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Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

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Re: Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

#101

Post by ipaddr »

I tried to get a new position in June/July. I asked for slightly above top salary bands for language/stack. I also tried to find a place without daily standups. I did many interviews/rounds/tests with a dozen places but never got that final offer either. It was strange the number of interview rounds at different places without even lowball offer. It felt like people were just interviewing to interview but too afraid to make the offer. After a month I stopped the process and just remained at my current job.

I think companies are afraid to hire but hr needs to do things so they interview.

Half of the places I interviewed are still looking for that senior developer and have new monthly job ads. There is something preventing hiring and a different force pushing for conversations/interviews

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

#102

Post by brezelgoring »

ipaddr wrote: post #101

I tried to get a new position in June/July. I asked for slightly above top salary bands for language/stack. I also tried to find a place without daily standups. I did many interviews/rounds/tests with a dozen places but never got that final offer either. It was strange the number of interview rounds at different places without even lowball offer. It felt like people were just interviewing to interview but too afraid…

They have turnover and must keep a healthy pool of candidates ready to go, open positions or not.

This is especially true if the interviewing process is long.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

#103

Post by pixelrevision »

gopher_space wrote: post #93
busterarm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the best engineers that I've ever met is fundamentally unhireable due to the severity of his personality. He's not even a bad guy -- he's very helpful always but unfortunately everything he says just sounds smug or sanctimonious. He can't help himself. It's been sad watching his career struggles and knowing the quality of his work if you can just keep him away from stakeholders and meetings in general

One of the nice things about the old "nerds-only programmer's pit" style of team leadership is that it provides a refuge for people that want part of their world filtered out to get work done. Quite a bit more mandatory social engagement as an engineer these days. Lots of requesting your face.

It was also better for the really quiet ones. There’s some really great programmers who can put out amazing stuff if you can keep them away from the agile/stakeholder circus.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

#104

Post by ipaddr »

fallingknife wrote: post #59
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it could, in theory. I've had the idea of approaching it more like a sorting problem. Scrape social media of the candidates and the company, use NLP to provide a 'cultural fit' metric that circumvents the interview process...

Problem with culture fit is that no one is willing to be completely honest about what they want, or what their culture is. No candidate is going to ever say "I'm a mediocre engineer really just looking for something easy where I can coast. Below market comp is OK." And no company is ever going to say "Kind of bureaucratic for a company this size, so want somebody who has a high BS tolerance, and will put up with that…

Mediocre means average. Most developers/people are mediocre or average. Perhaps you mean below average.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

#105

Post by ipaddr »

purpleblue wrote: post #47

Which part of the world are you located? When you say 40 interviews, do you mean 40 separate companies? You probably need to get your interview behavior evaluated by a friend or someone else. Either your technical chops are not good, or you're giving off the wrong vibe. Maybe get rid of Technical Lead off your resume and shoot for a lower-level position, and see how you do.

These days you need to go through 40 interviews to get past the filtering stage

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

#106

Post by swsdsailor »

If you suspect ageism, try interviewing at large companies whos primary business is not tech. Ive rejected candidates who struggled with the basics, for not explaining their thought process, constantly interrupting me (or arguing),not listening to my guidance, some even ran the interview and didn’t think it was worth their time to solve the questions. You have to be able to do the job but also, we have to feel we can work with you and you can adapt to our codebase without having to justify every past decision to you. It’s amazing to me how many people I would have hired had they just worked through the problem step by step, communicated, and taken my feedback seriously. It seems to me there is a serious lack of basics and communication skills out there. I suspect none of the candidates were aware of their mistakes. I never ask trick/FAANG style question. However, I have noticed more junior team members are ruthless with their judgement during the interview process. Find a company with an older demographic, and treat the interview as a peer work session. Whatever you do, don’t give up.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

#107

Post by dirtybirdnj »

ipaddr wrote: post #99
dirtybirdnj wrote: post #98

I'm right there with you. I was a backend web developer for 10 years until COVID hit, and after getting laid off I've been bouncing between menial low-wage jobs. I can be a capable, productive member of a development team but the experience I've had makes me look unhirable? I don't really understand it. Once you get "high up" enough in the job market and fall down, there is something that is perceived as wrong with y…

What language/stack are you in?

I got started with the LAMP stack but really enjoyed working with Node. I'm comfortable on the command line installing / running things, I've been doing linux based development my entire career with a few unfortunate exceptions where PHP was being run on IIS.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

#108

Post by hiyer »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #53

One thing I found helped during my 9-month job search was to have a project I was working on at the same time. A huge factor why job searching is exhausting is that one doesn't see any progress. Having a 'resume filler' helped me feel like I was still moving in a positive direction.

This honestly sounds like a great idea. Even if not a side project, maybe learning a new language might help not only as a resume-filler but also to expand the pool of jobs you can apply for.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

#109

Post by crnkofe »

Having gone through a similar but maybe less stressful experience during first COVID wave my suggestion is to take a break and act on the feedback. I applied to remote only positions and found companies would generally send me some feedback after the interview or some hints as-to what they didn't like. I probably rewrote my CV up-to 5, 6 times over the interviewing period. I also spend way too long digging into standard interview questions and leetcode madness which I'm still not particularly good at.

Also don't stress too much over failing interviews. Especially for full remote positions companies are trigger-happy. One, two mistakes and you're out. Request a wage that's too high and you're out without any feedback. Not to mention all the companies that are just doing the interviews but not really hiring and those special cases where they simply ignore take-home assignments.

Re: Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

#110

Post by lordnacho »

busterarm wrote: post #72
lordnacho wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd wager the best programmer on the planet will have a This made me wonder, is it true? I've often stumbled on LC tests, in ways that I (funnily enough) wouldn't have failed myself for. Off-by-ones, went down the wrong path initially but found the right one and ran out of time, that kind of thing. I suppose it depends on where you set the bar. What are people's experiences? The worst cases for me is when it's an a…

There's a lot of positions in the 200-300k range that aren't as petulant in hiring and probably better places to work anyway?

Yeah, I guess my main gripe is that if absolutely every job did it, I would just hunker down and study LC for a month and then apply. With my recent interviews it's been a mixed bag, enough that it doesn't feel worth it.
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