Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

80000hours.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 153 posts

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#21

Post by linkregister »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #10
merpnderp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure there is another way. But if you are in IT, and don't mind working with recruiters, LinkedIn is an incredibly efficient way to hook up with tons of recruiters willing to find you jobs doing exactly what you're looking (and qualified) for. We just lost a guy with barely 2 years experience on a lark response to a recruiter on LinkedIn. He made some ridiculous requests and the recruiter hooked him up.

This is not how it works. Recruiters generally spam everyone based on an inventory of jobs they have, and half the time, the recruiter is more interested in pumping you for information about where you currently work or where else you've applied. When recruiters do put you forward for a job, they require you to give up all negotiation power in advance, and generally they are paid bonuses on top of their commission if…

I was going to say that this seems like an overly cynical reaction to the parent poster's anecdote. But then I read your story in another comment that described your 14-month unemployment.

I have had good experiences with recruiters from LinkedIn, leading all the way to reasonable offers. To be fair, I have the halo effect of being currently employed. I acknowledge that the software industry has a highly irrational aversion to unemployed developers, much to its detriment.

I do want to add that for new graduates and the currently employed, recruiter messages on LinkedIn aren't strictly a fishing expedition and do lead to offers. n=2 in this comment thread, though.

I sincerely hope you find what you're looking for. As trite and uninformed as it sounds, perhaps temporarily moving back to Boston or another high job-density area would help overcome this. It wasn't clear in your other post if you were willing to relocate.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#22

Post by oppositelock »

merpnderp wrote: post #15

One thing in this article that really caught my eye was "Do free work". When I was a young kid I remember my grandfather, who was about to retire from a long career at the power utility having been head of the union, and much beloved by all his coworkers and managers, told me about how he got that job. He had been laid off at a grain mill, and was getting by as a butcher. But a friend of his got him in the door to se…

It's illegal to work for free today, unless you're a Congressional intern, since they exempted themselves from the law. Lots of "my grandfather..." stories are illegal in today's US, land of freedom and such.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#23

Post by p4wnc6 »

ryandrake wrote: post #19
p4wnc6 wrote: post #5

I've been unemployed for about 14 months since resigning from my most recent role -- a role which my close family and friends characterized as "destroying me." After becoming unemployed, with enough savings to sustain myself for a long search, I then faced a significant family trauma that required me to move away from Boston (where I had lived and worked for most of the past decade), back home to do basically full-ti…

Wow, I feel for you, having been there myself a number of times. The playing field is so stacked against applicants it's not even funny. One thing though: > I've done literally hundreds of phone interviews, had 7 different on-site interviews, and received offers from 2 of them (both of which I rejected because they asked me to accept compensation/benefits packages that were substantially worse than what I had when la…

There are a few reasons why I didn't agree regarding places that I've turned down. First, if the family situation continues to require on-going financial resources from me (likely), then it's literally not sustainable for me to accept an offer where the compensation/benefits are substantially worse than what I earned previously. Yes, if the situation becomes dire enough, I may have to, but until it does become dire, I would be setting myself up right away to struggle to make ends meet in that new job, and I don't feel comfortable doing that.

Secondly, taking a job doesn't fully solve the problems that you claim it does. For one, because I have a short stint on my resume followed by a long gap, that makes employers skeptical. If I just take the first job I can get and it turns out to be mind-trashingly horrible to the point of literally, physically not being sustainable to live with it, then I'll have to quit again, making another short stint and gap on my resume.

Most people think that about the 1-year mark is the shortest reasonable stint, so whatever job I take next, I have to believe at least that it is live-with-able for 1 year (my last job emphatically was not) before I am at the point where I could send my resume out and look again. Based on the experiences I've had, this is a fairly significant risk. Not to mention that my earnest, true goal is to find a place where I actually fit in and can focus on investing time in a real career for a long time frame.

Finally, I know reasonably well what I am worth based on past jobs, offers I got in prior years when I was already working. I suspect in at least one case that a company was intentionally trying to use my situation as leverage to low-ball me, and that just won't work. It communicates up front that they aren't excited about me, don't plan to treat me in a minimally healthy way, etc., and is just a massive red flag that I should avoid them for the sake of protecting myself and by extension also my family from what could happen if I take the job and end up being treated very badly.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#24

Post by Xcelerate »

yumaikas wrote: post #12

Haven't read the article all the way, but the "Hey HN, sorry to do this" dialog caught me off guard (I know that referrer headers can be used for it). Nice touch, BenjaminTodd.

That made my day as well. I'm actually debating subscribing — it's not often that you find someone who tends to that level of detail.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#25

Post by p4wnc6 »

linkregister wrote: post #21
p4wnc6 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not how it works. Recruiters generally spam everyone based on an inventory of jobs they have, and half the time, the recruiter is more interested in pumping you for information about where you currently work or where else you've applied. When recruiters do put you forward for a job, they require you to give up all negotiation power in advance, and generally they are paid bonuses on top of their commission if…

I was going to say that this seems like an overly cynical reaction to the parent poster's anecdote. But then I read your story in another comment that described your 14-month unemployment. I have had good experiences with recruiters from LinkedIn, leading all the way to reasonable offers. To be fair, I have the halo effect of being currently employed. I acknowledge that the software industry has a highly irrational a…

I'm definitely willing to relocate, but cannot do so unless the company provides relocation. If I can move for a definite job, that's one thing, and I can make arrangement here in the family situation to handle that. But I can't put the family stuff on hold just to move on a whim and maybe find a job. Even when I was already living in Boston, I didn't have much luck there and especially found the start-up working conditions quite poor.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#26

Post by strasser »

oppositelock wrote: post #22
merpnderp wrote: post #15

One thing in this article that really caught my eye was "Do free work". When I was a young kid I remember my grandfather, who was about to retire from a long career at the power utility having been head of the union, and much beloved by all his coworkers and managers, told me about how he got that job. He had been laid off at a grain mill, and was getting by as a butcher. But a friend of his got him in the door to se…

It's illegal to work for free today, unless you're a Congressional intern, since they exempted themselves from the law. Lots of "my grandfather..." stories are illegal in today's US, land of freedom and such.

> It's illegal to work for free today

Really? What law is this?

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#27

Post by derekp7 »

oppositelock wrote: post #22
merpnderp wrote: post #15

One thing in this article that really caught my eye was "Do free work". When I was a young kid I remember my grandfather, who was about to retire from a long career at the power utility having been head of the union, and much beloved by all his coworkers and managers, told me about how he got that job. He had been laid off at a grain mill, and was getting by as a butcher. But a friend of his got him in the door to se…

It's illegal to work for free today, unless you're a Congressional intern, since they exempted themselves from the law. Lots of "my grandfather..." stories are illegal in today's US, land of freedom and such.

In this case, you could still work for free, as a volunteer at a charity. Or attend user group meetings and give presentations. That is one way to increase your network.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#28

Post by sqeaky »

> since people need to engage over several months to get value out of the advice

This is false.

> I find popups annoying too

I do not believe you, if you did you would know that often the first response to popup annoyance is to close the window.

What do your analytics actually say happens when that popup shows? It will show that I was reading your article up until that appeared, then I entered garbage for an email and closed the window.

Will my email GoF##k@yourself.com be counted as a success or failure for your popup?

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#29

Post by robertwiblin »

Xcelerate wrote: post #24
yumaikas wrote: post #12

Haven't read the article all the way, but the "Hey HN, sorry to do this" dialog caught me off guard (I know that referrer headers can be used for it). Nice touch, BenjaminTodd.

That made my day as well. I'm actually debating subscribing — it's not often that you find someone who tends to that level of detail.

We hate pop-ups too, but it's the only way we can make ends meet and keep the site running. :)

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#30

Post by kafkaesq »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #18
kafkaesq wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am curious as to this obscure fact about GCDs and integer lattice points you got dinged for, actually.

I was asked a slight variant of this question: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/918362/what-is-the-n... >, as the third tech question in a 1-hour interview. The interviewer also did not give me any time to ask him questions. Also, nothing about the job suggested aptitude in this sort of math mattered, I think they just wanted to screen for Math Olympiad types. I wish they would have just asked me though. I'd h…

Well the relation of the GCD function to the problem is hardly obscure. But I agree, unless the role was specifically math-related it's a horrible filter question. Many hard-nosed and otherwise eminently productive and useful systems engineering types I know would surely blank on it, simply because... that wasn't the kind of stuff they geeked out on, in their high school / college years.
Post reply on HN