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My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

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Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#231

Post by eacow »

vmception wrote: post #219

I gave up on my midcareer job hunt once COVID19 hit because it was obvious that it would be a crowded pack, and salaries would go down, and desparate visa holders would be waaaay better at leetcode than me. I think I also did 16 companies or so but being exposed to them took longer than before. In the past I've also gone through 16 companies in one month through one recruiter before, fielded one or two offers and lan…

I don't know why you think startups can afford false negatives. They absolutely CANNOT. One bad hire will kill a startup. Even spending the one hour to interview someone is a significant hit to productivity. It's the big FAANGs fo the world that can absorb poor engineers.

Also, for senior positions, I would expect candidates to not only clear most leetcode interviews, but to also have some insight from their experience. I expect them to be opinionated about areas of their experience, and have demonstrable success to back up their opinions. Only then can they come and lead and mentor a team of more junior contributors. A general guide line is, as a senior engineer, I would have hoped to have heard some insightful ideas or learned something from you in the course of your interview.

If you are clearning leetcode problems fairly easily, I wouldn't attribute it to a crowded market and "visa holders" being even better at leetcode (I don't even know what that means, do you think they go to better schools or something?)

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#232

Post by fatnoah »

georgeburdell wrote: post #29

I look at that resume and I wonder if it didn't hurt more than it helped; it's form over function, and a bit corny. The fact that he got multiple offers in two months shows how strong the software job market is. I'm several years younger, but a staff-level hardware engineer at a second tier company (top tier being FAANG). I've had an incredibly difficult time jumping companies --- 2 years and counting. Despite being…

As a hiring manager, I liked that his cover letter spoke to the job and his qualifications for it. A "form" cover letter is worse than none, IMHO. For the resume itself, I didn't like that 1/3 of it was the corny sentence, especially since it was on the cover letter, too.

That said, he did a pretty good job highlighting his experience, which is far more important than a fancy resume. In my most recent job search, I had 4 interviews, and for three of them, the interviewers were holding printouts of my LinkedIn profile, not my meticulously edited and formatted PDF resume. Good thing I gave my LinkedIn profile the same treatment!

Regarding your own opportunities, there's nothing like experience, though hardware seems to generally require more years than software.

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#233

Post by vmception »

eacow wrote: post #231
vmception wrote: post #219

I gave up on my midcareer job hunt once COVID19 hit because it was obvious that it would be a crowded pack, and salaries would go down, and desparate visa holders would be waaaay better at leetcode than me. I think I also did 16 companies or so but being exposed to them took longer than before. In the past I've also gone through 16 companies in one month through one recruiter before, fielded one or two offers and lan…

I don't know why you think startups can afford false negatives. They absolutely CANNOT. One bad hire will kill a startup. Even spending the one hour to interview someone is a significant hit to productivity. It's the big FAANGs fo the world that can absorb poor engineers. Also, for senior positions, I would expect candidates to not only clear most leetcode interviews, but to also have some insight from their experien…

I mean this is exactly why I am going to pretend to have less professional experience. These expectations have nothing to do with just doing more of the same work, but at a new company.

Of course I'm fairly certain it is something about me thats the problem - this round. I don't know what that is, the recruiters don't know what that is, the feedback looks just like bad luck as I've had wildly disparate results that weren't really only rejections, no different than the blogger in the article wrote.

Next round my solution is to come across as less impressive to lower the expectation and just join a team.

No, I don't think visa holders are inherently better and especially not all, it is not insensitive to acknowledge greater selective pressures from the countries they came from due to pure numbers alone, as well as desire to stay within this country in the short time period they have to find a sponsor if they get laid off. This can result in greater motivation to study more and faster, and you can see this corroborated by the self-certified number of leetcode problems people say they do. The mere presence of these motivations from some unknown number of people, distorts the market. Not really that hard or fantastic to say that.

I also said I was only clearing Leetcode easy problems easily. Which is a caliber that sometimes comes up in some interviews, with nothing harder presented. With harder in different interviews I was just starting to make the 30 min mark and other bars. It still sucks if you realize your first solution isn't good that there is no time to double back.

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#234

Post by cargoshipit »

mettamage wrote: post #87
lynchdt wrote: post #10

Some perhaps unsolicited advice from a hiring manager in a company very similar to the great ones in which this writer was unsuccessful. - Rare programmers won’t identify themselves as such. - Most great companies hire for humility as a trait.

I want to ask a silly question. I know there are no such things as silly questions according to some people. In any case: What happens if great companies do not hire for humility as a trait? Is it truly as simple as: too many unkind people get into the company? Or could one be more cynical and say: it's easier to not have humble people negotiate tough salaries? Or is it something completely different? I honestly don'…

Toxic people absolutely demolish morale and productivity. The effects are strong enough that even a hint of egotistical behavior is enough to put you out of the running (for good reason).

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#235

Post by vmception »

dominotw wrote: post #225
vmception wrote: post #219

I gave up on my midcareer job hunt once COVID19 hit because it was obvious that it would be a crowded pack, and salaries would go down, and desparate visa holders would be waaaay better at leetcode than me. I think I also did 16 companies or so but being exposed to them took longer than before. In the past I've also gone through 16 companies in one month through one recruiter before, fielded one or two offers and lan…

I think market now has moved on to leetcode DP/hard in ~30 mins. I got this in my last phone screen at tier 2-3 shop https://leetcode.com/problems/split-array-largest-sum/

DP?

and yes, I got good at the easy problems, which would be all that appears in some interviews. In other interviews I could tell or got feedback that I was close to the bar, which is about 30 minutes.

Or if I had an opportunity to finish a harder question later after the interview, I could tell that writing a working solution would have still taken me MUCH longer.

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#236

Post by cantankerously »

ativzzz wrote: post #213
cantankerously wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Simply go to MIT and work at Google" I say this in jest, but that isn't the most replicable path. For someone who didn't go to MIT and is mid-career, should one just throw in the towel and give up on the industry?

The OP should have prefaced his post with "If you want to make top 1-5% of engineering salaries". The vast majority of engineering jobs are done at boring non-tech companies by average programmers who have average educations and experiences. And of course, average salaries. Generally programmers working at those companies don't know about or don't care about HN.

I generally agree and I think I understand OP's intent. However, if true that paints a fairly bleak picture. I'd like to find challenging work and make upper echelon salary, why not? Didn't go to MIT or similar and no FAANG experience. So my only hope is to create an open source project or blog and pray it explodes in popularity?

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#237

Post by dominotw »

vmception wrote: post #235
dominotw wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think market now has moved on to leetcode DP/hard in ~30 mins. I got this in my last phone screen at tier 2-3 shop https://leetcode.com/problems/split-array-largest-sum/

DP? and yes, I got good at the easy problems, which would be all that appears in some interviews. In other interviews I could tell or got feedback that I was close to the bar, which is about 30 minutes. Or if I had an opportunity to finish a harder question later after the interview, I could tell that writing a working solution would have still taken me MUCH longer.

> DP?

Dynamic programming, for the problem I linked.

Oh maybe I am having bad luck

I got hit with another DP/Hard ,

https://leetcode.com/problems/word-ladder-ii/

at company called ' The Trade Desk' , which i believe is no where near Tier 1/2 tech companies. Exhaustive graph search ins't an acceptable solution.

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#238

Post by virgilp »

dominotw wrote: post #227
virgilp wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am a programmer. Mid 40s, switched jobs to a better one not long ago(was headhunted/didn't actively look for it). Still coding, don't really plan to stop soon. I guess it depends for everyone, and yes lots of people prefer to go into management, but it's not compulsory by any means.

same here. I do feel a little embarrassed sometimes that i am being manager by someone 10 yrs younger than me. I have to remind myself to no think like that. Not sure if its cultural/genetic to feel like that or what.

You should remind yourself that a good manager is there to support you/ make your job easier and more relevant. A manager is not your master. No manager is embarrassed to have an assistant younger than them, so neither should you be about having a younger manager :)

Yes, there's the small "problem" that unlike an assistant, the manager also gets to decide your compensation... but you don't want to be working for managers that look for yes-men. There's no winning in that position, those kind of persons are seldom competent and will only drag you down; better find out sooner than later, and move out.

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#239

Post by eequah9L »

_448 wrote: post #179

You have a C program on your 404 page. That program should return either -1 or EXIT_FAILURE :)

The job of that program is to write "404". If that succeeded, returning 0 is reasonable. It should be checking the return code from that printf though!

Re: My Mid-Career Job-Hunt: A Data Point for Job-Seeking Devs

#240

Post by strgcmc »

bradlys wrote: post #69
cletus wrote: post #66

So I'd say anyone looking for engineering work should aim to have at least one (and just one is fine) of the following: 1. A good (and well-known) school. MIT, Stanford, CMU, UW, Waterloo, you get the picture. 2. A good (and well-known) employer. FAANGs in particular. Ideally as an FTE but internships are good signals here too. 3. To be known for something you've done. Well-used open source project, well-known blog,…

Education isn’t enough on its own for social proof. I know because I thought it would be. I couldn’t get a job to save my life after college even with UW on my resume. Also, education is wildly localized. Turns out SV doesn’t care about anyone except those from UCB and Stanford (big emphasis on Stanford). Same with UW. Outside of Seattle, no one even knows about it. (I should know - I went there) Maybe prestigious co…

Yeah, SV is really just the bubbliest-of-bubbles. It attracts so much talent, and is funneled so aggressively in so localized a market, that your anecdotal observation of "everyone and their mother went to an Ivy League or similar" is probably more true than most people might expect. Such is life, and it ain't fair.

UW is a great school. UW is what most people should realistically aspire to (as that caliber of school). It's upper-middle-class; it will most likely give you a great education and a great life.

UW is not Stanford/MIT/Harvard/etc. though. Those are not upper-middle-class schools; those are upper-upper-class schools. And it's not really the quality of education content either, at least if we're talking about average outcomes (but at the margins, ~2+ standard deviations away from the mean, it's no contest).

If anything, this should signal that SV has gone too far and the labor market is acting irrationally by competing so much for educational branding. However, just like the old adage says, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

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