Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by musingsole » Wed, Dec 28, 2022, 7:01 PM UTC

> Hard Truth #3: Interview invites are a poor proxy for your desirability Just because you’re getting a lot of offers to interview does not mean that you are a hot commodity.

Hard disagree. Interviewing is expensive as all hell from the company's perspective. Any company interviewing a rash of candidates is engaging in a weird strategy.

Getting an initial interview is a positive sign that (on paper) you're qualified. Further interviews with the company become a blended signal of your qualifications and being a culture match with the latter becoming more dominant with more rounds.

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

#342

Post by didibus » Wed, Dec 28, 2022, 7:02 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #189

anon50118810 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In very large part what your interviews look like depends heavily on when and where you're searching, what type of job you want and what your background is. It's hard to overstate this. 2018 might as well be an entirely different universe. That said I would be a little suspicious as a mid/senior-level developer if I got hired at a place that didn't ask me to do any coding for them at all beforehand.

> That said I would be a little suspicious as a mid/senior-level developer if I got hired at a place that didn't ask me to do any coding for them at all beforehand. I'd be suspicious if they didn't ask me to do any coding, but I'd be just as suspicious if the coding they asked me to do was leetcode.

Why are you opposed to leetcode?

While it annoys me as well to have to brush up a little, someone who has both the discipline to review their fundamentals, and that can demonstrate they have the smarts to be good at it, that's a great sign of being a good candidate.

It serves as a great arbiter, if two people seem to have the same experience, how do you pick between the two?

And when hiring a junior, out of school, there will be no experience to go by, so what else would you assess on?

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

#343

Post by LawTalkingGuy » Wed, Dec 28, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

harshalizee wrote: post #171

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 resu…

> This is terrible, possibly toxic advice.

[Continuing working] is the single biggest thing someone can do to avoid depression after a layoff. The best idea is a paying job because it fills both requirements.

It also keeps you ready to interview and ready to start immediately. When you're on the couch it's always easy to wait till tomorrow.

> I'd rather someone tell me they spent a year working on themselves, playing video games, hiking, etc.

If they were independently wealthy that might be okay but for most people this is self-destructive behavior.

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

#344

Post by krumpet » Wed, Dec 28, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

eulers_secret wrote: post #108

greesil wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was in the exact same situation. What I did was take a web manager job at a non-profit. I run their Wordpress website. It isn't what I was hoping for when I left marketing in the SAAS space, but it's a start and I finally enjoy going to work.

I have complete autonomy in this role and am setting things up so I'm not just managing a WP site, but actually working on the code base and learning as I go.

My thinking is it's better to get paid to learn than grind Leetcode at home (which I did for six long months).

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

#345

Post by the_af » Wed, Dec 28, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

anticristi wrote: post #336

I would love to read a European, perhaps Swedish version of this article. 12+ months of unemployment insurance is standard here. I guess it doesn't take the loneliness away, but might make unemployment less traumatic.

I really liked the article, one of the few on this subject that doesn't feel like self-help or a humble brag. So kudos to the author.

That said, like you, I wonder if this is an American thing. It feels to me as if many Americans are one job away from total collapse, like their country is only ok for people with a good employment and an utter nightmare for everyone else, with no safety net at all except your own savings. With that in mind, a year without a job prospect would indeed seem like living in hell.

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

#346

Post by Arisaka1 » Wed, Dec 28, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

beckingz wrote: post #328

w10-1 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We brought along the people we thought were the best, who we got along with, who would get the job done" I really appreciate the sentiment. In my experience such networks have been self-serving and mostly exclusionary, rewarding loyalty more than competence. "You need to make some changes" is not particularly helpful when you're outside the fold. What's typically unstated is something about loyalty, esp. not disclos…

That's pretty good advice. Get stuff done and be likable is good.

I have a colleague who almost feels like he's actively trying to make me hate him by throwing completely unrelated to work off-hand remarks in the most basic thing I do, like telling people that I'm gonna take a lunch break or just opening up a terminal prompt while we pair program.

I know it's off-topic but It's hard for me to try to be likeable with people who are actively trying stuff like that, and I don't know what else to do. It feels like I'm sitting on a table and the other side ignores their table manners because they're just that valuable to the company that they can.

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

#347

Post by system2 » Wed, Dec 28, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

anticristi wrote: post #336

I would love to read a European, perhaps Swedish version of this article. 12+ months of unemployment insurance is standard here. I guess it doesn't take the loneliness away, but might make unemployment less traumatic.

In some cases unemployment means hunger, homelessness, or even death. Those Swedish people live on another planet.

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

#348

Post by jareklupinski » Wed, Dec 28, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

mattm wrote: post #76

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…

We've heard "transparency" so much lately that it now gets confused with honesty. They're not the same. If a company asks where else you are interviewing an honest but not transparent answer would be something like "I'm exploring other opportunities at various places but don't feel comfortable providing more details." If you were to ask a company who else they are interviewing for the same role, you would expect the…

during one of the first interviews I ever had, the interviewer took me to a private room where I could do the coding part on my own

on the desk was the laptop they wanted me to use, some pens and paper, and a stack of resumes from other people

the interviewer made no mention of the stack as they were leaving or when they came back, and when I asked about it at the end of the interview, they chuckled and changed the subject... to this day I'm wondering if it was some test to see if I threw the other resumes out (didn't get an offer btw)

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

#349

Post by the_af » Wed, Dec 28, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

throwuwu wrote: post #223

harshalizee wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resu…

> 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. You think working on a passion project and trying out a startup is toxic and then you come out with this pessimistic bucket crab viewpoint? You’d be d…

The comment you're replying to said the advice was toxic, not the activity itself. That is, making people feel guilty for not doing "enough" (contributing to side projects, open source, etc) is the arguably toxic thing.

I don't know if I agree, but let's not twist the words of the comment.

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

#350

Post by icedchai » Wed, Dec 28, 2022, 7:16 PM UTC

anon50118810 wrote: post #237

michaelt wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect what Anon means is: if you plan to tell people your side project was your job, you should start treating it as your job. I play around with some side projects where I don’t give a shit about user counts or GitHub stars or commercial viability, doing perhaps 4 hours work per week. If I told people this was me at the height of my powers, I’d expect them to be unimpressed.

Yes, exactly, I'm saying that what will matter to future employers is how much you treat the project as a job, and not the project itself, no matter how interesting or challenging it is from the technical side.

It won't matter as much as you think. They'll probably spend 5 minutes discussing it, if that. If you have a demo or something to show for your time, that will be a plus.