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Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

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Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#451

Post by physicsguy »

stonks wrote: post #105
physicsguy wrote: post #91

Things that disqualify CVs straight away for us: * Unclear if have right to work in country. This needs to be stated up front! Our company can't sponsor visas, so if based in another country unless it says something about the visa status, we basically have to throw it away. * Poor grammar, spelling, attention to detail on CV. I get some CVs through that are almost unreadable. I'm not saying if there's a single typo t…

Why working in crypto exchanges would show poor judgment? There are still technical problems to solve. I knew a principal engineer who heavily disliked blockchain because it uses a lot of energy for proof of work, but with proof of stake this should be better now.

It’s an industry full of grifters and scams?

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#452

Post by softwaredoug »

dmvdoug wrote: post #447
softwaredoug wrote: post #429

I’ll be honest. Some people are bad at interviewing and selling themselves. Some of the best people I’ve worked with are getting passed over because they’re quiet and undersell themselves. Some of the more incompetent people can bullshit their way through the process and really oversell themselves. They think they’re gods gift to the field, and believing that, they can sell it. It’s 100% Dunning Kruger. I don’t know…

> Some people are bad at interviewing and selling themselves. 100% me. Also, hi, Doug.

Whenever I meet another Doug we have to fight Highlander style to try to get the others powers. ;)

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#453

Post by NikolaNovak »

cientifico wrote: post #341
whiddershins wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no one calls someone with 5.5 years of experience a junior engineer.

I do, and quite frequently. After more than a 2 decades in software development (rails/web/...), for me to consider a developer to be a senior it needs to: * Communicate: For example: can explain tech concepts to non tech people, or inform on Monday that the sprint will be unlikely to be done in time. * Can estimate and adapt to changes. Be boring and predictable. * Can work/collaborate/teach with other devs. I got t…

So I'm not alone!

I'm my environment, senior developer needs a deep understanding of technology but more importantly a deep understanding of business and business processes. I'm in the ERP space so a senior Dev can talk business language - they Co develop and guide functional specifications with business analysts. In other words they understand hr or pay or financial processes of the company.

I wish I could assume all those other qualities as well, but while some here think good communication is easy to acquire early, my experience is the opposite - there are many 20 year veterans that cannot / should not be put in front of a client. They are wizards at technology but not at communication - presenting things to non experts, understanding other points of view, etc. You have to WANT to learn things other than technical proficiency, and even here, that's frequently derided / seen as uncool. "Manager" is of course a swear word insult so anybody who wants to learn communication or empathy or estimates or hard conversation is "no true techie" :-/

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#454

Post by tough »

blitz_skull wrote: post #435
rsynnott wrote: post #282

It's not a good job market, but it doesn't seem normal to spend six months applying and only get _one_ interview. It might be worth asking friends or former colleagues, ideally people who actually are involved in recruiting (hiring managers etc) to take a look at your resume and LinkedIn profile and see if there's anything glaringly wrong with them. Is your resume in a weird format, or is it structurally weird/overde…

> whereas everyone else would call that person [with 5 years experience] a junior engineer I’ve met people with 3 years experience who I’d consider more senior than myself (8 years). Some folks just learn really fast and/or don’t do much else other than work. Not sure time is relevant to your skills or title after about 2-3 years.

It's such an old-fashioned way to look at skills and experience.

Tbh there should be real ways to measure all this but there aren't.

If you can code by your own without handholding, are you a junior at that point anyways?

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#455

Post by tough »

Macha wrote: post #390
yodsanklai wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _wild_ title inflation I'm wondering if it's important to put a specific title on one's resume. I assume many companies don't have any titles at all and everybody is just a "software engineers", whether they are a fresh graduate or 10 years of experience tech lead. What is more relevant is the scope of the job done which should be listed in a job description.

I think yes. While many companies have unprefixed titles, others have just plain "Software Engineer" as one step above graduate and even some otherwise decent companies will discard resumes applying for senior/lead positions when a HR drone does a first pass and decides "no senior level experience", even if your descriptions are full of business impact and leadership experience.

I think it's also important to know what you're applying to too.

If you're applying to a Frontend Engineer Position, and you're a Software Engineer who's comfortable with both parts and the full stack, you just shut up, put frontend engineer in the CV, and let them choose you, you can always tell them you also know to do backend stuff on the interview....

First passes are pretty simple, they just match their job position with the stuff recieved.

ATS filter you based on keywords before a human does

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#456

Post by pluc »

shagie wrote: post #397
darkwater wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never heard the full stack term in early '00s, but I was very very junior so it might be me, anyway I'm pretty sure that nowadays "full stack" has a specific meaning (basically only related to web development) and that it was different back in the day

Full stack back in '00 was typically LAMP. Linux, Apache (httpd), MySQL, and Perl, Python, or Php. As a full stack developer, you were expected to be able to do system administration for Linux, setup and configure Apache httpd server, work with MySQL (create tables, know SQL), and work in a language that typically started with 'P'. The way that CGIs (and Php) worked implied that you did front end and backend work as…

What you are describing is not full stack, it's backend development.

Full-stack adds the front-end, and that's why you won't find js devs that can configure nginx, because they've been surfing on that "full" part of "full-stack" for years but it really just means you can do node and JS.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#457

Post by azangru »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #404
azangru wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there's a step between a junior and a senior?

We typically use programmer, developer, or software engineer as synonyms as a whole, but I tend to view those titles as more junior/intermediate/senior. A programmer can program code good enough, but that doesn't mean they are good at solving the goals business requires and communicating it. A developer can program and develop a small enhancement with good communication. Sometimes can also break things down so other…

> but that doesn't mean they are good at solving the goals business requires

I wonder if any newcomer to an organization, regardless of how senior they are, won't be in this same position. In order to solve business goals, they need to understand them properly. In order to understand them properly, they need context. The context comes from working in the organization for some time (months to years, depending on the size and the transparency of the organization).

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#458

Post by tough »

smeyer wrote: post #409
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but it doesn't seem normal to spend six months applying and only get _one_ interview. At this point in time, it's completely normal for people breaking into the industry.

But someone with 5.5 years of experience isn't a person breaking into the industry.

Unless they have 6 years of 11 months experience doing the same thing.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#459

Post by lokhura »

randomuser23423 wrote: post #66

For what it's worth, I'm in a 'hot' area and my application response rate is something like 3%. I've also had this bad luck where a lot of the larger companies I've been interviewing with have rejected me without giving a reason, and then a month or two later (or one time, the day after the onsite!), I'd see that they were having layoffs. edit: and just as an aside, I'm a minority in tech, and I feel a bit like I'm m…

I'm a minority in tech too and I never respond to the race, ethnicity and gender questions. There are many red flags to find out which companies are likely to be racist. If the company's diversity statement is larger than the job description, I do not apply. So far this has worked pretty well for me. I applied to 25 jobs in the last month and I got 3 interviews so far. I think ethical companies that do not partake in racist statistics appreciate you not answering those questions.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#460

Post by marcusverus »

firefoxd wrote: post #63

I hate to say this, stop applying. Find a recruiter on LinkedIn. This is what it has come to. There are thousands of resumes being sent at my company, yet the recruiter can't find anyone. Why? Because no one is applying through her link. The regular resume channel is reserved for bots at this point. Contact a person and you have more chances.

I would add to this that you should find a handful of recruiters and check in with all of them regularly. As long as you make sure that you don’t get submitted to the same job twice, the more recruiters you have working for you the faster you’ll find something. To find recruiters, do a Google search for recruiting firms that have physical offices in your town, find an experienced recruiter who works for them on LinkedIn, and call into the front desk asking to speak with them.
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