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Looking for a Job Is Tough

blog.kaplich.me

111–120 of 296 posts

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#111

It's going to get tougher and tougher in this job market. 1. Layoffs happening regularly. 2. Less Senior positions and virtually no junior jobs. 2. AI accelerating and reducing the number of software engineers. 3. Job postings being reposted with less salary and equity in US, EU and especially the UK. You might as well take yourself off the job market / stay in current job, build a paying SMB company or side project…

> pest control SaaS

How does this work? Are we talking computer bugs?

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#112

I guess Europe isn't nearly as bad as the US. My portfolio (and probably my actual skills) are nowhere close to what some of those in the comments that can't find a job are offering, but I was able to secure a job in Trondheim, Norway (where I'm about to move in January) with a single application and interview. I assume there weren't too many people in the Trondheim area who were willing to work at an office and who…

Europe is probably easier to get hired, but if you are a senior making some medium+ salary, it's also easier to get skipped in favor of cheaper candidates.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure the bar has been raised. It’s been weirded, but not raised.

The bar has been lowered in many respects. 14 years experience, 5 of them at a FAANG. Successful startup exit for a small company I founded, and and endless array of India-based recruiters that, for example, want me to mention “Ruby 3.2” in my resume when the resume says I have 14 years of Ruby experience including using it daily in my present job. I could literally say “I invented Ruby and have worked with it daily…

Indians,Brazilians,Portuguese,Ukrainians,Russians are possibly the worst clique of discriminative nationalities. You can be 100% assured that you will be driven out of a company/job if more of them take a hold and get into higher up positions. This is not racism. This is a pure fact based on statistical evidence.

You will be sold a dream of infinite scalability by hiring "talent" in those countries for cheap and what you will get is usually disfunctional teams riddled with incompetence and nepotism.

Even if a job/team is meant to be multicultural,diverse they will find a way how to hire more and more of their countrymen until knowing the language is basically a requirement for the job.

I am not even an american and i've seen this happen in Europe as well so I imagine in the US it must be 1000 times worse.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure the bar has been raised. It’s been weirded, but not raised.

The bar has been lowered in many respects. 14 years experience, 5 of them at a FAANG. Successful startup exit for a small company I founded, and and endless array of India-based recruiters that, for example, want me to mention “Ruby 3.2” in my resume when the resume says I have 14 years of Ruby experience including using it daily in my present job. I could literally say “I invented Ruby and have worked with it daily…

You're describing the effects of normalising remote work. Employees now are able to work from anywhere in the world, so companies get employees from all over the world. Since we're already looking at employing anywhere, why not also contract from anywhere?

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. We pretty explicitly ask candidates to not use AI. While it's fine when doing the job the purpose of the interview is to gauge your ability to understand and solve problems, while AI can help you with that you understanding how to do it yourself signals that you'll be able to solve other more complex wider-spanning problems. Just like with a calculator - it's important for candidates to know _why_ somethi…

There is an interesting dichotomy in your interview process. You say you want someone who can solve problems, but then go on to say (perhaps unintentionally; communication is hard) that you only want someone who has already rote-memorized how to solve the particular problems you throw at them, not someone who can figure things out as the problems arise.

> but then go on to say (perhaps unintentionally; communication is hard) that you only want someone who has already rote-memorized how to solve the particular problems you throw at them

They said the opposite of that. Unless you think it's not possible to figure out problems and you can only do them by rote memorization?

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> * Diversity hiring: Big US/EU companies are trying to hire more females here because cost is low and they can show great diversity numbers. 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. do you have any examples of this happening? or is this just a boogie man? my experience has been different: so many medio…

I always got the feeling that the distributions were different for men and women. Male professionals seem to be normally distributed, with a lot of mediocrity, some excellence, and some incompetence. In women, the mediocrity part of the population seems to be missing, so the distribution looks more bimodal.

If that's actually the case and not just a warped perception on my part, it could easily happen that, depending on your own skill-level and environment, you'll be more likely to work with one of the two groups in the bimodal distribution.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#117
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're giving remote interviews, your loop should assume candidates can use AI. it's like giving a take home math test that assumes people won't use calculators at this point

I disagree. We pretty explicitly ask candidates to not use AI. While it's fine when doing the job the purpose of the interview is to gauge your ability to understand and solve problems, while AI can help you with that you understanding how to do it yourself signals that you'll be able to solve other more complex wider-spanning problems. Just like with a calculator - it's important for candidates to know _why_ somethi…

Prob everyone is usually AI at this point, only a few bother to make the solution mor human-made-like. Personally, there is not way I am writing boilerplate again unless you are paying me hourly for the test.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#118
post #58

This is the toughest market I've ever seen. I easily made it to on-sites at FAANG a few years ago and now I'm getting resume rejected by no-name startups (and FAANG). The bar has also been raised significantly. I had an interview recently where I solved the algorithm question very quickly, but didn't refactor/clean up my code perfectly and was rejected.

As someone with a couple of open (not engineering) recs, I can agree this is the toughest market I’ve ever seen. For both recs, we received many highly qualified candidates with relevant skills, often in a relevant domain. I’ve never seen this before. It’s always been very hard to find a single highly-qualified candidate.

The media seems to think the great resignation has ended, but really it’s just that jobs have dried up. Professionals, especially good ones, are eager to leave their current jobs, but the pool is so small, there’s just nowhere to go.

And with so many people looking for new positions, if you’re not highly keyword targeted, you won’t go anywhere.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#119
post #111

It's going to get tougher and tougher in this job market. 1. Layoffs happening regularly. 2. Less Senior positions and virtually no junior jobs. 2. AI accelerating and reducing the number of software engineers. 3. Job postings being reposted with less salary and equity in US, EU and especially the UK. You might as well take yourself off the job market / stay in current job, build a paying SMB company or side project…

> pest control SaaS How does this work? Are we talking computer bugs?

There are SaaS products for managing sales/compliance/billing for just about every licensed profession that deals directly with customers. I regularly get emails that are "from" my HVAC contractor or optometrist, but are obviously sent by a SaaS.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#120
post #31
post #3

One piece of advice I usually give is to avoid applying to jobs through company’s career websites or LinkedIn. Instead, tap your social network: see if there is someone you know/have worked with who either works at the company you’re interested in or is connected to it someone (as an advisor, investor, personal friend of someone in a leadership position) and ask them for a warm intro. Social proof gives you an advant…

> Instead, tap your social network social network might not be great for someone who just broke out of their underclass social network to try make it big. This advice assumes you have such a network anyway.

Unfortunately, it’s not really advice so much as reality. The truth of it is, if you know someone, you have a much better chance.
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