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Looking for a Job Is Tough

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Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#171

Post by Izkata »

wavemode wrote: post #88
noobermin wrote: post #85

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.

Software engineers are used to companies fighting over them. Now we're in a market where it's normal to have lots of experience yet be unemployed for months. So it's a shock for many (though not atypical when compared to plenty of other fields of knowledge work, as you note).

Or the past? I wasn't around back then, but I've heard the 2001 recession was the same.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#172

Post by ghaff »

Izkata wrote: post #171
wavemode wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers are used to companies fighting over them. Now we're in a market where it's normal to have lots of experience yet be unemployed for months. So it's a shock for many (though not atypical when compared to plenty of other fields of knowledge work, as you note).

Or the past? I wasn't around back then, but I've heard the 2001 recession was the same.

I got really lucky even if my comp was pretty mediocre for a number of years. But it was pretty much nuclear winter and many people (not just developers) left the tech industry.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#173

Post by namaria »

svilen_dobrev wrote: post #161
trentnix wrote: post #50

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…

> It’s as if the industry has forgotten that building software is about the application of algorithms to data structures to accomplish some user need My 3 months experience searching - and getting only ~3-4 initial interviews - is the New-AI-Kids-on-Da-Block think software-engineering is just another plumbing for their Artificially Great Intelligence. One CEO even used the exact word. waw. Plumbers make real good $$$…

They are just saying the quite part out loud now because they think they can finally get away with that.

Well when the discount plumbing they are getting put in starts to leak shit all over the place there will be a premium again in actually knowing how to do it properly.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#174

Post by ghaff »

bubbleRefuge wrote: post #170
thw09j9m wrote: post #18

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.

My observation as well. Going remote makes it harder to switch jobs because of loosing the personal connections and networks that get developed working on site. Going through the front door when applying for opportunities is usually more difficult than the back door. Back door as in getting introduced via your network. As a result, I've learned that a good recruiter is now a necessity because they have those relation…

Essentially post-school every job I’ve been hired for was through strong personal connections. And I certainly feel I don’t develop the same kinds of connections remotely. Maybe some folks who grew up in that of remote environment are better adapted.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#175

Post by mock-possum »

briandear wrote: post #101
trentnix wrote: post #29

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…

Yeah I feel like the recent application experience is almost coercing me into racism - I don’t actually believe in racial superiority, I’m not into any kind of bigotry or mistreating other people… buuuuuut I’ve noticed that I have this visceral reaction to seeing a typical Indian name on an email from a potential employer, or a thick Indian accent on a phone or zoom call. It always just seems like an indication that I don’t actually have a chance and am just wasting my time.

It’s awful catching myself in a “I’m not racist but” situation. It really worries me.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#176

Post by mock-possum »

tasuki wrote: post #78
purple-leafy wrote: post #59

It’s insanely tough. I’m currently searching. For context - I’ve made 4 personal projects that currently have over 1000+ daily active users (numbers are ~1500, ~6000, ~14,000, and ~430,000) all created within the span of the last year. I’ve also sold software. On top of all that, I have an Engineering degree, 4 years experience, no breaks in employment, study on my afternoons and weekends (C, Go, C#) and take extra u…

> Makes me want to become a gardener Why not?

You can’t make $85 an hour playing with your computer as a gardener

(Although, apparently it’s not likely you can you do it as a dev in today’s market so)

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#177

Post by consteval »

greenie_beans wrote: post #90
rdfc-xn-uuid wrote: post #48

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've had the same experience, and I've reasoned it as follows:

It's very difficult to be a woman in Computer Science. CompSci is uniquely awful for women. Like other STEM, it's overrun by men, so you get all the subtle discrimination of that. But CompSci men also tend to be, for lack of a better word, asocial weirdos. Civil engineers have to work with people, CompSci people built up their skills in front of a screen.

All this means that the large majority of women are filtered out. The ones that remain are the ones most skilled with navigating tough situations, and who have a strong passion for engineering. A passion strong enough to wade through the downsides.

I also think they have to constantly prove themselves, which also builds up their skills.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#178

Post by rachofsunshine »

thw09j9m wrote: post #18

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.

For what it's worth, it is definitely thawing (at least if what we're seeing in our client base is anything to go by), it's just going to take some time for that to work its way through everyone looking for work.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#179

Post by rachofsunshine »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #68
Plasmoid wrote: post #26

There are just piles and piles of companies out there trying to hire but are absolutely obsessed with having people work in their terrible SF offices. I don't get it. If these companies really believed that working in an office was so beneficial they would invest in them. But they all come across like "I need an office to appear like a real company but I don't want to spend a lot of money". They're these millennial g…

They're not obsessed. There are tons of qualified people looking for such jobs, so they can afford to make demands like this

It isn't cheap, though. You burn something on the order of 80k a hire to hire in-office, probably more if you're specifically looking in SF or NYC.

Those roles are going to get squeezed pretty fast as the market heats up.

Re: Looking for a Job Is Tough

#180

Post by rachofsunshine »

mlsu wrote: post #49
nradov wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admissions to selective colleges are the same way. For most students it's rather foolish and wasteful to target any one specific college because luck plays a huge factor (or the actual selection criteria are unknown and unknowable, which from the applicant's perspective is indistinguishable from luck).

People cannot discriminate. They must spray and pray because the algorithm demands it of them. Thus, both sides (employer and employee) lose, because every applicant and every institution becomes flattened, generalized. It used to be, applying to places took time and effort. So students (and job applicants likewise) would discriminate. This allowed employers and institutions to actually build culture. An institution…

AI has made this problem even worse, too.

The solution to the problem is trusted intermediaries that act as something of a filter against bad actors. They're just hard to establish, especially in a world where people want the other side to have their hands tied but not their own.

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