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Ask HN: Am I the only “unlucky” software engineer?

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Re: Ask HN: Am I the only “unlucky” software engineer?

#51

Post by gumby »

delusional wrote: post #15
sascha_sl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a personality test, which will likely be based on the MBTI - complete BS. Just because there's an entire consulting industry behind convincing you that to build the perfect team you must have "complementary personality types", does not mean it's true. Not like the IT industry has the luxury of choice based on such a lot of the time either.

I can kinda respect a personality test. It doesn't really mean anything, but they do stress that there's no "good" personality. IQ tests are different, because a higher number means better. That leads to superiority complexes.

For IQ tests, a higher number is supposed to mean better. The accuracy of such tests is dubious.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only “unlucky” software engineer?

#52

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

sascha_sl wrote: post #5
beingflo wrote: post #4

I can't comment on the rest of the post but this bit stood out to me: > Sometimes they talk so much about fit fit fit, but they don't even bother with a personality or IQ test (which as a former hiring manager, I find very valuable because it allows you to balance the team, not because you see how high/low people score). Just for reference, if an employer ever asks me to perform an IQ test I'm definitely walking away…

Or a personality test, which will likely be based on the MBTI - complete BS. Just because there's an entire consulting industry behind convincing you that to build the perfect team you must have "complementary personality types", does not mean it's true. Not like the IT industry has the luxury of choice based on such a lot of the time either.

I don't understand the hate towards MB. It does what any theory should do: predict behavior. And it does it pretty well, actually. I'm 52. I learned about it when I was 16, and my mother filled in some questionnaire in a computer program, and it nailed my internal thought processing to a T. Ever since, I've paid passive attention to it, and people seem to fit the archetypes pretty well, though I find the category division names to be utterly useless. Why do you say it's BS? What's the thinking behind the "anti" side?

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only “unlucky” software engineer?

#53

Post by ponow »

sascha_sl wrote: post #13
nordicengineer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you'll understand I'm not arguing against you. I can totally understand the adversity, and by all means people can easily use it as a bias, but it merely gauges how good at "if X then Y" one is, which in turn reflects on how clear the job at hand should be. It's not about being smart/er than others, it should be just one datapoint in a sea of tens of datapoints in the search for "a good fit". And all you're lo…

IQ in particular is a measure of very specific trainable skills. Particularly the harder part of IQ tests are extremely prone to cognitive bias by the authors though, where they start measuring neurotypicality rather than problem solving ability. The problem is that these tests do not sell themselves as "just one data point", and even if they did, you'd have to do so many other things to compensate for the shortcomin…

Of course get to know the candidate as much as possible before hiring, but if you had to pick your candidate based on a single number, you truly don't think IQ isn't way up there as one of the more usefully discriminating ones?

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only “unlucky” software engineer?

#54

Post by locuscoeruleus »

beingflo wrote: post #4

I can't comment on the rest of the post but this bit stood out to me: > Sometimes they talk so much about fit fit fit, but they don't even bother with a personality or IQ test (which as a former hiring manager, I find very valuable because it allows you to balance the team, not because you see how high/low people score). Just for reference, if an employer ever asks me to perform an IQ test I'm definitely walking away…

A friend absolutely bombed his IQ test (mostly on purposes, because he couldn't be bothered). He was a few standard deviations under the average person. When they asked him how he felt about it he excitedly said he was happy with the result. He later got the job.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only “unlucky” software engineer?

#55

Post by topherhunt87 »

I don't know if this fits into what you call your "unmatchable standards", but have you considered remote work for international clients? A senior software engineer with high work ethic who speaks excellent English, should have an easy time landing jobs on the various "remote freelancer" job-finder sites? I can personally vouch for Toptal, but I keep hearing about a ton of others: https://revolancer.com/, https://ateamcentral.org/, https://www.crewscale.com/developers, https://www.usebraintrust.com/, https://www.flexworkweb.com/talent, https://www.nixa.io/developer

And of course there's other more standard job-finder boards for fully-remote workers, such as http://weworkremotely.com .

Looking abroad for remote work both vastly increases your pool of options, and also puts you in a very different hiring culture from what you have described. In my limited experience, my remote-only jobs/clients tend to be much more results-oriented and less buzzword-oriented or checklist-oriented when interviewing me and evaluating whether I'm a good fit. Also, with remote jobs it's easier to do a 3-month "trial period" where both you and the client can evaluate whether the relationship is a good fit, and part on good terms if not.

One downside of remote work (ignoring the risk of social isolation / staying home all day) is that you're likely to take a pay cut in the short term... but in theory working remotely saves an immense amount of money for both you and the client/employer, so I don't take this too seriously as a long-term concern.

Anyway... good luck, and don't give up hope of finding meaningful work.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only “unlucky” software engineer?

#56

Post by dusted »

dangerface wrote: post #37
dusted wrote: post #2

I think I've read a few posts on this type on HN, and it seems to me like they are similar in a few ways, there might not be anything wrong with that, but I am still somewhat inclined to believe these things are why the job hunt is not going well for them. Almost always asking for "meaningful" jobs. What even is that? I'll challenge the notion and call it "An inability to find meaning in the available work." Feeling…

> Almost always asking for "meaningful" jobs. What even is that? There are lots of companies that are always "looking to higher" but they aren't actively highering, bullshit "job opportunities" are everywhere. > Feeling attacked about their profile, but not changing them to accommodate. Their profile should be an honest description of their abilities. Suggesting they change to "accommodate" sounds like you are sugges…

> There are lots of companies..

You can find meaning in anything if you look at it the right way, even if you're writing soulless fintech code to steal from the poor, there are probably interesting challenges in there.. How facebook manages to infer so much about their users based on the data they're stealing? Interesting problems even if they're distasteful.

> Their profile should be an honest description ...

They most certainly should ,what I mean by accommodate is not to bullshit, but to gain actual experience with [keyword] if that's really something that's a problem (I've NEVER encountered anyone saying that I miss [keyword], if asked about [keyword] I will answer honestly, ranging from 'heard of, not touching' through 'know well, not touching again' to 'no idea, can probably learn'.

> Unless your friends are recruiters they are probably too busy with their own work to find you a job...

Usually you can get a job by asking a friend to put in a word for you at their place, or just letting them know you're looking.

> Again sounds like your advice is just talk bullshit..

Making someone like in as socially-shallow a situation as a job-interview _IS_ bullshitting, it's called social norms, it's being polite and pleasant and well dressed and whatever else is typically expected. I'm not suggesting they lie or mislead, if they're genuinely an unlikable person and feel like they want to be, well, sorry, but that's probably a contributing factor to not getting a job.

> To be rudely honest you come across as a bullshitter with no useful advice.

I'm perfectly okay with that, it'd be rather a boring thread if every perspective was exactly the same, but OP feels like a typical overly spoiled primadonna to me. It's probably because I come from a somewhat less privileged background, having seen what cards other people are dealt, it seems incredibly bratty to come on HN, whining not that you can't find _ANY_JOB_AT_ALL_NOMATTER_WHAT_ but that you can't land your absolute dream job because you're basically intolerably picky and absolutely unable to adapt yourself. I'm sure OP has a lot of potential, but they seem to be so hard-set in their ways, wanting everything to be just-so in order to even give it a chance, that they cheat themselves out of it.

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only “unlucky” software engineer?

#57

Post by nordicengineer »

defaultname wrote: post #30

Often in situations like this -- where everything seems to be wrong with everyone else -- I remember that old Dysfunction Inc. post that had a tagline something along the lines of "The consistent feature of all of your dysfunctional relationships is you". It's a nod to the fact that often we need to stop and self-reflect instead of constantly enumerating the failures of everyone else. I have limited insight into who…

Thanks! FWIW it's not a knee-jerk reaction post, though choice of words can always be better, especially for someone who doesn't have English as their native language.

I'm not irritated. I'm more lost for words. And I honestly wanted to ask others what's their experience. In 2021. In Scandinavia or worldwide. In a so-called "hot market". Post Corona etc.

My examples come from tenS of interviews, maybe even hundreds. It's not 10 interviews. Obviously many have been totally fine, regardless it still ends in a "no, thanks" on any side. But a good chunk of them are light years away from "we have a problem to solve, this is us, this is you, can we work together?"

I truly respect even snarky comments pointing out how rude and infatuated I come out, but my experience is exactly the opposite: everyone seems to be doing things perfectly, except they can't find replacements or more people, and when someone gets interested in joining, they become defensive.

As you point out, one needs to ask the question: is it me the problem? And nobody is perfect, not even close. Not me at least. But that thing is that I am expected to be perfect. Like a comment says: I should learn to lie and pass the polygraph test. Well, I will never do that, so now we know what that will get me (from the same comment).

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only “unlucky” software engineer?

#58

Post by sascha_sl »

ponow wrote: post #53
sascha_sl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ in particular is a measure of very specific trainable skills. Particularly the harder part of IQ tests are extremely prone to cognitive bias by the authors though, where they start measuring neurotypicality rather than problem solving ability. The problem is that these tests do not sell themselves as "just one data point", and even if they did, you'd have to do so many other things to compensate for the shortcomin…

Of course get to know the candidate as much as possible before hiring, but if you had to pick your candidate based on a single number, you truly don't think IQ isn't way up there as one of the more usefully discriminating ones?

Absolutely not.

(And I would refuse to pick a candidate based on one number. No good can come of this.)

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only “unlucky” software engineer?

#59

Post by samhw »

ponow wrote: post #53
sascha_sl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ in particular is a measure of very specific trainable skills. Particularly the harder part of IQ tests are extremely prone to cognitive bias by the authors though, where they start measuring neurotypicality rather than problem solving ability. The problem is that these tests do not sell themselves as "just one data point", and even if they did, you'd have to do so many other things to compensate for the shortcomin…

Of course get to know the candidate as much as possible before hiring, but if you had to pick your candidate based on a single number, you truly don't think IQ isn't way up there as one of the more usefully discriminating ones?

I don't think anyone can doubt that it's likely to be predictive of success. There are sheafs of papers on that: e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/, though that paper also discusses confounding factors. My bigger worry is that I can't imagine any of our candidates assenting to an IQ test (outside of Scandinavia where it sounds like it's the norm).

Re: Ask HN: Am I the only “unlucky” software engineer?

#60

Post by pseudalopex »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #52
sascha_sl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a personality test, which will likely be based on the MBTI - complete BS. Just because there's an entire consulting industry behind convincing you that to build the perfect team you must have "complementary personality types", does not mean it's true. Not like the IT industry has the luxury of choice based on such a lot of the time either.

I don't understand the hate towards MB. It does what any theory should do: predict behavior. And it does it pretty well, actually. I'm 52. I learned about it when I was 16, and my mother filled in some questionnaire in a computer program, and it nailed my internal thought processing to a T. Ever since, I've paid passive attention to it, and people seem to fit the archetypes pretty well, though I find the category div…

It's a recurring debate here.[1] Wikipedia has a summary of the criticisms.[2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26288772

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...

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