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Finding a new software developer job

henrikwarne.com

181–190 of 322 posts

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#181

I later found another good way of finding companies to check to see if they have any open roles: google “competitor to” or “alternative to” and a company name, to find similar companies. This cannot be understated. Having inside info on a competitor you already worked at is definitely eye catching to a recruiter. It may not get you the job, but will get you noticed, and is definitely an asset your non-tech interviews…

Unfortunately, as per my experience, this is mostly illegal to do. Every contract I've ever had prohibits me to work for competitors for X amount of years.

thats if you are like CEO. if you got fired from google then of course you can apply for a job at bing

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#182
post #74

> Key Elements for Job Search Microsite > * Have a professional profile picture I don't do this, for two reasons: 1. Being a photographer taught me that I'm much better on the buttons side of the camera, not the lens side. 2. Photos really don't belong in hiring in the US. Due to the long history of unfair prejudices, which are still ongoing in some ways. Even better would be if we could remove names, for being cues…

[dead]

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#184

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 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…

> I'm not sure I have the energy to do a numbers-game applicant strategy.

Neither did I until it became a neccessity. Did 4 job interviews in 7 years and got them all in one go. Then I quit, and there was a long drought of people just not wanting to hire me for 6 months. The first rejection I took personally, but after 10 interviews with crazier and crazier questions you can’t do anything other than see it as a numbers game. Anything else destroys any sense of self worth you have.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#185
post #74

> Key Elements for Job Search Microsite > * Have a professional profile picture I don't do this, for two reasons: 1. Being a photographer taught me that I'm much better on the buttons side of the camera, not the lens side. 2. Photos really don't belong in hiring in the US. Due to the long history of unfair prejudices, which are still ongoing in some ways. Even better would be if we could remove names, for being cues…

> 2. Photos really don't belong in hiring in the US. The author of the post is in Sweden, not the US. As weird as it sounds, profile photos are prominent features of resumes in many European countries. It shocked me when I first started hiring in our EU offices, but that's just the way it is. I was surprised because we've often been told so many different ways that Europe is ahead of the US in matters of discriminati…

Reminds me of the story of someone with the first name "Kim" who had to put "Mr." in front of it on his résumé to get any interviews. Depressing.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy itself is a winning strategy. It translates to an initiative in an employers eyes, which is something that cannot be taught.

Can confirm. Energy is about the only way I could rely on myself to crack open a totally foreign job market with less than a year of experience under my belt when I was starting out. I set myself the goal of 10 applications a day, every day, anywhere in Finland was acceptable -and within 3 months I had my first offer.

Applying to Finland from where?

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#187
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.

At this point he might as well have an interview with the Janitor the too

i could learn more about a person by how they interact with the janitor than in hours of interviews and tests.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#188

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…

FAANG reputations are no longer evenly distributed.

Even though most people's opinions of the company have changed, Google engineers are still widely considered to be high quality. Apple engineers also have a great reputation but it's very rare to see them on the market. Facebook/meta engineers tend to be above average but have a reputation for being aggressive corporate ladder climbers.

But if I hazard a guess, if you're struggling to find work, you're at Amazon. Amazon's aggressive hire->pip pipeline has, at least in my experience, destroyed their reputation. I've worked with plenty of ex-Amazon engineers in the past few years and they were all notably below average in skill. This is not to say that you are (if you even work for Amazon), but Amazon is no longer the resume bump it once was, if anything quite the opposite.

Talking about "FAANG" is not really relevant anymore since there is a pretty big range of expectation for engineers coming out of each of those letters in the acronym. Additionally none of those companies command quite the attention they did a few years ago, as they've all shifted from demanding engineering skill to demanding the ability to survive in a large mega-corp.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#189
post #179
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discrimination in Europe works slightly differently than in the US, as having a native sounding name is just as, or even more, important than having a "right" skin color. So to be certain you'll avoid discrimination, you'd need to omit both the photo and the name from the CV, and that's not common at all.

how is that discrimination other than signaling you know the language, have a job permit and so on.

Because then employers will treat the absence of that signal as a potential concern?

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fully remote would be a pretty nice perk, ever since our companies forced us back to the office. I believe this alone might be one of the easiest ways for smaller companies to poach talent these days. Other than that, I enjoy working in hard and impactful problems. I'm privileged that I was able to do that in FAANG, but it's unclear how long this will last. I know that is very trite to say that your company has chang…

Where have you heard that ML engineers are in high demand? I don’t think they are immune from the tech slowdown that’s affecting the industry. Of course, LLMs and AI are all the rage, but the demand for that is in the services/APIs not necessarily the demand for ML engineers
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