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Finding a new software developer job

henrikwarne.com

31–40 of 322 posts

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#31
One thing I have heard from people is multiple reputable companies have been looking to see if the salary desired is not only inline with the range expected; but they are also calibrating things against what comparable levels/individuals in the team/org make.

The norm, in the last few years, has generally been in most cases a new hire makes more than a long tenured individual in the team.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#32
Remember: Finding a job is a sales process. You are selling a $1,000,000+ product (yourself over N years of anticipated tenure). How would you approach making a million dollar sale if it wasn’t called a job?

Do that.

Your CV or resume is sales collateral. Focus on warm and hot leads over cold calling. Vet your leads with conversation, make sure you really can solve their problems, then give them your sales material. Preferably optimized for the lead in question.

If possible make the sale before interviews even begin. That way they’re just a rubber stamp and smoke test for red flags.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#34
post #2

>For a typical job there were four or five interviews: an initial interview with a recruiter, an interview with a hiring manager, one or two technical interviews (either live coding, or going through a take-home assignment). There could also be an interview with a product manager, and/or one with a CTO or founder. All in all, quite a time commitment. This is not news at this point, but it is pretty crazy.

That's not crazy. Some of these are probably what 30 minutes? Tech interviews 60 mins? So what, five hours? Remember when on-site interviews meant an hour total commute plus say six hours of total interview plus lunch event. Some high demand companies put candidates through more than one round of that. Not to mention if you were flying from out of town... I remember a friend who interviewed with Google and got stuck…

So what, five hours?

Add in the 6-hour take home (which companies delusionally believe will take 2 hours, despite being often inadequately scoped or otherwise poorly presented; while quite often expecting a nitpick-proof solution); and all the random delays, and other hoops - and the none-too-occasional ghosting (even at the very end of the process) -

Yup, it adds up.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#35

I don't question that is takes hard work, even for more senior devs like the author, but 30 apps leading to 3 offers is a dream. Most early-career people are probably at >100 app with maybe a few interviews and hopefully one offer.

I agree. Even as a senior dev, I couldn't help but think, "this story isn't as difficult as I was expecting from the headline". To each his own. ;-)

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#36
Bit of a rant but I also have been job hunting after a layoff and their experience sounds like a dream. I have only gotten email rejections thus far and only 1 phone screen. It feels like most of my rejections are just automatic emails. Some of them come same day. The most demoralizing thing happens when you get rejected for a job and then see a new listing for that same job go up just moments later. You were rejected not because they picked someone else but because they decided even talking to you wasn't worth their time and they would rather go back to the pool.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not crazy. Some of these are probably what 30 minutes? Tech interviews 60 mins? So what, five hours? Remember when on-site interviews meant an hour total commute plus say six hours of total interview plus lunch event. Some high demand companies put candidates through more than one round of that. Not to mention if you were flying from out of town... I remember a friend who interviewed with Google and got stuck…

> I remember a friend who interviewed with Google and got stuck in SF for three weeks due to snow storms on the east coast This is literally unbelievable. I cannot remember a time when the east coast was inaccessible for three weeks…

Snowpocalypse/snowmageddon. 2010

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_5%E2%80%936,_2010_N...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_25%E2%80%9327,_2010...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_25%E2%80%9327,_2010...

Two back to back storms, there was about 12 hour window where you could get in or out. This poor guy was supposed to fly back during the first, got pushed to a flight during the second, and then the pile-on of rebookings pushed him further. I don't remember if he got trapped due to the third storm too.

It wasn't completely cut off. During the first storm, I got head notice of the next one and rebooked my flight out of the east coast to be one day earlier, and threaded the needle by politely asking customer service. I was in and out of the east coast for a week.

Anyways, Some cities on the east coast are less prepared than others for this sort of thing.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#38

Bit of a rant but I also have been job hunting after a layoff and their experience sounds like a dream. I have only gotten email rejections thus far and only 1 phone screen. It feels like most of my rejections are just automatic emails. Some of them come same day. The most demoralizing thing happens when you get rejected for a job and then see a new listing for that same job go up just moments later. You were rejecte…

Try running it through chatgpt. Give your resume and give job discretion. Ask if your resume is a match for this job. You will be surprised.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#39
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when on-site interviews were an hour and that was it. All this stuff companies do now is insane. If a person isn't performant, you'll know within 30 days, but you'll never know by interviewing them. I haven't had to cold interview in 20+ years. I hope I never have to based on how it works now. I get all my jobs from previous colleagues. Companies are closing the door to a lot of great talent based on this…

I interviewed at Google nearly 15 years ago and it was already phone screen + a marathon of on-site interviews. Maybe 4 in a row.

The problem is companies are having people run the gauntlet -- or in any case displaying a cavalier attitude about milking folks for their time and patience -- despite not offering anything comparable (in terms of intrinsic attractiveness of the role or compensation) to what FAANG-tier companies do. On top of flaky (or flakier than the used to be), sometimes weird even, communications, etc.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#40

what's the database timeout answer? i would say something along the lines of 5 seconds max.

Yeah, that's a pretty interesting question. For long-lived connections on networks I don't trust, I arbitrarily set the timeout at 10s. On networks I trust, I set it to one second. Looking at 99.99%-ile connection times on my production network, it's bimodal with peaks at 1ms and 28ms. (Guess which connections are from one physical machine to itself, and guess which connections are to a different machine.)

I have no idea what the correct answer to an interview question that asks this is, though. Like, I never connect to my database inside the request flow, I have a connection pool and wait for a connection to become free in the pool. So "connection time" is really a function of how utilized the pool is, and has only a passing resemblance to the health of the database. Maybe 10 connections are running "begin; lock table foo; select * from foo where expensive_condition". All 10 connections in the pool are blocked on a lock, and that doesn't mean the database is unhealthy and you want to shed load. So do you want to show the 11th person "sorry, our site is down, come back later", or do you want to wait for the random expensive queries to complete? I'd wait. (I suppose I wouldn't take an exclusive lock on a table to serve a web page either, but who knows what the interviewer is doing.)

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