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Laid Off, Now What?

bharathpbhat.github.io

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Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#301
The advise in the article is great for beginners or people willing to work as beginners. For people who are senior developers or who have previously been in corporate management these tips won’t work.

If you are a senior developer you shouldn’t be spending any time on practice interview whiteboards. You should already know how to code with confidence and be ready to honestly disclose where your experience ends. A good senior developer provides solutions to problems, which is more than pressing buttons on a keyboard.

The problem a senior is more likely to encounter is navigating the stylistic code biases of a controlling interviewer, such that if you aren’t writing code their way you are wrong. This is absurd. You either must have the confidence and soft skills to talk though those biases, if are adept enough to identify them, or be willing to work exactly their way like a beginner even after they hire you.

A huge red flag when interviewing are places that cannot differentiate junior developers from senior developers. For example if a junior developer is reliant on some tool for important basic requirements then a senior must be an expert at that tool completely ignoring the idea that such a tool is likely completely unnecessary.

Some people need interview prep. It could be that some candidates lack the soft skills. If the interview conversation capabilities don’t come naturally then you are projecting a false persona to be hired, a fraudulent first impression that evaporates once hired.

I do empathize with people trying to play up their capabilities just to be hired. There are tons of developers that are drastically under qualified for the seats they occupy.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole argument that Democrats, who have voted for bills that help resolve H1B issues by vast majorities and Obama passed executive actions that among other things allowed H1B spouses to work, provided a grace period, and until Republicans sued and had it rolled back in court allowed for H1 B green cards to be filled from infilled green cards in other categories, don’t really care is a remarkably wrong statement,…

> and the other side doing pretty much all the can within the legal powers they have to improve the situation Except they aren't. There is a clear 'caste' system when it comes to the immigration Democrats care about. Their primary focus is on immigration across the Mexican border (a lot of which is often technically or borderline 'illegal') which they want to make as legitimized as possible as the Hispanic community…

> the Indian and Chinese community in America is not that politically assertive

No, but the mega-corps that hire a lot of them are. Very much. And usually lean more towards supporting Democratic politicians to ensure their labor pipeline is kept in place.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but do people want to actually want to live in those places? My wife and I both live in SF and we were able to buy a house which would be impossible now, but I don’t think we’ve ever cleared more then 250K max combined in actual salary. Now with only one of us working which could drop to zero at any moment it seems a move to cash out our equity in the house and move to Europe is a more feasible option than stayi…

>Sure but do people want to actually want to live in those places? I don't see why not. It's not like the Bay Area is particularly great culturally, culinarily or in most other ways. It's a giant suburb sandwiched between a medium sized city and a place that is only technically dense enough to be a city. There's plenty of mid-sized cities and suburbs in the US with reasonable costs of living.

Culinarily, the Bay Area is #2 in the US, behind NYC. In Michelin star rankings it’s top 10 in the world.

Cost of living sucks, it’s why I just moved to a better COL area but damn do I miss the restaurant scene.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can see this takes at least four forms, multiple years, and possibly a significant chunk of change to a lawyer. Could you explain the process more since google is telling me it looks like a pain in the ass?

Pretty much any international person can emigrate to the USA by marrying an American. If they're already here on some type of visa like H1B or student visa, just simply upload your passport to NYC's marriage website (or go to Vegas I guess) and get a marriage license. Then have someone officiate your wedding and for a few hundred bucks and maybe 48 hours of planning total you are now legally married. You can take thi…

Oh okay, I was actually looking at citizenship. If you don’t care about being a citizen and just want to work, I can understand that’s an easier process.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#305
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should you have to compete for your wage in comparison to individuals from a foreign country with a much lower cost of living? For the most part you can't change your cost of living. (Yes, you can move else where but the delta between how you you keep/earn is pretty much relative around the country) Single people tend to be younger and less experienced. They tend to be represented in entry level positions, and get pa…

>Should you have to compete for your wage in comparison to individuals from a foreign country with a much lower cost of living? That appears to be the reality we've been living in for a couple/few decades. Airplanes, container ships, and the internet have made the world a much smaller place.

Not really. The borders still exist and the export controls still exist as well. It's just been tolerated in the last few decades.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be a mostly US-centric thing. I live in Scandinavia, and I have yet to encounter the levels of rigor I see in the US (tech) interviewing process - which is kind of weird, as we have much, much more stringent workers rights/laws, making it more difficult to get rid of a bad hire. Sure, US companies, especially in tech hubs, operate on a completely different scale than companies over here - at least in term…

The US pays a lot and there's a lot of competition for positions. The H1B system doesn't help that competition. When you have 50 well qualified applicants (ie: could pass most interviews) per position then you need some way to weed out 49 of them. Resumes can be exaggerated and downright lied on so once there's enough competition using them just means you're selecting the best liars/sociopaths.

> When you have 50 well qualified applicants (ie: could pass most interviews) per position then you need some way to weed out 49 of them.

Do you really? If they're all well qualified, wouldn't any of them do?

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#307

The advise in the article is great for beginners or people willing to work as beginners. For people who are senior developers or who have previously been in corporate management these tips won’t work. If you are a senior developer you shouldn’t be spending any time on practice interview whiteboards. You should already know how to code with confidence and be ready to honestly disclose where your experience ends. A goo…

This advice while noble, will it help you land a job

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#308

The advise in the article is great for beginners or people willing to work as beginners. For people who are senior developers or who have previously been in corporate management these tips won’t work. If you are a senior developer you shouldn’t be spending any time on practice interview whiteboards. You should already know how to code with confidence and be ready to honestly disclose where your experience ends. A goo…

Not true at all. Senior developers are routinely subject to the same algorithmic questions in their coding interviews, especially at FAANG (I successfully interviewed and got offers for senior positions at multiple FAANGs two years ago).

Even worse, the actual coding one does on the job is a completely different skill set than being able to dish out Dynamic Programming recurrences and tree traversals under tight time pressure, so by being farther removed from undergrad where these algorithms are taught, senior engineers generally have to prep even harder than junior engineers for these types of questions. I don't think I've ever actually used Dynamic Programming to solve a real problem on the job before.

The one case where this actually applies is during the System Design interview.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much any international person can emigrate to the USA by marrying an American. If they're already here on some type of visa like H1B or student visa, just simply upload your passport to NYC's marriage website (or go to Vegas I guess) and get a marriage license. Then have someone officiate your wedding and for a few hundred bucks and maybe 48 hours of planning total you are now legally married. You can take thi…

Oh okay, I was actually looking at citizenship. If you don’t care about being a citizen and just want to work, I can understand that’s an easier process.

Sorry for the lack of clarification. Citizenship would actually come relatively quickly after holding the green card as per normal. I suppose around 5 years is the normal waiting period? You just have to pass a simple test where you memorize key value pairs like "Who wrote the Star Spangled Banner?" "Francis Scott Key"

However American citizenship is of extremely dubious worth, even if you really like to travel like my wife and are limited by travel visa paperwork like with a Chinese passport for example.

Voting is not a particularly useful feature of American citizenship unless you live in a swing state and believe your vote to be important in deciding the fate of our country.

And most jobs that require citizenship like in government pay extremely poorly and have ridiculous arbitrary barriers to entry, namely a security clearance.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but do people want to actually want to live in those places? My wife and I both live in SF and we were able to buy a house which would be impossible now, but I don’t think we’ve ever cleared more then 250K max combined in actual salary. Now with only one of us working which could drop to zero at any moment it seems a move to cash out our equity in the house and move to Europe is a more feasible option than stayi…

>Sure but do people want to actually want to live in those places? I don't see why not. It's not like the Bay Area is particularly great culturally, culinarily or in most other ways. It's a giant suburb sandwiched between a medium sized city and a place that is only technically dense enough to be a city. There's plenty of mid-sized cities and suburbs in the US with reasonable costs of living.

Most software engineers I know don't even leave the house much. What's the point of living here if you're just going to watch LoL streams all day in your bedroom?
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