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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?

#131

Post by topkai22 »

snakedoctor wrote: post #77
BeetleB wrote: post #54

So far none of the replies has mentioned this, and it may be unpopular in HN, but: Seriously consider going back to school and finishing a degree. Although it's "known" that you don't really need a degree for a SW role, there are plenty of well established old school companies that will not consider you at all unless you have a degree. On the flip side, you'll get jobs more easily. A lot of interviewers who choose to…

I've thought about it. Community College, Deep Springs etc. I think autodidacticism is a better way to learn vs academic path. Though I didn't want to finish high school but I did.. So, it might be just one of those things that I'll have to suck up and just do. I disliked that I would have to take 2 years of core curriculum stuff before even being allowed to take major related courses. I had to reach out to instructo…

Getting a degree is only partially about learning. A degree signals that you were able to complete a curriculum that, frankly, will almost always have parts you don't like.

So some perspective for you to consider. The first is that as I have advanced in my career (its been solid if not extraordinary) the core curriculum stuff I thought was going to never apply working as a technologist has ended up being suprisingly useful. I wasn't a fan of linear algebra in undergrad, but now I'm using it on a data science related stuff. My politics concentration has ended up very useful at understanding the group and organizational dynamics. Even my forced sociology course lets me understand the reasoning of some my peers/superiors who buy into that line of research far more than if I was coming in blind. Theory of computation... remains useless, but they can't all be winners.

The second, and more important, perspective is that as a person who does some indirect hiring (interviewer plus technical lead, but not people manager), I worry that someone without a degree has trouble driving to completion in the face of disinterest, or is self sabotaging. My projects are mostly enjoyable, but sometimes I (or someone on my team) needs to spend 3-4 weeks writing up a government mandated security document. It sucks, but it has to be done. If I think you might be the type of person that will have trouble completing that independently because there is always more fun stuff to be working on, I don't want you on my team.

A degree is a noisy, loosely correalated signal that you won't be that person. However, as others have mentioned, your writing here indicates you MAY be that person, and not having a degree is a correalative signal that doesn't help your case.

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

#132

Post by asidiali »

1) you sound very intelligent and capable even though you don't have much to prove it apparently

2) I get a weird vibe from the way you write/speak

3) I've been cold rejected from almost every one of those companies you listed, and I'm a senior engineer with a decade of experience making SV money and doing just fine. Look for smaller companies that people haven't heard of, there are thousands. It took me years of working at small startups before I broke into the big corps.

4) someone mentioned "tainting" your rep with non-dev jobs and sadly this is true. You need to get dev experience on your resume no matter what, the good news is that it's never been easier. Come up with an idea, build something, buy a $2 domain, and bam, you are now a fancy Founder of Tech Project and have dev experience on your resume, not manual labor. Bonus points if you actually stick to the project. Speaking of which...

5) Build projects. Like as many as you can. I aim to build a new project 1x a month just to keep in the habit. Anytime I need to interview, I have tons of live, production software examples to show off. HMs love to see someone who can ship code. It is the #1 thing I would do if I were you to get a job. Build anything. Just build stuff and put it online. This is the next best thing to having formal W2 jobs on your resume.

6) totally random and I'm not affiliated, but check out usertesting.com. I sent this to a friend the other day who is also struggling to break into tech - they will apparently pay $10 for every 20 minutes of testing. Better than being homeless and at least it's in tech and seems relatively accessible.

7) some of the best dev gigs and jobs I found early on in my career were diamonds lost in the Craigslist rough, just sayin’

Wishing you the best of luck.

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

#133

Post by anp »

eBombzor wrote: post #23
brundolf wrote: post #15

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…

Can you recommend any good third party recruiting agencies for tech?

I got my first bay area job through Triplebyte -- they were pretty perfect for me being able to demonstrate technical ability without a deep resume. Their process has gotten more cookie cutter over the years but the resume-blindness might be an asset in OP's situation. They're also much better positioned to give feedback on why you're struggling in interviews than an HN thread.

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

#134

Post by pcthrowaway »

If you're not currently working, I'd recommend a staffing agency, Uber Eats, Taskrabbit, Instacart, etc. There are ways to start making money right now that might keep you from being homeless. And being homeless is going to set you back.

Don't put any of the above on your resume.

What are you looking for? You haven't really elaborated on what your skills are except for alluding to a possible penchant for security research. If that's really what you want to do (and you think you have enough knowledge of networking technologies and security practices that it's really your best path forward), do that!

If you hunt for bug bounties, and blog about your findings (even if you don't hit any), that's going to be a really good way for potential employers to audit your capabilities.

If you're looking to get into software development, publish some work on github or get involved with an open source project. Even filing issues is a great way to showcase your ability to work within a team and contribute. QA is often a great stepping stone into the world of software engineering, and (depending on the type of QA), you really just need to be computer literate, dedicated, and capable of working with a team. Those are things you can demonstrate on github.

It's not going to be an easy path forward, but getting some income you can live off of right now, then pouring all of your energy into working in the open is going to be your best path to getting hired. You don't have the resume to get the kinds of jobs your looking for, and it sounds like you haven't even had the kinds of jobs that would look impressive to potential employers

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

#135

Post by resume_monther »

I have a general question related to OP's situation:

How do you make a resume look better when you have many short stints on it?

I'm 30 and my average time to keep a job is less than 6 months. I always get overwhelmed and quit. When I start a new job I promise myself I will stick it out for just one year, but usually I'm white knuckling it within 3 months. I've been to doctors and therapists and have a clean bill of health. How do you develop grit and "sticktoitivness"?

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

#136

Post by fallingknife »

snakedoctor wrote: post #80
dimal wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he's on the verge of being homeless, getting a degree seems like too long of a timeline. A bootcamp seems more reasonable, but even that's a stretch.

One of my former co-workers at IBM went to a bootcamp in SF. She is pretty smart. Though, I feel that bootcamps are kinda scams. Not like colleges though.

I went to college and did a bootcamp.

College - 212K tuition (current) - 4 yrs - no job guarantee

Bootcamp - 18K tuition - 3 months - money back if no job within a year

Can you spot the scam?

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

#137

Post by mylons »

hbt wrote: post #113
klyrs wrote: post #42

Brutally candid advice? You sound like a creep. Am I reading it right here, you spoofed your number to talk to executives? In the best case, they'll assume you're a pen-tester; but more likely, you're blacklisted from those companies now. I wish there was, like, short and simple advice that I could give you to not be a creep. I just tried to google that, and I'm not finding a good clear resource. Like most social ski…

you call him a creep, I would call him a go getter. it is immensely frustrating to deal with automated systems, resume keyword matchers, no contact within a company and being ghosted after taking the time to write a proposal and cover letter that is a fit for the job description. so what, he called an executive and got around their spam filter? my advice treat job hunting like a sales process. you're successful based…

hire them then

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

#139

Post by bawolff »

> Google, Facebook, Dell, NSA, CIA, DoE (E=Energy), Airbnb, Palantir

Maybe try some less big-name companies. Google is not the easiest place to land a job.

> Reading Meyers, Knuth etc

As in the art of programming? If you read the entirety of that, and understood it, that's a huge accomplishment. Probably not something that will get you a job (i know everyone complains about having to reverse a binary tree on a whiteboard, but its pretty rare to actually need to do that). Anyways, its something you should be proud of.

> and wrote a detailed e-mail to the VP in charge of the anti-fraud system

I don't know how it works at amazon, but usually VPs aren't the right person to contact about bugs.

> I tried cold contacting executives at a few companies. Got meeting with SVP at Dell, CISO etc. was fruitless though. Spoofed number to bypass contact whitelist etc.

Definitely don't do that. Any plan for getting a job that involves tricking people or being obnoxious, is a bad plan.

----

I think you need to work on demonstrating your value/selling yourself. Like just from this paragraph (i appreciate its not a resume), its unclear if you have very good hard skills (no degree, no work history. You don't have to have a degree or work history to get a job, but if you don't have those you need something else to demonstrate you have those skills. You need to be able to say something to make the interviewer think you can do the job). Its also sounds like you have weak soft skills (e.g. how to negotiate the politics of an office environment, what is and isn't appropriate in a professional environment, how to get along with others, etc). My understanding is that often people who go to therapy for other reasons often need help with that sort of thing, so a therapist might be able to point you in the direction of resources to help with that sort of thing.

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

#140

Post by mattm »

hencq wrote: post #50
snakedoctor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think hiring managers think that I'm a quitter. I definitely think that I was whining too much about the Amazon role. Beggers can't be choosers. However, the no health insurance thing rubbed me the wrong way. I felt like it was a dead end job. I wish that I would've stayed with it though. I probably would've been promoted by now. I need to stay with a job and rack up some years of experience for sure. Like I…

> I felt like that I should've got promoted after reporting those issues, especially since I found them within my frist two weeks. Take this with a grain of salt, since obviously I don't actually know you or the details of this situation. However, flagging issues to your boss' boss is rarely the best way to leave a good impression. It mostly signals you have problems working within the structure of the company and yo…

I would also add on that most ideas have already been thought of. It's pretty common that new people will come into an org and bring up their idea only to find all the experienced people rolling their eyes because the idea has been talked about dozens of times.

It's good to be observable but just because your idea hasn't been implemented before doesn't mean no one has thought about it. At big companies there is friction in place for any change.

As someone new I think the best way to bring up something you notice is to ask your manager or a peer something like "Hey, I noticed we're not doing X and it could be a problem. Is there a reason for that?" That will allow them to fill you in on the context and organizational history.

If you bring up an idea, especially if it's been discussed many times before, and start raving about how it should be implemented, your co-workers are going to lose a lot of respect for you because you haven't taken a chance to learn first.

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