This is an area were AI could really help improve discovery. I see more and more job sites leverage personalized feed technology similar to the Facebook and YouTube. One could argue its perhaps more useful for job sites :) Also check out this blogpost: https://getstream.io/blog/personalized-job-feeds-machine-lea...
Why the Job Search Sucks
11–20 of 128 posts
Re: Why the Job Search Sucks
#12"I state upfront that I have zero React experience because 99.999999% of tech companies want someone with 18 years of experience with a four-year-old JavaScript framework. I'm being facetious here but that requirement is ridiculous for a fad. Writing CSS in JS? GROSS."
You don't have experience 99% of employers want, and your response is to stubbornly write it off as a fad? Maybe that's got something to do with it? If you have zero experience, how do you know it's gross?
Re: Why the Job Search Sucks
#13> At least I know not to waste my time waiting on you.
So don't. If they don't meet your communication expectations, then it isn't a good match anyway. So don't wait. Move along.
> These tests and whiteboarding are not indicative of your skill level
No, they indicate your ability to work and talk through problems. I'm not sure where this idea that whiteboarding is about skill level came from. You can cram/study algorithms. But you can't fake the thinking process, or how you approach a problem. You can't fake your communication style. And that is what doing it in a stressful situation shows - how do you really think and communicate under pressure?
> Maaaaan, go fuck yourself.
Hmm. OK, you are being honest about your feelings, but... does anyone ever get a better result in their job search after ranting about it online? Does an employer ever call you and say, "Well, we were on the fence, but after seeing you F-bomb other companies, we decided we liked you!" I'd save these rants for AFTER you get a job.
Re: Why the Job Search Sucks
#14FTA: "These tests and whiteboarding are not indicative of your skill level, they are approximations of what you can do with what is likely to be limited information and ambiguous scope." If I'm going to make you get up at a white board (and I might) it isn't going to be to write code on it. We don't hand designers white board markers and say "draw monkey draw" - because it isn't their medium and neither is it ours. I…
I like this explanation, I hadn't put it into words before but it feels intuitively correct. For most positions, your ability to communicate what you're doing to the rest of the team is way more important than your ability to write fancy code, or do something like a sample project that isn't our actual day-to-day-codebase. That communication is what's going to keep the team disciplined design wise, keep things consistent, and keep the codebase extensible. And keep morale up since everybody is capable of getting on the same page with everybody.
Dealing with ambiguous scope is the single biggest thing I want in a candidate, so if you don't like dealing with that, you're not going to like working with me anyway. But here's the thing, from my perspective: when's the last time you worked with product or business people who gave you 100% perfect information and specs up-front and then didn't change them? If you can build in a way that allows for future change based on the needs of the team/company/market, then you're very valuable.
> I've never met someone who performs exceptionally well with thinking on the spot in front of people they've never met when the grand prize is gainful employment.
I also want to know, based on this line, how many people the author has interviewed themselves. Cause I've interviewed a few (it's at least in the 100+ area) and have seen as many people do well in that sort of environment as have frozen up. Not uncommon for them to do better than I'd expect myself to do, either, algorithmically - but neither does that always translate directly to an offer, if they're bad at the communication or wrinkle-handling parts.
Re: Why the Job Search Sucks
#15Isn't this one of those asymmetry things where the hiring company has no incentive to make the process pleasant? They hold all the power/keys etc. Before people jump in with "what about negative Glassdoor reviews" or "negative reputation", I'm saying that all things taken into account, the equation is still in favor of the company. I don't know.
It is complicated. My team is trying to hire but it is almost impossible to get a decent candidate. It is a massive time sink and still depends more on luck than anything else.
Re: Why the Job Search Sucks
#16"""
I state upfront that I have zero React experience because 99.999999% of tech companies want someone with 18 years of experience with a four-year-old JavaScript framework. I'm being facetious here but that requirement is ridiculous for a fad. Writing CSS in JS? GROSS.
"""
React is just a library for mapping state to ui elements, right? I've been using react and all of my css lives in separate .css files. Is that not typical?
Maybe they are just venting frustration but maybe blowing off what employers want is indicative of other issues or a bad attitude.
Re: Why the Job Search Sucks
#17> Writing CSS in JS? GROSS.
Similarly jsx is writing HTML in JS. The whole evolution of web was to separate, modularize, componentize the concepts (DOMs, CSS, JS, HTML5 APIs, templates etc.), what on fucking earth happened?
Re: Why the Job Search Sucks
#18One thing about feedback: Too much feedback helps candidates game the system. This ultimately leads to bad hires, who end up getting fired. It hurts the process overall.
When interviewing with a good interviewer, he (or she) knows that whiteboard sessions / tests / projects are just hypothetical situations. If I throw an unfamiliar API in front of you, and you ask certain wrong questions, I know you're not going to work out. If you "get it" and can move forward, I know you're going to be able to learn all the weirdo stuff that you need to learn in order to do the job.
But, something I learned when I was in a similar situation: Companies that demand a LOT of upfront, grueling time in the interview process should be avoided. Once a call drags out beyond 45 minutes, or the coding test is just too time consuming, it's time to walk away.
Regarding whiteboarding, if the candidate argues with me about why we're using a particular API, I pretty much reject the candidate. (No, we can't use the new threading API, I want to see how you can learn this API. No, we can't use an ORM, I want to make sure that you understand how to use a database.)
Re: Why the Job Search Sucks
#19The reference point for gaining employment is that dude who wrote Homebrew and got rejected by Google for being unable to "invert a binary tree on a whiteboard" [1]
Unfortunately with this and many other articles I've read on HN over the years, the common theme is that decent/good programmers are not making it past HR.
Everyone that wants to work in tech should instead navigate through the meetup/social space and build up a decent network for this kind of thing.
Anecdotally, at 1 interview I went for, I knew the hiring manager and our "interview" was a 15 minute casual chat. That's it.
Re: Why the Job Search Sucks
#20If you can imagine each interview as a good way to learn about the people at the company, and also about the company's processes, then you can triage as you wish.
As an example you could ask openly about the company's hiring processes, rankings, followups, and the like. If you receive answers that satisfy your preferences, that's great; otherwise, you can move on to prepare for the next company.