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Ask HN: I can't find a job. What do I do?

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Re: Ask HN: I can't find a job. What do I do?

#31
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your tone or language is negative it will give the impression that you are a negative person. I had this backfire. I left a job after dealing with toxic and personal BS and passed all my interviews at a great company. Then came the personal references where one must be my previous manager. My previous manager trashed me and gave me a bad reference and I didn't get the job. In the future I didn't hold back on why…

In the US, the only information required to be given by a previous employer is time of employment, role, and whether the person is eligible for rehire. Reputable companies will ask and provide strictly this information only, to reduce their liability.

Good context. The point GP was making was that toxic manager went out of their way to trash them.

Re: Ask HN: I can't find a job. What do I do?

#32
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your tone or language is negative it will give the impression that you are a negative person. I had this backfire. I left a job after dealing with toxic and personal BS and passed all my interviews at a great company. Then came the personal references where one must be my previous manager. My previous manager trashed me and gave me a bad reference and I didn't get the job. In the future I didn't hold back on why…

In the US, the only information required to be given by a previous employer is time of employment, role, and whether the person is eligible for rehire. Reputable companies will ask and provide strictly this information only, to reduce their liability.

Vindictive bosses/owners will do as they please

Re: Ask HN: I can't find a job. What do I do?

#33
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to lie to get a job. And companies do verify. Maybe not small startups, but everyone else does. And those small startups will start verifying when they grow.

You didn’t state where you are based now. Are you still in India or you moved elsewhere?

Still in India. The layoffs and the recent batch of fresh graduates have really made it impossible to get a job as companies can basically take their pick. Immediate joiners, low salary expectations, work experience from FAANG like companies. And then there's the great vanishing of VC money as interest rates have been raised sharply

Re: Ask HN: I can't find a job. What do I do?

#34
post #23

Just say you have a degree, especially from India, nobody will validate.

This is claiming an accomplishment that was not achieved for the intent of financial gain. You are suggesting fraud.

That's not how fraud works in a legal sense between private parties. It's a job. They pay him to perform work, not to accurately represent whether or not he earned a piece of paper.

If he's taking government benefits explicitly intended for degree holders, that is fraud, and not what I'm suggesting. He doesn't need a degree to slap some shitty code together for some half-baked statup.

Re: Ask HN: I can't find a job. What do I do?

#35
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, the only information required to be given by a previous employer is time of employment, role, and whether the person is eligible for rehire. Reputable companies will ask and provide strictly this information only, to reduce their liability.

Vindictive bosses/owners will do as they please

They will, but some of that is actionable.

Re: Ask HN: I can't find a job. What do I do?

#39
I've got years of experience. Honestly don't blame yourself we are in a weird economic time. A lot of people went and got some 'formal' education. Maybe try to differentiate? Learn embedded systems? Learn AI (seems we're all going to have to sooner or later) Learn C++? Maybe learn soft skills like being a product owner? Roll up your sleeves and start your own business? (that's what i'm trying to do) but most of all it sounds like you want it easy - Don't become complacent. If you want jobs that do leet style interviews you're going to have to learn. At the very least binary trees, tree graph search, quicksort, those sort of things.

Re: Ask HN: I can't find a job. What do I do?

#40
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your tone or language is negative it will give the impression that you are a negative person. I had this backfire. I left a job after dealing with toxic and personal BS and passed all my interviews at a great company. Then came the personal references where one must be my previous manager. My previous manager trashed me and gave me a bad reference and I didn't get the job. In the future I didn't hold back on why…

In the US, the only information required to be given by a previous employer is time of employment, role, and whether the person is eligible for rehire. Reputable companies will ask and provide strictly this information only, to reduce their liability.

This is not accurate across the board. References (inc. back channel references) are common for companies that take hiring very seriously.
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