Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 875 posts

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

#441

Post by watwut »

balls187 wrote: post #375
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 sound like a creep. Am I reading it right here, you spoofed your number to talk to executives? If the Op had a bit more credentials, and/or created something special, they might label it as "chutzpah" instead. I recall a story (perhaps apocryphal) that involved Steve Jobs that was similar.

It is not chutzpah. It sounds like that when people tell stories from own point of view they can frame as they wish. They sound cool when you listen to it as uninvolved poison. They are not cool at all when you are there in real life or in receiving end of it.

It is the fantasy vs reality difference. As much as you imagine yourself creative when doing these, other people see blinking red flags and boundary pusher that will cause trouble.

It is like those funny and cool characters on movies, that in reality you would cut out because they are assholes.

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

#442

Post by kortilla »

sangnoir wrote: post #419
ipiz0618 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to tell if OP's on the spectrum. I used to think I could do that until I got close with a Clinical Psychologist. Sometimes it can't be confirmed even after a few in-person sessions with professionals, so it's certainly dangerous to "guess" it from a few internet comments.

I think parent was saying that author is violating social norms - either because they are oblivious to them (like it is to some people on the spectrum) or they are aware of the norms, but do not care for them (which would be sociopathic)

> but do not care for them (which would be sociopathic)

No, disliking social norms is not sociopathic. The critical piece of being sociopathic is a lack of conscience.

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

#443

Post by admax88q »

danielheath wrote: post #52
brundolf wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will take a cut of your salary I've never had one that did this (or told me about it, at least). My understanding was that the company is basically paying them to find talent, so you're the product being sold. Sometimes there's even a clause that if you quit too soon they have to give back their commission, which further incentivizes them to make sure you really are a good fit.

If the hiring officer has a budget of 150k for the first year, and the recruiter charges 30k, how much are they going to offer you?

You can still negotiate to what you're worth. If you're no better than the applicants they got without recruiters then good luck, but that's why companies are hiring from recruiters, they can't find the talent on their own.

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

#444

Post by szundi »

ep103 wrote: post #429
7sidedmarble wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does that make no sense in the context of hiring programmers, it doesn't make sense for hiring anyone. Nailing interviews is about impressing someone first and foremost. It's kind of hard to impress when you don't have prior experience to look to.

While I agree with you, my experience in hiring in this industry for the last few years has been to agree with the parent comment. Once you land an interview, I don't think any of my interviewers even looked at my resume, or cared what it might have said. Most companies, at that point, were 100% and solely interested in my ability to answer leetcode questions. The better companies asked more meaningful technical ques…

They look at the resume. If you are not just OK, then your interview may fix your CV. If you are not the best candidate, just barely OK, your bad CV can fuel worries.

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

#445

Post by nextlevelwizard »

7sidedmarble wrote: post #420
ma2rten wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily agree regarding FAANG. Once someone gets an interview it doesn't matter much what their previous work experience is.

Not only does that make no sense in the context of hiring programmers, it doesn't make sense for hiring anyone. Nailing interviews is about impressing someone first and foremost. It's kind of hard to impress when you don't have prior experience to look to.

It is not about what your previous job title was, but if you actually have the chops to do the new job.

There are many tricks you can use to get an interview. However nothing abut OPs past shows that he can actually be a productive programmer.

>Dev job at IBM

No details what he did or for how long. I've been in teams with fresh juniors who are amazing. They bring in new knowledge and new perspectives and over all crush the job. Then I've seen juniors who "work" on something for weeks and weeks and when we start for them to demo how far they are we find out that they haven't been able to produce anything working.

>QA at EA

While with normal software I'd say this requires at least scripting skills with games I don't know if that is necessarily true and again probably not a good skill set for getting hired as dev in FAANG

>Cybersecurity team at college

I immediately assume this is some kind of CTF team, which might teach you to use some tools, but again I've seen people in college just "pass through" without really learning anything

If the job OP could do and do well was Amazon help desk then he should aim somewhere between FAANG dev and that position and probably erring on the side of the help desk. The new job will teach them more and in a year or two they can apply for a higher position.

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

#446

Post by kyawzazaw »

ep103 wrote: post #429
7sidedmarble wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does that make no sense in the context of hiring programmers, it doesn't make sense for hiring anyone. Nailing interviews is about impressing someone first and foremost. It's kind of hard to impress when you don't have prior experience to look to.

While I agree with you, my experience in hiring in this industry for the last few years has been to agree with the parent comment. Once you land an interview, I don't think any of my interviewers even looked at my resume, or cared what it might have said. Most companies, at that point, were 100% and solely interested in my ability to answer leetcode questions. The better companies asked more meaningful technical ques…

I was asked about my previous internship work experience from my resume by Point72, Salesforce, Google, Addepar, Okta, Iterable, Visa, Veritas from my resume during my interviews.

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

#447

Post by bad44 »

blhack wrote: post #146

Post your resume and github profile. This seems like a strange post to make without actually linking to any of the work that you've done.

Oh that's brilliant, let's link a thread where OP details his personal struggles and shortcomings to his IRL identity.

Surely if the recruiters weren't all over him before, now they'll just be clamouring to hire him! Wow!

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

#448

Post by aeoleonn »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #211

As a hiring manager, the things that stand out to me in your post: - You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative. - You talk ab…

First, OP:

STOP CALLING YOURSELF UNHIREABLE.

STOP WITH THE SELF-PITY--

Why?

You can't simultaneously focus on two things: such as focusing pitying yourself while simultaneously focusing on building & completing your strategy.

_____________________

WHATS THAT YOU SAY OP?!, you say you want to CONQUER THE ROMAN EMPIRE, but you only have a dozen pals WITH NERF GUNS? Yeah, guess how that'll work out :P Doesn't sound like a reasonable strategy, does it?

Yes, you failed because YOU LACKED A REASONABLE STRATEGY.

ANYONE WILL FAIL when they LACK A REASONABLE STRATEGY REGARDING ANYTHING in life, that should be obvious.

The solution? Develop a reasonable strategy and fulfill the work involved in the strategy.

______________________________________

Now for the rest of my intended comment:

This.

PragmaticPulp is speaking about STRATEGY.

You need a reasonable strategy, OP.

Check out my recent comments for my lengthier reply of advice, but here I'll summarize:

* Make small pivots. Don't try to jump to the top, as Pragmatic mentions

* Market yourself. Want to be a programmer? Show the world you're a programmer then! How? You need to build an open source project with in-demand programming languages & frameworks. You need a Web Portfolio to show off your projects. A LinkedIn presence. And, put your resume up on job sites. This is basic marketing strategy, OP.

Want a dev job? Well, how do you show the world you're a dev? Again, click my name to read my recent replies if you can't find 'em here on the first page of 300+ replies.

So, focus on crafting your strategy and then completing the strategy.

Keep your head up. Stay positive. Find motivational music & speeches on spotify & youtube-- that helped me get through 4 months of building my full stack app (no one paid me to make it, I simply built it b/c I knew I needed to show the world I had the skills)

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

#449

Post by DoreenMichele »

I homeschooled my sons.

Public school was created to train children to be good little factory workers. A lot of the culture of public school is stuff you also see in old timey factories, like everyone responding to a ring of a bell to end their lunch.

Instead of listening to a bunch of internet strangers tell you that you are some kind of sociopath, let me suggest you try to see yourself as a stranger in a stranger land. The world of paid work is like an alien culture.

Social stuff is always partly learned. It is highly dependent on context. It doesn't matter how talented you are at the social thing or how well adjusted you are, you can't readily fit into an alien culture where you don't know the rules and implicit expectations.

Someone on HN once told me that they had seen a number of "unhireable" people do volunteer work, such as working on open source, and have that ultimately turn into a real job that worked well for them.

I think that's worth a shot.

In the mean time, you might look for gig work to help you pay your bills in the short term. It's much, much easier to avoid homelessness than to get back into housing after landing on the street. (I know this fact all too well from firsthand experience.)

I run a number of things that might be pertinent to your needs. This link is probably the best TLDR of stuff I work on that might be of some use to you:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GigWorks/comments/e81eba/welcome/

Best of luck.

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

#450

Post by WalterBright »

frman wrote: post #434
WalterBright wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gentle tip: writing "shouldn't of" instead "shouldn't have" is one of those critical writing misteaks one should never make when communicating with educated people. Some others worth special effort to do correctly: 1. their there they're 2. its it's 3. your you're A couple other writing tips: 1. don't terminate sentences with .. or ... 2. "bosses" is plural, I think you meant "boss's" for the possessive I know it sou…

their going

There a couple others, two.
Post reply on HN