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

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

#121

Post by BenjaminTodd »

enimodas wrote: post #86
BenjaminTodd wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, I'm the author of the piece. If you know any other good resources or statistics we should incorporate, I'm keen to hear about them. If you disagree with something, feedback is very welcome.

In part 1, income vs life satisfaction, maybe for correctness you could mention that the functions don't taper off, they behave logarithmic.

Positive effect, stress and feeling sad taper off, while life satisfaction is log. I don't think we say life satisfaction tapers off, but it's a bit unclear.

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

#122

Post by BenjaminTodd »

enimodas wrote: post #86
BenjaminTodd wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, I'm the author of the piece. If you know any other good resources or statistics we should incorporate, I'm keen to hear about them. If you disagree with something, feedback is very welcome.

In part 1, income vs life satisfaction, maybe for correctness you could mention that the functions don't taper off, they behave logarithmic.

Positive effect, stress and feeling sad taper off, while life satisfaction is log. I don't think we say life satisfaction tapers off, but it's a bit unclear.

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

#123

Post by BenjaminTodd »

cottonseed wrote: post #96
BenjaminTodd wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, I'm the author of the piece. If you know any other good resources or statistics we should incorporate, I'm keen to hear about them. If you disagree with something, feedback is very welcome.

Have you read Nick Corcodilos's Reinventing the Interview? There is a lot of overlap with your advice (understand the employer's problems, explain your value, etc.) Related to "Do free work", something I always liked, he recommends you actually do the work you're being hired for in the interview. How better to demonstrate how capable you are?

no, thanks, I'll check it out.

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

#124

Post by atom-morgan »

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…

I would love to do this and I'm convinced this would land me a job 90% of the time. But laws and privilege and all that stuff prevents me from doing what I believe is in my best interest.

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

#125

Post by hibikir »

graham1776 wrote: post #69

The one thing I always tell anyone on the job hunt, which few ever seem to take me up on: Informational Interviews. These are informal "can I take you out to coffee?" talks with people in your industry to see what they are working on, what is happening with them, what is going on in the industry. Every job I have ever gotten is through informal meetings with people I have met through my network (whether its the curre…

The results from that advice vary wildly depending on your 10 minute personal skills.

I know someone who happens to be extremely likeable that way. In this case, that person also ends up spending very little effort in fostering long term relationships, or doing the job well, but changing jobs becomes easy: Staying at a place is hard.

Someone else I know has Aspergers, so in a 5 minute coffee they appear to be 'off': unlikable. However, after a few months, care for users, coworkers, and technical competence show through: Instead of a very wide network, they have a much smaller one, but the people in it would recommend them for absolutely any job, warning others that the first impression of the dreaded "culture fit" will be very wrong.

Therefore, some people are great at this, are easily liked, and get very far on meeting for coffee. Others that lack those social graces, or are part of groups that are typically prejudged as incompetent, will fail with this shortcut. The solution is probably still networking, it just might be a very different kind of networking than informational interviews.

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

#126

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

graham1776 wrote: post #69

The one thing I always tell anyone on the job hunt, which few ever seem to take me up on: Informational Interviews. These are informal "can I take you out to coffee?" talks with people in your industry to see what they are working on, what is happening with them, what is going on in the industry. Every job I have ever gotten is through informal meetings with people I have met through my network (whether its the curre…

Anyone who already has a network is someone who either isn't looking for a job, or who will already find one without any help or advice for you.

For actual computer nerds, they may not have much of a "network". And so there's no one to ask out for coffee. And for them, your advice just sounds strange.

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

#127

Post by mercutio2 »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #78
kafkaesq wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have an undergrad degree in math, a master's in applied math (focusing on MCMC statistical stuff), and a master's degree in electrical engineering (focusing on computer vision), and I did not know this, and it would have taken me more time than was allotted in the interview to derive it for myself. I feel that when I was asked and I said, "I don't know" it was the unequivocally right thing for me to say to capture…

I really feel for your personal situation, and I appreciate your candor here.

Unfortunately, I come from the school of thought often derided hereabouts that this is an excellent interview question, and your unwillingness to engage with the question would've gotten you a bad score for that interview.

Generally speaking I think it's great to start with:

A) I don't know a great solution to that! Would you like me to brute force it? If I, the interviewer, am looking for brute force I'll say yes, code it up, but if not I'll say no, imagine we've already brute forced it and now we've found we need to optimize

B) I won't care if you actually figure out the precise closed form gotcha answer, but I'll want you to engage seriously. It's a test of whether you can discuss and identify patterns in a coherent way when working with a colleague, which is probably the most important signal for me, second only to "will this person get things done in a normal 40 hour work week"

It's entirely possible the interviewer was just a jerk, and wouldn't engage with you, and I feel bad for people who freeze in high pressure interview situations. But at first blush, your response sounds like you wouldn't engage with the problem at hand, and that just isn't the way to go in an interview, if at all possible.

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

#128

Post by mseebach »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #126
graham1776 wrote: post #69

The one thing I always tell anyone on the job hunt, which few ever seem to take me up on: Informational Interviews. These are informal "can I take you out to coffee?" talks with people in your industry to see what they are working on, what is happening with them, what is going on in the industry. Every job I have ever gotten is through informal meetings with people I have met through my network (whether its the curre…

Anyone who already has a network is someone who either isn't looking for a job, or who will already find one without any help or advice for you. For actual computer nerds, they may not have much of a "network". And so there's no one to ask out for coffee. And for them, your advice just sounds strange.

No, this is exactly who needs this. People who have a network are already doing this on daily/weekly basis without even thinking about it.

Identify someone you'd like to have in your network, and approach them. Start with people you find approachable, someone "in your league", but perhaps a few years ahead of you, and work you way up. If you show a modicum of modesty (so, perhaps your first approach isn't Elon Musk) and be unfailingly polite and respectful, most people are in fact flattered that you want their advice.

After each interaction, evaluate it for yourself, and improve your approach. Rinse and repeat.

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

#129

Post by sp332 »

LionessLover wrote: post #119

It's amazing, this site is more and more like reddit or Slashdot. This comment is heavily downvoted? It's punishing people for not being outgoing. More and more silly and baseless "I don't like this" downvotes n this forum. Actually, the number of people who are comfortable to follow this advice is likely far lower than the opposite. Also, it depends on your history: As an introvert you don't have a useful network to…

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. If you have money, you will have more opportunities than if you don't. Same with having a big network. But you can develop a professional network just by talking or writing - it takes some time, but it's not as much of a gamble as getting rich. It's fine to "behave very awkwardly". You're not asking these people to be your friends, you're talking about an industry that you're interested in.

Why is it necessary? Well, think of you and job openings as nodes on a graph. Each job is only going to look out through its network until it finds someone to fill it. The more connections you have, the better your odds of being found early in the search - which in this case, means being found at all. People are just nodes on the graph between you and a job. Again, they don't have to be social connections. It's in their best interests to find a good candidate quickly too.

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

#130

Post by mseebach »

LionessLover wrote: post #119

It's amazing, this site is more and more like reddit or Slashdot. This comment is heavily downvoted? It's punishing people for not being outgoing. More and more silly and baseless "I don't like this" downvotes n this forum. Actually, the number of people who are comfortable to follow this advice is likely far lower than the opposite. Also, it depends on your history: As an introvert you don't have a useful network to…

But it's not "punishing" people for not being outgoing. This is actually actionable advise: if you network isn't hot, start lower, and warm it up first. It's hard, yes, and if you're really socially awkward, it will take some training to get used to. Nobody says you'll have to enjoy it, but sometimes the path to success have some unenjoyable steps along the way.
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