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Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

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Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#101

Post by doix »

anon50118810 wrote: post #72
doix wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just curious, what do you define as an _okay_ job? Would you be willing to pay the opportunity cost to take it? If I didn't have enough money to pay for food/rent, I would take the first offer. Fortunately, I've never been in that situation. > I applied to over 50 companies and not all of them were FAANG by any stretch of the imagination. I'll admit I'm not the best at interviewing, which certainly was a factor. Bu…

It would be great if you could share your insights about finding work at these non-tech companies, either here or at my recent post at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34108841 . I've applied to far over 50 places and would be satisfied with that sort of thing at least for the near term.

You're looking for a remote job. The sort of companies I'm thinking of most likely won't do remote. Maybe it's different now in the era of COVID, but I suspect they'll still be "asses in chairs, look busy" type places.

Go on monster.com (or any other job search site), type in "programmer" (or " programmer" if you only have experience in a single language) and start applying. If you don't recognize the company name or what they do, that's good. If you're looking for a consultancy gig, then you probably want to look out for keywords like "government" or "client". If you're looking for a non-tech company, then you need to google the company name and see what field their in.

If you know Java, you can probably search for "Jira programmer" or "Jira developer" and find a pretty cushy gig writing those. If you know PHP, then search for "wordpress developer". If it's python, search "Django developer" etc.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#102

Post by tester756 »

rajin444 wrote: post #86
tester756 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you use algos if you aren't aware which places in your code you could significantly improve if you had that algo intuition?

You’re hired for your problem solving ability which includes being able to learn and apply specific algorithms if needed. Asking questions that chat GPT can easily answer gives 0 insight into problem solving ability.

Sounds cool in theory, but the question stands

How are you going to improve existing codebase / new code if you aren't aware of the foundations, tools and basic primitives?

How many problems could be solved by just usage of z3 if you were aware of it?

How many problems could be solved by applying most popular combinatorial optimization methods/approaches

instead of writing something times, times slower, but eventually hacked enough to make it work?

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#103

Post by itake »

scarface74 wrote: post #92
blagie wrote: post #74

My advice: Have one or more side projects going all the time. If you get laid off, immediately start doing a startup, open-source project, or volunteering full time. A year of unemployment? Lonely, depressing, and not good on a resume. A year of launching an unsuccessful venture? Running coding classes for the underserved? Focusing full-time on contributing to pytorch? That's a lot better, both at the time and in ret…

This is a statistically horrible idea. The chance that your startup is going to replace even the compensation of entry level grad in any large city in the US doing enterprise development is almost 0. The “story” that has worked for me is that “no I’m not going to reverse a binary tree on the whiteboard while juggling bowling balls riding a unicycle on a tightrope. What we can do is talk like adults and we can discuss…

Just wondering, what is your TC? My understanding is that story works at Tier 3 companies that lack a structured interview process and are desperate for candidates (e.g. startups).

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#104

Post by prismatix »

anon50118810 wrote: post #51
sillysaurusx wrote: post #19

> Don’t discount the physical aspect of loneliness either. If you’re like me, work is the primary shaper of your life. Work gives your life rhythm. It is the gravitational center around which the other activities in your life revolve. Then, one day, poof—it’s gone. Exhibit A of why not to take your day job too seriously. Be professional — but that’s as far as it goes. > Come up with a more, uh, positive reason for wh…

Being spoiled for choice with offers is great if you can manage it, but not very useful if you're OP who couldn't find something for a year. Also, having a job gives you a basic social identity to use to interact with people, and positive cash flow lets you be expansive and outgoing. It's very easy to take this for granted, or assume focusing on work is ultra-materialist, if you don't have a lot of experience going w…

Also, if you can't find a job in a year then maybe you need to lower your standards somewhere. Even as a self-taught, very junior (at the time) engineer it only took me 4 months to receive (competitive) competing offers.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#105

Post by anon50118810 »

jacquesm wrote: post #44
jayceedenton wrote: post #28

> Hard Truth #6: Honesty can only hurt you I think the author has come away with the wrong lesson here. Many engineers, particularly those that don't pay too much heed to social mores, think they have some God-given right to share details of all their private interactions publicly. Every tech test they do is pushed to GitHub with an accompanying blog post. Every interview has a transcript (somewhat one-sided) publish…

If a company asks you about stuff that isn't any of their business you have my permission (not that you need it) to lie your ass off if you think it will help you. The power asymmetry is such that unless the counterparty is extremely careful about abusing that power that you will end up being cornered and taken advantage of. If you present yourself as more desirable than you are based on your current situation and it…

I think it's healthier to instead develop the social skills and confidence needed to answer any questions confidently while enforcing boundaries about what you will and won't answer. Outright lying can come from a place of weakness and fear which isn't good to encourage.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#106

Post by awillen »

blagie wrote: post #74

My advice: Have one or more side projects going all the time. If you get laid off, immediately start doing a startup, open-source project, or volunteering full time. A year of unemployment? Lonely, depressing, and not good on a resume. A year of launching an unsuccessful venture? Running coding classes for the underserved? Focusing full-time on contributing to pytorch? That's a lot better, both at the time and in ret…

I've taken time off between jobs without taking on any meaningful projects, and I generally haven't found it to be an issue. When I tell recruiters I just wanted time off to relax, they're sometimes skeptical, but hiring managers more often than not either respond with some variety of "Oh yeah, I did that too and it was amazing" or "Oh man that sounds so great, I'm jealous."

I do apply almost entirely to smaller startups, so that may skew the response vs. what you'd get in the more process-oriented recruiting flows of a larger company. Also it probably helps that my resume has a couple of jobs where I was a very early employee at startups that went on to be extremely successful.

I also really like to just be left alone and read books, so it's something I enjoy - I recognize that many folks need the structure of work, and that's fair.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#107

Post by FpUser »

ThePadawan wrote: post #14
doix wrote: post #3

I'm guessing #7 contributed to the fact that it took the author 1 year to find another job. If you're desperate, you can most likely find an _okay_ job in 3 months. If you don't have the luxury to wait for a "good" job, finding a job tends to happen faster.

I'm in similar shoes to the author here, and am glad to hear you show some understanding for this. I interviewed with a quite promising company beginning of December, only to immediately get the written feedback (after the first call) of "Well I know a lot of SWE in this town and none of them are struggling to find a job - so if you've been looking for X months, surely there's something wrong with you - and anyway, w…

>"so if you've been looking for X months, surely there's something wrong with you - and anyway, we've already signed a contract with someone else in the 5 days since we last spoke."

I think letting them know you are currently unemployed is a mistake. Frankly your current state of affairs is not their business. You can always tell them that you are ok but looking for a better job. Very simple and understandable. Yes it is a lie but it is the only reasonable option. Telling perspective employer to sod off and not to stick their nose into your internal situation is not going to do you any good. Telling that you are out of job and looking will immediately put you into unfavorable position. Treat yourself as a business in this particular case. Businesses have zero problems lying to each other / their employees for as long as it does not break a law.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#108

Post by eulers_secret »

greesil wrote: post #95
blagie wrote: post #74

My advice: Have one or more side projects going all the time. If you get laid off, immediately start doing a startup, open-source project, or volunteering full time. A year of unemployment? Lonely, depressing, and not good on a resume. A year of launching an unsuccessful venture? Running coding classes for the underserved? Focusing full-time on contributing to pytorch? That's a lot better, both at the time and in ret…

Nope, I need that time to grind leetcode.

This is exactly what happened to me when I quit.

“Now I’ll have time for my projects!!”

Instead it’s been “Grokking Algorithms”, “The Competitive Programmers Handbook”, Alex Xu’s “System Design”, and enough leetcode that I’m actually doing more than I did at work.

What sucks is that there are still lots of medium problems I cannot do. Hards are right out. Dunno what I’ll do.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#109

Post by cahoot_bird »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #53
librish wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exhibit A of why not to take your day job too seriously. Be professional — but that’s as far as it goes. People spend 8 hours + lunch and commuting every weekday on their job. It's almost 50% of the time you spend conscious during a week. Most people want more out of that than just a chore that needs to be done.

Embrace distributed WFH and you can spend 4 hours in the morning, have a nice picnic, play some basketball, have a couple beers, then retire to your room to do another 4hrs. Or just fuck off some days and counterbalance it by doing hyper focused 12hrs days some other time. Also: unless you're genuinely curing cancer or flying food to starving African villages or something, 95% of software companies are pretty damn us…

Counter opinion: You're going to be one of many applicant because everyone else is embracing WFH trend too, so you are competing with everyone, especially with some much experience to show, or a portfolio of trending technologies.

It might be that a dev that has a money cushion and is willing and able to relocate can compete on a level others can't because competition would only be localized.

OP was unemployed a year. Time adds up, that's a lot of money.

Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job

#110

Post by BuckyBeaver »

autotune wrote: post #83

I have gotten laid off, fired, or otherwise managed out so many times in the last year or so I am writing off the whole year on my resume and calling it a “personal development” year and not listing any short term positions on there. 2021-2022 was just a complete disaster for job stability relative to most of my previous career where I was doing 2-3 years minimum in a role. My personal recommendation in addition to T…

COBRA is outrageously expensive. If you have no (or little) income, the ACA is a no-brainer I think.
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