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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?

#611

Post by underwater »

throw14082020 wrote: post #589
throw14082020 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not job hopping that’s the problem. It’s unemployment. Companies actually like job hoppers because they learn more, and actually can find those jobs, hence they hop. Job hopping without jobs (gaps) is unattractive but that would be unemployment not job hopping, since the dude is unemployed. I’m saying this only for people who are in utter shit jobs and have the talent to find another one, but are afraid to be cl…

I am talking from experience, where I 'job hopped' to get better jobs which treat me better, fit me better, pay me more, have smarter colleagues and better systems (aka. more agile not just talking about it), and benefits, healthcare. I did my research (mainly getting the confidence from articles online), whilst hearing too often the idea people have in their heads: I should stay a longer before considering moving be…

Job hopping is having a track record of optimising for your own experience at the expense of your employers. Of course that's going to look bad, unless you can explain why this time is different.

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

#612

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

endymi0n wrote: post #512
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…

That's spot on from the advice. I'll add that OP — Your biggest issue seems to be extremely high intelligence, paired with a lack of empathy and social functioning, which created a self-expectation of massive grandiosity. But you keep failing to deliver on it because you can't get your highly powered brain on the streets, leading in self-pity and depression. Not good, but salvageable. How do I know? My life story rea…

Sorry, but I think you're reading way too much in the OP. Their account is compatible with their biggest issue being "extremelly high intelligence" coupled with a lack of empathy, but it's also compatible with ordinary intelligence coupled with some bad choices- and the chances are that the latter is the right explanation ("extremely high intelligence" should only be the case very, very rarely, by definition [1]).

I think you're also perhaps projecting a bit. You stopped (very) short of giving the OP a diagnosis of ASD ("high functioning"). Again, that's way, way too much to read into 1590 characters (not counting spaces) on an HN post.

Personally I think there's no way to answer OP with anything approaching good advice when going only by what they have posted. I understand that everyone will want to try anyway, but sometimes the best asnwer is to say "I don't know".

______________

[1] Funny aside. Suppose Alice has "extremely high intelligence" (EHI). Her EHI will make her aware of two facts: a) everyone seems to think they have EHI, or at least intelligence above the mean; b) only a tiny minority of those people can be right. The obvious corrolary is that Alice herself must be of average intelligence and only feel like she has EHI because that's a common cognitive bias of people with average intelligence. Therefore Alice will assume she has average intelligence and discount evidence to the contrary. In other words, people who have EHI will very rarely believe they have EHI, let alone say they do.

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

#613

Post by incrudible »

When it comes to hiring "hacker type" people, we're always extremely cautious about them being trustworthy, because the amount of damage they can do is exponentially higher. There's no room for mistakes. You likely didn't pass the smell test.

As for Home Depot, you're clearly the wrong person for the job, even if you can do it. You'd likely have better chances with less skill, odd as that may sound.

In general, you may want to try saying less, especially when it comes to your "hacker skills".

> I need a job with decent health/dental insurance. Medicaid is useless. I might be homeless soon.

This doesn't make sense to me. If you're at risk of being homeless, maybe getting "decent" health insurance shouldn't be a requirement. I suspect you have some self-sabotaging tendencies, which is another red flag from a hiring perspective.

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

#614

Post by odshoifsdhfs »

yarcob wrote: post #575
throw14082020 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not job hopping that’s the problem. It’s unemployment. Companies actually like job hoppers because they learn more, and actually can find those jobs, hence they hop. Job hopping without jobs (gaps) is unattractive but that would be unemployment not job hopping, since the dude is unemployed. I’m saying this only for people who are in utter shit jobs and have the talent to find another one, but are afraid to be cl…

If someone never stayed more than a year at a job that's a pretty major red flag. Most hires will take a year to get productive (where they produce more value for the company than they cost). I would never hire someone if I expected them to leave in a few months (except an intern). There are exceptions. An experienced consultant may be hired only for short, specific projects. But if you're struggling to get hired, yo…

> Most hires will take a year to get productive (where they produce more value for the company than they cost).

I never fully understood this. In pretty much any company I worked, if by the end of the month you weren't productive (almost fully independent) you would get the boot. Do companies really expect for new employees to take a year to be consistently productive? In startup land, that is like 2-3 product launches, how the hell companies find the money for this?

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

#615

Post by p0sixlang »

Stormwalker wrote: post #608

Are you the guy who tried to apply for a job for Unfortunate Spaceman? Terrible emails at: https://twitter.com/geoffkeene/status/1337634779559129088

That was amazing. It left me wanting to read more emails from the Unfortunate Spaceman guy obliterating entitled assholes trying to beg.

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

#616

Post by konart »

jart wrote: post #584
atoav wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your advice is "just stop being poor"?

It's a question of living within your means. A guy who's fortunate enough to have an engineering job at EA and IBM shouldn't be having personal financial problems, if we consider that many of the immigrants who make his food live comfortably enough to afford sending half their income back to old country. There's a way to live responsibly in any situation and if you can't then you have room for improvement.

>It's a question of living within your means. A guy who's fortunate enough to have an engineering job at EA and IBM

First of all - you are almost never 'fortunate'. Jobs offers do not fall from the sky usually.

Second - you many live well within your means and then have a car accident, or an ill relative, or something else that will make you into piss poor indebted fella real quick.

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

#617

Post by underwater »

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…

Even if it wasn't creepy, sending the message that you get what you want by not playing by the rules makes you a complete wildcard. To the person who will be managing you that makes you sound like a pain in the ass. If you're going to do that you need to make it absolutely clear that your skill set matches your outlier behaviour.

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

#618

Post by hnra »

dotBen wrote: post #515
JamesDeepDown wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'll give you mock 30 minute interview (I've hired countless engineers, designers, PMs and other roles in the last 20+ years)" This is an incredibly generous offer and I hope it gets done, because it would BY FAR the most valuable thing that the OP needs.

I spent almost 2hrs with snakedoctor this evening. He's a smart young man who just needs some pointers and advice as he doesn't really have anyone around him who has experience of landing and keeping a job in tech.

Props to you for being amazingly empathetic!

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

#619

Post by the_only_law »

snowwrestler wrote: post #491
SkyMarshal wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure any random BA can help these days. Anecdotally at least, one of the recurring news stories about Millenials is about how so many can't get jobs with their BA degrees. OP is probably better off going to Lambda School or a similar technical boot camp.

Anecdotally this is a popular idea, but it is surprisingly poorly supported by data. I did a deep dive on this a couple years ago, and there is actually little difference between early-career employment prospects for STEM and non-STEM bachelor degree holders. I did not look at bachelors vs coding camp certificate.

I wonder how much of that is due to a big chunk of the STEM undergrad degrees (mainly science) being not so useful. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a scientist role requiring anything less than a PhD (at least nothing paying more then $40k a year) I find it hard to believe though, that the employment prospects for someone with an B.Eng. or B.S. CS are equally as bad for as someone with a B.A. in English or Psychology.

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

#620

Post by jakub_g »

0) Google, FB and other bigtech are extremely competitive, they get 100s of resumes per each opening. Without strong referral / top college graduation / significant exp (AND great interviewing skills) it's like lottery ticket. Even with all that it's a lottery. Bigtech hiring is foremost about avoiding wrong hires, hence ultra conservative. Try something from a bit lower league first.

1) Work on your writing skills. The post you wrote is not very clear in some places.

2) Remember to curate your CV/resume/story to each job to not appear underqualified/ overqualified/ having irrelevant skills/exp.

Show that you care about THIS particular job, not ANY job. Do a bit of research on each company and get ready to tell why X is best company for you.

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