121–130 of 271 posts
I agree. I have been on the interview trail for 10 months and do not get responses to either emails or phone calls. I have a masters degree, loads of experience, and a strong work ethic. I have a patent, have published cited papers, and have 4 commercial languages I co-authored. I am a lead developer on 3 open source projects, one of which contains about a million lines of code. All I see are "ninja/super/god-like" d…
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Also, $115k for a senior engineer? Really great "entry level" (i.e. recently graduated but mostly self taught with lots of internships under belt) is going for $110k... most of the "seniors" I know are running $200k plus.
You tell me who they are, I'll be sending my CV right away. I'm guessing half of the recruiting work is getting in the right networks...
Your salary expectations are awful high for a telecommute position. Next time you could consider letting them warm up to you before throwing that out. Also, how can you have expertise in "a bunch of other stuff"? The point of expertise is focus. Maybe the 40/50 are reading your email. How do you know they are not deciding up front that you're not the right fit?
Why would you think that salary has to be lower for telecommuting position ? Premise is it will be same quality of work as on site so should be same and company saves on office, space equipment etc..
That's why few were interested.
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> I expect to get paid $115K to lead a team as a senior developer, but don't want to relocate in order to be with the team. He targeted companies that claim to accommodate telecommuting. Not hire when being asked looks sneaky.
How often does telecommuting really jive with a senior/leadership position? If you're just coding away then sure I can see telecommuting being very viable. If part of your job is earning the respect of a team and being able to drive them and steer them in a direction, then not being physically there could very well be a huge barrier. Not to mention only really wanting telecommuting does potentially imply less commitm…
I know that my team's direct manager has huge respect from all of us (and the upper management as well), he keeps our projects on track, gives us the tools we need, and makes sure any obstacles in our path are quickly removed. And as with any good team, he steps out of the way and let's us work. Thinking about it, the biggest issue I've had with management in the past is not knowing when to get out of the way, I think remote work makes this easier.
The strange thing I always find about the common critiques of telecommuting is that there are many successful oss projects that are run entirely distributed and large communities, like HN for example, that probably have more social complexity than a similar sized physical group. Surely there are certain HNers who have you respect even though you've probably never even had a 1-on-1 chat with them.
You need to consider the possibility that you're not as competent as you believe yourself to be. Dunning-Kruger[0] is real, and your post doesn't demonstrate the self-awareness the best developers seem to possess.
Your writing is sprinkled with emoticons and rife with reduplicated punctuation, both of which (especially the exclamation points) are common signs of immaturity. Reading this diatribe--and assuming your 50 emails were written similarly--I am forced to accept one of two conclusions: either you're not aware that your writing is unprofessional, or you're aware that it's unprofessional and unconcerned. Either option does not reflect well on you. To put it bluntly, if I received an email from you in this style, I would archive it without response, assuming it was from someone who lacked the requisite introspective capability I expect from the people I want to work with.
I found it particularly telling that you claim that all five of your phone screens went "very well" but marveled that only three companies tried to set up an onsite interview with you. Unless both the two companies that stopped at the phone screen simultaneously filled the position immediately after your phone screen, you really need to recognize that at least those two phone screens did not go well. I do interviews at a large Internet company, and one of my goals--one of the goals that I've been trained to seek--is to ensure that the candidate, no matter how bad, walks away from the interview feeling good about himself/herself and the company. If you're doing really poorly in an interview, I'll toss you some easier questions than I normally give, because I have all the information I need, and I don't want you to have a negative experience with my company. You may have felt good about the phone screens, but the most likely explanation for the two companies that didn't bring you onsite is that you didn't actually do well enough to justify additional interviews. These people want to hire someone, and if you were someone they wanted to hire, they certainly would have continued to interview you.
I think your experiment was less valid than you think it was because you're less competent than you think you are.
EDIT: I should add that whatever the case, whether I'm right or wrong about you, the best response to the situation you're in is to seek to improve yourself, not to embark on a quixotic venture to change others. Read CS theory books, create and modify open source projects, solve fun programming puzzles: sharpen your skills and--no matter what your level of competency--your prospects will improve.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Specifically in response to the time gaps: it's true that time gaps are bad, but keep in mind these are startups, which means they're juggling about twenty thousand different things at the same time. I think in that domain in particular, some slack may be in order as compared to a 20,000-strong corporation with a dedicated HR department. Re: weird extra steps: the idea isn't that they're cool. The idea is that if you…
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Why do you think someone with Asperger's shouldn't conduct an interview? I can see talking in a monotone and fidgeting as an annoyance, but was it show-stopping? The refusal to answer why your response was (in his opinion) wrong is definitely a problem. I'm worried about this because I've been unofficially diagnosed with Asperger's (I believe I'm not, but I'm definitely borderline / close) and I intend to run a compa…
Sorry, I may not have been clear in my description. I didn't notice much of anything when he came in. It was after the interview started and he asked this question that he thought I answered incorrectly that the trouble started. That's when I started noticing the somewhat odd mannerisms and the fact that I couldn't get a technical discussion about the question started. Like I said, I'm used to working with all types…
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Also, $115k for a senior engineer? Really great "entry level" (i.e. recently graduated but mostly self taught with lots of internships under belt) is going for $110k... most of the "seniors" I know are running $200k plus.
It's funny how every single time there are discussions of salary on HN, there will be wild differences in opinion. You're saying an entry level engineer is getting $110k while some comments later are saying $115k seems high for a senior engineer. I never know where the truth lies…
I'm going to say it because it seems no one else is. I apologize ahead of time for my brutal honesty. You need to consider the possibility that you're not as competent as you believe yourself to be. Dunning-Kruger[0] is real, and your post doesn't demonstrate the self-awareness the best developers seem to possess. Your writing is sprinkled with emoticons and rife with reduplicated punctuation, both of which (especial…
I think your tome is somewhat off base.