There are also companies that post fake jobs and then use the good resumes with minor tweaks to help market their own employees. It's so dodgy, wish there was a way to improve transparency.
How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
191–200 of 332 posts
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner! I'm running a hiring competition right now for a "Senior." The pay band is less than what entry level startups pay. So we rotate through a never ending stream of kids who leave for better salaries because we don't have any higher levels. Sometimes we do get lucky and pick up a mediocre lifer (like me) so HR sees no incentive to change. Never take a job for a company where you are not…
> Sometimes we do get lucky and pick up a mediocre lifer (like me) why?
To a lot of people conditions matter more than money.
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blue collar workers are some of the hardest working people I know. Some of them make as much as 40k per year. Yes, I said "as much". You really, really need to check yourself. You have no idea how good you have it.
Oh I know I have it good. 1% in terms of income. And I come from a really unprivileged background. Uneducated parents, family on welfare. Shit man, we were so poor, I got into college for free based on needs.
Were your parents - I'm quoting you here - "dumb and lazy"? Since they didn't pull themselves bup by the bootstraps like you did, and yet they allegedly had the same opportunities as you.
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
On a related note, I dated a woman who was promoted to vice president of a small start up when she was in her 20's. She had to hide her title on her resume when she left because no established firm wanted to hire someone whom they assumed they'd need to pay a quarter million dollars to be competitive. Sometimes grandiose titles can work against you.
Could you just downgrade yourself without the company's consent? A upgrade seems fraudulent, but a downgrade...
Yes, I never use my official title in the company emails. There were some funny moments in the past when some people thought someone reporting to me was my boss, but it was always funny. These days people in my team have more impressive titles than me, I am totally fine with that.
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do Since when does "typical" mean "graduated from a top 10 school"? That's why you're being downvoted.
Because those schools collectively admit tens of thousands of students every year. It’s not that rare.
Maybe it would be helpful if you gave your definition of "typical"?
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#196Hiring consultants has really gone into the toilet. Senior Data Engineers who don't know what upsert is. Senior Developers who can't answer simple questions about a stack they have "3 years experience" in. Senior AWS Architects who stumble on simple architecture questions and insist on switching an 80K qps stack to API Gateway.
I presume because the real seniors these consulting firms depended on are working for FANNG/MAMMA?
Of course all of these firms want 2 weeks of "exploration" up front...
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
To quote a meme: “You all can’t have impostor syndrome, some of you gotta just be bad at your jobs”
I like this quote. While I think impostor syndrome is real, I also can't believe that so many actually have it (judging from media mostly). I cannot personally relate either. I can relate with insecurity, anxiety and so on _very_ much. But much of that has been based on a lack of experience, practice and knowledge. When those things can heal "impostor syndrome" then it's not impostor syndrome - you'd still have it. T…
> "nobody has a clue what they're doing"-syndrome
The more advanced you are in your career, the more your job should be to solve novel problems. Things you, at least, haven't solved before. Preferably things nobody has solved before.
If all you're doing is work you already know how to do, you should find a more interesting job imo.
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#198This is an H1B "consulting" body shop.
Emphasis on "body". Of course you are housed like a morgue.
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#199Throwaway account for obvious reasons. I had a really similar experience as my first software dev job and this post brought up a lot of old memories. I ended up writing quite a lot, but I hope it's helpful for someone else in a situation like this. It wasn't until I started reading HN that I began realizing how common these types of experiences may be. The company I worked for was a small consultancy specialized in c…
Wow, thank you so much for writing out and sharing your story.
>I would be curious to hear more about how this experience affected that for the author.
I think you and I have a lot of similarities on this regard. I also learned later in my career that I don't have to be a technical wizard to provide a lot of value to teams and projects. My biggest strengths are being an effective communicator and being able to come up with sustainable solutions that solve the problem at hand while also being maintainable in the long run. When it comes to things like coding itself, I'm mediocre.
Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
On a related note, I dated a woman who was promoted to vice president of a small start up when she was in her 20's. She had to hide her title on her resume when she left because no established firm wanted to hire someone whom they assumed they'd need to pay a quarter million dollars to be competitive. Sometimes grandiose titles can work against you.
> Sometimes grandiose titles can work against you. Early stage startups can be especially hilarious that way, especially when young founders/early stage employees mistakenly feel they need a "big" title to be taken seriously...
Also, oddly, banks, where everyone seems to be a VP at the very least.