Cool stuff, I'm thinking of doing my internship over there (CS major from Holland) so I'll be following this!
Hunting For A Tech Job In Silicon Valley
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: Hunting For A Tech Job In Silicon Valley
#22I was looking for a job in the Bay Area in September (similar situation, non-US citizen). I never used a "job search" site, though, I just researched companies I was interested in and applied through their sites. This worked out fine... most places replied quite quickly to my application. I don't really see any advantage to using a site like Monster.com. If I haven't heard of a company, I probably don't want to work…
For all you guys targeting startups, do you have a recommended location for finding them? There are plenty of amazing startups around that I have never heard of. I feel like I just don't have the time to keep up or am unaware of some magic resource that some of you must have. I am mostly curious about companies specific to the bay area but a larger scope would certainly be welcome.
Pro-tip: check out Crunchbase (http://www.crunchbase.com), and look through all the recently funded companies (http://www.crunchbase.com/funding-rounds?page=1). These are startups that are pretty much all hiring-- one of the primary reasons startups raise money is to ramp up their team and scale growth.
Re: Hunting For A Tech Job In Silicon Valley
#23I shit you not -- if you are in San Francisco I can take you out partying and you'll have a job you love the next day <-- this is how retarded easy it is to get a software job in this city -- EVERYONE is hiring
It's odd. All these businesses are fighting over a small amount of talent. Why not just have a remote office in San Francisco and focus development elsewhere in the country?
This happens a lot with agencies, where they locate their sales, marketing, even designers in say New York or London, meanwhile the bulk of the company is elsewhere - in locations with high unemployment and lots of developers.
In those areas you might have 20, 30, maybe 40 developers all applying for a single position.
Re: Hunting For A Tech Job In Silicon Valley
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is sound advice, forget the big job boards, write companies directly. People love hearing a sincere email about why you want to work at their company. Set yourself apart by doing a little research and it will pay off big time. Besides, many good jobs are not even listed on the big job boards.
I just concluded a job search, and found that writing sincere emails did indeed establish a positive rapport, but 1) job-seeking engineers are already universally adored and 2) the recipient of the email will need to be herded, because their primary job is not making sure you get hired. Recruiters, guys. Do you know there is a whole class of people that will work full-time to bring you whatever jobs you want? Why am…
Why am I the only one mentioning them in this thread?
Because most recruiters are ignorant incompetents, or at least most of the interactions that potential recruitess have are with ignorant incompetents. If you want a longer, more involved version of this look at Peroni's comment history, (formerly KoZeN).
Re: Hunting For A Tech Job In Silicon Valley
#25I skimmed this, but then I saw Madison, WI jump out. Here's a warning: I'd bet $100 the company was Epic Systems. They're a godawful employer [1]. Please please please think multiple times and talk to previous employees before accepting a job there. They're infamous for hiring devs on h1bs, refusing to sponsor them for a green card, and working their asses off while paying as little as possible and well under market. They also use, at least last time I checked, the world's shittiest tech stack: tens of millions of lines of vb6 and maybe 30-50MM lines of M/cachescript/mumps. The world's shittiest language by a damn long shot [2:4]. Undocumented and non unit tested (last I heard), though they do hire, at least when I was there, one full time tester for every two devs. At first you'll think wow -- they're dedicated to quality! No, that's just the minimum it takes to make barely usable software there.
The other downside to their antiquated tech stack is after putting in a couple years there, you will still have no marketable skills because you'll be the same as a brand new dev straight out of school. Everyone else will have two years in on either the .net or the java or the web (rails/django/node/html5) or the ios/android tech stacks. You'll still be starting at ground zero.
Further, my best guess is their devs have something like 25-35% annual turnover. That is not a joke. The best part is if you try to leave, your ass will be stuck in Madison WI. There's really not that many tech companies there so you'll have to relocate. They'll brag about paid sabbaticals after 5 years. So few people last that long I'd bet it's one of the cheapest benefits they have.
Finally, they have a comprehensive NDA/noncompete and since it's Wisconsin, it's very enforceable and they can and do aggressively enforce it.
Just don't do it. If you poke around the internet even a bit you'll see legions of disgruntled ex employees.
I could go on; they have this theory that anyone can be trained to code so your interview is pretty much just your gpa. They then put you through a 1-3 month internal bootcamp to train you to code. You can, um, imagine the sort of code this churns out...
See also [5:6].
[1] http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Epic-Systems-Corporation-Re...
[2] http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/2417/60874.aspx#60874
[3] http://thedailywtf.com/comments/A_Case_of_the_MUMPS.aspx
[4] http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/2402/60158.aspx#60158
[5] http://www.indeed.com/forum/cmp/Epic-Systems/Epic-Systems-Sa...
Re: Hunting For A Tech Job In Silicon Valley
#26protip: pick keywords for the tech stack you want to work in, whether {.net, java, ios/android, web:{rails,django,node,js,html5}}. Hook up if this then that (http://ifttt.com ) to your google talk account. Every 15 minutes it will poll craigslist jobs looking for your keywords then im to your google talk account; it's wonderful. I think they also support email endpoints and maybe rss.
Re: Hunting For A Tech Job In Silicon Valley
#27I skimmed this, but then I saw Madison, WI jump out. Here's a warning: I'd bet $100 the company was Epic Systems. They're a godawful employer [1]. Please please please think multiple times and talk to previous employees before accepting a job there. They're infamous for hiring devs on h1bs, refusing to sponsor them for a green card, and working their asses off while paying as little as possible and well under market.…
yeah, every company should be checked on glassdoor....will let you know if it's a company that's a slave driver, or if they are pay below market rates or if they expect you to work long hours
Re: Hunting For A Tech Job In Silicon Valley
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just concluded a job search, and found that writing sincere emails did indeed establish a positive rapport, but 1) job-seeking engineers are already universally adored and 2) the recipient of the email will need to be herded, because their primary job is not making sure you get hired. Recruiters, guys. Do you know there is a whole class of people that will work full-time to bring you whatever jobs you want? Why am…
Why am I the only one mentioning them in this thread? Because most recruiters are ignorant incompetents, or at least most of the interactions that potential recruitess have are with ignorant incompetents. If you want a longer, more involved version of this look at Peroni's comment history, (formerly KoZeN). http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Peroni
Recruiters mainly make the HR and/or management folks happy not necessarily the IT guys you'll working with. If you're a good candidate, they only do lots of work for you because they can land a better bonus.
Re: Hunting For A Tech Job In Silicon Valley
#29In the Bay Area, high tech jobs hunt you (at least right now). Fill in your LinkedIn profile like the first comment suggests, build your reputation (GitHub, StackOverflow) and you'll start getting approached by recruiters.
If you want recruiters, just call them. You need a linkedin or a resume, but the other steps are more useful to employers. (You can also email me, sdrost@gmail.com -- I just worked with seven in my job search, and can pass on the three I recommend.)
I'm just now at the point where I refuse resumes and calls from recruiters.
It'd be better to figure out companies you want to work for and figure out how to get in touch.
Re: Hunting For A Tech Job In Silicon Valley
#30I was looking for a job in the Bay Area in September (similar situation, non-US citizen). I never used a "job search" site, though, I just researched companies I was interested in and applied through their sites. This worked out fine... most places replied quite quickly to my application. I don't really see any advantage to using a site like Monster.com. If I haven't heard of a company, I probably don't want to work…
For all you guys targeting startups, do you have a recommended location for finding them? There are plenty of amazing startups around that I have never heard of. I feel like I just don't have the time to keep up or am unaware of some magic resource that some of you must have. I am mostly curious about companies specific to the bay area but a larger scope would certainly be welcome.
Tech meetups are a goldmine if you're interested in startups. Maybe you won't find employees from the startup itself there but if you interested in say, erlang, and go to an erlang meetup you can very easily ask people there if they've heard of any interesting erlang startups. You'll probably find some people who will say something along the lines of oh yeah, I recently heard about company x who's doing y, it sounds pretty interesting actually.
Then you can do some research on company x and try to get in touch with someone there.