By 2020, I already had the big overvalued house in the
| burbs, decent retirement savings, a good work life
| balance, etc.
|
| I fell into a role at BigTech almost by accident doing
| the type of work I enjoy - seeing a company's problem,
| solving the problem, training, and putting myself out of
| job and moving on.
|
| Heck, my expenses are lower now than they were in 2020.
| Within the past year, I've sold my house, we sold our
| cars, and now we have a cheaper investment
| property/winter home where we stay half the year and we
| fly across the US the other half of the year staying in
| hotels. We own nothing physically can't fit in three
| suitcases - two of which have to stay under 50 pounds.
| anon7725 wrote:
| Your situation seems unique - not many people are game
| for 50% travel as they hit mid career.
|
| Consulting does offer an alternative path to engineering
| at big cos - usually the interview focus is on your
| experience and ability to interface with a customer
| rather than leetcode, etc.
| scarface74 wrote:
| That's true. But there was nothing stopping us from
| staying at home and traveling like normal people.
| tra3 wrote:
| The intent is to learn and produce and be an able to talk
| about rather than try to make money.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So if you aren't "learning and producing" at your day job,
| what are you doing 40 hours a week?
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Speaking as someone who has juggled both a full-time job
| and a part-time startup on the side before, I can answer
| this: both of them contributed immensely to my
| professional development, but in different ways, since
| the business domains were very different (which also
| meant developing proficiencies with different
| technologies and tooling).
| scarface74 wrote:
| My perspective is different - not disagreeing with yours.
|
| My goal is to constantly be "putting myself out of a
| job". That means I need to be able to recognize a problem
| or opportunity, understand the business context, do
| enough of an MVP or POC that the rest of the organization
| understands, train and move on.
|
| Sometimes the internal organization doesn't have the
| desire or capacity to maintain or evolve the solution. In
| that case it's my job to find an outside consulting
| company.
|
| I don't do staff augmentation.
| tra3 wrote:
| I believe the gp was talking about the year of
| unemployment referred to in the original post.
|
| I was laid off for about a month earlier this year and it
| was the most productive I've ever been, open source
| contributions wise. Pragmatically, I should've grinded
| leetcode but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I was
| really enjoying the open source work though, a
| combination of react and lisp. I did talk about it during
| the interviews and maybe that came across.
| greesil wrote:
| Nope, I need that time to grind leetcode.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| This is exactly what happened to me when I quit.
|
| "Now I'll have time for my projects!!"
|
| Instead it's been "Grokking Algorithms", "The Competitive
| Programmers Handbook", Alex Xu's "System Design", and enough
| leetcode that I'm actually doing _more_ than I did at work.
|
| What sucks is that there are still lots of medium problems I
| cannot do. Hards are right out. Dunno what I'll do.
| krumpet wrote:
| I was in the exact same situation. What I did was take a
| web manager job at a non-profit. I run their Wordpress
| website. It isn't what I was hoping for when I left
| marketing in the SAAS space, but it's a start and I finally
| enjoy going to work.
|
| I have complete autonomy in this role and am setting things
| up so I'm not just managing a WP site, but actually working
| on the code base and learning as I go.
|
| My thinking is it's better to get paid to learn than grind
| Leetcode at home (which I did for six long months).
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Not a widely shared opinion here, but this process will
| make you a better engineer. Keep at it.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Memorizing decks of leetcode problems improved your
| engineering skills?
| the_doctah wrote:
| Shockingly, sometimes Software Engineers are asked to
| write algorithms for their job.
| awa wrote:
| Frankly, Leetcode seems like a more objective test to me
| than a panel of interviewer grinding me on behavioral
| questions checklist.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| And you would never plunk down a memorized verbatim fix
| in such a scenario.
| the_doctah wrote:
| No, but I'd be far more likely to choose the appropriate
| data structure or canned algo since I know how they all
| work
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| And you don't resort to memorized algorithms when that
| happens. You research.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| You're definitely correct, I've learned a lot while
| practicing leetcode. Especially about my chosen language
| (Python). I do feel I'm a better engineer because of it.
|
| I don't think much of what I've learned will be useful in
| the day-to-day SWE grind. It's really quite interesting,
| but I cannot recall ever having to remember the skeleton
| of an iterative DFS before now.
|
| I've taken away more useful lessons from system design
| studying. If I had my way, I'd spend more timing
| finishing "Designing Data Intensive Applications"
| (AWESOME book), instead of figuring out why my oranges
| aren't rotting correctly or trying to remember how to
| solve the coin problem using dynamic programming instead
| of a greedy algo.
|
| On the plus side, once I've got a good memory base and
| can solve random Mediums and some Hards, I should be OK
| to pass basically any technical interview - barring
| random chance. Right now I took a break for xmas and need
| to go back to it, and _that_ is the hardest part :)
| carlmr wrote:
| I see this all the time, "coding interviews suck",
| "leetcode doesn't test if you're a good coder", but in
| the end it's better than nothing, and having worked at
| places without coding interviews there's almost no bottom
| to people's abilities. So a low, but existing, floor is a
| good thing.
| vsareto wrote:
| The biggest issue IMO is lack of flexibility. Leetcode is
| a specific format with specific questions, but is not
| necessarily the work you'll do day-to-day.
|
| What would be great is if companies offered multiple
| formats including leetcode, take home, pair programming,
| Github review, project review, just talking, etc.
| shagie wrote:
| There are several issues that leetcode solves that the
| other ones don't work _as well with_ or have flaws that
| prevent their use in some hiring processes.
|
| Leetcode has a single rubric. The same questions and the
| same answers. Conducting it has minimal additional effort
| on the employer's side. It does have false negatives, but
| it has fewer false positives.
|
| Take homes are often similar to leetcode, but some less
| scrupulous companies have used them for unpaid work (note
| that this becomes more and more of an issue as the take
| home becomes more and more relevant to hiring company)
| the and unless the interviewer has done the take home
| themselves to benchmark it (this should take between 1-2
| hours), it is possible that the request be "do this thing
| that will take 20 hours."
|
| GitHub review requires that the person have a GitHub
| project of sufficient size, that it isn't just copied
| from someone else and that they have time to work on it.
| There's a joke in /r/adventofcode that shows a GH repo
| that only has activity in December.
|
| With pair programming, project review, and just talking
| the lack of a rubic becomes an issue and it becomes more
| likely that biases get into the interviewing process and
| leads to possible issues of discrimination.
|
| When mixing any of these so that some people do leetcode,
| others do pair programming then it becomes an issue that
| not everyone is considered using the same scale and those
| biases and discrimination issues become even more
| something that legal starts wondering about if they'll
| have to deal with a lawsuit.
|
| If one person can do the interview with "just talking",
| then that should be the same criteria that everyone uses
| (no leetcode) and "just talking" has an _abysmal_ false
| positive rate.
| fein wrote:
| What situation are people in that they have to result to
| this? Is this an issue with getting laid off and trying to
| find a FAANG job?
|
| I was laid off from one consulting company back in 2018 or
| so and had a new gig with more pay a week or so later. No
| leetcode or dev tests, just talking with people in phone
| interviews. It was a company I had previously done contract
| work for, and they called me, but nothing at the FAANG
| level.
|
| Is it an experience issue (are the people getting laid off
| junior devs?), because I had maybe 6 years of dev
| experience across various stacks by that time. In my 10
| years of being an employed dev, I have never had to do
| leetcode interviews.
| hello_moto wrote:
| >I was laid off from one consulting company back in 2018
| or so and had a new gig with more pay a week or so later.
| No leetcode or dev tests, just talking with people in
| phone interviews. It was a company I had previously done
| contract work for, and they called me, but nothing at the
| FAANG level.
|
| There's your answer: consulting companies and contract
| works.
|
| You have a different bubble compare to the LeetCode
| crowds. The Leetcode crowds tend to work for Product
| companies as a Full-Time employee in major Hi-Tech
| cities. Product, Full-Time, major Hi-tech cities, hit
| those 3 characteristics => higher chance of getting the
| Leetcode interview jackpot.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| For what it's worth in my 15+ year career I have also
| never had to do leetcode interviews... until now.
|
| Part of it is that I'm pivoting from systems software
| (Linux kernel) to webstuff. I have zero network here, if
| I wanted to do systems again I'd have an easier time of
| it.
| Swizec wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: If you're competing for a cattle job,
| you have to do leetcode. If you want to be a pet, you
| have to stand out to people who are looking for _you_
| (what you have to offer), not just any fungible developer
| with a pulse.
|
| The challenge is that cattle jobs in tech have
| historically paid very well thanks to the free money
| environment. It looks initially like the right strategy:
| Cushy job, cushy work, much money. But the glass ceiling
| is hard and you won't see it coming until suddenly you've
| had the same day-to-day for 10 years and no amount of
| grinding leetcode gets you to the next level.
|
| Fortunately standing out is easy: My girlfriend got a
| (not-coding) FAANG-level job out of 2000 applicants in
| part by being one of the three people who actually read
| the job description and could hold an insightful
| conversation about what she can bring to the table.
| rr808 wrote:
| If you've been working 10 years you're in the peak
| desirability age. A few more years you'll be nearly 40,
| after that people are much less likely to hire you.
| eclipxe wrote:
| Unless you make the move to management...in which case
| age can be an advantage.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| In very large part what your interviews look like depends
| heavily on when and where you're searching, what type of
| job you want and what your background is. It's hard to
| overstate this. 2018 might as well be an entirely
| different universe.
|
| That said I would be a little suspicious as a mid/senior-
| level developer if I got hired at a place that didn't ask
| me to do any coding for them at all beforehand.
| ipaddr wrote:
| 20+ years in. Don't be afraid those positions can lead to
| a greenfield development project or come from departments
| that don't have someone to vet your coding preferences.
| Usually these positions offer more technical freedom. A
| company who spends more time vetting code will generally
| be a place with less freedom and more micromanagement.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > That said I would be a little suspicious as a
| mid/senior-level developer if I got hired at a place that
| didn't ask me to do any coding for them at all
| beforehand.
|
| I'd be suspicious if they didn't ask me to do any coding,
| but I'd be just as suspicious if the coding they asked me
| to do was leetcode.
| didibus wrote:
| Why are you opposed to leetcode?
|
| While it annoys me as well to have to brush up a little,
| someone who has both the discipline to review their
| fundamentals, and that can demonstrate they have the
| smarts to be good at it, that's a great sign of being a
| good candidate.
|
| It serves as a great arbiter, if two people seem to have
| the same experience, how do you pick between the two?
|
| And when hiring a junior, out of school, there will be no
| experience to go by, so what else would you assess on?
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Why are you opposed to leetcode? > It serves as a great
| arbiter
|
| I'm opposed because I don't think it serves as a great
| arbiter. At best, it selects for logical/academic
| ability, whereas IMO the most important skill as engineer
| is pragmatic decision making and building an appropriate
| solution. In practice it just selects for people who have
| studied leetcode (and to a lesser extent, those who have
| a CS degree)
|
| > if two people seem to have the same experience, how do
| you pick between the two? > And when hiring a junior, out
| of school, there will be no experience to go by, so what
| else would you assess on?
|
| You use a technical challenge that resembles the work
| that the person would need to fulfil in the job. Perhaps
| creating a single view of a website/app for a frontend
| role. Or creating a few API endpoints for a backend role.
| Or whiteboarding through a technical architecture (with
| plenty of opportunity to ask clarifying questions).
| criddell wrote:
| I'm sometimes involved in the interviewing process for my
| employer and we don't do any kind of coding tests. We do
| ask for them to submit a sample of their work and use it
| in the interview. I ask questions about the problem and
| about how they solved it. The code itself isn't usually
| that interesting, but the tangents we wander down usually
| are. If the person can't communicate well about a
| technical topic that they essentially chose, then they
| probably won't get an offer.
|
| That said, I work for a small company and our turnover is
| pretty low. I haven't been involved in all that many
| hires.
| scatters wrote:
| Submit a sample of their work? What employer lets their
| ex employees do that?
| fein wrote:
| This is pretty close to what my experience has been on
| the interviewee side. The conversations have been
| technical in regards to talking through problem solving,
| and esoteric coding philosophy conversations over lunch.
|
| The only coding exams I've ever had to submit were while
| working at consulting agencies for clients that require
| an interview process to pick what the client regards as
| the best candidates for the contract.
|
| I also worked at "very small" (15 dev consultants) to
| "medium-small" (300 or so technical consultants)
| companies, hence why I was curious if this was a
| bigconsulting thing or not.
| Yoric wrote:
| Last time my job was threatened, I spent a few weeks
| brushing up on my algorithms, going through coding
| challenges, reimplementing the basics (in my case, a
| concurrent consumer-producer queue, an IPC mechanism,
| etc.)
|
| I'm an experienced systems developer with a pretty good
| resume, I didn't want to look stoopid if I was asked any
| such question in an interview.
|
| Worked pretty well. I wasn't laid off but I ended up
| changing job for something more fun than my then
| position.
| [deleted]
| noodle wrote:
| > What situation are people in that they have to result
| to this? Is this an issue with getting laid off and
| trying to find a FAANG job?
|
| It's reflective of the type of company you're
| interviewing for.
|
| I lived in Seattle for a while, and almost every startup
| in the area did some form of algorithm lottery
| interviewing, because the startups were created by ex
| AMZN/MS/etc employees and they just took the process they
| were comfortable with to the next company.
|
| I lived in Atlanta and a few other smaller cities for a
| while before and after that, and no company did anything
| like this, because the successful tech companies were all
| born of people with no FAANG experience, with different
| backgrounds and with different experiences.
| carabiner wrote:
| FAANG uses them because they're effective and scalable: h
| ttps://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/zhgtmr
| /o...
|
| They're derived from cognitive sciences research and they
| have a high false negative rate, but it's more valuable
| to these companies to capture the true positives.
| vsareto wrote:
| >What situation are people in that they have to result to
| this?
|
| Widespread interview advice targets the "worst-case
| technical interview scenario" which is doing leetcode and
| running a gauntlet of interviews. This casts the widest
| net possible in terms of how many interviews you'll pass.
| There's also a little bit of reasoning like "if you can
| handle this, you'll be able to ace the easier
| interviews".
|
| The other things for job hunting - like using your
| network and being contacted first - are additional layers
| that you go through.
|
| >In my 10 years of being an employed dev, I have never
| had to do leetcode interviews.
|
| I think the reason you hear prep advice so often is that
| no one has any real data on how many companies are doing
| leetcode interviews vs. non-leetcode interviews. Because
| of this ambiguity, that's why you hear so much advice
| about preparing for the worst case.
| geekbird wrote:
| I get interviews with "coding challenges all. the. time.
| IDK why, I'm a Linux systems engineer, not a programmer.
|
| But I constantly keep getting jerks wanting btree sorts
| that are like a college exam or take home challenges that
| assume I have industry type applications on my home
| network. No, folks, I don't run containers and terraform
| infra in my personal network. When I have to spend three
| hours to install a dodgy application just to start your
| janky "8 hour project" I lose all the enthusiasm I had
| for your job.
| the_only_law wrote:
| God I wish I could get to suffer leetcode interviews, but
| right now I can't even get past automated ATS screens.
| itake wrote:
| leetcode IS the side project 8)
| Jagerbizzle wrote:
| "A year of unemployment? Lonely, depressing, and not good on a
| resume."
|
| A year of unemployment seems significantly less depressing than
| this statement. What if you were to travel (or hike/explore
| your local area), focus on quality time with your family,
| friends, or dog? This to me seems way less depressing than
| grinding on some meaningless side-project, and as a hiring
| manager at a FAANG I would absolutely look at a year on
| someone's CV spent on these activities as a positive rather
| than a negative.
| geekbird wrote:
| I've had bouts of unemployment lasting a year and a half.
| It's really hard to focus on side projects when you are
| worried about being able to pay the rent and health insurance
| and your pittance of unemployment insurance has run out.
|
| My advice to anyone in the tech field is to try to have a lot
| of reserves, because tech is cyclical, and layoffs are
| inevitable, like every two to five years.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I have a decent amount of savings and a side project I want to
| do which could potentially earn money. Are you saying if I quit
| my job and do this for a year or so, it'll fill a hole in my
| resume and not affect future interviews?
| anon50118810 wrote:
| I would only hope to use that as a substitute for paid
| employment if you actually incorporate, give yourself a
| title, put your company on LinkedIn and otherwise treat it
| like a business. Noodling around on a side project that you
| might monetize eventually is not a substitute.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| No need to incorporate or give yourself a fancy title IMO.
| "Founder @ sideproject.io" works well enough.
| icedchai wrote:
| I disagree. Incorporating, giving yourself a title, and a
| LinkedIn page are things anyone can do. People who "play
| business" spend tons of time on this stuff, along with
| designing company logos, hiring accountants (for their zero
| revenue business), and lawyers (for NDAs to protect their
| non-existent idea.) I've seen it first hand. They'll do
| anything to avoid actual work: building and selling a
| product.
| michaelt wrote:
| I suspect what Anon means is: if you plan to tell people
| your side project was your job, you should start treating
| it as your job.
|
| I play around with some side projects where I don't give
| a shit about user counts or GitHub stars or commercial
| viability, doing perhaps 4 hours work per week. If I told
| people this was me at the height of my powers, I'd expect
| them to be unimpressed.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| Yes, exactly, I'm saying that what will matter to future
| employers is how much you treat the project as a job, and
| not the project itself, no matter how interesting or
| challenging it is from the technical side.
| icedchai wrote:
| It won't matter as much as you think. They'll probably
| spend 5 minutes discussing it, if that. If you have a
| demo or something to show for your time, that will be a
| plus.
| ctvo wrote:
| Everytime I read these comments I feel like I work in another
| industry. Who cares about the gaps in your resume? Truly,
| have recruiters commented in anything but passing? Your
| interviewers?
|
| I've hired candidates with large gaps in their resume and
| their reasoning for the most part was I wanted time off or I
| went traveling or N other things that have nothing to do with
| work. We. Did. Not. Care.
|
| Pass the interview. This is the only thing we cared about at
| Big Tech Co.
| okaram wrote:
| It's not so much the (closed) gaps, but the time since last
| job. The _first_ job after you take a year off will be
| harder to get. After that, most people won 't care.
| ctvo wrote:
| I don't think it matters as much as people here seem to
| think.
|
| You're the current CTO of a unicorn looking for a more
| technical role with stability so you apply to be a staff+
| engineer at Google. Now the opposite: you've taken a year
| off to take care of an elderly parent. In both cases,
| your resume is one of the lowest signals we have. You're
| going to need to pass that interview.
|
| HR folks aren't even looking this closely as long as you
| have a resume with the right _prior_ experiences. And
| almost none of these resume concerns matter with a
| referral.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| All else equal, people with resume gaps are going to get
| sorted to the bottom of the pile. Maybe at the high end
| of the market, the FAANG staff level, there aren't enough
| applicants so it's not a big deal, and they'll get to
| those applications eventually. At the lower end of the
| market however, there's more competition and more
| likelihood that someone else from the top of the pile
| will get hired before they get down to the bottom.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Are you working for FAANG etc? I work a mid-level IT job,
| there is competition. I have no evidence but it seems like
| candidates who are currently unemployed (especially for a
| long time) will end up at the bottom of the pile. That at
| least would make finding a new job harder.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I have the same feeling, unless your response to the
| question about the gap is "yea I was on the run from the
| law for a while because I killed some people while robbing
| a bank, then I had to spend some time in prison but I had a
| really good lawyer" I dont know how much impact it really
| has
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| Probably! I've done this to good success (gotten _better_
| jobs when I come back to industry after failing)
| ushakov wrote:
| me and my co-founder did the same this year
|
| thanks to our project's success we now get more and higher
| offers now that we ever did in our lives
|
| however, there's no way back for us
|
| we left for a reason, with a concrete goal in mind
|
| not just because we could
| nicoburns wrote:
| I've taken most of a year out to travel the world while doing
| nothing work-related whatsoever and nobody seems to care.
| screye wrote:
| The only value of having a knee-jerk 'startup' going is to not
| appear unemployed.
|
| If it's for the optics, then I'd just move the dates of my
| previous side-projects around and call it a faux-startup. It's
| not lying. It is work you have previously done as a side-
| project/school-project at some point. But saying you did it in
| the last few months helps give the appearance of being
| continuously employed and not being rusty.
|
| SWE interviewing IS a fulltime job. When unemployed, it is
| especially important to use that time to: [1] Reflect on what
| job you want for your future & [2] Work on achieving that job.
| Together, they will take up ALL your time. Tech recruitment
| wants to have their cake and eat it too. You are expected to
| have an excellent primary project and have time for the months
| it takes to Leetcode. It's unrealistic and leads to a period of
| overwork for candidates.
|
| Jugaad is never optimal. But sometimes, Jugaad is necessary.
| anticristi wrote:
| I would love to read a European, perhaps Swedish version of this
| article. 12+ months of unemployment insurance is standard here. I
| guess it doesn't take the loneliness away, but might make
| unemployment less traumatic.
| the_af wrote:
| I really liked the article, one of the few on this subject that
| doesn't feel like self-help or a humble brag. So kudos to the
| author.
|
| That said, like you, I wonder if this is an American thing. It
| feels to me as if many Americans are one job away from total
| collapse, like their country is only ok for people with a good
| employment and an utter nightmare for everyone else, with no
| safety net at all except your own savings. With that in mind, a
| year without a job prospect would indeed seem like living in
| hell.
| gorbachev wrote:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/19/56percent-of-americans-
| cant-...
| belfalas wrote:
| _> It feels to me as if many Americans are one job away from
| total collapse, like their country is only ok for people with
| a good employment and an utter nightmare for everyone else,
| with no safety net at all except your own savings._
|
| Yes, that is pretty much correct. Many many Americans, even
| ones considered well-off, live a threadbare existence. To
| Europeans it's unfathomable what can happen in the United
| States but it's just as bad as you think if not worse. There
| is literally no bottom in this society, there's no limits to
| the depths you can fall.
| system2 wrote:
| In some cases unemployment means hunger, homelessness, or even
| death. Those Swedish people live on another planet.
| fatnoah wrote:
| Looking at the internet, it looks like Sweden supports 300 days
| of unemployment benefits that max out at 1200 SEK/day (about
| $115 US). In the US, one can receive up to 210 days of
| unemployment with a max benefit of $145/week.
|
| So yes, there is unemployment insurance in the US, and it pays
| almost 30% more than in Sweden. There is a HUGE gotcha, though,
| and that's the cost of health insurance. Unless the former
| employer is subsidizing, that costs about $400-700/month. There
| are, in general, far fewer social welfare services to rely on
| as well.
| subrat_rout wrote:
| If Sweden pays $115/day then it comes about $575/week. And if
| US pays $145/week how it is 30% more than Sweden?
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| I think you just compared a daily rate to a weekly rate, if
| I'm reading correctly? Which would make the US rates very
| small in comparison, especially combined with health
| insurance as you describe.
| deepzn wrote:
| I would just add one thing here, aside from echoing the comments
| on the great writing. Everyone needs to focus on saving when they
| have a job for uncertain times. I've found it incredibly helpful
| in the last year with some savings in the bank, to ward off the
| uncertainty and chaos around not having a job, and taking it a
| bit easy so to say.
|
| Saving at least 20% or so of every paycheck is good standard
| advice for rainy days. But, also not to keep any debt.
|
| Lastly, it's not that terrifying these days to not have
| employment in the software industry. Things will turn around as
| long as you work on developing your skills. Staying positive is
| good advice for the short and long-term. Because everything will
| work out, and we usually stress a lot more than we really should.
| drpossum wrote:
| Hard truth #9: Bad grammar will erode your credibility
| xyzelement wrote:
| This is good, and/but is one dimension. A few from me:
|
| - Have perspective. Several years down the line when you're in a
| new company/career/life, you will recognize this layoff was a
| necessary thing to happen for you to "get there."
|
| - It's going to take a while. Every job I ever got, took waaaay
| longer than it should have. Things happen. Roles get filled
| internally, headcount goes away, etc. Job finding is inherently
| filled with friction, so if it takes 6 months or more, don't
| interpret that as "I am bad/this will never work" - it's just the
| nature of the beast.
|
| - Be in sync with your family on what matters. My wife was very
| clear that she was going to be fine if it took me longer to find
| a role I was really excited about. We were lucky that we could
| afford that, and it's good to be explicit.
|
| - There's no stigma in layoffs but you can generate your own
| stigma in how you talk about it. Don't be bitter and do provide
| some color. My answer why I was looking was "the company took a
| big revenue hit with COVID and had to reduce headcount. The
| strategy was to cut from areas that were further along in
| technological maturity, such as (my area.) We lost a lot of
| senior tech talent, including myself. I am really grateful having
| worked there, though!" This is 100% true to what happened and how
| I feel, and it's a great answer because it makes is clear I
| wasn't fired because I was bad, and shows some maturity and
| perspective.
|
| - Be aware that your next job may not be your perfect job. It
| should be good enough that you MIGHT want to stay there, but at
| the very least can be a launching pad for your real next role.
| When you are laid off, the question isn't "do I see myself here
| the next 10 years" but more like "am I pretty sure this will be
| an interesting / worthwhile year and a half"
|
| - Don't be negative. The author posted some spreadsheet about how
| rough his job search was and then was surprised that a company
| wasn't interested in him. I don't think this is the same as
| "truth can hurt you" - more like "companies are on the lookout
| for red flags, and if you are the kind of person who complains in
| public, maybe you are going to be a negative culture fit." That's
| doesn't mean they want yes-men, but there's a big difference
| between people who feel an obligation to dissent (strong
| positive) to perceived complainers. Complainers are poison.
| [deleted]
| swang720 wrote:
| Speaking from personal experience the "there's no stigma in
| layoffs" bit is not always true. Many places have asked me why
| I was laid off upfront with an assumption that it was due to
| performance reasons unless I'm able to prove otherwise.
| jayceedenton wrote:
| > Hard Truth #6: Honesty can only hurt you
|
| I think the author has come away with the wrong lesson here.
|
| Many engineers, particularly those that don't pay too much heed
| to social mores, think they have some God-given right to share
| details of all their private interactions publicly. Every tech
| test they do is pushed to GitHub with an accompanying blog post.
| Every interview has a transcript (somewhat one-sided) published
| and shared to Twitter. This is typical oafish behaviour displayed
| by mamy engineers and frankly, it annoys people. It's often
| considered a red flag when hiring. Understanding when to be
| discreet is an important skill for any employee.
|
| Lying about why you're looking for work is a bad idea. That small
| lie will escalate, you'll have to start stringing together more
| lies, and when you get found out it won't reflect well.
|
| This has nothing to do with radical honesty. I'm not suggesting
| you air all your dirty laundry during an interview. But don't
| lie. And don't publish all private interactions because you're a
| fan of free software. It's not the same thing.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| I was mortified at the simple description of that twitter post.
|
| To lump that with honesty is probably unhelpful long term for
| OP, certainly unhelpful as advice.
|
| Why scrub social media early only to taint it later!?
| mattm wrote:
| We've heard "transparency" so much lately that it now gets
| confused with honesty. They're not the same.
|
| If a company asks where else you are interviewing an honest but
| not transparent answer would be something like "I'm exploring
| other opportunities at various places but don't feel
| comfortable providing more details." If you were to ask a
| company who else they are interviewing for the same role, you
| would expect the same answer. It would probably cause alarm if
| they actually told you the names of other people they were
| interviewing!
| jareklupinski wrote:
| during one of the first interviews I ever had, the
| interviewer took me to a private room where I could do the
| coding part on my own
|
| on the desk was the laptop they wanted me to use, some pens
| and paper, and a stack of resumes from other people
|
| the interviewer made no mention of the stack as they were
| leaving or when they came back, and when I asked about it at
| the end of the interview, they chuckled and changed the
| subject... to this day I'm wondering if it was some test to
| see if I threw the other resumes out (didn't get an offer
| btw)
| oorza wrote:
| Pretty sure the test here is to see what you do when you
| discover them. I'd give them more benefit of doubt and
| guess that they wanted you to report it immediately, and
| letting any mention of it wait until the end of the
| interview was the wrong answer. If you're the sort of
| person that believes in these sort of tricks (I don't),
| you'd probably jump to the conclusion that the person
| ignoring the pile of resumes was okay watching the place
| burn down around him as long as it wasn't his job to fix
| it. That's a huge leap of logic to make, except in the
| whacky world of job interview shenanigans, where it's
| basically par for the course.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| I was shocked by that too. Maintaining such a sheet is a good
| idea, but never _ever_ share it. It's bad operational security.
| It's also revealing more about you (what other companies think
| of you) than it is about the companies in question.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If a company asks you about stuff that isn't any of their
| business you have my permission (not that you need it) to lie
| your ass off if you think it will help you. The power asymmetry
| is such that unless the counterparty is extremely careful about
| abusing that power that you will end up being cornered and
| taken advantage of. If you present yourself as more desirable
| than you are based on your current situation and it lands you a
| job at a higher salary than you otherwise would have: more
| power to you. But don't overdo it and realize that there is
| some risk involved.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| I think it's healthier to instead develop the social skills
| and confidence needed to answer any questions confidently
| while enforcing boundaries about what you will and won't
| answer. Outright lying can come from a place of weakness and
| fear which isn't good to encourage.
| kelnos wrote:
| Lying is always risky, though. If the truth comes to light,
| you are screwed. Even if it doesn't, you have to remember and
| internalize your lie, and make sure anything you say in the
| future is consistent with it. That requires extra work and
| can be stressful. (And if you mess it up: again, you are
| screwed.)
|
| I don't buy the "you don't want to work for a company that
| would ask you XYZ anyway" line. Sure, in some cases that may
| be true, but sometimes someone (that is, a random person on
| the interview loop, not a "professional interviewer" like a
| recruiter) will ask or say something they shouldn't, and that
| doesn't need to reflect poorly on the company (or even on the
| person; who hasn't said something dumb on occasion?).
|
| If you think a question is inappropriate, politely decline to
| answer, using whatever verbal finesse you have available to
| yourself. It takes practice and confidence to do so, but it's
| the right thing to do.
| some_furry wrote:
| I always lie (through omission) in job interviews, because
| there's no federal protection against discrimination on basis
| of sexual orientation.
| vengefulduck wrote:
| Even when applying to companies that are LGBTQ friendly? I
| sometimes self identify on applications if the company has
| a good reputation with that kind of thing because I'd
| expect It would give me some diversity points. But maybe
| that's not the best idea.
| some_furry wrote:
| I do not trust "LGBTQ friendly" companies, unless their
| board of directors is predominantly LGBTQ.
|
| Once bitten, twice shy.
| [deleted]
| sobkas wrote:
| > Even when applying to companies that are LGBTQ
| friendly? I sometimes self identify on applications if
| the company has a good reputation with that kind of thing
| because I'd expect It would give me some diversity
| points. But maybe that's not the best idea.
|
| Pretending to be LBGTQ friendly is a good PR while
| changing actual company culture is hard, expensive and
| takes time. So don't get fooled by PR stunts and changed
| policies because they will always be eaten by real
| company culture.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Even when applying to companies that are LGBTQ
| friendly?
|
| Ah, so sorry, we found a candidate who had more relevant
| experience than you, but please do keep applying.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Has Bostock been overturned?
|
| https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/protections-against-
| emplo...
| some_furry wrote:
| A ruling by a court isn't the same thing as federal law.
|
| There is no federal law establishing my rights, so if a
| company tries to ask about my personal life (wife, kids,
| etc.) I politely decline to answer, or I answer vague
| enough that doesn't give them any useful information.
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| How often does that happen though? I'm straight and I
| don't recall ever being asked about my family or love
| life in a job interview. Not that I'd keep it secret if
| asked, but why the hell would they be asking?
| yongjik wrote:
| Yeah I'm also curious. When I was at Google there were a
| list of things you were never supposed to ask a candidate
| because that's Super Illegal(TM) and could expose the
| company to lawsuits. That included sexual orientation and
| marriage status. That was more than ten years ago, I'd
| expect most IT companies would do the same by now, at
| least in the US.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There are ways to ask those without being illegal and
| these are employed quite frequently. Essentially any kind
| of probing into someone's private life should be off-
| limits.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's exactly the sort of exchange that I had in mind.
| Likewise for work at a previous company, your current
| salary, whether or not you plan to have kids and so on.
| Depending on where you live some of those may be illegal
| but still, you need that job...
| jasmer wrote:
| Gosh, no - strongly recommending not doing this. (The lying
| part)
|
| Lying is one of the worst things you can do, it usually
| speaks to an issue with integrity, a concern that comes
| before almost all of them even intelligence, education,
| aptitude, skills.
|
| Learn the skill of polite deferral, of saying things without
| saying them, diverting or embellishing a bit - and then only
| if it's an issue not relevant to the job.
|
| If someone in an interview asks you your 'political
| orientation' (which obviously they shouldn't do and it would
| raise a big red flag anyhow - but just as an example) you do
| not have to be candid, but don't lie. You can say "I have a
| variety of opinions, I try to keep an open mind" - so long as
| you are comfortable with it and it's true. You have not lied,
| but not fully answered the question because it's none of
| their business.
|
| I also think the OP here has misinterpreted 'transparency and
| candor'.
|
| Engineers who 'over share' are a bit annoying but then again,
| you don't have to read their posts - but this is not the
| issue.
|
| The 'issue' here is the absolutely truthful information that
| is 'just too much' for an interview setting.
|
| Everyone needs to be honest and candid but not transparent
| like you're talking to the IRS or your accountant.
|
| Suppose they ask you why you might want to work at the
| company, and you don't really feel hugely inspired, well,
| instead of saying literally that, you can find at least
| something interesting about the situation and allude to it.
| There's something interesting about every situation. And of
| course, if it's truly a bad situation just say that politely
| and assume you won't be working there.
|
| It's ok to ask 'Elephant in the Room' questions especially if
| they are asked politely, if they can't handle that you don't
| want to work there.
|
| It's ok to be turned away for something arbitrary or mundane
| (or any other reason) there will be other opportunities.
|
| Getting turned down can make you very cynical and brings out
| our worst, even conspiratorial tendencies so try to stay
| grounded and keep your head on straight, don't be sucked into
| the vortex of weirdness and 'ultra competitive civility' of
| getting job shenanigans, it's not real, it's a big of a game,
| recognise it a such.
|
| Kind of like telling people to 'don't be nervous' on a date,
| what I'm about to write is super glib but I think it's true:
| stay true to your basic values and identity and I think it
| will be easier to be more relaxed and authentic in
| interviews. The 'game' will pull you towards negative
| behaviours I have found it's a lot easier not to do them if
| you literally just decide that you are not going to do so for
| reasons of morality or values or whatever.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Companies lie to their prospective employees all the time.
| About how much runway they have, about the work that you'll
| be doing, about what it is like to work there.
| oorza wrote:
| > And of course, if it's truly a bad situation just say
| that politely and assume you won't be working there
|
| Or "this situation sucks, that's why I'm excited. I want to
| lead the charge out of the darkness and into the light" or
| some such self-aggrandizing metaphor. Assuming, of course,
| you are willing to take a job whose primary function is
| fixing a broken team.
| charles_f wrote:
| I don't know about that. Something that makes me sick to my
| stomach is the current only accepted behaviour to react to
| being laid off by being grateful to such a wonderful company to
| have given me opportunity to learn and blah, blah, blah. There
| is so much dishonesty and fake gratefulness around that
| anything departing from that, including just sharing that you
| interviewed a lot and only found dead ends, is a black flag.
|
| I get that this is marketing, and that's the game in an
| employer market. But sh*t, no-one is calling out the fact that
| maybe the responsibility is not only on the incoming recession,
| but also how dumb a large portion of the industry has been in
| trying to ignore as best as possible a freaking war, a
| pandemic, and flying oil prices, and carried on over-hiring at
| high wages. I'm grateful mine didn't go in that game and froze
| hiring very early on.
|
| Maybe it's an emphasis, the way I read it is that you should
| keep your unpalatable opinions to yourself, because being
| critical of the system is cause to be rejected by it.
| JackFr wrote:
| I was laid off in April 2020 as well, and while some of my
| experience matches the author's some of it was very different.
|
| Being laid off was not a relief -- it was terrifying. All
| indications were that a severe recession was coming. Frankly, it
| was quite surprising to me that companies were hiring at all
| given the uncertainty. It was not obvious at the time that broad
| sectors of the economy could seamlessly move to 100% WFH. It was
| also my first experience in fully remote interviewing.
|
| I am a software engineer over fifty. I also have three children
| two of whom were in college, and my wife works in a travel
| related industry which was very much affected by the pandemic.
|
| Given those things I approached my job search aggressively and
| with a sense of urgency, and I made it out OK. I was out of work
| for about two months and accepted a role at flat comp.
|
| Being laid off is profoundly lonely. I was part of a mass layoff
| (approximately 2/3 of my company was laid off.) So while I was
| not alone in that sense, we were all very much alone together.
| Where you had been a team, you were now five people looking for
| jobs, each with their own problems and constraints. My wife could
| not have been more supportive, and yet the process of
| interviewing and landing a job is one you have to do by yourself.
| One of the hardest things is to maintain an upbeat outlook, and
| yet it is so necessary because no one is going to hire a
| miserable sad sack.
|
| On the other hand, I had no stigma whatsoever attached to the
| fact that I had been laid off. Part of that might have been that
| the size of the layoff was such that anyone with any glancing
| familiarity with the place I was at would know that 2/3 of the
| company were laid off.
|
| One thing that I would emphasize would be maintain your
| professional network in good times and in bad. I got a number of
| good leads that way.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I had no stigma whatsoever attached to the fact that I had
| been laid off._
|
| This point in the article was weird to me, that you should
| creatively avoid saying that you were laid off. Sure, some
| layoffs are just an excuse to get rid of people who the company
| believe are low performers, so if you were laid off from a
| prominent company where recruiters know why the layoff
| happened, this could be a problem for you when looking for a
| new job.
|
| But if you were caught in the string of layoffs happening this
| year (or at the beginning of the pandemic), I can't see how
| there'd be stigma attached to that. And I'd worry that being
| evasive about why you're no longer at your previous company
| could be a red flag to recruiters; just doesn't seem worth it.
| ketzo wrote:
| Yes, when lots of companies are cutting back to their most
| essential employees, it helps provide a little cover.
|
| But, y'know, regardless of the environment, what does it say
| about your abilities that your employer didn't consider _you_
| essential?
|
| This is a very pessimistic way to view things that I don't
| fully believe, and of course any reasonable person knows that
| being part of a layoff is very rarely just the employee's
| fault. But to perhaps state the obvious, being laid off is
| never gonna look _good_ , or even neutral. There will always
| be stigma.
|
| Being able to reframe your layoff in as positive of a light
| as you can is important.
| itake wrote:
| To add, usually companies layoff low performers first.
|
| At my previous job, the company laid off 1000 people, but
| only 3% of engineering...
| quanticle wrote:
| But, y'know, regardless of the environment, what does it
| say about your abilities that your employer didn't
| consider you essential?
|
| I think it depends on the company. If you're laid off from
| from a small or medium sized startup, with more or less one
| product, then I can understand how being laid off can be
| seen as a reflection of your skills (or lack thereof) as an
| engineer. But if you were laid off from a larger company,
| all it means is that some director saw a team (or teams)
| which were working on more speculative projects, which
| could be axed as a way of saving money during a recession.
| It doesn't mean that you're an unskilled engineer. It just
| means you were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at
| the wrong time when the ax fell.
| snapetom wrote:
| > But, y'know, regardless of the environment, what does it
| say about your abilities that your employer didn't consider
| you essential?
|
| In the case of a startup, there's often not much you can do
| to be seen as valued if you're not a founding engineer.
|
| I've been a part of 3 layoffs. 15%, 90%, and 75%
| reductions, all at small or medium-sized startups. At a
| startup, they're going to keep founding and early engineers
| first. There's a selection bias, but those engineers aren't
| probably "dead weight" if they were there since the early
| days. Plus, there's a cliqueness to startups that will
| favor them.
| ketzo wrote:
| Yeah, and all of this is relevant, and the kind of stuff
| you would wanna talk about with a new potential employer.
| Maybe you did really amazing work with a killer team, but
| that team got cut as the founders tried to reduce scope.
|
| But... it's still set against the default backdrop of
| "they kept some people, but not me", so it's important to
| be able to tell your story well.
| turdprincess wrote:
| It is none's business about why you left (or are leaving)
| your previous job, unless perhaps it is due to some legal
| issue that would show up on a (criminal) background check.
| Interviewing for a new job is all about the future, and it's
| totally up to you to reveal only the facts about your past
| that paint you in a favorable light.
|
| Whether or not saying you got laid off would hurt your
| chances is a separate question. My guess is most of the time
| it wont. But as a flip, would saying you got laid off improve
| your chances of getting the job? If the answer is no, then
| its not worth saying - focus instead on the things that for
| sure portray you positively.
|
| The same goes for jobs with short tenures - if you stayed at
| some place for a few months and left just leave it off your
| resume. It doesn't do anything to sell you, so why waste time
| on it?
|
| Just remember, an interview is a short period of time to sell
| the best parts of yourself that are most applicable to the
| job. It is not a 100% confession of all the good and bad
| things that happened to you.
| tnel77 wrote:
| I have a bit to go before I'm a software engineer over fifty,
| but I have a lot of anxiety about it primarily from an ageism
| standpoint. I don't really want to go into management because I
| love coding and solving problems, but I fear that one day I'll
| will struggle to find work due to my age.
|
| What has your experience been with this issue?
| Fr3dd1 wrote:
| I myself lead a software development team. I am 31 and the
| last two people I hired were almost 50 and they are very good
| devs. In my opinion age alone isnt a reason not to hire
| someone. What is the "common reason" older people are not
| considered to be hired? I guess because people think they
| cant adapt or are stuck in some ways in theire thinking. If
| your future you can show that this is not the case, I guess
| you are fine :) Only "REAL" age related reason is (and I have
| to admit that I myself didnt hire someone because of that) if
| the person wants to retire in the near future and you think
| you want to invest your time in someone who will, hopefully,
| stay longer.
| spacemadness wrote:
| It depends on what part of the industry we're talking
| about. One aspect of this is startup culture and needing to
| "fit in." Or in other words "culture fit." You see it on HN
| all the time where people mention many of their friends are
| coworkers. Sometimes that means not hiring the person who
| has a life outside work, isn't going through the same
| issues everyone does in their 20s, and is perceived to not
| fit in. In some cases, I think it is simply the threat of
| possibly having a life outside of work and not signing up
| to overwork yourself by default.
|
| Another is pricing yourself out of the industry. And
| another is the mistaken idea that all an older dev knows is
| older out of date technology. The usual stuff.
|
| I've found that firmware and regulated industries in
| general do not have as rampant of an ageism issue.
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| Some IC roles do fit more younger candidates than older.
| E.g. in a startup - often better they not have outside
| commitments like a family, or need for a healthy work-life
| balance. Sometimes "work smarter not harder" falls apart
| and they need to work like a maniac. On balance I've found
| older colleagues less willing to do that. That isn't meant
| as a criticism, just an observation about role-fit, those
| people usually didn't last long.
| Fr3dd1 wrote:
| The underlying belief to this is, is that more hours =
| more results = better results. I highly doubt that this
| is the truth.
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| That's not the underlying belief in a startup. It's more
| like: we have not fully figured out market fit. We may
| need to build something very very quickly (I'm talking
| about hours/days, not weeks/months) and then maintain
| them for while.
|
| That's why I say "work smarter not harder" can fail -
| that only works if you make assumptions about the future,
| in a startup that can only take you so far.
| Fr3dd1 wrote:
| Okay, I didnt thought about such an early state.
| JackFr wrote:
| I worry about it too. What I have found is that it's
| important to keep your skills very, very current. It's OK to
| be reasonably skeptical about the latest hotness, but it's
| imperative to know about it and why it's the latest hotness.
| No one cares (OK very few people care) about the systems you
| built in perl in the 90's. They will care about your opinion
| Go vs. Rust vs. C++, even if you are not an expert in any of
| them. You needn't have used every no-SQL data store, but
| again you need to know about them.
|
| On the other hand if you are a subject matter expert in a
| particular domain, then your twenty years of experience are
| indeed very useful, and while no one wants to replicate the
| risk reporting system you built in Motif/X in the 90's, they
| may well want build it in React.
| remote_phone wrote:
| Over 50 in 2022 is very different than over 50 in 2000.
|
| I'm GenX and grew up with the internet but I know life before
| the internet. I know technology more than most and keep up
| with it. I play video games (finished elden ring earlier this
| year) and watch TikTok 2 hours a day. I'm not young but the
| gap between me and someone younger isn't a vast canyon like
| it used to be.
|
| My last job hunt a year ago I got over 5 job offers. I
| wouldn't be too worried.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Well, the issue unfortunately is that we know that but a
| thirty y-o hiring manager doesn't. A few years back I saw
| folks commenting on YouTube about the "good old days" of
| 2013 and had good sensible chuckle.
|
| Also, tiktok is like smoking--wouldn't recommend.
| clutchdude wrote:
| > You're probably going to have to fake enthusiasm for the AI-
| enabled TikTok outfit generator you will be working on. No, it's
| not going to make the world a better place. Yes, it might even
| make the world a worse place.
|
| This is _how_ the world becomes a worse place - perhaps if
| working for the company developing this is life or death for you
| or a loved one, I can see why.
|
| But otherwise, consider doing something else.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Thank you for posting this. I really dislike how not wanting to
| work for companies that are actively harming the world is often
| portrayed as some sort of selfish luxury.
| btrettel wrote:
| The author mentions the "diamond-in-the-rough" strategy used by
| organizations, which in my experience can be particularly
| disrespectful of the interviewee's time. One thing I try to
| figure out how before applying to a job is how many applicants
| the organization is considering for the position. If they're
| interviewing a ton of people for one position, it's probably a
| waste of my time to apply. This is particularly true for
| organizations that use marathon interview sessions (doing a
| series of interviews over an entire day), and/or organizations
| that expect the interviewee to give a talk of interest to the
| organization (common in research positions). Customizing an old
| talk I have takes several hours. I know that I could use an old
| talk without modification, but I feel that I'd be at a
| significant disadvantage to do so.
| gorbachev wrote:
| The number one thing I've learned from being laid off was never
| to trust your employer. Trust people, if they've shown to be
| trustworthy, but never, ever trust a company.
|
| A company is not family, they're not your friend, and the
| perceived loyalty you think you've "earned" doesn't mean a thing
| if layoffs are coming.
|
| Treat your employment as a business arrangement. You get a
| paycheck in exchange for labor. Nothing less, nothing more.
| euix wrote:
| I second this. Institutions come and go but the people and
| connections you make throughout your working life is what
| counts and transcend your workplace. This is especially true
| for technical people, if you are middle management/executive
| your skills are far less transferable.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| Ahh yes. I think most people end up going through this bitter
| disillusionment at some point in their careers.
|
| Humans are tribal by nature and companies are setup like a big
| tribe. We even call the guy (and it's mostly a guy) at the top
| the chief! Feelings of "family" and "loyalty" are built into
| humans operating in tribes, and a real tribe looks out for its
| members.
|
| So when the sudden wholesale internally orchestrated slaughter
| of a chunk of the tribe happens (metaphorically), it comes as
| quite a shock (the first time). Both for the people that go and
| the people that stay. The lesson _is_ that a company is not a
| tribe.
|
| That said, a company is also a collection of people and the
| relationships you develop as you work are just as meaningful as
| the ones you develop in other aspects of life. Loyalty to
| _people_ is a perfectly good and reasonable thing.
|
| So my take is, you should focus on fostering good relationships
| with your coworkers and hold loosely to the concept of the
| "company". The company may screw you over, but good people will
| always try to do what is right.
| tomcam wrote:
| Painful to read. Thank you for sharing.
|
| > You're going to have to grind Leetcode. Yes, even the dynamic
| programming problems.
|
| What are dynamic programming problems?
| autotune wrote:
| I have gotten laid off, fired, or otherwise managed out so many
| times in the last year or so I am writing off the whole year on
| my resume and calling it a "personal development" year and not
| listing any short term positions on there. 2021-2022 was just a
| complete disaster for job stability relative to most of my
| previous career where I was doing 2-3 years minimum in a role. My
| personal recommendation in addition to TFA is enroll in COBRA and
| get an in-network therapist. I thankfully managed to survive off
| of credit cards, debt, and help from the parents, but if the
| recent role I landed ends up being a dud not sure what is next
| for me. Thankfully it seems to be going relatively well.
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| COBRA is outrageously expensive. If you have no (or little)
| income, the ACA is a no-brainer I think.
| autotune wrote:
| My parents paid for it for me and refused to consider
| anything cheaper, so I was lucky, but yeah, it is something
| like $700 a month.
| rr808 wrote:
| For my family COBRA is about $2500 a month, which is a lot
| when you aren't working!
| parski wrote:
| SWE does not mean Sweden. I've gathered that much. WTF is SWE?
| xutopia wrote:
| I just got laid off and I went through a layoff in the early
| 2000s and it was brutal. Had to do contract work with tech I
| didn't like and now with the added pressure of having kids that I
| have to care for financially it's definitely more stressful.
|
| One thing I'm doing different this time around is that I'm
| building a project that could be useful for some friends and
| might actually scratch an itch. It allows me to get back in the
| latest technologies and adds something to my portfolio.
| tayistay wrote:
| > You're going to have to grind Leetcode. Yes, even the dynamic
| programming problems.
|
| Really? I would think contributing (significantly) to an open-
| source project would look better than spending time on leetcode,
| though I've never tried leetcode.
| ok123456 wrote:
| That would require the hiring staff being able to evaluate your
| contribution. Unlikely, unless the job you're interviewing for
| is interviewing because you made a useful contribution to a
| software that they use themselves.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| In my experience interviewing, nothing on github or your resume
| will be read. The only thing that will be read is what you type
| into coderpad during your interview.
| vintermann wrote:
| > "When faced with two choices, flip a coin. When it's in the
| air, you'll know which side you're hoping for." --Former gangster
| Arnold "The Brain" Rothstien
|
| In the TV series Boardwalk Empire, he said that. I can't find any
| evidence he ever said it in real life.
|
| However, the poet Piet Hein did:
|
| Stejler man foran et vanskelig valg
|
| og vil ha det afgjord prompte,
|
| er det et sare fornuftigt princip
|
| at platte og krone om det.
|
| Ikke at valget skal ske pr. hazard,
|
| i mens man selv sidder og maber
|
| men: lige nar monten er kastet til vejrs
|
| sa ved man precis, hvad man haber.
|
| (His own translation:
|
| Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
|
| and you're hampered by not having any,
|
| the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
|
| is simply by spinning a penny.
|
| No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
|
| while you're passively standing there moping;
|
| but the moment the penny is up in the air,
|
| you suddenly know what you're hoping.)
| enos_feedler wrote:
| All of these apply equally well to getting dumped.
| mathattack wrote:
| Another hard truth... You learn who will help you in a crisis,
| and it will surprise you. People you thought had your back become
| scarce, while some weak connections really go to bat for you
| because of some small courtesy you did years prior.
|
| Going through the experience once makes you more empathetic to
| folks in a similar boat.
| shufeng wrote:
| When I was at the spot before covid, I felt very venerable and
| desperate at the same time. I was junior and just started my
| career. At the beginning of job search, I tried to tell people
| the true story behind. However, once I opened that, it
| immediately became a gossip where the recruiter was more
| interested in the details than my competency for the job.
|
| I survived it eventually after 6 months but I wish I knew all the
| truths before that.
| dadoge wrote:
| Contrary opinion:
|
| If feels very very very wrong to compare a search during April
| 2020 and now.
|
| Why? The year after April 2020 was a booming job market for SWEs.
| Hiring managers were competing for talent, 2021 was a boom year
| of low interest rates, euphoria in private and public markets.
|
| This blog post _should not_ be considered a response to the WSJ
| article.
|
| And sorry, grinding away at leetcode should only take about 2
| months tops if you don't have to worry having to balance leetcode
| and your job, and not a tall ask for a 250k+ job in tech. if you
| don't need that high a salary, smaller companies generally are
| more lax about leetcode
| dadoge wrote:
| Ok looked the guy up: https://www.stevenbuccini.com/about/
|
| - Studied at Berkeley
|
| - worked at Apple and Uber
|
| And I'm supposed to feel bad for you not wanting to spend a few
| weeks grinding at leetcode?
|
| This reeks of someone who is very well off, and not an
| "Everyman" engineer.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| I actually agree with the parent here;
|
| grinding leetcode is some dumbshit waste of time that I'm not
| going to bother with -- I've got code to put in production
| and this simply is never a good use of my time. When you have
| an obnoxious hiring process that will take multiple hours for
| your _special_ company, why would I even waste my time? I can
| click a few more buttons and have offers elsewhere anyways...
| 1270018080 wrote:
| > dumbshit waste of time that I'm not going to bother with
|
| You're leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the
| table. The hours/money ratio of studying leetcode is pretty
| good.
|
| > for your special company
|
| At least 1 round of leetcode questions is a requirement for
| every company I have interviewed with.
|
| > I can click a few more buttons and have offers elsewhere
| anyways...
|
| If that's actually true, then nevermind.
|
| I hate leetcode too, but I think it's unwise to not
| conform.
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| Leetcode interviews gave me an anxiety disorder for
| upwards of a year, despite solving the problems correctly
| ummonk wrote:
| Well the guy who wrote the post had the same opinion as you
| and his job search took a year as a result...
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Anecdotal but over the past 20 years I've held about eight
| different positions in various companies as a software
| engineer, and I've never even so much as glanced at leetcode.
| I've been able to live comfortably and put plenty away for the
| future with 150 to 200K salary.
|
| I feel like companies that emphasize interviews prioritizing
| rote memorization aren't going to be a good culture fit for me
| anyway.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _The year after April 2020 was a booming job market for
| SWEs._
|
| Did we know that at the time, though? From what I remember, it
| was all doom and gloom: public markets were trending downward,
| people were talking about recession and corporate belt-
| tightening, and the assumption was that we'd see a lot of
| layoffs, and the labor market would get tight.
|
| True, that's not what happened (at least in the case of
| knowledge workers) -- in most cases it was the opposite -- but
| I don't think we had that foresight back in April 2020.
| drdunce wrote:
| In short, the SWE job market is not healthy.
| gregfjohnson wrote:
| Stepping back for a moment from the content, I think it is worth
| noting what an exceptionally well-written essay this is. Being
| able to write well is a super power for engineers. It is a
| reflection of the lucidity and clarity of one's mind, and the
| ability to understand the needs of the reader. Writing well is an
| exceptionally useful and powerful skill that can be improved with
| consistent practice. I would be tempted to add that as hard truth
| #9!
| crosen99 wrote:
| For sure. So utterly penetrating, incisive, soulful and
| relatable. There can be no suspicion that the author relied on
| ChatGPT for this piece!
| linhns wrote:
| I hope everyone takes this as sarcasm
| [deleted]
| ericmcer wrote:
| He is a good writer and clearly a thoughtful individual, which
| further reinforces truth #6 (honesty can hurt you). I
| subconsciously approached the article with a bit of negative
| bias around the fact he had been laid off. His writing has more
| clarity than many successful CEOs though so who knows.
| theteapot wrote:
| How charitable of you for the poor laid off person.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| > I subconsciously approached the article with a bit of
| negative bias around the fact he had been laid off. His
| writing has more clarity than many successful CEOs though so
| who knows.
|
| That's because most people get laid off because of no fault
| of their own. There's a false idea that people that are laid
| off are low performers, but the truth of the matter is that
| more often than not it, it's entire teams.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yes, and if you're in the game thru a few downturns, you
| will be laid off during them a few times in an otherwise
| successful career. Severance package FTW.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| As someone who also writes and thinks a lot, truth #6 applies
| particularly to us. People REALLY don't want to hear hard
| truths from people who think about what they are saying. If
| you are saying something that is less thought out, honesty
| can be a good policy - after all, they have probably heard
| whatever you are saying before.
| lazide wrote:
| I will say - most people don't like hearing that. And
| you'll certainly not be a hit at parties if that's your
| style.
|
| There is a high correlation between specific types of high
| performer and people who do like (and benefit) from hearing
| that type of truth though. At least unless it hits too
| close to home.
|
| Which is why the article is getting upvoted.
| [deleted]
| paulpauper wrote:
| Verbal and math ability are highly correlated, as suggested by
| IQ and SAT scores. People who are good at math tend to be above
| average at writing too.
| falcolas wrote:
| It took me many years to figure out how to write. Finally, I
| figured out how to apply that math side of my brain to
| writing: I treat sentences like math exercises; that is to
| say I learned how to show my work.
|
| Ironically, I feel that this also helps me identify AI
| writing since it never shows its work; it has a tendency to
| mix together multiple "answers" in a swirling morass of
| leadership-speak (a mixture of management-adjective-soup and
| the avoidance of direct points). That kind of speech pattern
| coming from anybody that's not a C level executive stands
| out. Even executives tend to drop the leadership style speech
| patterns on forums.
| mbg721 wrote:
| SAT-type verbal stuff is very different from being able to
| write well. It's much closer to math with a different
| alphabet--I've met more than one math major who did better on
| the verbal sections of standardized tests.
| klabb3 wrote:
| And the author is.. also good at math?
| ptero wrote:
| Good thoughts, but (not as a criticism of the author), some of
| the pain points are at least partially self-inflicted:
|
| To minimize post-layoff loneliness (and not only for that!) make
| sure you have a life outside of work: the people you like to
| spend some time with and things you like to do. To minimize
| money-driven stress of the layoff, build up a cash cushion that
| can last at least 6 months; with unemployment, vacation time and
| any severance it can probably be stretched for a year.
|
| And #7, "think whether you want to work for that company _after_
| getting an offer " seems off the mark. Sure, reject an offer that
| is not the best and stretch time on a safety offer until you get
| a better one. But do _not_ go through the motions of getting an
| offer with a company you have no interest to work for. If you do
| not want to work for a company at all, do not apply there. My 2c.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| > But do not go through the motions of getting an offer with a
| company you have no interest to work for.
|
| Strong disagree. In this economy, you regularly want to hip
| pocket job offers.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| Being unemployed, I can't support this. Keeping an offer on
| hold blocks the company from making the offer to someone else
| who actively needs it. Maybe you meant something else, like a
| handshake agreement with a manager friend who works there
| that they'll try to make room for you if you ever want to
| join.
| alocasia-1 wrote:
| This, and interview practice is a plus too.
| ptero wrote:
| The problem with going through to the offer stage with
| companies you do not want to work for is that this is
| likelier to limit your options rather than increase them.
|
| This is not a very strong prior, but re-applying after
| rejecting an offer can indicate that you are using the
| company as a fallback and may bolt as soon as you get a
| chance.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| There's some truth to what you're saying, but it can be taken
| too far.
|
| If you have the posture of "I'll take anything I can get" I
| think that actually puts you at a disadvantage in an
| interviewing situation.
|
| In my experience employers can tell who is actually trying to
| evaluate fit themselves, and who is just saying what they
| think needs to be said.
|
| I find it's easier for both parties to make an offer, if they
| know the counterparty has done their due diligence.
|
| For me when accepting an offer I'm also doing the same,
| evaluating whether I think the company has actually vetted me
| properly and has reason to think I will be a good fit.
|
| There is so much mystery in the hiring process, I really need
| the other party to be doing their half of the work. And that
| means saying no to opportunities that don't feel right.
|
| That doesn't mean I walk away from anything that's not
| perfect. It just means I am looking out for reasons to say
| no, in addition to the reasons to say yes. I think
| interviewers pick up on that and it helps me get offers.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| > Hard Truth #6: Honesty can only hurt you
|
| Honesty really has no place in corporate interactions. The author
| is way too old to be learning this lesson. The reason you are
| applying is that you "are passionate about X because of Y" even
| if you don't give a flying crap about what the org does.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Why are these universalized as if they are true of all layoffs?
|
| > Hard Truth #2: It's gonna take longer than you think
|
| I was laid off once and had a new (higher paid) job before
| gardening-leave was over (two weeks) - OP doesn't say what offers
| they turned down..
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| I wanted to get back into more hands-on work on something. Being
| laid off (well, not like a usual one, but I do not want to talk
| about that here) was not part of that plan, of course, but I
| still wanted to move on anyway. It opened me to accept dealing
| with the interview process more, which I always found unpleasant
| and tedious in the past. With that, compounded with not having to
| go through that for 8 years, sort of stuck with me. I started
| interviewing before being laid off.
|
| After getting through a few of them already, I feel a little more
| comfortable of the process itself, even if it meant I ended up
| with rejections. At least with a little boost of confidence
| around it (that and seeing my financial runway), at least now
| pushing myself on this has changed my attitude.
|
| For what it is worth though, my own interest is to work with
| something that I can improve on what I improve on. Except for a
| couple of industries, I'd do anything almost, hopefully with an
| emphasis on Java, as I think the space is a bit more exciting
| than the many years before now (or that I stopped caring over
| trends and just want to write programs :))
| hintymad wrote:
| > dynamic programming problems
|
| Truth be told, most of the dynamic programming problems in
| Leetcode are relatively straightforward: find the recursive
| relation or state transition equation in general, identify the
| initial condition, and then build up the transition from bottom
| up. What's much harder, at least to me, are those ad-hoc
| LeetCode-Hard problems that require insights or clever tricks.
| ctvo wrote:
| You're already ahead of most people interviewing.
|
| My advice if you're currently prepping: Don't worry too much
| about hard problems. They're much more rare. While true you may
| get an interviewer who hasn't properly calibrated their
| question, but more often than not, it's easy or mediums. Invest
| your time into telling a convincing story about your previous
| experiences, the impact you made at companies, and how great
| it'd be to work with you.
|
| During a downturn, Big Tech doesn't send out a memo to increase
| the difficulty of algo / DS questions. It's being more picky
| about culture fit, skill match, prior experience,
| recommendations from current staff, etc..
|
| It's more do we hire Bob who is qualified and could learn
| embedded software for hardware devices or hire Jill who is just
| as qualified but has experience in the space. Previously we'd
| hire both. Now we hire Jill.
| hintymad wrote:
| Thanks for the advice!
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I've been in that loneliness before, and don't want anyone to
| have to suffer it.
|
| One thing we can do to help is have each other's backs by
| providing references. I've made it clear to colleagues who get
| laid off that I don't care what the corporate policy says: I'll
| give you a reference. It's a moral duty.
| w10-1 wrote:
| Kudo's for reminding everyone of the idea of hard truths and the
| kind practice of sharing them.
|
| We could all get better at facing unpleasant reality; so much
| more damage is done by being avoidant, mainly to our own
| character.
|
| The key question is why recruiting is maladaptive, whether the
| market is hot or cold.
|
| The answer lies in why no one has really addressed the question:
| recruiting is spoiled by a culture and practice of secrecy.
|
| The goal is to be fair and avoid recruits gaming the system, but
| the practice ends up nurturing toxic judgments, tending towards
| the paranoid and the extreme. Paranoia excludes supposedly non-
| compliant untrustable people evidenced in resume gaps, and
| extremism excludes supposedly toxic people evidenced by ancient
| social media posts.
|
| Like defense procurement, the secrecy that is necessary ends up
| concealing and preserving toxic practices. In both cases,
| programmatic application of objective standards could dis-
| intermediate, so the recruiters/procurement bureaucracies resist
| and claim essential wisdom.
| Jiocus wrote:
| What a refreshing and reassuring read of an intimidating topic,
|
| Thank you
|
| ~
| akomtu wrote:
| "No, it's not going to make the world a better place. Yes, it
| might even make the world a worse place.
|
| But you will be employed."
|
| With the same attitude DuPont managers dumped PFAS into the
| rivers.
| throwaway85858 wrote:
| I'm about to get laid off, there's sliver of hope that something
| might come through before the end of the week but we all pretty
| much know now that the company is finished. I dedicated the last
| 7 years of my life to this and I'm disappointed that the
| investors don't share our optimism and confidence in the future
| of the company.
|
| I've been laid off before and I share the OP's perspective that
| it can be a cathartic singular moment in life that presents an
| opportunity for re-invention.
| cheschire wrote:
| > Very few of us are going to bat 1.000 during our careers,
| especially with the industry reshaping itself under our feet.
|
| This feels like it may be an iceberg. Could you expand more on
| what "reshaping" you're seeing? Are you referring to the mass
| layoffs specifically or is there some broader context to this
| comment?
| stcroixx wrote:
| Not OP, but the significant change I see is FAANG can't hire
| simply to keep talent away from their competitors anymore. Not
| sure what overall percentage of people working in those jobs
| were hired for that reason, but they'll likely never see that
| kind of salary again.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| I think SWE is a very young field. Just 50 years ago GOTO was
| commonplace (apparently?). In any case I think the future hold
| some interesting prospects, with copilot and gpt and all.
| SonOfKyuss wrote:
| GOTO is still perfectly acceptable and common practice in the
| Linux kernel and other widely used codebases.
|
| https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v5.0/process/coding-
| style.ht...
| debacle wrote:
| I disagree with some of this greatly. Some of it is 100% spot on.
|
| 1. Getting laid of is usually pretty liberating. Everyone knows
| the company isn't generally doing well, the air is hot with
| friction, and you probably know you're working yourself into a
| corner. Getting laid off has happened to me two and a half times
| now. The first time was in the 2007 crash, and the company was
| hemorrhaging money and everyone knew it but didn't want to admit
| it. The second time I happened to quit the same week the CEO was
| planning layoffs. He teared up thanking me for saving him from
| having to fire anyone. The third time was one of the worst work
| experiences I have ever been in, but I didn't realize it until it
| was over. I called my wife and was excited, not downtrodden.
| Every day for the next two weeks was full of lunches and drinks
| and I had to insist on being allowed to pay every time.
|
| 2. This is just good advice. The only things you should spend
| money on when interviewing are dry cleaning and resume paper. I
| think my longest stretch was about 9 months, and my wife was
| forced to go back to work during that time despite just having a
| baby.
|
| 3. Yes and no. Some people don't interview well. Based on the
| author's other writing, he seems like the kind of person who
| might not interview well. In my career I think I have a close to
| 30% offer rate on interviews (but I'm very picky about applying
| for jobs). Yours may be higher, or much lower.
|
| 4. This is just always good advice. Set a bar for yourself, be
| willing to negotiate, and realize that work environment is about
| 500x as important as what technology you are using. I once got a
| job at a perl (yay!) shop where I worked for literally 1 day
| because the environment was so toxic.
|
| 5. Most offers for help come from people who don't know how to
| help. The author's approach here of direct asks is fantastic.
| Most will flake on you, but those that follow through are true
| friends.
|
| 6. Yeah this was a bad move. Don't talk about your exes on a
| first date, and definitely don't bring up the ones that swiped
| whichever direction the bad one is _before_ your first date.
|
| 7. If the economy keeps going the way it is headed, ditch this
| advice in its entirety. Take that job, grasp it tightly to your
| breast, and don't let go no matter what happens. The job market
| in a down economy could be romantically described as falling
| somewhere between a chop shop and a meat market, and the hiring
| incentives for managers can be pretty twisted.
|
| 8. This has taught me to have a healthy relationship with my
| career. That post-layoff feeling should be bottled and sold next
| to the stickers that neophyte programmers put on their macbooks.
| There's nothing more seductive than confidence, and the clarity
| that a layoff brings is the best test of confidence there is (up
| there with a cold sales call, a VC interrogation, etc). If you
| can internalize a realistic understanding of your own skill level
| and marketability, you'll be an attractive hire, teammate,
| leader, etc.
| periram wrote:
| Would anyone here find it useful if I offered to teach algorithms
| and data structures, specifically catered towards leetcode kind
| of problems.
|
| The approach would be (writing it from memory, will revise it if
| there is any feedback):
|
| First master the basic data structures and be able to manipulate
| them rather quickly. We will write many small programs to ensure
| that a one can perform most of the common operations on a given
| data structure straight from memory.
|
| Then we will write transformations, i.e. being able to convert
| one data structure into another.
|
| Next up with be problems that requires a combination of data
| structures.
|
| We will spend a good about of time in graph problems, the usual
| data structures used to store / manipulate them and understand
| some of the basic graph algorithms ( MST, Traversal, Shortest
| Path, etc.)
|
| We will briefly spend some time on sliding window problems.
|
| Dynamic programming, Greedy and divide and conquer techniques are
| rather simple, but we need to distill it down to a science so
| that we can code them eyes closed :-)
|
| Order complexity, how to think about it by looking at an
| intermediate step and calculating how many operations are needed
| to get to next step. We will dig a little into the mathematical
| aspect of it.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| I've got a couple hundred LC's under my belt but I would still
| definitely appreciate something like this. Do you have a
| discord in mind or something else?
|
| Currently gainfully employed still, not sure if being laid off
| is a requirement but I'd like to keep my skills sharp just in
| case.
| periram wrote:
| Discord would be great. The parent comment was -1'ed perhaps
| because it came across as selling. Was trying to help folks
| here as I have recently gone through the ordeal of getting
| into a FAANG company.
| mvcatsifma wrote:
| This would interest me as well.
| doix wrote:
| I'm guessing #7 contributed to the fact that it took the author 1
| year to find another job. If you're desperate, you can most
| likely find an _okay_ job in 3 months. If you don't have the
| luxury to wait for a "good" job, finding a job tends to happen
| faster.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I'm in similar shoes to the author here, and am glad to hear
| you show some understanding for this.
|
| I interviewed with a quite promising company beginning of
| December, only to immediately get the written feedback (after
| the first call) of
|
| "Well I know a lot of SWE in this town and none of them are
| struggling to find a job - so if you've been looking for X
| months, surely there's something wrong with you - and anyway,
| we've already signed a contract with someone else in the 5 days
| since we last spoke."
|
| (To be fair to them - I had mentioned how frustrating it was to
| simply get "no" as negative hiring feedback and asked them to
| elaborate if at all possible)
|
| I take it as a "well, bullet dodged" moment, but I am not going
| to lie and say it didn't sting.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"so if you've been looking for X months, surely there's
| something wrong with you - and anyway, we've already signed a
| contract with someone else in the 5 days since we last
| spoke."
|
| I think letting them know you are currently unemployed is a
| mistake. Frankly your current state of affairs is not their
| business. You can always tell them that you are ok but
| looking for a better job. Very simple and understandable. Yes
| it is a lie but it is the only reasonable option. Telling
| perspective employer to sod off and not to stick their nose
| into your internal situation is not going to do you any good.
| Telling that you are out of job and looking will immediately
| put you into unfavorable position. Treat yourself as a
| business in this particular case. Businesses have zero
| problems lying to each other / their employees for as long as
| it does not break a law.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| There's really no way to hide you're currently unemployed,
| or at least not employed in the tech field, unless you make
| up an entire fantasy world. Not only will you have to put
| the lie into your resume, and maybe provide fake
| references, but you'll also get tons of interview questions
| about skills and projects and challenges from your current
| job.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| You're bang on - I was asked in the very first call for
| two references.
|
| Also in this case I really don't mind disclosing - I was
| laid off because my position was made redundant entirely.
| [deleted]
| FpUser wrote:
| >"There's really no way to hide you're currently
| unemployed"
|
| It is absolutely trivial.
|
| >"but you'll also get tons of interview questions about
| skills and projects and challenges from your current job"
|
| Your last job unless it is 10 years old should provide
| all of the answers. Any really identifying details should
| not be asked / answered as the employee is normally under
| NDA.
|
| Same for references. Reference from "current job" can
| simply be refused. I can hardly imagine employee going to
| their boss and asking for a job reference while still
| working.
|
| Anyways I am independent and run my own company. Maybe I
| am not up to date about how deep the US employers are
| able to stick their fingers up that proverbial hole.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Freelancing since 2020, most often working on foo bar
| baz...
| jacquesm wrote:
| This sort of thing is pretty common. It happens in both
| directions, if you're employed job offers line up, if you're
| available there must be something wrong with you. Highly
| frustrating. A couple of takeaways: unemployed < freelancers
| < has a job < has a prestigious job. So if possible and
| you're on the job market at least fill the time freelancing
| so you don't end up with the 'unemployed' status because
| hiring managers are going to see that as a way to excuse
| themselves, from that point forward they look at employing
| you as taking a risk, which, as a rule they are trained to
| avoid. VCs suffer from the same disability: the start-up that
| has a deal on the table will have multiple parties trying to
| get in on the deal, the start-up that is just pitching is
| probably somehow faulty or someone else would have given them
| a terms sheet long ago. They see no inconsistency in this.
| Also, you don't necessarily have to inform them of your
| feelings and the fact that you've been rejected more than
| once. Best of luck there!
| jt2190 wrote:
| > I had mentioned how frustrating it was to simply get "no"
| as negative hiring feedback and asked them to elaborate if at
| all possible
|
| Don't do this! You're inviting feedback from someone who is
| basically a complete stranger, who has an undisclosed set of
| "standards" they're judging you against, and who might not
| actually be very good at assessing talent. The odds of
| getting a "false signal" are high.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| Asking for feedback is okay if you're in the right mindset.
| Understand that unless you completely failed something,
| it's probably them, not you, and any feedback you get
| should be seen as likely rationalizing a decision they made
| for who knows what reasons. So as long as you don't take
| the feedback too hard or too personally, you might get some
| ideas for how to improve your chances with the next
| employer.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I've honestly made enough of a positive experience to
| recommend doing it.
|
| Sometimes people just genuinely tell you things like "there
| wasn't enough detail about X on your CV, but we took a
| chance and called you anyway" - that tells me that I can
| improve my chances for a callback in the future by adding
| more detail (if I get that same feedback 2-3 times).
|
| You're right though in that a looooooooot of hiring people
| also have no clue what they want to see.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| There's no reason to avoid information. You can still
| ignore it.
| [deleted]
| pinewurst wrote:
| I can respond to this having gone through a similar process in
| the past few years. There's ok and there's the (IMHO) more
| common bad. I turned down several offers myself, for reasons
| ranging from 'not wanting to be the public advocate for
| something I didn't believe in' to 'discovering the leadership
| were crypto scammers'.
| sbuccini wrote:
| Just curious, what do you define as an _okay_ job? Would you be
| willing to pay the opportunity cost to take it?
|
| For what it's worth, I thought the same. I applied to over 50
| companies and not all of them were FAANG by any stretch of the
| imagination. I'll admit I'm not the best at interviewing, which
| certainly was a factor. But even as I broadened my search to
| the "okay" roles, I still had difficulty landing work.
| doix wrote:
| > Just curious, what do you define as an _okay_ job? Would
| you be willing to pay the opportunity cost to take it?
|
| If I didn't have enough money to pay for food/rent, I would
| take the first offer. Fortunately, I've never been in that
| situation.
|
| > I applied to over 50 companies and not all of them were
| FAANG by any stretch of the imagination. I'll admit I'm not
| the best at interviewing, which certainly was a factor. But
| even as I broadened my search to the "okay" roles, I still
| had difficulty landing work.
|
| If you're thinking about the distinction between FAANG and
| not FAANG, then we are talking about completely different
| levels of _okay_. I'm talking about non-tech companies, where
| you'd most likely be working on internal tools or whatever.
| Maybe you'd be writing crappy Jira/Confleunce/whatever
| plugins. Or gluing together one internal system to another
| internal system, etc.
|
| I consider _okay_ to mean a job that pays enough money to
| cover rent/food.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| It would be great if you could share your insights about
| finding work at these non-tech companies, either here or at
| my recent post at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34108841. I've applied
| to far over 50 places and would be satisfied with that sort
| of thing at least for the near term.
| doix wrote:
| You're looking for a remote job. The sort of companies
| I'm thinking of most likely won't do remote. Maybe it's
| different now in the era of COVID, but I suspect they'll
| still be "asses in chairs, look busy" type places.
|
| Go on monster.com (or any other job search site), type in
| "programmer" (or "<language> programmer" if you only have
| experience in a single language) and start applying. If
| you don't recognize the company name or what they do,
| that's good. If you're looking for a consultancy gig,
| then you probably want to look out for keywords like
| "government" or "client". If you're looking for a non-
| tech company, then you need to google the company name
| and see what field their in.
|
| If you know Java, you can probably search for "Jira
| programmer" or "Jira developer" and find a pretty cushy
| gig writing those. If you know PHP, then search for
| "wordpress developer". If it's python, search "Django
| developer" etc.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| Yes, remote only if at all possible. I'm surprised that
| non-tech companies care about looking busy, since tech is
| a cost center for them and I would guess they're hiring
| grudgingly at best.
|
| I've looked mainly on LinkedIn and some smaller job
| boards, not Monster or Indeed or Dice or any of those.
|
| Another thing is that I'm avoiding complex applications,
| the ones where you're immediately asked to create an
| account and once you do they ask you for a ton of
| information like every job you've had in your life. Are
| the jobs you're talking about often gated behind these
| applications?
| doix wrote:
| > Are the jobs you're talking about often gated behind
| these applications?
|
| Most likely, you'll start to recognize the different
| software companies use to track job applications.
|
| My only experience was helping someone out when they got
| laid off. They had a mortgage to pay, a new born and a
| wife that quit her job to look after the new born.
|
| Being picky about job application software wasn't a the
| top of our list. I think we applied to over 500 ads over
| the course of a few days, basically every single
| commutable job. I think from those, there were 20
| interviews and 3 offers.
|
| Some of the software automatically scans your CV and
| populates stuff. If it can't do it properly, restructure
| your CV until it can. You might need a few different CVs
| for different software.
|
| I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but you don't
| sound very serious. Or at least not desperate (which is
| probably a good thing).
|
| If you're looking for a job full time, you should spend a
| few hours a day grinding leetcode and a few hours a day
| filling in those shit applications. Obviously I don't
| know you or you situation, I have no idea if this is good
| advice for you or not.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| You can judge for yourself whether I'm serious or
| desperate or not. If your standard is 500 applications
| within a few days, then no. I can't even comprehend that.
| Are we talking like 10-15 applications per hour?
|
| I don't care about the software as such, but so far I'm
| not desperate enough to provide detailed information
| about every job I've had since I was a teenager, every
| reference up front, agree to legal statements, or
| whatever else they might insist on, knowing I could be
| fired later on if I get any of it wrong, just to maybe
| get the first 30 minute phone call from a recruiter. On
| top of this is the simple logic that any employer that
| puts up all these barriers is probably not really
| interested in hiring anyway. More work for less reward,
| so that my time would be better spent looking for more
| likely positions.
|
| That said I'm willing to have my mind changed on this.
| Maybe all of these jobs are actually super eager to hire
| despite being so hostile to applicants.
| doix wrote:
| > Are we talking like 10-15 applications per hour?
|
| Pretty much, around 5 minutes per application.
|
| >provide detailed information about every job I've had
| since I was a teenager, every reference up front, agree
| to legal statements, or whatever else they might insist
| on, knowing I could be fired later on if I get any of it
| wrong
|
| Either you're completely overthinking it and you can just
| omit a bunch of stuff, or you're applying to some job
| that requires security clearance and they use those
| questions to prescreen. I remember the application for
| some defense contractor was too painful and we gave up.
|
| But if it's some standard jobvite or whatever form, just
| fill it in. Only include relevant tech jobs and your
| university education (if you have a degree) and move on.
|
| If it's really that big a deal for you, shortlist 50 jobs
| from those job search sites. Then go to /r/slavelabour
| and pay someone $15 bucks to apply for you (given your CV
| and email).
|
| > That said I'm willing to have my mind changed on this.
| Maybe all of these jobs are actually super eager to hire
| despite being so hostile to applicants.
|
| It's more likely that at some point that bought a license
| for the applicant tracking software and they'll use it
| forever. They probably have it on some default settings
| so it's not the best for tech jobs. That doesn't mean
| they aren't serious about hiring.
|
| But those job aggregator sites are a bit shit, they'll
| have listings for jobs that are already filled or no
| longer available.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| We may be talking past each other. I'm talking about
| applications for unremarkable positions at large
| corporations where the application forms are either
| branded by the company or done through something like
| iCIMS, Taleo or Workday. You create an account and then
| you're faced with several steps asking for who knows
| what. The experience question might be "List all past
| jobs starting with the most recent" with no date limit.
| Later on you'll have to agree that you answered
| everything fully and honestly or you can be fired. Maybe
| I'm a fool for taking that seriously but the meaning is
| straightforward to me.
|
| These are also the sorts of positions I think people are
| talking about when they talk about HR being a barrier,
| filtering on keywords, or how important it is to network
| around them before applying. So I don't think it's a
| matter of the company being stuck with software they
| can't do anything about, instead the hostile and opaque
| application process mirrors their actual hiring process,
| or at least I assume so. I'm happy to hear if you have
| any insight from the recruiting side at these places.
| fatnoah wrote:
| Coming off my own job search, my take is that the era of
| remote work has fundamentally changed the entire process. I'm
| going on 24 years of professional experience and applied to
| more jobs in that search than in the rest of my career
| combined. Prior to this year, I've had exactly two
| applications that didn't result in an interview, and only 3
| interviews that didn't result in offers.
|
| In this past search, I applied to about 50 jobs and had 4
| interviews. According to LinkedIn stats, most of those jobs
| had 30-200+ applicants. The results of those applications
| were: ~12 screens with recruiters that
| resulted in rejection ~ 8 rejections w/no conversations
| ~20 no reply whatsoever ~ 3 rejects in first round
| - 1 second round reject - 1 final round reject (a
| nearly 2 month process!) - 1 offer for about 50% of my
| previous salary, but a more more interesting role - 2
| replies indicating a desire to move forward that came 6 weeks
| after my application, and after I'd accepted a job.
|
| My takeaway is that it's a numbers game now. In the past, I
| was very highly targeted in my searches, but now that the
| doors are wide open to everyone across the country for many
| roles, it's about getting someone's eyes on your resume, and
| that requires a certain level of aggression in applying.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| The bar can get very low! Look into local low prestige
| consulting companies if you're really desperate for something.
| I worked at one after moving to the US and the hiring bar was
| extremely low and I was working there a few days later
| [deleted]
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I am not sure this apply to western EU thought. N=1 but I had
| a long dry spell even though I work IT.
|
| I think it's like for successful startups: luck, luck and
| luck.
|
| edit: And for having been on the hiring side a bit: I know
| luck's involved, more than people think or - worse - than
| they want to admit.
| cjaro wrote:
| I agree. I was hired over a year ago to a similar place
| that's since been acquired by a Big IT Consulting Company.
| One benefit of that situation is that a) I can kinda just
| blend in and do my job quietly without attracting much
| notice, and b) the hiring bar was insanely low, the easiest
| interview-to-offer pipeline I have ever fallen through. I'm
| not planning to stay forever, but they're paying my bills and
| giving me work so for now, I'm content to stick it out, maybe
| through the end of next year even.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| For both your and the GP's comment, it would be great if
| you could share some details on how job searching with
| "local low prestige consulting companies" works, either
| here or in a recent post I made at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34108841.
| dangus wrote:
| I was about to say the same thing. #2, #4, and #7 partially
| contradict each other.
|
| I think you can go faster if you use third-party recruiters, as
| much as I often despise them. Try to pick out one or two
| individuals within recruiting firms that are not awful. They're
| out there. Recruiters are given the jobs that corporations need
| a warm body to fill _now_.
|
| Yes, you can absolutely always quit that un-ideal job and
| completely omit it from your resume. I don't see the wrong role
| as a good reason to turn down a job when you have bills to pay.
|
| My other feedback on this article:
|
| I wish it generally talked about unemployment insurance. It can
| be a complicated process, and I wonder if the author had any
| success there.
|
| #1 should is a part of the basic life skill of understanding
| the difference between coworkers and friends. I do have friends
| that started as coworkers, and they did a lot more than help
| with the mechanics of getting laid off. I do agree that it's
| not a life skill that is taught very well.
|
| If you want to turn coworkers into lasting friends, you need to
| be proactive and invite them to do things outside of work.
|
| #3, I'm just not sure I agree with it. Getting interviews is an
| excellent indicator. At the very least it means that your
| resume is attractive. I don't think it's very common for
| companies to waste their own employees' time interviewing
| people for roles they aren't serious about filling.
|
| My rule of thumb is that if you get beyond the recruiter and
| talk to the hiring manager, the company is serious and intends
| to fill the role. Maybe they get around to it or maybe not, we
| all know how priorities can change.
|
| #5 seems like a waste of time. Either you know someone who is a
| hiring manager or you know someone who can refer you through a
| company's referral system. I think those are the only two
| activities that are productive. I wouldn't want to get any of
| those requests in my LinkedIn Inbox.
|
| Writing open source software is a waste of time with respect to
| job hunting unless you are looking to build a portfolio. Your
| time is better used physically applying for jobs (which takes a
| legitimately solid amount of time).
|
| #6, totally agree with that. The author absolutely overshared,
| and should have known better. Corporations want to know that
| you can keep secrets. Transparency is almost never in the best
| interest of a company.
|
| As I mentioned above, I'd only agree with #7 if you have
| runway/a spouse earning income.
|
| I'd almost replace #8 with "enjoy being laid off." Spend some
| days doing activities meant for joy, especially if you've
| exhausted your job application pipeline for the moment. I'm
| almost hoping I get laid off, I love not working, and I loved
| all the stuff I got to do the last time I was laid off. I
| played two video games the whole way through and read an entire
| novel, which are things I rarely get through when I'm employed.
| anon50118810 wrote:
| I've had very little luck with third-party recruiters myself,
| personally. My take is that because the job is theoretically
| easier to get, there is much more competition, and the
| recruiters are more ruthless in removing applications that
| don't meet the exact specifications from their client.
|
| Also it pains me a little for you to say that reading one
| book is a big sign of having lots of free time. Maybe you're
| not a huge reader but I hope you normally do stuff you enjoy,
| reading or not, whether you're employed or not, if you don't
| mind my saying so.
| dangus wrote:
| I'm just not a huge reader. It's far down my usual list of
| free time activities.
|
| Basically, the fact that I had enough free time to finish a
| book and do all the things I like to do higher on my list
| was one of the joys of unemployment.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Yep. Author covers that under #4. "You may have to take a job
| at a "less prestigious" company." Probably the best advice in
| the blog post.
| KETpXDDzR wrote:
| > It [work] is the gravitational center around which the other
| activities in your life revolve.
|
| Don't let work be most important part of your life! Companies
| encourage you to, so they have another cheap way to lock you in.
| Years of work from home showed me that your (social) life
| shouldn't mainly happen at work. Better find friends at
| hobbies/meetups/etc.
| Bahamut wrote:
| Love most of the advice I see here, but there's a few quibbles I
| have here.
|
| > You're going to have to grind Leetcode. Yes, even the dynamic
| programming problems.
|
| One trend I've been seeing is the MANGAs have been moving away
| from leetcode crap - in my org at one of them, I think almost the
| entire org is against leetcode questions as an insufficient form
| of candidate assessment.
|
| > Come up with a more, uh, positive reason for why you're
| interviewing instead of disclosing that you were laid off.
|
| Honestly, as an engineering manager on the hiring side, I haven't
| seen any negative perception in these times when candidates
| disclose they were laid off - its become so common as of late &
| often not due to the candidates' fault that it's a non-issue for
| us. I know a manager trying to extend a formal offer to one such
| candidate who revealed that they were laid off. I especially
| appreciate honesty in a candidate when they admit they don't know
| something & try to set the conversation around working with the
| info they have as presented to them, creating space for an open
| conversation around questions being asked instead of viewing it
| as a Q&A session. Those tend to be the candidates who get the
| highest marks from me.
| 0xmarcin wrote:
| We may revert the hard truths to get soft precautions:
|
| - Always have savings that will cover at least 6 months of
| expenses, now probably a year (if indeed it takes so much time to
| find a new job).
|
| - Socialize outside work, ideally have a network of people that
| work at other companies that you are in touch with. Sports,
| charities, churches etc. If this is hard, ask yourself if you are
| overworking yourselves/spend too much time at work.
|
| - Be careful what you are posting on social networks. Employers
| are more and more concerned about the image that you have on the
| internet. I propose to have 2 profiles, the first a professional
| one with portfolio of projects, blog, articles and what's not and
| the second for your private views (nobody should track that
| profile to your person using publicly available information).
|
| Also I wonder what the author is doing professionally. I don't
| see any hard tech articles on his blog. Maybe he is into niche
| tech or doing some no longer hyped stuff like data science? That
| would explain why it took the author so long to find a new job.
| Maybe if this is the case the author should reflect on his skills
| and maybe change his niche to something more marketable?
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I propose to have 2 profiles, [...] the second for your
| private views_
|
| Or just don't post about your views on anything (controversial
| or otherwise) on social media. Just opt out. There's no
| inherent reason why you need to post about anything on social
| media. If you must, perhaps because you use it to keep in touch
| with family and friends, just post about things that are going
| on in your life. There's no reason you need to use social media
| to air your grievances about society.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| The issue I take with this is that employment becomes a form
| of restriction of free speech. Unfortunately, the reality is
| most of us can't afford to truly speak our minds because we
| need a job to put food on the table and a roof over our
| heads. Still, even with that in mind, I think the best
| compromise is to provide strong support of your opinions and
| not just shout whatever political slogan happens to be in
| vogue.
| MRtecno98 wrote:
| Honestly if you're going to(hypothetically) rant over the
| economic system from an extremist viewpoint(like many
| people on the internet do) i won't be surprised nor blame
| the employer for not giving you a job in that exact economy
| you just spent 2k words ranting about; and you shouldn't
| neither, if you have any integrity that is. Free speech
| doesn't mean denying any responsibility over what you say,
| so if an employer refuses to give you the job over some
| rational reason regarding what you wrote(e.g. hypocrisy in
| the example before) i really don't think there is anything
| wrong with it.
|
| Obviously i'm not saying there are no employers
| discriminating candidates for a political view which may
| have nothing to do with the job itself, or that they aren't
| a problem, but i don't think the number of employers that
| are actually problematic are enough to say that they
| restrict your freedom of speech. Just find another, and if
| you can't, well then it's probably on you more so than the
| employer.
| k__ wrote:
| _" If you're like me, work is the primary shaper of your life"_
|
| It's sad to see people again and again sell their life.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I work to live, and if I quit I would not be lonely at all
| because I have hobbies and a social life that is intentionally
| completely separate from work.
|
| But not everyone is the same. Some people derive great value
| and pleasure from their job.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>It's sad to see people again and again sell their life.
|
| Why? I don't find that sad at all - some people really enjoy
| their work, and it becomes a big part of their identity. What
| better way to spend you life than doing something you truly
| enjoy and provides you an income to be comfortable and take
| care of your family/friends?
|
| I know a lot of doctors, they have spent their entire lives
| taking care of people, saving lives and generally doing good
| things. Most of them have a very, very hard time retiring when
| the time comes - it is who they are. I know several in their
| eighties who continue to practice because it brings them joy.
|
| While not an MD myself, if I won the mega-millions tomorrow,
| and was set for life, I would still write code for someone or
| something.
| chinabot wrote:
| Plenty do, difference is they just write code and do projects
| they like so no tick-tock add-ons unless that floats your
| boat.
| eat wrote:
| I'd still interact with computers in some way shape or form
| if I were a millionaire, but I also hope that such an amount
| of money and free time would expand my scope of personal
| fulfillment to some other unknown areas of life and
| consciousness beyond IT work.
|
| Ironically, I think your MD example provides the exact sort
| of comparison that should trigger some critical introspection
| for most tech workers. Most of us are not exactly saving
| lives with the time we spend in front of the keyboard.
| k__ wrote:
| There is a difference between having passion for your
| profession and selling your life to one specific company.
|
| If you have passion, you don't need to care where to follow
| it. But OP seemingly traded a fulfilling privat life with
| friends for a company with coworkers.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Don't overstep the learning, though. Hard rule #6 in an
| environment with normal, real people, who actually care about
| what they work on, is a toxic rule.
| sbuccini wrote:
| Hey everyone, author here.
|
| Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I decided to spend
| Christmas break in CDMX[0] by myself in order to reflect not only
| on the past year, but just how far I've come since I got laid
| off. This is the result.
|
| Thanks for making all those hours at the cafe (instead of at a
| museum or bar or whatever) worthwhile.
|
| [0] I'll be here for a few more days if you'd like to meet up!
| axetheone wrote:
| One of the best articles I've read about the experience of
| being laid off, thanks for writing and sharing!
| zackfield wrote:
| thanks for the post Steven. I especially appreciate Hard Truth
| #5. Most folks end up not knowing exactly how you may want to
| be helped and having a clear and specific ask helps a lot.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Great article, I really enjoyed it.
|
| Given that you now know what it will be like if you get laid
| off again, have you changed anything about how you approach
| your non-work life? Things like non-work friends you hang out
| with, non-work activities that you do for fun, Etc. Sort of "if
| I'm laid off again, then I'll fill my days with interviewing
| and ..."
|
| Glad you're back up and running and have processed the layoff!
| europeanguy wrote:
| > Only in retrospect did I understand the connotations that
| post broadcast to potential employers.
|
| So, you wanna share with us what the connotations were? Is it
| just that the recruiter read "oh, you're failing a lot, you
| must suck"? Or is there something else more interesting to
| this?
|
| I'm disappointed that this post is somewhat vague on specifics.
| But on the one situation that is set up very specifically, we
| don't get the punchline.
| [deleted]
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Not OP, but I'll take a guess that it makes the OP look like
| a troublemaker. Someone who has the nerve/gall/gumption to be
| so open as to name/shame other companies may not pull any
| punches when it comes to naming 'company X' in the future
| after something bad goes down.
|
| Posting "here's a list of companies that haven't got back to
| me" (which is possibly implicit in an open spreadsheet sort
| of post) is likely perceived as a troublemaker.
| sbuccini wrote:
| The connotations I had in mind (although I obviously cannot
| be sure what the recruiter thought):
|
| - what mgkimsal said
|
| - "This employee is applying to really big companies. I'm
| not sure they know what they are really looking for. This
| is a mission-driven company, and we want people who want to
| be here"
|
| - "This person has applied to 30+ places and hasn't landed
| a job yet? Must not be that great after all"
|
| - "Someone who posts this information publicly has low EQ,
| I wouldn't want to work with them"
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I'd also add:
|
| - "Oh someone here is treating our company as if it was a
| commodity. I don't like them."
|
| - "This person is trying to game interviewing, probably
| best to steer clear."
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| How could interviewing be anything but a game? I
| understand some wouldn't want it spoken of however.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Part of it is, indeed, talking about unspoken rules. But
| part of it is that the hiring managers and CEOs are
| humans like everyone else - some may have ego issues, or
| buy a little too much into their company's branding.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| Super post. Thanks a lot Steve.
| partdavid wrote:
| When I was laid off in 2010, I found another way in which
| honesty bit me. Or maybe it was a lesson in recognizing the
| limits of offers of help, because it wasn't _my_ "transparency"
| which was the problem.
|
| Of course I had my friends looking for opportunities and making
| referrals. One of them had a kind of clunky opportunity for me
| as an independent contractor for their company. It was a
| lengthy process to get it done, in part because they didn't
| really have their own contractor infrastructure so I organized
| an LLC, got my proper insurance, etc. Of course, I didn't tell
| me other friends about this opportunity because it wasn't a
| done deal yet, and I kind of knew the contracting thing was
| going to be short-lived anyway. Well, it turned out to fall
| through completely, which wasn't a huge surprise; but I found
| out that the hiring manager had told all my other friends to
| stop looking for jobs for me, because I was coming to work for
| him! So I was back to square one.
| stephenhuey wrote:
| Well written thoughts! I've definitely shared many of your
| feelings more times than I would have thought at the start of
| my long career.
|
| Corporate jobs disappeared due to the financial crisis one time
| and a hostile takeover another time (both of those I was
| personally happy about). And a couple startups were acquired
| sooner than expected. There can be upsides, yes, but it can
| still leave you with months of trying to figure out what to
| pursue next, and that can be a weight on your mind even when
| you're making the most of your time off. When you are committed
| to a full-time job, something you have to do every day, you may
| dread going to work sometimes or just wish you could hike up a
| mountain or something, but it helps frame your day and reduce
| the number of decisions you have to make, so when you don't
| have that there can be a significant cognitive load trying to
| decide how to spend your time in a way that others may not
| understand. "Oh, that's nice, you're consulting, how flexible,
| lucky you!"
|
| Early in my career I learned about how to come out of the gate
| blazing fast since when I graduated from college a couple
| decades ago half of the tech jobs were gone, and I had to work
| hard for months after graduation just to find a specific kind
| of application development work I wanted at the time. I was
| fortunate to find that but many others were not and had to take
| whatever came their way. But it wasn't easy, and like you said,
| I found out early that lots of interviews on your calendar
| isn't necessarily promising, so over the years I've tried to
| find alternate routes to work by meeting with people inside the
| company first to find out what it's really like, and how much
| they want to fill a specific position, etc.
|
| And more important than all the above, I recommend finding a
| listening ear to share your journey with, someone who will try
| to understand where you're at! I have some friends who have had
| the same job for a couple decades and even though they may not
| relate well, we can still try to share our different lives with
| each other and it's more helpful than you might think!
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Good article. Well written and to the point. It's sad how bad the
| employer / employee world is today.
|
| I have been providing computers services independently since
| 2007, but had a cerebral hemorrhage in 2017. Which I wrote short
| book about(It needs some work still)[1]. My NDE came without the
| typical experiences that you read about, but something within me
| had changed, I had a really hard time being dishonest and hiding
| parts of myself from the world (this is how I see it, others
| might see it differently). During my recovery, I didn't know if I
| could return to providing services independently, and had some
| interviews after being out of the work world for about 15 years,
| and man, had it changed.
|
| My brutal honesty about myself and the world didn't go over to
| well in those interviews. But it made me realize how messed up
| parts of the world are, and how the employer/employee
| relationship is really slavery to forces outside myself. A good
| book on this is "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of
| Humanity"[2].
|
| Obviously, its not so easy to extract oneself from this
| relationship, I had something to fall back on as I redoubled my
| efforts to continue my services independently. Obviously, not all
| employer/employee relationships are slavery, but the corporate
| world and the politics behind it feels like slavery to me.
|
| It feels like we are gradually moving away from centralized
| systems like these as more and more people realize whats
| important. COVID seemed like a big wake up call for many.
|
| It's important, now more than ever, that people find what's
| important to them and start taking small steps in that direction
| as it seems like concentrated industries that are too big to fail
| are starting to collapse.
|
| [1]:https://www.scottrlarson.com/books/book-most-improved/
|
| [2]:https://www.amazon.com/Dawn-Everything-New-History-
| Humanity-...
| trashface wrote:
| Plan for early retirement even if you don't want it. You may want
| to work forever, but the jobs may not want you. Already an issue
| for older ICs and I expect it will just get worse.
| dghughes wrote:
| I think when I hit 50 my fire went out. I'm not 1/10th of what
| most HNers are I trod my way through jobs IT or not. As long as
| money comes in and I can bear the job. I like technology but it
| can drain you and at some point burn-out is a possibility if
| you can't recover like you could decades earlier.
|
| Certainly save money now and always especially if young like
| 20s. Stuff money away learn how to invest. Even if you're older
| save like your life depends on it right now. Even for emergency
| funds I'd suggest a year's worth not as cash but something just
| as easy to liquidate that won't lose much value.
|
| Yes I'd say plan to retire as soon as you possibly can. Or
| switch gears to part-time work since younger workers will
| become increasingly annoying to you. You may like them but
| generational culture clash is natural.
| geekbird wrote:
| I'm less than ten years from retirement. I still need to work
| for those ten years, and probably afterward. Yes, I get a lot
| of ageism, ableism and sexism in my job searches. I don't look
| my age, fortunately, but having over 20 years in my field makes
| people want to lowball me or hire a "cheaper" (less experience)
| person. It's very annoying.
| addaon wrote:
| > You will have to interview for jobs where you will use a
| language you despise. Maybe even Java. Definitely Javascript.
|
| No.
|
| Or rather, maybe?
|
| I have been fortunate enough that in a couple decades in this
| industry, including two major downturns, I've never been in a
| position that I /must/ find a job on a particular timeline to pay
| the bills. While my life situation helps with this, I do
| recognize that luck is a major part of it.
|
| As a result, this line in particular fails to resonate with me.
| If I take a job doing something that makes me miserable, I will
| be miserable. Maybe I can put up with it for six months, but
| what's the point? During those six months, between working full
| time and being miserable, I will not be effective at looking for
| a long-term role I enjoy. Better to take a personal bridge loan
| and keep looking for something that works for me.
|
| We're software engineers. If, like me, having someone pay you to
| build cool shit is about as good as it gets -- hold out for that,
| don't settle for doing what you "despise" instead.
| sabujp wrote:
| I started programming c/c++ then perl/python and i hated java
| initially, but it actually taught me CS. Java has very mature
| and powerful libraries, e.g. rxjava and guava.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I think you're in a more fortunate position than many.
|
| > Better to take a personal bridge loan
|
| You often won't be able to get a loan without verifiable steady
| income.
|
| > Maybe I can put up with it for six months, but what's the
| point?
|
| To bring in income. Pay for living expenses. Pay off debts.
| Provide for family. Start/increase/replenish savings.
|
| > hold out for that, don't settle for doing what you "despise"
| instead.
|
| People with families and multiple financial responsibilities
| beyond their immediate needs often have to do things they
| "despise", if even/only for a short while.
|
| Your post, while not having anything specifically 'wrong' in
| it, comes across as a bit privileged. You recognize that luck
| is a part of it, and you recognize your own life situation
| helps, but you still tell people to 'hold out' for 'building
| cool shit'. Not everyone can hold out, for a multitude of
| reasons.
| addaon wrote:
| This is totally fair, and I was trying to acknowledge my
| understanding of these points. But I do have to take a bit
| more of an aggressive stance on some of this -- by simple
| virtue of being software engineers successful enough to be
| laid off in bulk, rather than dismissed for cause years ago,
| we are in an elite group. Over the previous years, we've had
| great opportunities, including the opportunity to save enough
| money to ride through hard times. The amount one needs to
| save, and the amount of hard times one can ride through,
| absolutely varies with life situation; and a black swan event
| like medical bills can destroy any amount of savings. But I
| do feel like the vast majority of folks looking to get a
| second, third, or fourth job as a software engineer (as
| opposed to that first job) should be able to hold out for
| something that is at least not "despised." And I do hope that
| those reading this who are mentally responding "nope, I'd
| have no options" might consider the value of having those
| options, and perhaps adjust spending vs savings rates while
| they have an opportunity to do so.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Agreed, and I may have been a bit too quick in the reply.
|
| I think age and life situation play a much bigger part in
| this than people recognize, and I'll go out and say
| "especially younger people". You can pay lip service to it,
| but if you're in your late 20s or early 30s starting a
| family, your financial obligations and priorities are
| vastly different from an empty nester or single person in
| their 50s.
|
| By almost any measure, a software engineer with 20+ years
| of experience - especially someone who perhaps didn't have
| kids - should probably have months of years of savings to
| tap in to to weather a downturn. But I've also known folks
| with 10-15 years of increasing experience who still
| struggled financially, and it was usually a mix of having
| kids and limited forward planning that kept them in a
| 'paycheck to paycheck' lifestyle - often, not even a
| terribly extravagant one.
|
| Most of the bad decisions I've made have come during times
| when I was in very bad financial situations. The stress
| contributes to poor decision making, and it was often
| something I wasn't even aware of in my early days. I just
| thought that's "how it is". Even getting to the point of
| having 3-4 months of savings seemed outrageous and out of
| reach to my younger self.
|
| And yes... the black swan of a medical situation can
| deplete savings enormously quickly. Even relatively small
| hiccups we've had over the years have ended up taking
| thousands out of pocket that were unexpected. Having, say,
| $30k in savings can help you weather a lot of unforeseen
| setbacks - car issue, housing issues, moving expenses, etc.
| A medical condition may drain that 'overnight'. There may
| be loads of billing delays/etc which may drag it out over
| months, but the 'debt owed' may be immediate.
|
| My wife got sick and within a few days, we're in ER with
| double pneumonia and she's struggling to breathe (scary).
| $4k owed. I blacked out from covid shot - ambulanced to ER.
| Another $4k owed. Older me can weather those costs now. 25
| years ago those sorts of expenses would have been
| crippling. And these are _tiny_ compared to other things
| that can happen - my family has generally been quite
| fortunate with respect to health conditions and medical
| issues over the years. I know others who are far worse off.
| barrenko wrote:
| Makes sense that this is the author of "Zillow did not have
| metallic balls".
| isatty wrote:
| Not a lot in here about being on a visa: you can do everything
| right, but your life can be uprooted by work authorization being
| artificially limited to x days after you're laid off. Getting on
| a more permanent visa isn't actually possible for a lot of devs.
| musingsole wrote:
| > Hard Truth #3: Interview invites are a poor proxy for your
| desirability Just because you're getting a lot of offers to
| interview does not mean that you are a hot commodity.
|
| Hard disagree. Interviewing is expensive as all hell from the
| company's perspective. Any company interviewing a rash of
| candidates is engaging in a weird strategy.
|
| Getting an initial interview is a positive sign that (on paper)
| you're qualified. Further interviews with the company become a
| blended signal of your qualifications and being a culture match
| with the latter becoming more dominant with more rounds.
| uka wrote:
| If you have to be an employee- nobody is forcing you to make the
| job your whole life.
|
| Whether you are at risk of getting laid off or not - not having
| friends outside work is a bad idea.
| stcroixx wrote:
| I was laid off once and didn't find much in common with anything
| in this article. I had two offers, not interviews, within a day
| or two of being laid off. Then 2-3 years later, after their
| outsourcing strategy imploded, they called me offering me that
| job back - this was the best part. Knowing they were making a
| mistake from day one and finally confirmation when the Cap Gemini
| losers were all shown the door. Maybe this is all different if
| your skills are more niche, but if you know something common like
| Java, I don't see any reason to have any break in your employment
| after a layoff unless that's what you want.
| [deleted]
| kagakuninja wrote:
| Yes, that was me during the dotcom boom. When I decided to get
| a new job, I had 2 offers after an intense 2 weeks of
| interviews.
|
| However, once I was in my 40s, it became considerably harder to
| get a job. I'm now 59, and my career has never truly recovered
| (and yes, I have reasonably up to date skills). All I can get
| are contract jobs.
|
| Part of the problem is that I am introverted and on the
| autistic spectrum. I have never interviewed well, and for
| various reasons, have not maintained a network of people who I
| can contact to get interviews. And even when an old
| acquaintance does come thru with an interview, I still have to
| get thru the leet code questions. Being highly recommended by
| an employee usually has little influence on whether I get
| hired.
|
| At my age, I actually handle the social part of interviews
| better than ever, but now I have to deal with age
| discrimination.
| rr808 wrote:
| I agree, I think so many teams are filled with 20 somethings
| with a 30 yo boss, no one really likes hiring someone twice
| their age.
| Beaver117 wrote:
| I don't know why people attach themselves to their work so much.
| It's just a job. When you have money, what's wrong with quitting
| to live your life for a bit? I got burned out but only stayed to
| see the numbers in my account go up. That's no way to live.
|
| I don't even like tech anymore, maybe it's more fulfilling to
| start a farm or coffee shop
| phibz wrote:
| Hard truth #9. People won't stop clicking on listicles, so
| writers keep using them.
| axetheone wrote:
| As someone recently laid off, I strongly ressonate with points #1
| and #5 and the amount of platitudes and empty words (but to be
| honest, some people were truly earnest/helpful on helping me get
| through this) involved in this makes the whole experience almost
| feel like being gaslighted by (almost) everyone. I was already
| quite aware on how unaunthentic and fake things are in the
| corporate world but this layoff (and several others in the
| industry right now) was really something else.
|
| And then companies wonder why employees are more and more
| "mercenary"...
| beej71 wrote:
| At the first round of layoffs from a startup, we (the laid off,
| not the company) started a Slack for those affected. Subsequent
| rounds added more people. It made the whole thing less lonely and
| kept up a decent network.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| [dead]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I liked this quote:
|
| _> "When faced with two choices, flip a coin. When it's in the
| air, you'll know which side you're hoping for." --Former gangster
| Arnold "The Brain" Rothstien_
|
| Basically, you'll know which direction to take, after taking your
| first step (or you'll learn to fly, after being pushed from the
| nest).
|
| In my case, this was exactly that. I got laid off from my
| previous job (after almost 27 years). It was entirely expected
| (for years), so I'd had a lot of time to prepare.
|
| When I learned Hard Truth #9 _(If you are over 40, it will be
| rough. If you are over 50, prepare to be humiliated -and not get
| a job)_ , I was fairly panicky, at first, then, I realized that I
| had plenty of savings to retire early, and I already knew of some
| nonprofits that could use my expertise, so I didn't need to stop
| working.
|
| I really wanted to retire -not to play golf, but to work harder
| than I ever have, in my life, doing stuff that is appreciated,
| effective, and untainted by bad management and "fuck it -let's
| ship."
|
| So I was forced into it.
|
| A number of companies didn't get my work, but I seriously doubt
| they miss me. They certainly didn't seem as if they would, during
| the recruiting process, and I probably would have been laid off
| again, _tout suite_.
|
| It's actually been an amazing five years.
| revskill wrote:
| Luck is vital in the interviewing game, from moment you apply for
| a position after finding a company, to the multiple rounds of
| interviewing.
|
| My thought is, don't rush. Keep and spend more time on learning
| and doing what you wanna do, go deeper on the holes of knowledge
| (not for the sake of interviewing).
|
| Good things need time and patience. It's the only thing that i
| can do, and i can't do more about it about the interviewing game.
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