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

161–170 of 270 posts

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#161

Post by turdprincess »

angarg12 wrote: post #84
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. It's a grind, but you definitely get "in the zone". Additionally, setting this goal ensures that you are being properly proactive/aggressive in pursuing opportunities. As a married man nearing his 40s I can't imagine doing this. I need to keep my full time job to support my family, so just quit and focus 100% on prepping is not an option…

I think the problem these days is that it’s so hard to fire someone. I’m not sure if it’s legal, cultural or otherwise, but I constantly see coworkers who are at best useless and often detrimental being kept on and on and on.

So the game becomes to avoid hiring someone like that at all costs, because once they are hired they are impossible to get rid of.

I wish employment was more like contracting - you give someone a trial for a few weeks and then end it it’s not a mutual fit. No long interview necessary - the job is the interview.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#162

Post by lurking_swe »

listenallyall wrote: post #142

> After leaving Meta recently That's all I needed to hear. Back in the day, the college you went to opened (or shut) doors to get interviews. And most people, who did not attend an Ivy League school or similar, rejected the concept as being anti-meritocratic. However, today, it's the same thing -- just replace college with the company(ies) you list on your resume. A shitty programmer with a bad attitude from Meta, Go…

as someone who started their software career working at 3M of all places (shitty software practices) and slowly worked my way up to a tier-2 software company (just below faang) with a total comp of $200k+, don’t sell yourself short. Oh and i went to a state school, and also applied for these jobs directly online, no referrals. Where you start doesn’t matter if you are motivated and have some luck along the way.

Yes the rich and smart have a head start, they are dealt better “cards” at birth. That’s true for EVERYTHING in life. That has nothing to do with software.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#163

Post by dan-robertson »

listenallyall wrote: post #135
turing_complete wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take vacation or save some money before quitting. Or just do a few interviews per week while working like most people.

sorry kids, no Disneyland this year, I used up my vacation days back in Feb when I interviewed for a week straight

“Thanks for accepting our offer. When would you like to start?”

“Well my notice expires at my current job in two weeks but I’d like to take a short break in between to decompress / spend time with my family.”

“Obviously we’d like to have you as soon as possible but we don’t want to keep you from your family. How about six weeks from now?”

“Works for me.”

Obviously different companies/roles will be differently flexible and bigger companies will be more tolerant of delaying start by longer. And you can only do that if you get a job offer somewhere. But the parent comment wasn’t even suggesting taking holiday to interview for a week straight right?

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#164

Post by osigurdson »

dan-robertson wrote: post #146
listenallyall wrote: post #142

> After leaving Meta recently That's all I needed to hear. Back in the day, the college you went to opened (or shut) doors to get interviews. And most people, who did not attend an Ivy League school or similar, rejected the concept as being anti-meritocratic. However, today, it's the same thing -- just replace college with the company(ies) you list on your resume. A shitty programmer with a bad attitude from Meta, Go…

Would the person who wrote the best dry-cleaner management software do well at a company like Google? That is, I think a lot of the required skills there are ‘getting things done in a company the size of Google’ and having worked at Meta for a few years is perhaps a better signal for that than having made some great software. Likewise someone from Google may have a harder time in some startup where the structure is d…

>> don’t have all the fancy google tools or services

Hard to believe that all of the fancy google tools haven't been replicated in open source yet. Software people love writing tools to make writing software easier - what's up?

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#165

Post by osigurdson »

listenallyall wrote: post #135
turing_complete wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take vacation or save some money before quitting. Or just do a few interviews per week while working like most people.

sorry kids, no Disneyland this year, I used up my vacation days back in Feb when I interviewed for a week straight

>> sorry kids, no Disneyland this year, I used up my vacation days back in Feb when I interviewed for a week straight

As a kid, I went to Disneyland exactly zero times. There are hasher realities for many.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#166

Post by the_jends »

jacurtis wrote: post #158
the_jends wrote: post #122

I think this write up is a good resource for those who got called into at least an interview. I wonder how does one improve if the rejections come even before a single interview? At that stage companies typically will not give you any reason for the rejection either for legal reasons or simply convenience. This leaves you hesitating whether to apply to other companies for fear they will reject you for the same unknow…

This is almost impossible to answer because there are so many reasons that it could be. But I've been hiring manager and looked through thousands of resumes/CVs and hired about 50-60 engineers. 1. Far under-qualified. People apply for senior positions with literally 18 months of experience ALL THE TIME. Seriously... ALL THE TIME. 2. Too many technologies on your CV. A lot of resumes will just list every language or t…

Thanks for the answer. I honestly don't know about the photo thing. LinkedIn itself has a photo of the person and I would assume companies at least check a candidate's linkedin profile in which case they will see the photo of the candidate. Some companies also look at your social media presence which also has your photo.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#167

Post by dan-robertson »

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…

If some companies do take-home assignments and others don’t, I think that’s maybe good in general as it means there’s still a good chance for people who don’t like the assignments and for people for whole the assignments are a great way to show their skills (and who eg perform poorly in a more traditional interview).

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#168

Post by jacurtis »

bradlys wrote: post #82
mhlakhani wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I explicitly chose to not interview at FAANGs since I was previously at a FAANG and wanted to try my hand at a different type of company. I'd probably practice a bit more for FAANGs

Is the comp comparable to FAANG or is it a big step down? (At least in terms of liquid compensation) This is partially why I haven't been interviewing. All the big p(l)ayers have slowed down their hiring so much - why bother taking a role that pays less than half.

Not OP. But I would say that from my experience (I've avoided FAANG for culture reasons, not interviewing reasons) and I can get comparable offers to my FAANG friends at least in terms of Salary & Benefits. The big difference is bonuses, specifically stock bonuses.

So a lot of the crazy salaries you see people brag about are often taking stock programs into account. And because tech stock has been generally hockey stick growth, then the TC (total compensation) is too.

But aside from the stock, you can get good salaries and benefits at lots of non-FAANG companies. I actually have better insurance than my brother-in-law does at his FAANG job, which is already considered very good. In fact its the best insurance i've ever had in my life.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#169

Post by dan-robertson »

abrahms wrote: post #73
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…

It's a selection for socio-economic status. Hiring people who have enough excess time to do this grinding excludes people like parents of young toddlers. So.. you'll probably get a bunch of young single people w/ enough income to not need to have multiple gigs.

Since when was ‘parent of toddlers’ a kind of socioeconomic status? (Not that I disagree with you that it disadvantages such people).

Also note that the OP said they found the coding questions were mostly easy/easier than they expected so maybe the amount of work required (for older/more experienced candidates) on preparation is not so high? I dunno.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#170

Post by jacurtis »

TimPC wrote: post #92

You absolutely can prepare for system interviews it’s just some of the best content for doing so is behind paywalls. I opted to buy a course on leetcode covering this topic and my performance before was like night and day. Going through about 20 worked examples each of which has a 45 minute explanation means learning about 60 patterns you can slot into various problems. Once you’ve seen the patterns it’s a lot easier…

Thats a good endorsement. I've seen those and wondered if they were a waste of time. I think I might consider one now if it was that beneficial. I have no problem paying for educational content. But I was afraid that stuff was just institutional fluff and internal-marketing.
Post reply on HN