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

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

#771

Post by rsynnott » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #378

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…

> _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.

Yeah, honestly if I was coming from a startup that called everyone the Vice-President of Whatever (or indeed a large multinational bank; some of those also have silly title inflation) I'd be inclined to just put engineer.

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

#772

Post by JohnBooty » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

timacles wrote: post #649

cosmojg wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have been diagnosed with ADHD this year. How do I best tell prospective employers I might need some accommodation in this process? You don't. In my experience, any mention of anything resembling mental illness will result in rejection (but obviously they'll cite some other reason to avoid a lawsuit).

As a general life advice (this may sound harsh (but thats life)) ... never admit weakness or flaw to anyone that you're selling yourself to. They will immediately ignore your 99 other good qualities and only focus on the flaw you mention. Selling yourself is a game, and the ones "buying" you dont have the cognitive head space to make difficult decisions across many candidates. They will always choose the mentally eas…

As somebody who has been diagnosed with ADHD (and struggled mightily at times) ...yes. This.

Once you get the job, most workplaces simply just want you to get the job done and are fairly flexible.

Need to wear noise canceling headphones or hole up in a conference room to write some code in a distraction-free environment, etc.? Been in the industry for 25 years and that's never been an issue.

Mentioning a label like ADHD to an employer is IMO useless at best and career suicide at worst. Most commonly it sounds like you're making excuses. Best case scenario is that they're sympathetic, but, the label "ADHD" still does not tell them what you actually need. Even if your manager has diagnosed ADHD as well that doesn't mean her needs are the same as yours. So why even mention the label? Tell them what you need -- or better yet, when it's feasible, just do it the way you need to do it.

For example, working on a teeny tiny laptop monitor exacerbates my ADHD. Shuffling windows around really breaks my flow. So I like big and/or multiple monitors. If I have a workplace tech budget I use it on big-ass monitors or I simply bring my own. There are cheap, lightweight, portable 1080p USB-C monitors now and I can fit two of them in my laptop bag alongside my laptop. So by buying $200 worth of USB-C monitors on Amazon I have solved this particular hurdle for myself.

There are physical and mental health diagnoses for which I wouldn't give this sort of advice. And yeah, the world should be different.

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

#773

Post by imchillyb » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:35 PM UTC

IKantRead wrote: post #581

tough wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The idea that "experience" is an outdated concept would only make sense coming from an industry that really doesn't even really have "senior" people. Having worked in multiple fields throughout my life, I deeply miss the presence of truly experienced coworkers. For example one of the lessons of experience is that skill in the immediate task at hand is only a part of the overall engineering skillset. Experienced profe…

> ...industry vet how to solve a tricky problem only for them to, time and time again, that the best solution was to avoid the problem...

This is a world-wide, ancient, phrase: If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Which derives from the universes oldest rule: Nothing is more permanent than a temporary fix.

Senior devs have internalized these two constants of the universe. I suggest you do as well, before the third rule of the universe takes hold of your life.

Third immutable rule of the universe: He who noticed it, broke it.

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

#774

Post by johanneskanybal » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:35 PM UTC

adriand wrote: post #686

evantbyrne wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've started grinding leetcode, reviewing system design, and behavioral questions. You MUST memorize perfect responses to regurgitate as fast as possible on the interview. Again, you cannot afford a single mistake in process right now or they will pass on you. I'm not discounting that it is hard to find tech jobs right now, but have you considered that this attitude of "grinding leetcode" is possibly contributing t…

> I would imagine the most important qualities to have in an interview are going to be charisma and an ability to reason through technical problems. As someone who has interviewed many software developers, I can assure you that charisma is not something that experienced hiring managers in tech are expecting in the candidate pool. For sales positions, sure. For coding, though, competence is often inversely correlated…

Honestly as a senior if I only focused on my ability to ”grind leetcode” I would probably be laughed out of interviews instead of having more work than I can handle. Your milage may vary but don’t underestimate team play and personality/charisma. Few team managers want the team to be more disfunctional after hiring you.

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

#775

Post by rsynnott » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:36 PM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #411

cientifico wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you're discussing has little to do with seniority - those are some personality traits that are great to have, but you either have it in you or not - people who are bad at explaining stuff will usually stay bad at it for the rest of life (but can still be fantastic in e.g. architecting things). Being a senior dev is IMHO much simpler. It's all about being able to solve problems independently, without needing supe…

> people who are bad at explaining stuff will usually stay bad at it for the rest of life (but can still be fantastic in e.g. architecting things).

How does that work? Explanation is fairly important there, I'd have thought.

> Being a senior dev is IMHO much simpler. It's all about being able to solve problems independently, without needing supervision, guidance or tutoring.

See, I think this may be the disconnect/product of title inflation.

In a system where you have junior engineer/engineer/senior engineer, what you're describing is probably engineer, not senior engineer. In a junior/senior system, it's, ah, a senior junior? :) A senior engineer should be a kind of force multiplier (though such is the level of title inflation that that maybe is now more staff in some places).

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

#776

Post by a_t48 » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:36 PM UTC

xlbuttplug2 wrote: post #306

a_t48 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much this - nearly every job I’ve gotten in tech has been due to knowing someone working there, or knowing someone who knows someone.

The problem being that when you muck up the interview, you get outed as a quack to someone you know.

For me personally - if I refer someone and they mess up the interview, I wouldn't take it as them being a "quack". If I referred someone it's likely I thought they could do the job fine, it's just that they didn't do a great job convincing my coworkers - and that's okay.

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

#777

Post by formulathree » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:36 PM UTC

adriand wrote: post #686

evantbyrne wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've started grinding leetcode, reviewing system design, and behavioral questions. You MUST memorize perfect responses to regurgitate as fast as possible on the interview. Again, you cannot afford a single mistake in process right now or they will pass on you. I'm not discounting that it is hard to find tech jobs right now, but have you considered that this attitude of "grinding leetcode" is possibly contributing t…

> I would imagine the most important qualities to have in an interview are going to be charisma and an ability to reason through technical problems. As someone who has interviewed many software developers, I can assure you that charisma is not something that experienced hiring managers in tech are expecting in the candidate pool. For sales positions, sure. For coding, though, competence is often inversely correlated…

Charisma is one of those factors that bypass conscious mechanisms.

Experienced managers think they aren't screening for charisma but I would say 99 percent of managers who say this actually are, but they just don't know it. It's subconscious.

I can somewhat prove this to you because there's science on this. Charisma isn't very measurable or quantifiable but a physical attribute similar to charisma is, and that is physical beauty and height.

The more attractive you are and the more taller you are the more likely you are to be hired. It's absolutely true. There's so much studies around this it hurts. Just Google it.

There's even been a news segment in 60 minutes where they literally sent in a ugly dude with a shitload of Ivy league credentials and a handsome tall dude with nothing. And it was incredible. Ugly dude was grilled like a mofo and not hired. Handsome dude was a shoe in, didn't even get asked any hard questions.

The interesting thing is, the hiring manager wasn't even aware he was being biased. When asked in a subsequent interview on how he chose each candidate he stated credentials, but was completely unaware he wasn't even looking at credentials.

Now you yourself may be the exception just like how everyone thinks they're the exception and I'm sure you have examples to prove it too. But humans are inconsistent, I'm positive that at some point during your experience you mis-judged a person with rizz as being more technical.

Its human nature. We are wired to be biased this way. Nothing consciously immoral here. Just note that the first human bias being triggered by any reader reading this post is that they think they themselves are clearly above this bias. That should be the first thing the reader is thinking, and if I guessed correctly on that... Likely I guessed correctly on everything else.

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

#778

Post by johnwatson11218 » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:37 PM UTC

Back in 2001 - 2002 I was out of work and it was miserable. I had been doing webdev for 2 years in nyc during the dot com bubble. In addition to looking for work I was also trying to move cross country. I remember days of just spamming my resume out to 40 or 50 new email addresses that I would harvest from monster.com. This got me 2 interviews in 3 months.

I was very surprised in terms of how much harder it was to get interviews compared to just 2 years earlier. During the height of the dot com boom I had arrived in nyc on a greyhound bus and found a job writing java servlets against mysql/postgresql in 3 days w/o any contacts.

Looking back I would have been better off taking any job and reading as much new tech as I could. The long aimless days were as damaging as the lack of income.

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

#779

Post by JofArnold » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:37 PM UTC

The volume of applications we are getting for our open roles is huge and the proportion of them applying because they were laid off is higher than I've ever seen.

Given that, as you will expect, hiring teams we need to process a lot of applications and make snap decisions. You need to ensure you rise to the top by

- Keeping your CV brief and relevant

- Making it clear what things you specifically did in previous roles and their benefits

- Make it clear (e.g. in a side panel) your abilities and how they match the role you are applying for.

But yes, it's hard. The days of applicants getting ten job offers at once are over for now. At least outside AI and outside of senior positions.

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

#780

Post by WinLychee » Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 3:37 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #647

WinLychee wrote: post #553

I've gotten plenty, though I am a decent bit more senior than you. It's very hard to get an offer right now, but for sure you can get interviews. I think I've interviewed with ~10 companies for positions since June, and all passed on me, but it's mostly because I didn't take the time required to prepare. In hindsight nobody asked anything _super_ hard, but you cannot make a single mistake, or a suboptimal solution, o…

>In hindsight nobody asked anything _super_ hard, but you cannot make a single mistake, or a suboptimal solution, or give the wrong response to a question right now. >I've started grinding leetcode, reviewing system design, and behavioral questions. You MUST memorize perfect responses to regurgitate as fast as possible on the interview. Again, you cannot afford a single mistake in process right now or they will pass…

I definitely failed at one or two places on the behavioral / experience questions, but a few told me explicitly I need to improve my technical chops (I was grateful for the feedback). I felt like nobody was unfair at all, and that I just need to refresh my knowledge in the fundamentals. Basic DS & algos, concurrency, programming language trivia, etc.

Startups are kind of hard to get an interview at these days, you ideally should know someone already working in one, who can vouch for you. I don't feel like they have a low bar either, just less rounds.