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Looking for a Job Is Tough

blog.kaplich.me

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Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It hurts when you see posh privileged urban women having much more chance of getting into a good company than a man who worked his way up through sacrifice. It's not a gender issue. I would be looking to hire someone competent who works hard, not someone who makes "sacrifices" and then expects a job/promotion. The latter never works. That's not the work culture in most places. I've seen it many times, people who ma…

[deleted]

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#92
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they are better, that's his point lolwut

That is not the poster's point. The poster contends women are being prejudicially hired as "diversity" rather men who have "sacrificed" and worked hard. "lolwut" indeed.

Right, but certain careers have figured out that women are, on average, better at the socialization game and thus, broadly speaking, a better fit for the job. Ain't nobody "diversity" hiring on the oil rigs or other jobs where the physical act is more important than interpersonal interaction.

However, it is difficult to measure those positive traits for what they are, so employers are selecting based on gender hoping for positive correlation. But that's illegal, so "diversity" hiring was created as a scapegoat to help avoid legal fire.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It hurts when you see posh privileged urban women having much more chance of getting into a good company than a man who worked his way up through sacrifice. It's not a gender issue. I would be looking to hire someone competent who works hard, not someone who makes "sacrifices" and then expects a job/promotion. The latter never works. That's not the work culture in most places. I've seen it many times, people who ma…

[flagged]

> From my experience there are relatively few women who really get in the trenches.

have you ever heard of the word "bias"?

> Staring at logs in a terminal and sifting through endless YAML not so much.

i did not know that one gender could be better at this work. that seems like huge news if true.

and yes, you sound like a reactionary. coward ass throwaway account.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#94

I’m going through a similar experience after being laid off back in July for the first time in my career. The jobs advertised are quite often less-than-inspiring, the hiring processes are weird and opaque, and the hiring team is frequently disorganized and unprofessional. An interviewer last week was straight out of a Silicon Valley storyline, asking a “if you were on an elevator with Marc Andreessen” question and ex…

whose

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#95
post #22

Good luck, Sergey. In my case, the process became so awful, humiliating, and hostile, I just gave up, and retired, ten years before I had planned. I’m very fortunate, that I could afford it. I now develop software for free, for outfits that can’t afford people like me. It’s tough, but looking for work after 50, especially when pivoting from management, back to IC, is unbearable. My heart goes out to those without the…

Devs in there 40's and 50's are probably the most valuable devs on earth. We grew up with computers and had to adapt to our rapidly changing industry. I suspect we will see startup founders trending older if it isn't already happening. Companies stuck in the old way of thinking that older is slower will probably be disrupted in the next recession.

It's interesting how much stereotyping is happening in these replies.

The fact is that there's nothing unique about any age group, and the only difference between them is their birth dates. Intragenerational differences are always larger than intergenerational differences. In any age group, there are varying degrees of competence, varying degrees of attitude, varying degrees of personal circumstances (e.g., home, family).

Ageism is treating a person solely as member of a group rather than as an individual. You simply can't accurately generalize based on a job candidate's age. Anyone who claims, "In my experience [members of age group] are mostly like this..." is putting forth weak anecdotal data that is practically useless and totally unscientific.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#96
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies are filtering candidates in favor of mercenaries while pretending they are looking for dependable, committed professionals. If you don’t have specific experience with some CTOs favorite esoteric API or don’t have experience in the same, specific corner of some insurance or usury industry, your ability to actually engineer solutions is considered irrelevant. It’s as if the industry has forgotten that bu…

Yeah well what do recruiters know about software development? They just know the keywords the EMs and C suite sent them in the headcount request.

That EMs and the C-suite think solving their engineering needs is to add "headcount" is the bigger problem.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not the poster's point. The poster contends women are being prejudicially hired as "diversity" rather men who have "sacrificed" and worked hard. "lolwut" indeed.

[flagged]

Your perceived truth maybe. The truth you’re looking for to fit your world view.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#98

I’m going through a similar experience after being laid off back in July for the first time in my career. The jobs advertised are quite often less-than-inspiring, the hiring processes are weird and opaque, and the hiring team is frequently disorganized and unprofessional. An interviewer last week was straight out of a Silicon Valley storyline, asking a “if you were on an elevator with Marc Andreessen” question and ex…

whose

Yep. That frequently trips me up.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#99

Sometimes I feel like you guys live in alternative universe. Nothing about the "bad" interview sounded too atypical. Sure it's annoying, but not uncommon enough to be exceptional. I don't mean to discount anyone's unpleasantness but you'd be surprised how much worse the rest of the world is.

That's kind of the point, the "typical" experience is actually pretty bad for job hunters

Try to get a job in finance, accounting, marketing, law, or other kinds of engineering. 7+ rounds of interviews, weird pop-psych questions, even getting a reply/meeting is a problem ...

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It hurts when you see posh privileged urban women having much more chance of getting into a good company than a man who worked his way up through sacrifice. It's not a gender issue. I would be looking to hire someone competent who works hard, not someone who makes "sacrifices" and then expects a job/promotion. The latter never works. That's not the work culture in most places. I've seen it many times, people who ma…

[flagged]

This has not been my experience. The women I've worked with in software engineering teams have all been, well, engineers. One of them worked on some kind of real-time printer operating system before becoming a Java dev, another one is currently team lead on the cluster team on a distributed software product, another one has the most in-depth knowledge of CSS of anyone in a 50+ people frontend department.

I see a lot of people online complaining about the job market and blaming all kinds of things for their inability to find a job, but I think what has changed is that there are no more defensive hires, where companies like Google hire as many people as possible just to deny their competitors those people. Lots of relatively unqualified people found very high-paying jobs that way and are now surprised that they can't land those jobs anymore.

If you're competent and personable and know your own strengths, you can still find a job relatively easily.

Coincidentally, I was fired during the tech downturn two years ago, and within a few weeks, had three job offers out of three applications. I have a good CV, I applied at local companies that matched my specific expertise, I asked how the interview would go and what was expected, and prepared specifically for each company.

Complaining about women because you can't find a job isn't just misguided, it's harmful to yourself, because it prevents you from understanding what the actual issue is, and working on it.

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