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Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

adamconrad.dev

121–130 of 447 posts

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#121

>>>> Get a referral for all of the jobs you apply for, study a standard list of questions, stack your interviews, and negotiate like a champ. Success is all but guaranteed. ELI5 what getting a referral for a job means. I've been out of the market for a long time.

Either find someone who you know IRL who works at your target company to refer you internally, or post on a Blind thread to solicit referrals from randos:

https://www.teamblind.com/search/referral

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#122

>>>> Get a referral for all of the jobs you apply for, study a standard list of questions, stack your interviews, and negotiate like a champ. Success is all but guaranteed. ELI5 what getting a referral for a job means. I've been out of the market for a long time.

Having someone that already works in the company add you to the applicant pool. Most companies have differing level of referrals, including "network" which just means it's someone that you vaguely know but never worked with (or a friend of a friend).

Sometimes there's a bonus attached if the person is hired and stays for some period, though those are somewhat falling out of favor due to the perverse incentive.

The main benefit is just ensuring that a recruiter / hiring manager actually looks at the candidate, so it's really just a portal to ensuring a real recruiter screen.

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting expenses also gets you closer to financial independence: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si... In fact, it's doubly effective. If you can learn to reduce your expenses by $10k and live happily, not only do you have an additional $10k to save/invest, but you need less each year to live independently.

> If you can learn to reduce your expenses by $10k 1. This is crazy to me. I could maybe cut $3K by taking a huge hit to quality of life (that would probably not be sustainable with a full time job anyways). Getting the other $7K would involve either homelessness or cutting back on eating and visiting family. How do salary earners manage to rack up $10K per year of purely unnecessary expenses? 2. That number is still…

> How do salary earners manage to rack up $10K per year of purely unnecessary expenses?

You learn to spend what’s in your pocket.

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#124
Is something wrong with software engineering interviews that one could reasonably need to spend months prepping for interviews? Leetcode problems can be fun and interesting, but seldom represent problems and skills I employ daily as a more senior software engineer. Studying these problems won’t help me much at my current employer and likely wouldn’t after I passed the interview gauntlet at another firm.

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#125

It's wild to me that his way of figuring out what companies to apply for was to make a list of the top-paying ones and just pick the top 10 highest-paying. Is that a common strategy? No thought about product, industry, impact on the world, just $$$. It looks like it worked out for them though, since I guess they got like a million dollar offer, so maybe I'm the one approaching this the wrong way?

Comp is king, everything else is window dressing; only the comp pays the bills and gets you closer to financial independence (wealth is options, options are freedom).

What are you planning to do with all that financial independence?

If the answer is, "Live a meaningful and satisfying life." then... some people seek out work that gives them some of that while they are earning money.

Obviously, the idea that work can provide all of the meaning in your life is a toxic meme that leads to people being exploited. But the idea that work should provide no meaning is equally toxic. You're going to spend most of your waking hours during the healthiest stretch of your life at work. That is way too much to sacrifice for a job that is soulless surrounded by people you care nothing for.

Meaning is king, everything else is window dressing; only meaning gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. The sooner you start finding avenues for that in your life, the sooner you'll realize you don't need to focus completely on some distant exit strategy like financial independence.

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#126
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very well-paid tool that can probably retire in a few years and never have to work again.

I feel like I'm the only person left who actually likes working and being productive with other people. I actually like programming and solving problems with other people. There's been a huge shift since COVID to embrace not working hard, but to me life isn't as interesting when you're spending 40 hours a week just kinda wasting your time, trying to get away with putting in the least amount of effort possible. Having…

Working with people who care about their craft is definitely much more enjoyable.

"What should we work for?

Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary." — Marcus Aurelius

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#127

It's wild to me that his way of figuring out what companies to apply for was to make a list of the top-paying ones and just pick the top 10 highest-paying. Is that a common strategy? No thought about product, industry, impact on the world, just $$$. It looks like it worked out for them though, since I guess they got like a million dollar offer, so maybe I'm the one approaching this the wrong way?

[deleted]

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that note, is anyone else getting a little tired of all the pretentiousness going about in tech? Suddenly, every tech company is claiming to "change the world" and "not like the others". You know, hyping these adds, metrics, platforms, etc. up as if they're going to really change life in a noteworthy way for Average Joe. Whatever happened to just putting in a good day's effort and admitting we're doing it for the…

"Suddenly"? It's been going on for at least a decade, decade and a half, nearly two decades now, whenever Web 2.0 was getting off the ground and startups started booming again post-Dot Com bubble.

"I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" came out in 1971.

Corporate ego is ancient.

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#129

> I would have the third-highest new offer on Levels out of over 200 offers on their site Looking at Facebook's salary data[0], does this mean the offer was in the ~$2M range? [0] - https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...

managers seem to get much more money than their corresponding peers on the software track according to this website.

[deleted]

Re: Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

#130

It's wild to me that his way of figuring out what companies to apply for was to make a list of the top-paying ones and just pick the top 10 highest-paying. Is that a common strategy? No thought about product, industry, impact on the world, just $$$. It looks like it worked out for them though, since I guess they got like a million dollar offer, so maybe I'm the one approaching this the wrong way?

I find it weird that you find this weird. Most people I know and know of optimize like this. They are in it for the cash and trying to make as much as possible and then get out as soon as possible. Doesn't matter what the impact is, doesn't matter how unsavory the work is.

Most people I know don't, and a lot of them still do pretty well for themselves, so... to those wo do: Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better I guess, but don't pretend that it's universal for justification.
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