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Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

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Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#171

Post by sicp-enjoyer »

uVacCXNiiJCTnYB wrote: post #37
inglor wrote: post #29

> How do you find interesting gigs? Get really good in a specific field you care about - for me that was platforms and programming languages but you might really enjoy other stuff. When I say really good let me emphasize that's not exceptional, I am in no means a great programming language designer or web platform person or developer in general. Once you get beyond a threshold - you'll find a lot of people who deeply…

That is interesting but what I find hard is getting a foot in the door when changing expertise field. In my case, I'm generally a mix of full stack dev and game dev (specialised in HTML5 game dev). I want to do more systems stuff (particularly Rust), and I've recently created a scripting language with a VM from scratch for a game engine as part of a side project. But I don't have any commercial experience or keywords…

It's just the default way to hire. You look at what you want/previously had and see if they have it. As a candidate you should treat this as a sales problem and address it directly. If they are left with narrative they believe it probably won't be a problem.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#172

Post by mellavora »

neilv wrote: post #92
giaour wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may happen more at large companies than at startups, but having interviewees sign NDAs is normal, isn’t it?

I haven't seen NDA on interview from many startups in the Boston area. (Which is good, because I minimize the number of NDAs that I sign, and just try to be professional and collegial.) The first NDA for an interview that I recall was from a big tech company, and most of it could be paraphrased as something like "Everything we tell you is under strict NDA; anything you tell us, we will treat as public domain" (or may…

I don't think the company was trying to be malicious; the double-standard is because they don't want you in a position where you violate an NDA, AND they want to make it clear to their staff (the person interviewing you) not to press you for details.

Agree that their later wording is better, but I suspect good intentions from the start

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#174

Post by caeril »

> How do you find interesting gigs?

Honestly, you need to accept the reality that useful companies pay less.

It's a sad commentary on the world, but if you want to do useful work and actually contribute to humanity, you're not going to be buying $12 beers in downtown SF or NYC.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#175

Post by sicp-enjoyer »

uVacCXNiiJCTnYB wrote: post #117
robofanatic wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> open source devs generally don't get paid for their work lol. have you seen this https://github.com/sponsors ?

yeah, I'm thinking of enabling it, but what I'm making is a game engine that only has a few users for now and it would be a very very long way to being able to make a living income from game developers sponsoring it. Maybe eventually it could get to the point where I could do part time freelancing supplemented with github sponsor income, but even that would take a long time. I suspect outside of a few super-popular r…

Unsolicited advice: I think you're right, nobody will pay you for it. Every serious programmer interested in game dev writes engines as a hobby. Just search through GitHub. It's partly because it's just tech exploration fun..

If you're serious about games you should make a game. Build an engine too, but only build what you need for the game. This will guide you in making the countless tradeoffs necessary to build an actually shipping piece of software. Otherwise, it's just a tech demo with no constraints or commercial value.

The general game engines (Unity, Unreal, etc) that are commercially valuable spent a lot of time and effort on excruciatingly boring things: supporting a lot of file formats, having very stable tools, being very accessible for beginners, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#176

Post by yodsanklai »

uVacCXNiiJCTnYB wrote: post #124
gniv wrote: post #78

Sometimes you can get lucky and land an interesting job, but I think getting to do interesting work takes time (and luck). An anecdote from my past as an illustration: When I started my job at [FAANG] I was assigned a project. It was not mind-numbing, but not sexy either -- modernize the infrastructure while not messing up the site. Being new, I gave it my all and was rewarded a couple of years later by having the op…

Honestly, Facebook has tried to hire me like 3 times now and every time I got a completed offer at a different job by the time they finished organising their 8-step interview process so I never finished it. FAANG might be interesting but their interview processes kill it for me. I have no idea how people find the time to do homework for it + are willing to spend months in this lengthy interview pipeline. (Also there…

FAANG is mostly 3 steps. 1. chat with the recruiter 2. screening interview 3. on-site interview

You normally get an offer after 3.

EDIT: I'm downvoted, but this was my experience at Google/Facebook. There were exactly three steps. There can be more if they ask a follow up if you're borderline in some of the interviews but it's not the default.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#177

Post by navbaker »

the_only_law wrote: post #155
uVacCXNiiJCTnYB wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree, though I wonder where you find those types of jobs? I recently tried looking at government jobs but didn't find anything that was either remote or near me. Not sure where to find the rest. Because indeed, almost everything I find on tech recruitment platforms is either big corps (often doing nebulous B2B things) or VC backed startups that clearly don't really provide real value besides making VCs ho…

> I recently tried looking at government jobs but didn't find anything that was either remote or near me. Hell, I’d be willing to go back in office for an “interesting” job. The problem with the government is what they pay for probably having to live in DC. As well as the horrible sounding bureaucratic requirements and leveling.

You need to look at either the private companies or university-affiliated research centers doing the actual research and implementation of technologies for the government rather than the government itself. There are loads of these places that don't require living in DC or have a ludicrous application process. Just to throw an example out, US government spacecraft operations have a large presence in Colorado, so there are a ton of government-adjacent opportunities for tech work in that sector there.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?

#179

Post by cevica »

krisoft wrote: post #86

Don’t look at job adverts. Figure out what interests you. Find people who do that. Figure out how they got there and how you yourself can get in the same position. > It honestly makes me feel like my skills and time are being wasted. Stop wasting them then. Hint: work is not necessarily the thing which will scratch that itch. If after plenty of introspection, and trial and error you find that the kind of things which…

krisoft, you are spot on with trying to change one's perspective on viewing your current work differently. I find interesting initiatives to work on the side at Mozilla- Foundation (&Mozilla Corporation for paid work) : https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-you-can-do/
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