>What can you do?
Have the skills the company wants at a price they're willing to pay. That always works for me.
61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience
101–110 of 364 posts
Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience
#102Won't the market sort out whatever this is? Is there a specific unfair mechanism at play that would prevent supply and demand from finding its balance?
Things in nature are rarely in equilibrium. What you see with your eyes to today is the aftermath of what remains after multitudes of systems have overloaded and destroyed themselves. To assume that markets sort everything out is folly. Nature tends towards entropy.
Markets only sort everything out if the incentives are right. Stock markets are efficient because people can make money out of predicting future prices. But people don't always benefit from making good hiring decisions. They might even be punished for hiring the best, because companies are made out of competing individuals, and an excessively good candidate could make them look worse by comparison. Hiring markets are optimized for ass-covering, not profit. The experience requirements let people deflect the blame if anything goes wrong.
Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience
#103Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience
#1043+ years doesn't mean 3+ years "in a job". That makes no sense. (Well, maybe for some companies it does, but you don't want to work there anyways). For some reason people can never get over that. It means 3+ years with a technology. It means don't walk in the door out of a Java college having used nothing else and apply to work on a Triple A game written in C++. It means don't show up after a weekend html course and…
Bull. I've been using Python since high school, but very few employers I've ever spoken to were willing to actually label me as having any years of experience in Python.
Did you have anything to show for your work since high school? Any projects online? Github codebase?
I know a Github profile shouldn't necessarily be required to count as experience. But if your only experience is non-work related then you're probably going to want to back it up with something tangible.
Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
>without any personal interest / passion in technology Can I not work in tech without being passionate?
You have to have had some level of passion to bother learning about it. It takes time to learn a topic, that's a form of passion - a drive. That's not to say you have to burn all hours on it tho. Which I think is what you're assuming there. That's honestly somewhat unhealthy and only super passionate people (and lucky ones at that) can do that for any length of time.
Passion requires enthusiasim, not merely drive.
Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I once interviewed a guy who claimed to have done iOS development since 2007 – basically since the iPhone launch. There was no iOS SDK that year, it only came later. Guy was a bit embarrassed when I pointed that out. This could have been a honest mistake, but then I started looking for more "mistakes" and found a bunch more non-plausible stuff. I then went ahead and hired another guy with literally zero job exp…
This isn’t an argument to not lie, it’s an argument to know what you are lying about. I’ve seen plenty of people lie their way into great jobs.
Me too. And frankly, I could not care less about whatever someone says to HR during the non-technical B.S. interview process that some companies have. "Tell me a time where you did X". Make up whatever story you want, they will not fact check you, as long as you don't overdo it.
For technical interviews though, it depends on how deep the interviewer will want to probe. Banking that they won't care or don't know their stuff is not really a winning strategy.
People may overlook some of the job requirements (many interviewers won't even look at what's written in the job offer itself!). They will not look the other way if they catch you lying, even if it about something that's of no consequence for the job. You get branded as not trustworthy from the get go.
Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience
#107Entry level doesn't mean people with no experience, and it means something different for every company. Entry level for the NFL means having 8+ years of football experience for instance. Not every company hires people straight out of highschool or college. But there still are many that will hire people with 0-1 years of experience for entry level roles.
X years of experience might also count part time work done during college.
Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I once interviewed a guy who claimed to have done iOS development since 2007 – basically since the iPhone launch. There was no iOS SDK that year, it only came later. Guy was a bit embarrassed when I pointed that out. This could have been a honest mistake, but then I started looking for more "mistakes" and found a bunch more non-plausible stuff. I then went ahead and hired another guy with literally zero job exp…
Is this true? My business partner and I started doing iOS app development in august of 2008, and we were distinctly afraid we were late. edit: Ok, the SDK arrived in March '08. I guess we weren't that late.
Mr. Jobs was adamant that web applications would be just fine, no SDK needed. You may remember that. So no SDK that year :)
Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience
#1093+ years doesn't mean 3+ years "in a job". That makes no sense. (Well, maybe for some companies it does, but you don't want to work there anyways). For some reason people can never get over that. It means 3+ years with a technology. It means don't walk in the door out of a Java college having used nothing else and apply to work on a Triple A game written in C++. It means don't show up after a weekend html course and…
Maybe every employer I've talked to is unreasonable.
When a job lists a requirement for 2-3 years experience, it means 2-3 years of industry experience.
I don't have 10 years of Python experience because I started coding when I was a teenager.
I learned more about programming in Ruby from 6 months on the job than I learned about Python from 3 years of using it at university.
Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience
#1103+ years doesn't mean 3+ years "in a job". That makes no sense. (Well, maybe for some companies it does, but you don't want to work there anyways). For some reason people can never get over that. It means 3+ years with a technology. It means don't walk in the door out of a Java college having used nothing else and apply to work on a Triple A game written in C++. It means don't show up after a weekend html course and…
> That's all it means (to any reasonable employer).
There's the rub. Early in my career when I had little working experience this CONSTANTLY bit me. It didn't matter that I did consulting on the side or that I worked with the technology or even that I went to school and used the technology there.
In my experience almost all of non-tech companies and maybe half-ish of the tech companies would require the experience be on the job at a company.
Now I don't know how indicative my experience is. I don't know if this type of information is tracked anywhere.
As an aside I'll never forget the one company I applied for who was looking for a developer with 5+ years experience in using .Net Framework... in 2003.