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

Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

alexchesser.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 633 posts

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#371

Post by thaumasiotes »

datavirtue wrote: post #215
TameAntelope wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You make it seem like straight white men conspired to take over the industry and box everyone else out. Last few teams I have been on were very skin diverse. They all had privileged cushy backgrounds though...except for one of the white men who was self-made. The power base in the US is white middle class. It's not just software that is dominated by white men. Law, medicine, construction, management at corporations.…

> It's not just software that is dominated by white men. Law, medicine, construction, management at corporations. Not just white men.

By what metric is software dominated by white men? Are we counting Indians as white?

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#372

Post by vincentmarle »

d23 wrote: post #221
DebtDeflation wrote: post #133

Bad career advice I received early in my career: Don't talk compensation until late in the interviewing process after you've already convinced them to hire you. Compensation is the first thing I bring up now. "I currently make X salary, Y annual bonus, and Z equity. This position will need to exceed all 3 by at least 20% before I even consider it. Does that sound doable? If not, let's not waste any more of each other…

Unless you're already extremely out of band and are pretty sure your range will be higher than 95% of your incoming offers, I do not recommend doing this. Never give first numbers, and if you're in software and haven't gotten past the middling, typical startup salary numbers and onto the mind-blowingly high numbers, you will not feel confident enough to handle a negotiation where you've already given away too much in…

> Never give first numbers

I disagree: the first one who gives a number is able to anchor the negotiation around their preferred outcome; it's much harder to negotiate up from a lowball number than the other way around.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#373

Post by TameAntelope »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #371
datavirtue wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it seem like straight white men conspired to take over the industry and box everyone else out. Last few teams I have been on were very skin diverse. They all had privileged cushy backgrounds though...except for one of the white men who was self-made. The power base in the US is white middle class. It's not just software that is dominated by white men. Law, medicine, construction, management at corporations.…

> It's not just software that is dominated by white men. Law, medicine, construction, management at corporations. Not just white men. By what metric is software dominated by white men? Are we counting Indians as white?

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see...

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#374

Post by thaumasiotes »

TameAntelope wrote: post #373
thaumasiotes wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not just software that is dominated by white men. Law, medicine, construction, management at corporations. Not just white men. By what metric is software dominated by white men? Are we counting Indians as white?

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see...

That would seem to indicate that 54% of "software developers" are white.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#376

Post by TameAntelope »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #374
TameAntelope wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see...

That would seem to indicate that 54% of "software developers" are white.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Over half.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#377

Post by lhorie »

AlexC04 wrote: post #317
lhorie wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Alex, fancy seeing you here :) I'm going to agree that the "if you want me, do some work first" thing seems a bit overkill. For me, usually just a single sentence asking for salary range and job description gives me more than enough to figure out whereabouts in the spectrum they are. This is the way I think about it: 1) there are different types of recruiters. At least in the city where you are, I can tell you th…

Those are incredibly good points. If you look at the levels.fyi data I think this pattern applies really well to the people within the bottom half of the graph. There's ALWAYS the option of trying to go from "No Name" -> "Big Name" but I also feel like that can be a harder path to take. When the person reaching out is a "Meta" or a "Netflix" I know that I don't need to ask how much. I'm pretty sure the number I got t…

> The optimal path here for the bulk of the developers in the middle of the pack is to make a move when the person reaching out has a role at a different no-name shop that is 50% higher than their current

I think it's worth noting that 50% bumps were historically nowhere as realistic as they are today with the current job market. At least from my convos w/ recruiters over the years, large bumps would normally imply some very tangible upgrade, like a corresponding job title change. A 30-50k bump back in ~2015 typically meant moving from a dev role to a role w/ significant leadership/managerial responsibilities.

Being able to command 50% bumps without a significant change in levels of responsibilities in today's market is definitely an anomaly from a historical perspective, but under these circumstances it definitely makes sense to consider lateral job changes to get in on those juicy market dynamics.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#378

Post by Tehchops »

onphonenow wrote: post #336
Tehchops wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have hard data to back that up or is it just anecdotal personal bristling whenever someone says "privilege"?

"Do you have hard data to back that up or is it just anecdotal personal bristling whenever someone says "privilege"?" - Tehchops This is actually a perfect example of this! Let's take a minute here to look at your response. "Do you have hard data to back that up" I literally said "I've found". Folks who go on long winded discussions about privilege do exactly this - redirect, misunderstand, demand impossible things.…

> Dismissing others experience rather than engaging on the comment. Is your experience positive with folks who communicate like this? Mine is not

I believe your original comment was:

> Insta-delete if I'm doing hiring...

Now who's being dismissive again? ;-)

> Folks who go on long winded discussions about privilege do exactly this - redirect, misunderstand, demand impossible things.

And I've found folks who respond defensively as you have tend to not reflect on their own privilege, and generally do not respond well to criticism or questioning.

Of course... feel free to "dismiss" what I'm saying.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#379

Post by vanusa »

TameAntelope wrote: post #348
vanusa wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may be violently agreeing here; Violence is completely counter to my way of being - so No. What is bad is the idea that someone can get a job because they know someone else, over a more qualified candidate who doesn't know that person already. We agree this is bad, yes? We keep going in circles - with this idea that person that someone in the company already "knows" (or who came in via a referral anyway) gets the…

Violent agreement is just a term for when people seem to be disagreeing but actually aren't. [0] If that is completely counter to your way of being, then it's possible your way of being isn't compatible with the concept of constructive argument. And I'm confused about where I said anything about certainty. I'm not talking about how all companies operate all of the time, I'm talking about how some companies operate an…

I'm not talking about how all companies operate all of the time, I'm talking about how some companies operate an unfortunate number of times.

In between these opposite extremes -- your language clearly indicates that you think this level of what we might call "aggravated bias" (hiring not just someone in your network; but hiring them over a more qualified candidate, presumed to exist and be interested in your opportunity) is commonplace, or something close to it.

Such that in your mind, "including referrals in your hiring funnel" == aggravated bias (in the sense above), basically.

As to the bias stats you liked to: the findings interesting, to say the least -- if they can be validated. Unfortunately the link to the original Payscale "study" seems to be broken (if we can call it that -- since remember, this is the work of a private company, with products to push).

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#380

Post by deathanatos »

blizkreeg wrote: post #135

Q for engineers on this thread: would you be more open to a "recruiter reach-out" if that person _is_ an engineer themselves but independently also helps startups build teams as a recruiter?

I'd rather talk to another eng, but the problem with recruiters isn't that they're recruiters, it's that their email wastes people's time; cf. the article, and the canned response the article recommends writing: what if… what if the recruiter just told us those things up front? Then I'd instantly know this is worth responding to! Instead, we have to waste a mostly-automated round trip asking for what ought to have been done up front.

Of course — the offer would need to be actually palatable.

Post reply on HN