21–30 of 31 posts
A tangential question to my post: the use of recruiters. Would I benefit from using a recruiter? Would they have additional capabilities to filter employers to only those amenable to my situation?
So they only put candidates forward if they have a good chance of getting the role.
You can use them to get feedback on the current market and how they think you might fit into it.
It's worth a try.
This is a good study plan to follow if you want to get in shape for dev interviews: https://www.techinterviewhandbook.org/coding-interview-study...
Leetcode is now deeply embedded as part of dev interviews. In current market there are 300-800+ applications for any given dev role. You gonna have to play this game if you are looking to go back into corporate. This is a good study plan to follow if you want to get in shape for dev interviews: https://www.techinterviewhandbook.org/coding-interview-study...
You don’t show that you can cut wood, you show you can build things with a portfolio of work. Like every other damn profession.
Also come up with a one line explanation for the gap. “Dad was diagnosed with cancer and I wanted to spend the last year of his life with him.”
Also leetcode. Just do one problem per day for a week or two. I quite enjoy doing those puzzles. They’re like crossword puzzles.
No, you don't have to memorize every algorithm. You can pass interviews doing sub optimal solutions if you have good code, a clear thought process, recognize there may be a better algorithm, have a dialogue about what that might look like, etc.
I did rounds of interviews at Microsoft, Google, and Netflix a couple years ago, and with the exception of a single round in Microsoft, none of the 'algorithms' I needed to know went beyond understanding hashmaps, recursion, and the concept of a graph. (yes I realize that encompass DP, but still).
A tangential question to my post: the use of recruiters. Would I benefit from using a recruiter? Would they have additional capabilities to filter employers to only those amenable to my situation?
Make sure you have a good LinkedIn profile and it highlights the kind of work you want to do. Recruiters do search through those to find matches for positions that they want to fill.
Leetcode is now deeply embedded as part of dev interviews. In current market there are 300-800+ applications for any given dev role. You gonna have to play this game if you are looking to go back into corporate. This is a good study plan to follow if you want to get in shape for dev interviews: https://www.techinterviewhandbook.org/coding-interview-study...
Leetcode tells you little to nothing about an individual’s actual skill set? I wouldn’t work for a place that required this sort of bs? Imagine if for every job as a carpenter you need to show you can cut wood properly. It’s fucking ridiculous. You don’t show that you can cut wood, you show you can build things with a portfolio of work. Like every other damn profession.
Most corporate dev jobs are dull. Most of the codebase is mostly for loops. There's no relevance to day-to-day job. But these jobs pay well because of which competition is high. So interviewers are trained to measure as many signals as possible. If it's big tech company then there would be 7+ rounds instead of usual 5 to measure more signals.
No one cares what you built at startup either. There's lot of red tape in corporate. Many good ideas get blocked or shut down because of politics. Chances of building something are slim if not hired in a greenfield project.
I hope you will excuse me for delivering some tough love, as a lot of your narrative around this is not as objective as it could be.
* Nobody cares about your "unique experience", "unique set of circumstances", "this confluence of unfortunate events", "heavily scripted and impersonal to a fault" etc... "You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap." The only thing anyone cares about is demonstrable ability to develop software.
* Nobody cares about "20+ years of software development". If they did, they'd put it in their job descriptions / requirements. Rather, they care about 3, 5, maybe 7 years of experience. Anything that comes before that is irrelevant. Only in highly specialized fields, or senior management, is extensive experience an asset.
* "what have you done lately?" - well, what _have_ you done lately? Do you have a good answer to this question, mentioning only things that you have done, and not any mentions of uniqueness? The reality is that people hiring for software developers see having developed software in the very recent past as indicative of someone who can be productive in the very near future. Explanations of unique circumstances and software development experience several years ago won't cut it.
* "Does someone with my experience really have to grind leetcode and memorize algorithms to prove his capability?". Well, yes. Frankly, given your level of experience, brushing up and kicking ass on leetcode should be a walk in the part, and nothing to get indignant about. If entry level / fresh grad folks are expected to be able to do this, you should be able to do it too (and more). "20+ years of software development" doesn't get you a free pass on this, you should be able to do it all day, every day, in your sleep at this point.
* "Is it realistic for me to expect to be able to work on a software team again after having transitioned away from software development?" - only if you can demonstrate your ability to develop software here and now, and in the near future, as distinct from years in the past.
* "I'd be interested in management" - do you have management experience, which is articulated in your resume, profile, applications, etc? That means performance management, hiring, firing, project management, powerpoint, stakeholders, etc., etc... it's not a given after "20+ years of software development", it's a distinct skillset that you may or may not have developed.
* "I know I'm fully capable but I've found it difficult to prove that to ornery employers employing what I see as broken hiring practices" - nobody cares about your opinions on hiring practices. When you start your own company, you'll be able to institute your own, superior hiring practices. Until then, it would be in your best interests to focus on the hiring practices as they exist, rather than how you wish they were. Proving your capability, given the hiring practices that exist, is what it's all about.
* "I've been involved myself in hiring for several years and I always made an effort to take an empathetic approach with people I interviewed. Sadly, I seem to be one of few who take that approach." Nobody cares about empathetic approaches. They only care about demonstrated ability to develop software.
An expert is somebody who spends many years performing a deep dive into one or more technologies very narrowly. The expert has learned what beginner nonsense to ignore, which makes them weird from a beginner’s perspective but they can probably do things you deem impossible. Experts tend to come from formal researchers and hobbyists. Real experts know where their strengths and limitations are and so may undersell their capabilities.
Trend whore tries to be a master of everything. They are a master of none but are well rounded in a way an expert will never be. They can talk a good game during an interview as they have experience with many different tools. If you need someone who is good at writing config files to paste together a tech stack you want the trend whore. Trend whores are experts of none who may oversell their capabilities with over confidence when they may confuse diverse shallow experience for a depth that doesn’t exist.
There are pros and cons to each path. Just know your own personality and goals. If your goal is just to be employed then be the trend whore as the cost of investment is lower. If you want to innovate or deliver superior solutions then be the expert.
You said that you were laid off in 2022. How recently did you restart your job search? FWIW I'm a software engineer with 25+ yrs of SaaS dev experience (since 1998) & 10+ years of .NET dev experience. It took me four months of job searching to find my current position, which I started a few weeks ago. I was employed during the first two months, when I first suspected I was going to be laid off, & was collecting unemp…