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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?

#811

Post by bawolff »

guenthert wrote: post #776
Aloha wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar story. I learned at all early age the only thing appearing like the smartest guy in the room was good for was paining a target on your back. I also learned how to emulate empathy, it's not perfect, but it makes up for the natural broken/missing wiring in my head. Also early in my career I talked my way out of several jobs, You might have the best ideas in the world, but if powers that be don't want t…

> I also learned how to emulate empathy, Please don't. I know a guy who does the same. It comes across as utterly condescending.

You know that the people failing to do it, do it badly. You have no idea how many people in your life succesfully do it. (Survivorship bias)

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

#812

Post by wildermuthn »

bad44 wrote: post #433
wildermuthn wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, but snakedoctor did set this in motion by asking for candid feedback. Ostensibly, he wants to receive and integrate feedback. Seems like the sort of thing a smart kid would aim for. Part of me feels like in a decade people will reference this thread in the same way we reference the shellacking of Dropbox back in the day. It takes a cosmic-sized ego to ask HN to give you advice about why no company will ac…

Or maybe he just kills himself because he's close to being homeless already and a few hundred assholes just told him that he's a hopeless, narcissistic, uneducated "creep"? Snakedoctor, I think this whole thread says a lot more about Hacker News and its penchant for armchair psychology and condescension than it does about you and your future prospects. There's a few helpful posts here... take what you can and go out…

It’s actually kind of impressive to me that so many people want to try and help though. Even if their judgment and advice is wrong (which is likely due to the fact that we really know nothing about this guy), it still gives me a little bit of hope in humanity that people care about some random stranger they’ve never met. Most responses seem genuine rather than self-serving,

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

#813

Post by nsonha »

thesuitonym wrote: post #766
ehnto wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What jobs inquire about your financial history? That seems a little dystopian. Can't get a handle on your finances because you don't have a steady job, better not give them a steady job!

Even if an interviewer doesn't ask about your finances, it can be pretty clear if you're on the very low end. A person living hand-to-mouth may not be able to afford nice clothes (I remember a time when those $99 suit deals were something I had to plan ahead for!), and what nice clothes they have may be worn out. In most of the US, you'll be showing up to your interview in a car because there's no public transit. Is…

Are you actually a hiring manager who thinks like this or you just speculate? I've always thought no one gaves a shit about this kind of think in software dev and have not been proven wrong, especially now with remote interview becoming the norm. Quality of microphone/connection is more like the kind of thing that matters.

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

#814

Post by djellybeans »

steerablesafe wrote: post #570
jart wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good comment with the right instinct but for the wrong reasons. The biggest red flag is struggling with personal finance. You can't get jobs like the ones he wants if you live beyond your means and constantly land in hot water with money because people who are like that are at risk of turning to evil to make ends meet.

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…

I have a safety net, it's in the form of subsidized housing where I don't have to pay anything for rent as long as I don't earn an income, and utility and food are paid by one of my relatives through an allowance. Having said that, I'd be careful how you treat these situations because it's easy to fall into a loop of complacency.

With nothing to light a fire under your butt, you have to sometimes create your own crises because simply setting deadlines when you don't need to pay for anything doesn't have any real stakes. This is coming from personal experience- I've been constantly job hunting since 2015 with no FT offers in software development, despite having 8 years experience from 2007-14. Job hunting now just feels like going through the motions and I'm burned out from so much interview practicing.

I have the potential to turn down offers because of my situation of not needing to pay for almost anything, but I can only take advantage of that if I get offers to begin with. Whatever approaches I took in the early 2010's to get work aren't effective anymore and I'm still in the process of discovering what will work for me today.

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

#815

Post by nsonha »

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.

I guess the person aimed for FAANG precisely because they interview skills that are learnable quickly (leetcode) and care less about skill that requires you to grow organically by working on real products

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

#816

Post by perl4ever »

topkai22 wrote: post #428
perl4ever wrote: post #374

I suggest temping. When I needed to do that, I found only one agency out of like half a dozen in my area was any help. It was the same one that I got a job through almost 20 years ago. So it's important not to give up if some of them seem to be wasting your time. If you need good benefits, then a government job may be the way to go. I've never known anyone who got one directly, but there can be loopholes, and temping…

It is no guarentee, but temping/contractor work is how I got into Big Tech. I did a good enough job and impressed enough people the team was willing to pick me up full time. However, I would warn the OP that the most important thing is to start building a portfolio of reliablity. Temping/contracting can be demeaning- you ABSOLUTELY are a second class citizen on the teams. You will be assigned the least strategic work…

>building a portfolio of reliablity

That sounds excessively intimidating.

The issue is that if you haven't had a job in a couple months, you can get tagged as unemployable. There's no point in telling people what you did six months ago if they are going to assume that you can't do anything (that you're not doing at the moment).

All you have to do to get past that is subordinate everything else to being employed for the moment. It's a lesson in prioritization. You can get on the treadmill nearly as fast as you got off of it. At least if you think 6 months to a year is reasonable speed.

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

#817

Post by djellybeans »

konart wrote: post #616
jart wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

(Additionally, QA jobs for game companies are almost never lucrative.)

The core problem is that a median income lifestyle is a relatively unstable state due to unforeseen circumstances like your example. A poor person stays poor (if whatever happens doesn't kill them) which means that poverty is a stable state. A rich person can weather at least a couple disasters, so that makes it a mostly stable state. If you're in the middle, you are in a more unstable position compared to the extremes.

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

#818

Post by djellybeans »

batch12 wrote: post #418
fnbr wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. If OP can consistently get interviews at FAANGs, then that’s all that’s needed for the job.

It sounds to me like it is either a knowledge gap of which they may be unaware, or a personality issue. When hiring in the past, I looked for thoughtful, but honest answers-- even if the answer was "I don't know." Someone talking around the question or bullshitting me resulted in a no. Also, interviewers may be sensing some quality which hint that the interviewee would make existing employees' jobs harder. Dunno if t…

I think personality issues are kind of overstated for interviews. Just about every industry has its fair share of jerks and sociopaths that throw people under the bus. Regardless, they have jobs, and almost all of them had to pass interviews to get into their respective companies. These are the workers that set the lower bar for entry into a job, and in the "right" companies, your personality would be passable by those standards to get hired.

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

#819

Post by wolverine876 »

WalterBright wrote: post #346
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…

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…

> 1. don't terminate sentences with .. or ...

Why not? 'Do you prefer C or Rust?' 'Would you like paper or plastic?' Perhaps I misunderstand.

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

#820

Post by wyclif »

midasz wrote: post #694
kamaal wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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. Things like this are very important. Job hopping is a giant red flag for lots of…

> Job hopping is a giant red flag for lots of companies I noticed that after a year or 2 I get bored because things become a bit too routine. After the third job I decided to just become a midlancer (in a few years want to go full freelance) so I can hop whenever I hit that wall.

I don't think the conventional wisdom on job hopping is current anymore. It used to be a red flag, and might still be for certain kinds of jobs, but in tech it's quite common and standard to move on after 2-3 years. It would surprise me if interviewers at FAANGs thought 2-3 year tenures at their kind of companies interpreted that as "job hopping."
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