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

stevenbuccini.com

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

#171

Post by harshalizee »

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 terrible, possibly toxic advice. Software devs are people too. They burn out, take time off to travel, reflect, take care of family, or just down on their luck being unemployed.

The only advice I'd consider paramount is to take stock of themselves financially and mentally, to assure themselves that they can take on the chaos and uncertainty that follows.

Honestly, if someone showed up with a gap in their resume and claimed that they were doing start-up, open source, etc. for an interview, I'd dig deep into that hard. The open source contribution/project would have to have a sufficiently high bar for it to be even considered. Else, I'd just assume they were being less than honest. I'd rather someone tell me they spent a year working on themselves, playing video games, hiking, etc.

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

#172

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

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…

Did you get a job this way? Do you know anyone who got a job this way?

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

#173

Post by pclmulqdq »

ericmcer wrote: post #123
gregfjohnson wrote: post #90

Stepping back for a moment from the content, I think it is worth noting what an exceptionally well-written essay this is. Being able to write well is a super power for engineers. It is a reflection of the lucidity and clarity of one's mind, and the ability to understand the needs of the reader. Writing well is an exceptionally useful and powerful skill that can be improved with consistent practice. I would be tempted…

He is a good writer and clearly a thoughtful individual, which further reinforces truth #6 (honesty can hurt you). I subconsciously approached the article with a bit of negative bias around the fact he had been laid off. His writing has more clarity than many successful CEOs though so who knows.

As someone who also writes and thinks a lot, truth #6 applies particularly to us. People REALLY don't want to hear hard truths from people who think about what they are saying. If you are saying something that is less thought out, honesty can be a good policy - after all, they have probably heard whatever you are saying before.

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

#174

Post by throwaway85858 »

I'm about to get laid off, there's sliver of hope that something might come through before the end of the week but we all pretty much know now that the company is finished. I dedicated the last 7 years of my life to this and I'm disappointed that the investors don't share our optimism and confidence in the future of the company.

I've been laid off before and I share the OP's perspective that it can be a cathartic singular moment in life that presents an opportunity for re-invention.

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

#175

Post by carabiner »

fein wrote: post #139
eulers_secret wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What situation are people in that they have to result to this? Is this an issue with getting laid off and trying to find a FAANG job? I was laid off from one consulting company back in 2018 or so and had a new gig with more pay a week or so later. No leetcode or dev tests, just talking with people in phone interviews. It was a company I had previously done contract work for, and they called me, but nothing at the FAA…

FAANG uses them because they're effective and scalable: https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/zhgtmr/o...

They're derived from cognitive sciences research and they have a high false negative rate, but it's more valuable to these companies to capture the true positives.

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

#176

Post by eropple »

tester756 wrote: post #102
rajin444 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eventuall…

You're assuming that that awareness of how to solve a problem and immediate hands-on-keyboard test for materially different success rates while actually employed. My experience is that by the time you've gotten the job, most of the crammed-in Leetcode specifics have leaked back out and you're in the same place as somebody who knows the thing from school or from using it in prior projects, but didn't have it in their fingertips during the interview--you're looking it up again, because you know what you need but don't have the details top-of-mind.

The insistence on being able to spew out code-first answers to contrived problems during an interview situation is silly gatekeeping, but it makes the people who pass feel good, and that's why it persists.

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

#177

Post by vsareto »

fein wrote: post #139
eulers_secret wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What situation are people in that they have to result to this? Is this an issue with getting laid off and trying to find a FAANG job? I was laid off from one consulting company back in 2018 or so and had a new gig with more pay a week or so later. No leetcode or dev tests, just talking with people in phone interviews. It was a company I had previously done contract work for, and they called me, but nothing at the FAA…

>What situation are people in that they have to result to this?

Widespread interview advice targets the "worst-case technical interview scenario" which is doing leetcode and running a gauntlet of interviews. This casts the widest net possible in terms of how many interviews you'll pass. There's also a little bit of reasoning like "if you can handle this, you'll be able to ace the easier interviews".

The other things for job hunting - like using your network and being contacted first - are additional layers that you go through.

>In my 10 years of being an employed dev, I have never had to do leetcode interviews.

I think the reason you hear prep advice so often is that no one has any real data on how many companies are doing leetcode interviews vs. non-leetcode interviews. Because of this ambiguity, that's why you hear so much advice about preparing for the worst case.

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

#178

Post by partdavid »

sbuccini wrote: post #4

Hey everyone, author here. Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I decided to spend Christmas break in CDMX[0] by myself in order to reflect not only on the past year, but just how far I've come since I got laid off. This is the result. Thanks for making all those hours at the café (instead of at a museum or bar or whatever) worthwhile. [0] I'll be here for a few more days if you'd like to meet up!

When I was laid off in 2010, I found another way in which honesty bit me. Or maybe it was a lesson in recognizing the limits of offers of help, because it wasn't my "transparency" which was the problem.

Of course I had my friends looking for opportunities and making referrals. One of them had a kind of clunky opportunity for me as an independent contractor for their company. It was a lengthy process to get it done, in part because they didn't really have their own contractor infrastructure so I organized an LLC, got my proper insurance, etc. Of course, I didn't tell me other friends about this opportunity because it wasn't a done deal yet, and I kind of knew the contracting thing was going to be short-lived anyway. Well, it turned out to fall through completely, which wasn't a huge surprise; but I found out that the hiring manager had told all my other friends to stop looking for jobs for me, because I was coming to work for him! So I was back to square one.

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

#179

Post by Jagerbizzle »

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…

"A year of unemployment? Lonely, depressing, and not good on a resume."

A year of unemployment seems significantly less depressing than this statement. What if you were to travel (or hike/explore your local area), focus on quality time with your family, friends, or dog? This to me seems way less depressing than grinding on some meaningless side-project, and as a hiring manager at a FAANG I would absolutely look at a year on someone's CV spent on these activities as a positive rather than a negative.

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

#180

Post by vsareto »

carlmr wrote: post #144
martythemaniak wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a widely shared opinion here, but this process will make you a better engineer. Keep at it.

I see this all the time, "coding interviews suck", "leetcode doesn't test if you're a good coder", but in the end it's better than nothing, and having worked at places without coding interviews there's almost no bottom to people's abilities. So a low, but existing, floor is a good thing.

The biggest issue IMO is lack of flexibility. Leetcode is a specific format with specific questions, but is not necessarily the work you'll do day-to-day.

What would be great is if companies offered multiple formats including leetcode, take home, pair programming, Github review, project review, just talking, etc.

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