221–230 of 274 posts
USA, remote. I recently (Feb) found work. I did about 10-15 company interviews at various stages, lots of recruiter calls. I screened out easily 3x the amount of companies due to position requirements or salary. During my job search I probably had 100 or more messages from recruiters on linkedin. Got to the final round on 6. Received 3 offers, accepted one of them. Not a lot of equity in the comp packages this time a…
CTO here... great thread! Things are definitely taking longer even if the company really wants to and need to hire! But I agree with some of the comments below that for some positions you get a lot of inbounds thus hard to have enough time to review it all so screening for most relevant skillsets first and go from there. I'm certain 25% of the applicants can do the work but you'd want someone that has work on the tec…
I wouldn't disregard people with short stints, there is so much context out there. Obviously the higher salary hunters is a concern but I have 3x -> 1 year stints on my resume not because I am a terrible human being but others, layoffs, loosing visa, toxic boss, had to move countries due to family illness and all of them in the end ended on good terms. Just saying, give people a chance to explain.
After viewing the comments I see a few things that stand out.
People are mass sending their resumes. I think this shotgun approach doesn’t really work given the state of how many people are submitting resumes. You will get filter out.
The idea is to get you in front of hiring managers.
This is where recruiters come into play. Working with recruiters that has continuously placed candidates at job x is a better approach.
Write cover letters to the hiring manager. Your resume has to be tailored to the role. Write follow up letters showing your interest for the role.
Companies are willing to hire a less experienced engineer over someone with more due to their greater interest in the role.
If you think your experience alone is going to get you the interview or job, think again, FAANG engs are having a tough time securing roles.
You need to make it sound like there’s no other place you would rather work at for the next five years than there. However do this without sounding desperate but with great interest and a desire to contribute and offer something.
In a flourishing or surplus market, I wouldn’t normally do any of these as it’s not required. In the previous market anyone could get in front of managers without much effort.
However we are in dire times where companies are careful who they hire and one has to really stand out to be picked.
Be picky and don’t just chase anything, even if you’re desperate.
Gluck.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
ChatGPT is passing quantum physics tests. "ChatGPT can answer it" should not be a thing that we say. ChatGPT can recite every single algorithm known to man, wondering about your interview process.
ChatGPT can regurgitate existing answers, it is very bad at programming when met with novel questions. See how far it can go in AdventOfCode.
then i got an idea. in 2008 i created a company where i wanted to work after not being able to find an agency in NYC that i felt had good culture.. so i should do it again. this time, however, there would be a mission… i want to unfuck how hiring is done.
if, as job seekers we can share knowledge of how recruiters and hiring companies behave, we can spare each-other grief and unnecessary pain and suffering when we look for work.
recruiter reviews, by candidates for candidates.
it’s very new, has quirks that i’m working out, and is simply a chrome extension that runs on top of LinkedIn. reviews contribute to a calculated score, and the details of any review are never shared with anybody. job seekers come first, recruiters get held accountable for the reputations they deserve.
https://hirerank.cc give it a swing, let me know what you think.
Not just you. I would guess, optimistically, I’m averaging a 5% conversion rate of applications to recruiter chats/“stage 0 interviews”. That is, ~95% of applications yield silence or a generic email rejection without any human contact. ~15 YOE, FAANG experience, usually only applying to roles I feel I’m at least a halfway good fit for (i.e. not a complete scattergun approach). I’m (financially) fine for now, which i…
If you are a US citizen try defense companies. Edit: I should have explained my reasoning. They have a much smaller eligible applicant pool - US citizens who are eligible for security clearance. Because of this they’re continuously looking for good talent.
1. Every company wants to show off it's "really high bar" ... For building yet another crud service ... handling 1qps (that is still a 100k qpd so don't laugh at it).
2. So they read about what the fangs do and naturally copy all the terrible parts (impact impact impact, more artifacts just for evidence, write realms and realms of repeated documents before writing a line of code so you can show "influence", leetcode and more). Why aren't they copying the good parts - oh we are still a small company and tight on resources.
3. Naturally they couldn't demand this when the market was hot. Now they feel unleashed. So are going nuts either in the form of taking their sweet time ("evaluate and dig deep into our hiring pipeline") or with ridiculous and arbitrary hiring loops. (I had one cto ask me to demo a personal project only to back out after he felt insecure about what I had built - sure could be my opinion).
Another one I had never written a cover letter in my life before and this time I had to write 2000 word essays on why I thought company X was better than Jesus and why and when Id sacrifice my left nut for the honor of being chosen by them.
Sigh I suppose human nature had to come out. But thankfully I did get lucky and met some amazing people who were there when I needed them. My only advice (ok selection bias) is to network like hell. Good roles aren't coming by just applying on LinkedIn (I don't this was ever true but more so now). If you have to send a resume you've already lost is what I am getting reassured of. Hope ymmv.
USA, remote. I recently (Feb) found work. I did about 10-15 company interviews at various stages, lots of recruiter calls. I screened out easily 3x the amount of companies due to position requirements or salary. During my job search I probably had 100 or more messages from recruiters on linkedin. Got to the final round on 6. Received 3 offers, accepted one of them. Not a lot of equity in the comp packages this time a…
What kind of os projects?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that an engineer at a FAANG likely owns a miniscule fraction of the stack, whatever that may be. The average company doesn't need or want someone who is so deeply specialised.
This is such a ridiculous notion to be that I find a hard time lending it any credence. The reason average companies pass on FAANG is generally that they can’t afford them. Not “oh, this guy isn’t Jack-of-all-trades enough, we’re really looking for a midrate web contractor that still uses jquery but also knows some SQL”.