Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Job Hunting in 2022

mhlakhani.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 270 posts

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#61

Post by symlinkk »

paxys wrote: post #23
asadlionpk wrote: post #6

Sounds about expected even in current conditions. If you are fairly skilled programmer, somewhat senior. These layoffs don’t matter. I assure you that you won’t die of hunger if you quit/are laid off. Plenty of demand for non-coasters.

Anecdotally, a large number of experienced engineers I know at big tech companies have been secretly hoping to be included in an upcoming layoff round. So many people have mentally checked out of their current jobs but are too lazy to grind leetcode and go through interview loops. Unless you are in a financial crunch or have other issues like visa sponsorship, getting paid for 6+ months to fully focus on the next ste…

“Lazy” is the wrong word. People work for 8 hours a day and then are expected to cook, clean, exercise, and maintain some sort of social life. Adding in Leetcode on top of that is going to cause something to give. There’s only so many hours in the day.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#62

Post by dgunay »

dirtbag__dad wrote: post #42
mikedelago wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't blame you. Take home assignments are ridiculous, anyway. My personal time is valuable to me and it's unrealistic to expect me to do homework just for the privilege of an interview. In my last job hunt, I flat out declined further interview if I was requested to do a take home assignment.

Would you prefer a take home or a live coding challenge? I have the total opposite experience. I have rarely done well on a live code problem, I clam up. Tbh it’s humiliating, not representative of my actual skill set, and a waste of everyone’s time. The amount of time I’d need to study to be good at live coding is less than doing a couple take homes for companies I’m actually interested in.

I personally prefer take home problems (I also have a bad track record on "speedrun this Leetcode problem" interviews). However I think it'd be great if applicants could choose one or the other, without any bias in either direction.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#63

Post by Hermitian909 »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #51
Hermitian909 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, how good of a signal can companies really be getting if it's too different from real world systems? There are "layers" to the signal you can get from system design interviews: 1. Are they aware of "big concepts", indexing, sharding, queues, scheduling, etc. 2. Are they comfortable actually using and manipulating these abstractions in an academic sense? e.g. new college grads may have never used an index, but…

> imagine we didn't have feature X, how would you add it to the product? I think pulling specific ideas from your actual system is full of traps. These are probably problems you've thought of - both actively and passively - for days, months, or even years. The person you're interviewing has had no such benefit, and it might be very hard for the interviewer to be able to separate what they think is reasonable and what…

> I think pulling specific ideas from your actual system is full of traps. These are probably problems you've thought of - both actively and passively - for days, months, or even years.

The first time you give the interview certainly, but you have time to formalize and tune the interview. Write down what you're going to ask, what signals you're looking for, the quality of a solution you expect. Socialize this with engineers who weren't directly involved in the design of the system, ask for their feedback.

You can usually iron out a question in 10-20 interviews and make it really stellar within a 100. I know that's a lot of potentially wasted hours, but the ROI in terms of candidate quality is worth way more.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#64

Post by ergonaught »

avmich wrote: post #17
WoodenChair wrote: post #2

I wrote a similar post but my search was in May instead of at the end of the year: https://www.observationalhazard.com/2022/05/my-experience-wi...

I wonder, if somebody has not a happy story, but an ongoing story of failures in job search - would he write such a story? Or we hear only from those who succeeds? Or, assuming that everybody eventually succeeds, those who take years to find a position won't write about it, as they are too exhausted or embarrassed?

7 months deep, hundreds of applications, blah blah, so to answer your question, for the most part people in this particular situation don't write public stories about it.

1) It can feel like it will sabotage your chances even if it raises awareness of your situation. Firstly because you cannot help but "call out" some of the hiring practices/people, and secondly because, well, must be something wrong with you if no one is snapping you up, right? Which leads into...

2) A lot of really obnoxious folks like to pounce on this and "blame the victim", and then reference stuff like this post to show how "it must be your fault", etc, and "ain't nobody got time for that". It's hard enough to deal with impostor syndrome kicking the brains in without inviting the mob to kick as well.

3) It's depressing to think about it, much less to write all that down where it becomes an objective thing that cannot be ignored. Especially if you've tracked everything in detail (I have). Much more pleasant to sell off your belongings and pretend you're just embracing minimalism and forget about it.

4) Feels a lot like begging, and there are many complicated reasons why people mostly don't like to do that.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#65

Post by zeroCalories »

Those are some impressive numbers. While it seems clear that you can get interviews applying through websites and recruiters, I'm amazed by how effective networking is. Any suggestions on how I should manage that? I add people on LinkedIn, but that's about it. Don't really socialize or make friends with people at work.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#66

Post by ergonaught »

fnimick wrote: post #31

This is just depressing. How is the technical interview process valuable _for companies_ at this point when it seems to be evaluating how well you can prepare for their specific leetcode interview, and how well you practice the incantation of the system design problem (make sure you follow the template and the pattern!) - do they really think they're selecting the best candidates, and not the most practiced interview…

They aren't putting much real thought into it.

Beyond the barest basics, 99% of the time the only thing that's genuinely relevant is whether or not the team wants to work with the candidate. Almost nothing else that is relevant is even knowable until after they're actually working. Exceptions only prove the rule.

It's a sham but I guess it makes someone feel like they've contributed value somehow.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#67

Post by remote_phone »

nsxwolf wrote: post #25

On my last job search I found that overloading myself with interviews was very stressful. It's one of the reason I will no longer continue with any process that has take home assignments - at one point I had 4 different assignments with overlapping due dates. Far too much stress (and I was ghosted on all of them). It's also not fun to be waiting to hear from the places you're really interested in while you've multipl…

I felt exactly the opposite.

Having so many interviews makes you feel more relaxed for every interview because you become numb to it. You don’t care if you flunk your FAANG interview because you already have a good chance with a mid-sized smaller company, which makes you even better for the FAANG interview.

I did over a dozen interview loops when I was looking last year and I felt great and at the top of my game.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#68

Post by wikibob »

zeroCalories wrote: post #65

Those are some impressive numbers. While it seems clear that you can get interviews applying through websites and recruiters, I'm amazed by how effective networking is. Any suggestions on how I should manage that? I add people on LinkedIn, but that's about it. Don't really socialize or make friends with people at work.

The answer is to socialize and make friends at work.

People who try to “Network” artificially won’t see great success.

People who are genuinely take an interest in what others are doing, and are intentional about meeting once or twice a year for coffee to catch up, are the ones who can call in a favor in the way described in the blog post.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#69

Post by bubba_sparks »

I'd rather be tortured by al qaeda than go through all that. I wish someone would write an article on how to hack this process. There's always a back door. Then again if there were I wouldn't be sharing it here.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#70

Post by wikibob »

nvarsj wrote: post #22
sbuccini wrote: post #3

Thanks to the author for taking the time to write this up. I think it is a fairly realistic description of what the process is like for an engineer who has spent several years working in Silicon Valley at a well-known company. The key takeaways, coming from someone with a similar background: * Rely heavily on your personal network to both identify worthwhile opportunities and for referrals which, in the Before Times,…

> They had a _full_ pipeline, interviewing every day for three weeks straight. I honestly think I'd be physically incapable of doing this. I'm on the HSP side and even a single set of interviews is enough to drive me into an insomnia/anxiety cycle for weeks. I can't even imagine what this would be like for me. Albeit I admit it's the best way to get the job you want. Maybe I'm in the wrong industry...

Look into beta blockers. Also used by stage performers for similar reasons.

https://www.goodrx.com/conditions/generalized-anxiety-disord...

Post reply on HN