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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

#471

Post by programmarchy »

Arisaka1 wrote: post #346
beckingz wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Have you told this person what they’re doing bothers you and asked them to stop? If you haven’t, then you are partially to blame for not speaking up for yourself. Good opportunity for you to learn how to tactfully set boundaries with people.

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

#472

Post by throwaway675309 »

dadoge wrote: post #207

Contrary opinion: If feels very very very wrong to compare a search during April 2020 and now. Why? The year after April 2020 was a booming job market for SWEs. Hiring managers were competing for talent, 2021 was a boom year of low interest rates, euphoria in private and public markets. This blog post _should not_ be considered a response to the WSJ article. And sorry, grinding away at leetcode should only take about…

Anecdotal but over the past 20 years I've held about eight different positions in various companies as a software engineer, and I've never even so much as glanced at leetcode. I've been able to live comfortably and put plenty away for the future with 150 to 200K salary.

I feel like companies that emphasize interviews prioritizing rote memorization aren't going to be a good culture fit for me anyway.

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

#473

Post by EamonnMR »

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…

I was shocked by that too. Maintaining such a sheet is a good idea, but never _ever_ share it. It's bad operational security. It's also revealing more about you (what other companies think of you) than it is about the companies in question.

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

#474

Post by KETpXDDzR »

> It [work] is the gravitational center around which the other activities in your life revolve.

Don't let work be most important part of your life! Companies encourage you to, so they have another cheap way to lock you in. Years of work from home showed me that your (social) life shouldn't mainly happen at work. Better find friends at hobbies/meetups/etc.

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

#475

Post by scarface74 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #182
scarface74 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you aren’t “learning and producing” at your day job, what are you doing 40 hours a week?

Speaking as someone who has juggled both a full-time job and a part-time startup on the side before, I can answer this: both of them contributed immensely to my professional development, but in different ways, since the business domains were very different (which also meant developing proficiencies with different technologies and tooling).

My perspective is different - not disagreeing with yours.

My goal is to constantly be “putting myself out of a job”. That means I need to be able to recognize a problem or opportunity, understand the business context, do enough of an MVP or POC that the rest of the organization understands, train and move on.

Sometimes the internal organization doesn’t have the desire or capacity to maintain or evolve the solution. In that case it’s my job to find an outside consulting company.

I don’t do staff augmentation.

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

#476

Post by charles_f »

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…

I don't know about that. Something that makes me sick to my stomach is the current only accepted behaviour to react to being laid off by being grateful to such a wonderful company to have given me opportunity to learn and blah, blah, blah. There is so much dishonesty and fake gratefulness around that anything departing from that, including just sharing that you interviewed a lot and only found dead ends, is a black flag.

I get that this is marketing, and that's the game in an employer market. But sh*t, no-one is calling out the fact that maybe the responsibility is not only on the incoming recession, but also how dumb a large portion of the industry has been in trying to ignore as best as possible a freaking war, a pandemic, and flying oil prices, and carried on over-hiring at high wages. I'm grateful mine didn't go in that game and froze hiring very early on.

Maybe it's an emphasis, the way I read it is that you should keep your unpalatable opinions to yourself, because being critical of the system is cause to be rejected by it.

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

#477

Post by jacquesm »

jasmer wrote: post #375
jacquesm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Gosh, no - strongly recommending not doing this. (The lying part) Lying is one of the worst things you can do, it usually speaks to an issue with integrity, a concern that comes before almost all of them even intelligence, education, aptitude, skills. Learn the skill of polite deferral, of saying things without saying them, diverting or embellishing a bit - and then only if it's an issue not relevant to the job. If s…

Companies lie to their prospective employees all the time. About how much runway they have, about the work that you'll be doing, about what it is like to work there.

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

#478

Post by anon50118810 »

bumby wrote: post #428
anon50118810 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to distinguish between being at some particular job and being in a profession or similarly in any job at all. I think it's unhealthy to have your identity tied to your specific employer, job title and tasks that you do for them. You as a person should not be defined by the tickets in your current sprint. However not having a profession or any job is much different and worse. Unless you're older and retired, o…

Part of the distinction I was trying to make is that it's dangerous to have one's identity tied primarily to any singular thing. In western culture, it just seems like a job/profession is the easiest identifier. Will Storr writes about this much better than I can explain it here. But his point is essentially that the healthiest approach is to have your identity tied to many disparate parts of your life so that if one…

What I'm really talking about when I'm talking about the threat of extended unemployment is the threat of losing socioeconomic class. So much depends on class: where you live, what you eat, where you worship if anywhere, where your kids go to school, who your friends are. Almost everything. It's very difficult to diversify your social and professional network outside of your class.

In most cases switching from one tech job to another will keep you in the same middle-to-upper-middle class even if you have to take a relatively large pay cut. You can even lose your job without something else lined up and it's not a big problem as long as you're confident you'll find something similar soon.

All of that is at risk with extended unemployment or being forced to indefinitely work for lower pay in a different field. Consider all the life changes someone might have to make if they have to change from being a software developer making $150k to being a rideshare driver making $40k, after six months, a year, or five years. I don't know about buggy-whip makers but probably they'd be okay with losing their jobs if they were guaranteed equal work in the new car factories. What they really dreaded was having to work for less pay in the new factories, or becoming day laborers or similar. This is what motivated the original Luddites.

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

#479

Post by jacquesm »

some_furry wrote: post #379
hgsgm wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Bostock been overturned? https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/protections-against-emplo...

A ruling by a court isn't the same thing as federal law. There is no federal law establishing my rights, so if a company tries to ask about my personal life (wife, kids, etc.) I politely decline to answer, or I answer vague enough that doesn't give them any useful information.

That's exactly the sort of exchange that I had in mind. Likewise for work at a previous company, your current salary, whether or not you plan to have kids and so on. Depending on where you live some of those may be illegal but still, you need that job...

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

#480

Post by jacquesm »

yongjik wrote: post #462
chrisbaker98 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often does that happen though? I'm straight and I don't recall ever being asked about my family or love life in a job interview. Not that I'd keep it secret if asked, but why the hell would they be asking?

Yeah I'm also curious. When I was at Google there were a list of things you were never supposed to ask a candidate because that's Super Illegal(TM) and could expose the company to lawsuits. That included sexual orientation and marriage status. That was more than ten years ago, I'd expect most IT companies would do the same by now, at least in the US.

There are ways to ask those without being illegal and these are employed quite frequently. Essentially any kind of probing into someone's private life should be off-limits.
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