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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?

#671

Post by corobo »

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.

Please also consider that not everyone is neurotypical. I'm of course not diagnosing OP but things like ADHD make it a hell of a time trying to manage personal finances on top of the rest of your life.

If everything was just easy we'd all just do it.

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

#672

Post by exdsq »

jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote: post #660
exdsq wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your writing is not strong, i can tell you did not attend college. Maybe you're right but this is how I read it. Alice's writing is not strong -> Alice did not attend college. therefore Bob's writing is strong -> Bob did attend college.

You just fell into a logical fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent On the other hand, what the other user deducted was: * If you attend college -> You probably end up writing properly * OP doesn't write properly -> He probably didn't attend college Which is a proper logical deduction rule called modus tollens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens

Fair enough! Happy to be proved wrong :)

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

#673

Post by throwaway79392 »

mypalmike wrote: post #544
snakedoctor wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried out meetup.com and went to one meetup. It was ok. I felt a little uncomfortable though. They solicited for my name, and email to be added to the Slack. There was a lot of recreational clubs etc at my college. I tried rock climbing, and liked it. There wasn't a lot of social interaction with rock climbing though. I went to a party in Austin. Chatted with strangers etc. Wasn't really sure what else to talk a…

How To Win Friends is a great book for fine tuning interpersonal skills in adversarial situations such as sales calls and job interviews. It's worth a read. But I wouldn't recommend it as something to internalize for actually making friends. It mostly teaches how to seem empathetic as leverage in negotiations. It's more important IMO to develop real empathy through routinely putting yourself in other people's shoes,…

> How To Win Friends is a great book for fine tuning interpersonal skills ... I wouldn't recommend it as something to internalize for actually making friends.

I would even argue this book can harm your friendships. Really, the whole book is only about friendships that you try to seek value from. That said, there are tons of books worth reading. The therapist can most likely recommend books that are really useful for "homework".

FWIW at some point in my life I also realized I need to improve my social circle and went for asking for the time and all that. Please don't do that, consult with your therapist and just learn by doing otherwise. People tend to think there is one way a person has to be.

Anyways, it's really bad with Covid right now but once that's over, there'll be plenty of opportunity to go to real Meetups, public events and all that.

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

#674

Post by smhg »

crsv wrote: post #86

Was this post written by a machine as some weird test to see how the community would react? This seems like a mechanically contrived lack of self awareness that just seems too ridiculous to be real. This is not a sarcastic post.

Right? After seeing the GPT-3 examples, it's hard to not get triggered by incoherent sentences.

Sorry if that's the wrong assumption in this case.

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

#676

Post by irscott »

jart wrote: post #592
steerablesafe wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviewing with a poor financial situation in the background can be indeed suboptimal, but I think for a different reason. You don't have leverage in negotiation and you are most probably desperate, which is hard to hide. Overall this comes trough as lack of confidence and undermines the interview. To turn this into an advice for people interviewing without a safety net: get a safety net. It can be a job that is ea…

If you're broke and don't have kids to feed, hit the road and go backpacking or something. No one cares how much money you have. What people care about is that you have an interesting story and are resourceful enough to make the best of any situation. Because one day you're going to get paged at 3am where all the technology is crumbling around you and you're the only one who can save it, and what's going to make you…

I always talk about my time traveling and riding trains and going to antarctica in interviews. Most of the time it breaks up the monotonous interview process and allows me to stand out in the crowd.

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

#677

Post by [deleted] »

shultays wrote: post #599
endymi0n wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I too suffer from an extremely high intelligence.

[deleted]

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

#678

Post by DeusExMachina »

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…

He also mentions a couple of times that he was ghosted after interviews, even at Home Depot. So I would add also add to this already great list: role-play interviews with friends and get their feedback on how you present yourself (dress, tone of voice, behavior, etc.) and what kind of blunders you make.

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

#679

Post by amacbride »

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.

This may be the single best thing I’ve ever read on HN; truly awesome and generous for you to have reached out in this way.

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

#680

Post by [deleted] »

maroonblazer wrote: post #178
snakedoctor wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be argumentative. But yes, I did attend college. Send me a email, and I'll send you an email from my college email address (Hasn't been deactivited yet). I can send you my college transcript if that helps.. Well, I did get hired by IBM as a programmer so... I've contributed to a GNU open source project.. So I feel that I am qualifed for a entry level developer/SecEng/Security Analyst role. I went above my boss…

When responding to a comment that asserts your writing is not strong you'd want to read, re-read, and re-re-read your reply to ensure it is well written. You seem to have not done that, which lends credence to the parent's comment. My take is you seem to have an inflated sense of your abilities. I've interviewed people who share this trait and it's a turn off unless they have a portfolio of work to back it up. Perhap…

[deleted]
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