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Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#41

Post by netdevnet »

dheera wrote: post #25
keyle wrote: post #6

The older I get, the worse I find the experience. I've had so many poor experiences with recruiters over the years, I think I'm becoming allergic. It's getting harder to pierce through the BS layers with all that new meat on the market, and to make the matter worse, recruiters are even less skilled than they ever were and are often offshored now. It's insane today. When I'm on the hiring side, we can't find candidate…

That works for startups, but most larger companies still won't hire you without an interview, your old collegaues can only refer you to hiring. Very often that's where I screw up. I code computers, not goddamn CoderPads. I run my shit to know if it works, not pretend I'm an interpreter and go through line by line. I cut and paste boilerplate and edit it, not write the boilerplate. Some dude in an interview at a very…

Tech folks often complain about the interview experience but a big part of that experience is created by tech folks. Stuff like what you went through is really to blame in tech culture imo

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#42

Post by ayewo »

dheera wrote: post #32
jongjong wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age discrimination is real... I'm 35 and I could feel it kicking in big time. It's particularly obvious in my case because my resume is excellent. I don't say that to brag. Speaking to recruiters and prospective employers is cringe because, for most of them, I'm the best developer they'll meet this year but they can't hire me because of my age, race and sexual orientation. Can you guess them? I think also in my case,…

> Age discrimination is real... I'm 35 That's not really the typical age where age discrimination sets in. In fact 35 is very much a sweet spot where people would respect your experience but you still look young enough to be hanging out with people in their mid 20s. If you really think it's an issue don't state your graduation year on your resume. > my libertarian views on social media and cryptocurrency background h…

Agreed that finding solutions is a good step forward.

There’s even a (paid) tool that can bulk delete tweets for you.

https://tweetdeleter.com/

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#43

Post by netdevnet »

jongjong wrote: post #24
keyle wrote: post #6

The older I get, the worse I find the experience. I've had so many poor experiences with recruiters over the years, I think I'm becoming allergic. It's getting harder to pierce through the BS layers with all that new meat on the market, and to make the matter worse, recruiters are even less skilled than they ever were and are often offshored now. It's insane today. When I'm on the hiring side, we can't find candidate…

Age discrimination is real... I'm 35 and I could feel it kicking in big time. It's particularly obvious in my case because my resume is excellent. I don't say that to brag. Speaking to recruiters and prospective employers is cringe because, for most of them, I'm the best developer they'll meet this year but they can't hire me because of my age, race and sexual orientation. Can you guess them? I think also in my case,…

I couldn't guess anything other than what you revealed, mind sharing? Also, what are your actual views on crypto that you think stops you from a tech role?

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#44

Post by johnnyanmac »

dxuh wrote: post #17
delbronski wrote: post #12

Personally, I'm not interested in a FAANG or hot startup job. So not sure if my "classic" strategy works for those positions. I also got 15+ years experience(in my late 30s). I use the exact same approach today as I did 15 years ago. When I'm in job hunting mode I search through job postings every morning. If I find an opening that stands out I write the company a short email stating my interest and why I think I'd b…

Where do you look for job postings? I figure this is very dependent on location.

and perhaps industry/domain. Though these days it feels like all parts of tech are extending the interview process. It was already too long to begin with but it feels like every person in the company needs to slowly schedule an hour to talk every week for 3 months straight before considering you as a candidate.

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#45

Post by [deleted] »

blipvert wrote: post #30
jongjong wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age discrimination is real... I'm 35 and I could feel it kicking in big time. It's particularly obvious in my case because my resume is excellent. I don't say that to brag. Speaking to recruiters and prospective employers is cringe because, for most of them, I'm the best developer they'll meet this year but they can't hire me because of my age, race and sexual orientation. Can you guess them? I think also in my case,…

> I'm the best developer they'll meet this year but they can't hire me because of my age, race and sexual orientation. Can you guess them? I already know that I wouldn’t want to work with you - not due to your characteristics. I suspect that I share them - but because you come across as such a whiny ass. > I think also in my case, my libertarian views on social media and cryptocurrency background have hindered me. Co…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#46

Post by johnnyanmac »

tmountain wrote: post #36

I staffed an entire team back in January just using HN (Who's Hiring) and a very high-touch email strategy. I made a video introducing myself and my company, and I screened on comp in the first series of exchanges (based on the budget we could afford). I've been running with this team for 7 months now, and the folks I hand picked out of ~200 applicants have been truly fantastic. I know this is about finding a job and…

>You really have to make yourself stand out, and proof of work is a great way to do that (personal websites showing work, etc).

Sounds like you work in Web? Pretty much impossible to do that in games while looking for a senior role. They all want shipped professional games, but shipped games by their nature are NDA'd (and larger studios don't care about generalists who can ship their own indie). Sometimes you can't even talk about specific parts of a game you worked in.

In my junior years personal projects were invaluable, though. Nothing better to show you can code your way out of a paper bag than making a few game jam games.

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#47

Post by johnnyanmac »

throwaway019254 wrote: post #2

I posted here the steps I'm following when looking for a job: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36494126 And I would say I am pretty successful.

times sadly changed very quickly in 18 months. Recruiters are flooded with applicants, they won't respond as often to a cold message. I would indeed say it worked maybe 7/10 times for me in 2019-2023, but this year it's been barely 2/10.

Some are just "ghost jobs", some are on a hiring freeze but want to look like they are growing. Some may simply be apathetic. I had recruiters contact me, schedule a call, and then ghost the call and any follow ups. That's unheard of for me in 2023 or before.

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#48

Post by johnnyanmac »

> but I'm curious what the HN community's experience has been recently.

TL;DR: Dreadful for me. Games was never stable, but these days it's imploding in real time and my calls slowed to a trickle. Crazy how much changed in 2 years. The worst part isn't the rejections but the disrespect.

For reference, I had 7 YOE when I was laid off in 2022, and it took maybe 40-50 apps leading into 6-7 interviews and I accepted my first choice while I was 5+ interviews deep into 2 others. 3 months or so of seaching.

Studio shuttered in 2023, took a break, started looking in September of 2023. Boy, it felt like finding my first job all over again. Hell, it's worse than that; I at least lucked out into my first FTE after 3-4 months. It's been over 9 months and I felt like I experienced every bad glassdoor review in the book short of outright scams:

- See an interesting role and it's closed after an hour.

- Try to contact recruiters or old colleagues to express interest. Sometimes I get a response from the recruiter for my resume, send it, then never heard from again. Not even a "sorry we're looking for someone with more experience/more experience in X".

- Interview one or two stages in and then a hiring freeze occurs. Or better yet, layoff announcements. Especially wary now when interviewing towards the end of a fiscal quarter.

- given some project that "only takes 2-3 hours". ends up taking more like 8-10 hours (even when I optimistically estimated the project scope to be 4-5 hours), turn it in.... and no response. This is how I got my first job back in the day but I will absolutely never do a project without talking to a human anymore. (fwiw, no. I highly doubt this was anything worthy of spec work to use professionally. Some were basically college math + comp sci quizzes. Some were basically filling in a template).

- Get referrals. Higher rates, but I'm shocked how many lead to no responses. my referrals almost always lead to at least an exploratory call. Here it's gone from 95% response rate to 40%. still better than cold applying but crazy how even people vouching for you on the inside may lead to nothing (not even a generic rejection. Some referrals had to prod the manager and get some response).

- Get an invitation to a recruiter call who reached out for me. I setup a call and confirm on email. No Show. Never responds back again. This has happened twice now. One of them delayed a call a week, then another week, and 10 minutes after the 2nd delay just deleted the call. Never heard back from them again.

- get a recruiter call, express interest, then say the role is filled... all within 24 hours.

- Go through 5 rounds of interviews, get good vibes from the team, expect good news (or at least "we went with the other candidate") and then... nothing. Ghosted after 6-8 weeks of interview. This happened Twice. What the heck? When did I enter the Ghost Zone? This is crazy.

I lost count long ago, but I must be well past 400 applications at this point. My current part time role came from a complete blind message on LinkedIn, so I'm not exactly going to say LinkedIn is useless or obsolete. I've tried half a dozen other websites and LinkedIn is only second to applying directly on the company website.

It's just weird times. My rates were never as stellar as many stories you read here (the 2022 experience was still ~16-20% response rate) so I'm used to that. But the real kicker is just how little respect there is these days. I'm more than burned out from trying to curate my resume and make a homely cover letter talking about their projects, what I liked, and what I can help with. I lose hairs every time I am lead to a workday application knowing I need to re-enter 99% the same stuff but under a "new account".

The only solace is knowing I'm not alone. Most of my close friends got hit or barely dodged layoffs. I think at this point almost all of them bounced back (except one that was laid off 2 months ago or so during the Activision layoffs), but I am treading water.

funny side note: got one more rejection (this one actually came from a HN Hiring post) as I wrote this comment. Fine enough (it's 2AM right now, so I'm guessing this wasn't a US company). I just can't believe I'm in a situation where a personal feeling rejection is one of my better experiences this year.

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#49

Post by shalmanese »

dheera wrote: post #25
keyle wrote: post #6

The older I get, the worse I find the experience. I've had so many poor experiences with recruiters over the years, I think I'm becoming allergic. It's getting harder to pierce through the BS layers with all that new meat on the market, and to make the matter worse, recruiters are even less skilled than they ever were and are often offshored now. It's insane today. When I'm on the hiring side, we can't find candidate…

That works for startups, but most larger companies still won't hire you without an interview, your old collegaues can only refer you to hiring. Very often that's where I screw up. I code computers, not goddamn CoderPads. I run my shit to know if it works, not pretend I'm an interpreter and go through line by line. I cut and paste boilerplate and edit it, not write the boilerplate. Some dude in an interview at a very…

I'd be wary of almost any startup that hired without any form of interviewing whatsoever. The big difference is that you walk into the interview as a default-yes rather than a default-no, ie: they're on the lookout for any red flags that would cause them to have serious reservations but if no flags pop up, you're assumed in.

At big companies, there's more of a formal process but the key is get the attention of the hiring manager and make sure that hiring manager has enough juice to quietly backchannel to whatever process to treat this as a default-yes conversation. A good sign of how effective your manager is at a Bigcorp is how well they know how to work their internal system to get the right people onto their team.

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