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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?

#51

Post by williamdclt »

My recent experience as a L5-L6 eng: applied to 15 companies advertising on LinkedIn, plus 2 recruiters reaching out, got into the interviewing process for 7 companies. Plus ~3 potential opportunities from network but not for the sort of thing I was looking for. Got a few offers, although some were for a lower role than I was applying for.

I was mostly applying for companies with a strong product and solid revenue, ranging from ~50 to a few hundreds employees, with a few bigger outliers. No startup or faang.

It was much higher success rate than I was expecting given all I heard about the job market these days. All humility aside, could be that I just have an appealing resume.

Resume was generic, cover letter mostly generic, slightly tuned per company.

I’d say network is still the best way, just didn’t work for me for the sort of company I was looking for.

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

#52

Post by Sammi »

copywrong2 wrote: post #21

I only have a very small set of companies I would ever want to work for which is a huge plus, because I just check their career pages. Small local security/pentest companies. Worked twice so far. I'm just lucky tho and I know it. What I think helps a bit is: I'm very personal in my emails and brutally honest, like I'll tell them all the bad things explicitly in the first 5 sentences (bad education, dropout). No forma…

Is your skillset rare?

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

#53

Post by tmountain »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #46
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 e…

Good point. Yeah, this was a mobile-first app company, but web skills apply (React Native, etc).

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

#54

Post by jongjong »

michaelt wrote: post #34
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,…

> Speaking to recruiters and prospective employers is cringe because, for most of them, I'm the best developer they'll meet this year Have you considered instead applying to the kind of organisations that are in the habit of hiring people at your skill level? You should - there will be far more people to learn from, and they're probably in the habit of paying higher wages.

In reality, almost nobody wants to work with intelligent people. Most highly intelligent people don't want to have to compete with other people who may be more intelligent than themselves. Not everyone gets to play the game of 'meritocracy.' You have to be a good actor first and foremost.

Especially as you get closer to the big money, the theatrics, double-dealing, sabotage, and dirty games. etc... increase by a huge factor. It's very hard to find a company of intelligent people. I've worked for maybe 15 companies in my career and out of thousands of people, I met maybe 3 intelligent people. Intelligent people aren't interested in helping out the like-minded. They'd rather surround themselves with 100 idiots they can easily manipulate. They don't need another intelligent person around them.

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

#55

Post by copywrong2 »

Sammi wrote: post #52
copywrong2 wrote: post #21

I only have a very small set of companies I would ever want to work for which is a huge plus, because I just check their career pages. Small local security/pentest companies. Worked twice so far. I'm just lucky tho and I know it. What I think helps a bit is: I'm very personal in my emails and brutally honest, like I'll tell them all the bad things explicitly in the first 5 sentences (bad education, dropout). No forma…

Is your skillset rare?

Not really. Lot's of web hacking, bit of other stuff.

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

#56

Post by ffsm8 »

jongjong wrote: post #54
michaelt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Speaking to recruiters and prospective employers is cringe because, for most of them, I'm the best developer they'll meet this year Have you considered instead applying to the kind of organisations that are in the habit of hiring people at your skill level? You should - there will be far more people to learn from, and they're probably in the habit of paying higher wages.

In reality, almost nobody wants to work with intelligent people. Most highly intelligent people don't want to have to compete with other people who may be more intelligent than themselves. Not everyone gets to play the game of 'meritocracy.' You have to be a good actor first and foremost. Especially as you get closer to the big money, the theatrics, double-dealing, sabotage, and dirty games. etc... increase by a huge…

Sorry that I've got to break it to you, but these people aren't particularly intelligent. They're just narcissistic and likely convince themselves to be a lot better at manipulation then they're.

More often then not, the "manipulated" person just went along with it because they just cba to deal with people that're convinced of their own superiority. They're tiresome to interact with and most people just don't care to bother. There was even a term for it a decade ago, they were called "madonnas" I believe. It was back when "brogrammers" thought of themselves as rockstars

As the old quote goes: You can't reason a person out of a perspective they haven't reasoned themselves into. And as such, most people just let them live in their fantasy world while moving on with their life

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

#59

Post by degosuke »

jongjong wrote: post #33
degosuke wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it might be a good idea to keep or your social accounts private? Or it's mandatory to reveal it during recruiting?

Unfortunately my Twitter account uses parts of my real name. I didn't try to hide it enough. Over time, they must have discovered it. I didn't foresee that society would turn into a censorship totalitarian hellhole when I created the account years before. I'm not controversial or hateful at all. Just Rand Paul level common sense but some people see it as improper.

Got it... So it wasn't like a step in the process: Hey, by the way give us your X/FB/reddit handles?

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

#60

Post by mcv »

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.

Do you make a separate profile for each job you apply for? That sounds like a lot of extra work.

I usually just wait for recruiters to contact me, which is easy, but I've got to admit it doesn't give me a lot of control.

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