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Finding a new software developer job

henrikwarne.com

141–150 of 322 posts

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#141

I'm a ML Engineer at FAANG and I have been passively looking for the last half year. Common wisdom might make you think that I should be having companies throwing wads of cash at me, but my experience has been very different. * It's true that my profile attracts many messages from recruiters. However ghosting is the name of the game. More than half of recruiters have ghosted me at different stages of the process. Ove…

As a FAANG employee, working with ML, what do you want to get from other companies, besides more money? It's hard to have more chips, for example. You run less experiments, you have less throughput in an already computationally tight environment.

The traditional answer is stability. I think that's still true despite the sense of looming layoffs. Everyone always knew the layoffs would come one day anyway...

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#142
Anecdotally I've noticed that while the job market isn't good for software engineers, its seems to be much much worse for all the supportive roles like eng managers/product managers/designers/dev rel/ etc.

In my circle these seem to be the people who have been really struggling to find work, whereas the devs do seem to be finding work (just at a slower pace and with worse benefits than before.)

Is this just my bubble or have other people been seeing this too?

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#144

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…

The correct answer is to talk through how you'd evaluate making the decision based on the requirements and measured usage patterns, talk about what you've used in the past and why, if you haven't really been in a position to decide this or think about it, don't lie or randomly pick a number but just get out whatever you do know about it. So kind of like just talking through your second paragraph and maybe creating a hypothetical situation and answering based off of it.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#145
post #136

> I was asked what timeout I would set on a database connection. I was more thinking about how long an individual user could be prepared to wait for a page to render, so blurted out too high of a number. Interesting, I would have put those in the same ballpark. Anyone who can shed light on this?

I would have had to ask if it was load balanced. If it is, i would have said half the time for the requesting service minus 10 percent. Gives the query time to retry with some margin. This would be my opinion, not something I've read up on.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through interview training and one of the reasons why they’re so adamant that résumés go into an automated parser was to strip photos and other info like that.

Yeah, on my end reviewing resume or when we did take-homes things like names and photos were always erased to prevent 'bias' We did interview and hire a lot more women and PoC than other firms I've worked with so I guess it works to some degree

Should you conduct the interview without camera and with a voicechanger?

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#147
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I got lucky in when I started out as a career switcher in 2017. Iirc I applied 6 places, had 4 interviews, got 2 offers. Mind you this was as an effectively junior person applying to mid-level positions. I like to think that having so few interviews allowed me to concentrate my enthusiasm and highest mental energy into the interviews I had, but maybe it's just survivors bias. Since then I've taken 3 interview…

2017 was a very, very different job market for us engineers

2017 through to around 2020/21 was insane worldwide .. All the big co's soaked up the talent, then that sucked the air out of the market worldwide. We were getting people outside of the US headhunted from the US, which had constant ripple effects. Now it seems the rebalancing is definitely taking hold and times are a lot tougher for devs world wide.

Trying to hire in 2020-21 was impossible. You would get people between interviews get massive offers (days/week apart). 50/50 whether even after accepting the offer they'd actually turn up... If you saw someone that had a decent shot at coding you needed to hire right then and there. Reddit/HN was absolutely filled with devs making hay while the sun was shining job hopping and say things like 'if you're not getting a 30% payrise...'

Now the credit crunch has just switched the tap off. I'm about to contract out a small bit of work via one of the freelancer sites and I'm going to be very interested to see what it's like getting freelancers now....

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#148
Started looking late November and started tracking my applications in January.

I have applied to a total of 46 positions within a month. This has led to six interviews, several of which I received no response, 13 formal rejections, and one job offer which I declined (The decline was due to the position being advertised as a developer role, yet the recruiter mentioned that about 50% of the duties would involve support tasks)

Seeing this thread gives me some relief. At least it's not just me but a broader trend across the whole industry

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#150
post #8

Did I misread or did you end up taking a remote job (specializing in crypto, company based in Zug, CH) and you’re based in Stockholm?

The fact that the job they finally took is at a crypto company suddenly had me reevaluate everything they wrote. :)
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