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Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

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Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#101
post #83

First off, your HN submission history is really weird, dude. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=snakedoctor ) If you get a job in customer support at Amazon there is literally no way to get a 'promotion' to a dev role. It's different parts of the org, and you're tarnished with being a CS person. Why? Because it's signaling - people who can do eng roles at Amazon don't take CS roles so they don't bother minin…

Customer support for AWS can convert into other roles pretty easily, just apply for internal transfers for adjacent roles or move into devops etc at another company.

But if you have programming skills, I agree you're far off going directly for dev roles instead.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#102

Have you tried talking with a recruiting agency? I notice you've mostly applied at household-name companies, many of which are very competitive. The majority of the tech jobs out there are not at companies you've ever heard of. Recruiters (third-party, not in-house) are motivated to find you something that's a good fit because they get commission (from the company) based on you getting hired. They'll coach you, help…

And OP, ask them to help you find long term positions. It sounds like your resume shows a lack of commitment and it'd be good to show you can stick with something for more than a year.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100% your problem. If I worked someplace for two months I wouldn't even put it on my resume. On the flip side of that if I got a resume with only a bunch of 2 month jobs on it I wouldn't likely interview you. As other comments have mentioned you have to stick to something for a while. You didn't even finish school so you cant even say "At least I stuck with my degree". The way you read to me is that you will…

Seconding this. The advice I've always heard is that if you quit a job in under a year, it's a red flag. Generally you get one freebie where people will understand if you had to quit because of a bad fit or a toxic situation or whatever - though you'll probably have to talk about that in your interview - but if there's a pattern of it happening over time, that's a huge red flag. If I were you I'd try and get one soli…

Just chiming in to say, while this is mostly true, it is not always true.

I had a stint of about 2 years of job hopping every 3-6 months at the beginning of my career. Worked great for me every time.

The trick is to get the new job while you still are employed, not quitting and then looking for something new. Employed = attractive to other employers, but still a bit of a red flag. Unemployed = just a big red flag.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm seeing a therapist. I had an abusive childhood. Not that it justifies anything. I was also homeschooled since the 6th grade, so I didn't really have any IRL friends etc. I hope that I'm not a sociopath... I might be on the high functioning autisim scale. I've never been tested so I don't know.

You're also young. Plenty of well-adjusted people with jobs and families did idiotic things when they were 20, too.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#105
Dude, you don't sound like a creep. Well maybe you do to dumb fags. You had a legitimate reason to spoof your number.

But yeah. It's gotta be your social skills. Doesn't matter how smart you are; if you're dumb socially, unless you're John von Neuman, you're fucked. And, yes, definitely set your sights lower than the fucking NSA. The fact that you didn't acknowledge or give context to the absurdly high bar (given that we don't know shit else about you) implied in your choice of companies really does make one think you're socially retarded.

Go and fix that.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#106

Have you tried asking any of the jobs that rejected you're getting rejected? Honestly, just a guess, you're probably giving off bad interpersonal vibes/people don't really like talking to you. Half of interviewing is just being very personable/being able to talk comfortably with other people. Generally in this space (this space meaning those interested in tech/startups/etc) sometimes people struggle in this area but…

Many companies large enough to have HR and/or legal departments have rules specifically against providing feedback to candidates on why they were rejected.

That may be true, but I've had good luck asking recruiters for feedback after getting bad news. They usually give some good advice or feedback - over the phone, of course, never in writing. Typically they say something like "You were really strong in X but the hiring manager is looking for someone with more Y." One recruiter told me that the HM had given me the thumbs down saying I was "insufficiently succinct" in my answers! But even there, I had good rapport with the recruiter and he was able to suggest other roles within the company.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#107
Just based on original statement, you sound like one of those guys who thinks he's some hotshot hacker and won't play nice with everyone else. When you're like that, you have to bring lots of value. Downside protection like "I stopped us from having broken anti-fraud" is really kind of not that interesting as a story. People want upside story.

At any point of time, almost every company is teetering on some massive exploit. That's just how it is. Finding one isn't this big thing if the risk is mitigated in some other way (maximum exploit size is $10k and we'll wake up the OC eng to turn off writes and rollback). I'm not interested in this binary failure-is-worst-case nonsense.

Listen, people aren't that interested in knowing that they can be fooled because most people apply some default amount of trust to the world. "Spoofed number to bypass contact whitelist". Dude, come on. This is boring stuff. Just knocking on the door isn't enough to be interesting. This isn't a Hollywood hacker movie.

My advice: Work on being productive. No one cares about all this 'exploit hacker' shit you've got going on. It's not interesting. It's not profitable. It's boring. So go finish your degree somewhere. Write some code. Find someone who you can write some code for. For free even. Move up from there.

EDIT: Jesus Christ, reading other comments, want to be promoted for finding some random issues like this in the first two weeks? Yeah, no. Here's a hint: everyone sees these things. It's not some great secret. Other people are also able to do one more thing: multiply by probability of external exploit and amount of loss.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm seeing a therapist. I had an abusive childhood. Not that it justifies anything. I was also homeschooled since the 6th grade, so I didn't really have any IRL friends etc. I hope that I'm not a sociopath... I might be on the high functioning autisim scale. I've never been tested so I don't know.

Yeah, I'd guess that you're on the spectrum. To be quite honest, I see my younger self in your actions. It took me a long time and a lot of work to recognize bad ideas before acting on them, and I wish I could share notes... but I never could learn from other people's advice, only from years of deep reflection after fucking up repeatedly.

But it's good to hear that you're seeing a therapist. I didn't figure that one out until my mid 30s

Edit: I'm not one to crab about downvotes, but if y'all downvoting the parent post could kindly quit that. This person has shared some deep vulnerability here, they're asking for help and doing the work. This shit's a process

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#109

Your writing is not strong, i can tell you did not attend college. Written communication is important in tech. Your applying to those companies with 0 experience or college degree is unrealistic. The entry level is extremely competitive and you have nothing to make you interesting to hire. They get thousands of applications for those jobs. You are still young, plenty of time to learn, but I recommend taking a step ba…

> Your writing is not strong,

I don't know. I think he has pretty decent writing. Kinda reminds me of William Gibson. It may be stylistically unusual, but it's definitely better than the median SWE. At least in terms of clearly conveying his thoughts.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#110

Have you tried asking any of the jobs that rejected you're getting rejected? Honestly, just a guess, you're probably giving off bad interpersonal vibes/people don't really like talking to you. Half of interviewing is just being very personable/being able to talk comfortably with other people. Generally in this space (this space meaning those interested in tech/startups/etc) sometimes people struggle in this area but…

I've tried asking companies for feedback. Some respond, and some don't. I think that most don't due to legal reasons. I did move to Austin when I received a lump sum of money, and hanged with some people IRL. Some would ratify that I'm awkward lol. But there was a lot of good vibes while I was in Austin. Now that I'm back where I grew up I find that I'm more depressed, and surly. State goverment here is more Laissez-faire, and there's a lot of crime.

Reason that I mentioned that I mentioned Bill Landreth was that I think that I'm kinda like him. I got in to programming, RE, VR, soldering etc. when I was very young. Like 8 years old. I knew some folks that Wired articles were written about etc. I hanged out with a Head of Research guy at IBM who told me himself that I know some stuff that he doesn't know, and have told me that I'm smart. Which sounds cringy now that I type this. But I'm not delusional lol. I was the second person at 18 years old to be hired full-time at IBM in a certain program.. The first guy works at Armonk. I can send proof, screenshots of interview emails with DKIM etc. if anyone would like to verify my claims. Trust but verify as former president Reagan liked to quote.

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