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2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

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Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#21

Post by janalsncm »

Aurornis wrote: post #14
javajosh wrote: post #7

$475k TC for a product manager role? I am clearly doing something wrong in my career.

$475K was their old compensation, prior to being laid off. Great product managers are very valuable. Having someone who knows the customers and the market inside and out helps a company focus their roadmap on the highest value features and products. If you're paying 50 engineers and their managers to work on products, having one highly-paid person dedicated to scrutinizing every last detail of the roadmap to make sur…

Small nitpick, $475k was their prior total compensation. Maybe half of that was salary, the rest stock.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#22

Post by tayo42 »

I haven't applied to as many places but its defiantly demoralizing. Looking at pay cuts feels so bad too. Its not like life stops being expensive. Rent keeps going up, prices for homes out of reach, food keeps getting more expensive, especially eating healthy, gas, electricity bill. it never ends. then you need to listen to some soulless hr robot tell you 180k is to much...

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#23

Post by ribosometronome »

MH15 wrote: post #4
avnfish wrote: post #3

If this person was laid-off on Jan 1st and spent one hour on each application, that averages to 12.5 hours of non-stop job applying every day for 197 days straight

I've never spent close to an hour on a job application. In senior year of college I probably sent 200 out at 10? minutes each?

10 minutes? To find the position, see if you fit, customize your cover letter and resume to well fit, and go through their portal? I could see maybe with aid of a GPT this being possible nowadays but still non-trivial.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#24

Post by lordnacho »

You have to ask whether there's real effort put into the 2500 applications. I'm sure I haven't applied to that many jobs. Maybe not even 200 in total. But it's also true that some applications are simply sent off with little chance of getting the job: either my experience was too tangential, or the job appeared to already have an intended taker, or the ad had been there too long to still be live, and so on.

I've been on the hiring side as well and you can definitely see that by far most applications (direct from the ATS) are from someone who might as well not have bothered: their experience is only qualifying in a stretch, or they are so completely out there you have to wonder how they thought it was worth 30 seconds to apply.

46 first rounds sounds like a lot too. I get the feeling that applying to too many jobs simply meant that the low probability dusted up a bunch of HMs who thought they'd take a chance.

I don't think hiring is a straight up numbers game, there's probably certain pots that are OOM more likely to get you a job than others. Eg personal network and similar businesses.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#25

Post by janalsncm »

dabbz wrote: post #16

At those numbers, something is wrong with their process. Poor resume formatting/content, bad social skills during interview process. That's barely 2% call-back rate after an application.

Agreed. I’m not sure what it’s like for PMs but 1 bite out of 43 applications is pretty bad. And 1 offer out of 46 interviews is also pretty bad.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#26

Post by dymk »

ribosometronome wrote: post #23
MH15 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never spent close to an hour on a job application. In senior year of college I probably sent 200 out at 10? minutes each?

10 minutes? To find the position, see if you fit, customize your cover letter and resume to well fit, and go through their portal? I could see maybe with aid of a GPT this being possible nowadays but still non-trivial.

What's a cover letter? I've never submitted one of those for a software engineering job.

Send in a resume, of which there are only a few categories of customization. Certainly no need to customize for each specific company for SWE.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#27

Post by guhidalg »

scarface_74 wrote: post #12
guhidalg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also don't need FAANG-level competence. F500 companies would rather pay consultants and contractors truckloads of money than hire a few FTEs at FAANG rates. Ostensibly the reasoning is that it's easy to cut back spending on vendors than to lay people off, but I think a stronger reason is that tech salaries are so high that you'd have software engineers being paid more than some executives at these companies.

Enterprise/CRUD devs - where the overwhelming number of developers work - are making between $80K - $170K in most major cities in the US. That’s what I did the majority of my career so it’s not meant to be an insult.

These people do a valuable job, I'm not trying to insult them. I'm only providing my observation and theory for why large non-software companies do not hire and pay software engineers the way that software companies hire and pay software engineers.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#28

Post by squokko »

lordnacho wrote: post #24

You have to ask whether there's real effort put into the 2500 applications. I'm sure I haven't applied to that many jobs. Maybe not even 200 in total. But it's also true that some applications are simply sent off with little chance of getting the job: either my experience was too tangential, or the job appeared to already have an intended taker, or the ad had been there too long to still be live, and so on. I've been…

The thing is that you don't get anything by investing more effort into an online job application. It's all a big stochastic dumpster which might spit out a hire or two every so often.

You're better served by finding 20 companies you want to work for and finding a way to speak live to someone who works at those companies and then applying through them.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#29

Post by w0m »

bamfly wrote: post #18
anon291 wrote: post #13

I'm a dev and I apply to like 8-10 roles each job cycle and usually get call backs on 4-5 and then offers from 2-4. I cannot fathom 2500 job apps or 46 job interviews.

Similar here, 20+ year career. I think it's because I've never targeted the FAANG tier. Started in the low hump of the trimodal dev comp distribution before I'd ever heard of it, noticed there was a middle hump and moved into that before long, expect never to make it to the top one. I don't think I could handle an entire day of their interviews, as being in high-pressure meetings like that for hours on end wipes me o…

> turns my brain to mush in short order

I assume this is everyone. Can only carefully answer so many questions in crappy lighting before the brain dissipates.

Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

#30

Post by notahacker »

ribosometronome wrote: post #23
MH15 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never spent close to an hour on a job application. In senior year of college I probably sent 200 out at 10? minutes each?

10 minutes? To find the position, see if you fit, customize your cover letter and resume to well fit, and go through their portal? I could see maybe with aid of a GPT this being possible nowadays but still non-trivial.

If you're sending 2500 applications, you're not doing custom resumes or cover letters, or even much seeing if you fit...
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