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Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

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Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#591

Post by havkom »

One thing that managers generally does not like is staff that does not “fall in line” and create issues for them that they have to deal with. I would therefor not mention for example having emailed VP:s about issues or highlighting bypass functionality in systems (if your previous job description did not include to highlight this).

From a managers perspective in the example, they are trying to run an operation of good support. They have to comply with different laws and have a solution “that works”. They may not appreciate that someone in the staff highlights “flaws”. If someone highlight flaws of this type anyways:

1) if highlighted by a staff member may have to be addressed. In particular from a staff member that emails VPs. Some point in time, possibly after a difficult process, legal may have ticked this off. The manager may not be happy to have to revisit this question again.

2) It may be difficult to address for the manager (request new support services software? Get an opinion from legal? - may be a large project)

3) disrupts the main goal of the manager of providing good support services.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#592

Post by jart »

steerablesafe wrote: post #570
jart wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good comment with the right instinct but for the wrong reasons. The biggest red flag is struggling with personal finance. You can't get jobs like the ones he wants if you live beyond your means and constantly land in hot water with money because people who are like that are at risk of turning to evil to make ends meet.

Interviewing with a poor financial situation in the background can be indeed suboptimal, but I think for a different reason. You don't have leverage in negotiation and you are most probably desperate, which is hard to hide. Overall this comes trough as lack of confidence and undermines the interview. To turn this into an advice for people interviewing without a safety net: get a safety net. It can be a job that is ea…

If you're broke and don't have kids to feed, hit the road and go backpacking or something. No one cares how much money you have. What people care about is that you have an interesting story and are resourceful enough to make the best of any situation. Because one day you're going to get paged at 3am where all the technology is crumbling around you and you're the only one who can save it, and what's going to make you succeed at that moment is your lived experiences until that point saving yourself.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#593

Post by Google234 »

jart wrote: post #462
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #211

As a hiring manager, the things that stand out to me in your post: - You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative. - You talk ab…

> You spoofed emails to manipulate executives into meetings. A guy got hired at Google once because he spoofed an email from Larry to Sergey using an unknown DKIM hack he discovered. The OP said numbers so I'm assuming he spoofed caller id. That's kind of like stealing the silverware as far as hacks go. So it doesn't surprise me that would come across poorly.

I don’t think that person got hired or even applied.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#594

Post by hrktb »

fnbr wrote: post #395
ma2rten wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily agree regarding FAANG. Once someone gets an interview it doesn't matter much what their previous work experience is.

I agree. If OP can consistently get interviews at FAANGs, then that’s all that’s needed for the job.

There's the caveat on education.

From the other side of the fence, if a candidate has an atypical resume, the best course of action will be to interview to check their level.

You can't ignore the possibility of them being good autodidacts, but it will also lead to a very quick rejection if they're below those high expectations. It creates a cycle of quick interviews at prestigious places and quick rejections.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#595

Post by Pmop »

Based on your cyber security background, I'd suggest you to take a look into the DeFi space and crypto related jobs. There's a big incentive at the moment for finding holes before others do, there are bounties programs, some projects are hiring, and so on.

Edit: I think that the whole "anonymous team" and "decentralized" thing could help you in your case. Can't check on someone you don't even know the name.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#596

Post by Insanity »

What immediately stands out here is that you apply for companies that are extremely competitive. Maybe try to go for non-FAANG-style companies first.

There's plenty of work in the software field. An income is better than no income. Admittedly, my perspective is European, so I'm not sure just how bad health/dental etc actually is when working for 'regular companies' but I imagine it can't be that bad for any SWE role?

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#597

Post by kstenerud »

You sound autistic. Many of your experiences feel similar to mine.

Here's what happens to autistic people in general:

- They get ghosted a LOT because NT people generally don't know how to deal with them (and social training only goes so far).

- They get fired / laid off / pushed out / excluded a lot with no real reason given, and nobody will care if it's just/legal or not because "something about him is just ... wrong".

- They tend to have very small networks or none at all.

- The less "crazy" you behave, the worse it is because you fall into the uncanny valley. The more "crazy" you behave, the more tolerant people are of your quirks, but the less they take you seriously.

I was even ghosted by a 7-11 store when I applied as a clerk in my late teens, and wondered why the sign remained up for another month when he didn't even get back to me.

Computer jobs were easy for autistics in the old days because nobody expected much of you other than to get the thing working. Only managers and software architects needed people skills. That's no longer the case in the modern highschool-like software house. People are a LOT judgier and intolerant. You need to do whatever you can to bridge the ever-increasing divide, even faking if you have to, or risk getting pushed out. I've had mixed results saying up front that I'm autistic. Discrimination is a huge problem here.

One piece of advice I can definitely give is: Don't do any crazy stuff like bypassing access controls. That only works if you also have the panache to wow the person within 10 seconds of the intrusion.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#598

Post by tomxor »

These are all huge companies, their hiring practices are optimised for scale, they are reduced to viewing you through a crude lens of metrics.

Don't play this game if it's not coming easy to you, they just don't have time for people not easily fitting their metrics. You can get a lot more job satisfaction working for small companies and from a hiring perspective they tend to be more informal, really trying to figure out if you are a reasonable person and have potential because that is what's important to them, not appeasing upper management by box ticking a due diligence form.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#599

Post by shultays »

endymi0n wrote: post #512
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #211

As a hiring manager, the things that stand out to me in your post: - You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative. - You talk ab…

That's spot on from the advice. I'll add that OP — Your biggest issue seems to be extremely high intelligence, paired with a lack of empathy and social functioning, which created a self-expectation of massive grandiosity. But you keep failing to deliver on it because you can't get your highly powered brain on the streets, leading in self-pity and depression. Not good, but salvageable. How do I know? My life story rea…

I too suffer from an extremely high intelligence.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#600

Post by throw14082020 »

yarcob wrote: post #575
throw14082020 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not job hopping that’s the problem. It’s unemployment. Companies actually like job hoppers because they learn more, and actually can find those jobs, hence they hop. Job hopping without jobs (gaps) is unattractive but that would be unemployment not job hopping, since the dude is unemployed. I’m saying this only for people who are in utter shit jobs and have the talent to find another one, but are afraid to be cl…

If someone never stayed more than a year at a job that's a pretty major red flag. Most hires will take a year to get productive (where they produce more value for the company than they cost). I would never hire someone if I expected them to leave in a few months (except an intern). There are exceptions. An experienced consultant may be hired only for short, specific projects. But if you're struggling to get hired, yo…

It depends how many years they've got. It also depends what your definition of job hopping is. Some people say anything less than 1 to 2 years. https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/job-hopping-v2/ I definitely wouldn't be moving every 3 months, since the interview process takes time, and picking the right company is difficult.

Anyway, I was productive within a week at my current company. Have you heard of companies trying to reduce the time to impact (or git commit) of an employee, some are proud that their employees commit go into production on their first day. If it takes one year to make back the money it costs to pay them, that sounds like we should improve that process or get more value from developers, rather than expect people to stay for longer to earn back their cost.

This is clearly a tough topic for some people on HN. I would recommend you just do some interviews (this is not treason), and see what offers you get (this is fair, you might get a nice increase). Then you'll realize its not a big deal for companies (especially the one thats making the hire), it might be bigger in your head and in your existing company.

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