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All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

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Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#101

Post by p4wnc6 »

taurath wrote: post #97
p4wnc6 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not how it works. Recruiters generally spam everyone based on an inventory of jobs they have, and half the time, the recruiter is more interested in pumping you for information about where you currently work or where else you've applied. When recruiters do put you forward for a job, they require you to give up all negotiation power in advance, and generally they are paid bonuses on top of their commission if…

After pouring through your comments throughout this thread I'm kinda left with the following conclusion (take it for what its worth, a random person on the internet): you have a mindset problem, and you're generalizing to the point that you wouldn't be able to accept nearly any job, or be happy in one. You've determined: Most companies are bad/wrong/awful/burnout machines All recruiters are either spambots or leeches…

I understand where you're coming from, but I also feel there's a serious argument to be made, Moral Mazes / Peopleware style, that most companies are bad/wrong/awful/burnout machines. The fact that open-plan offices are widely used is a perfect example. It's a condition fundamentally at odds with the productivity it is alleged to facilitate. Cost has long been disproven as a favorable factor for choosing open-plan, as the productivity losses quickly destroy any real estate savings. Instead it's about status and affiliation -- accepting non-functional designs in order to seem impressive looking in a superficial way.

And something like open-plan offices are merely the tip of the iceberg. Superficial reasons for big showy tech re-orgs around the latest and greatest trends are very similar. The ambient background of political dysfunction intensified in start-up environments, etc. Huge exposes in major media outlets describing the way e.g. Amazon employees are made to cry frequently at their desks and encouraged to use gossip hotlines to backstab colleagues, followed shortly by their own CEO releasing a statement to shareholders basically saying if you don't like the cutthroat, anti-human environment then just get out. ...

It is a mammoth challenge to find employment that is minimally acceptable for human cognitive health. The way corporations behave, a la Moral Mazes, is just exceptionally maladaptive for human cognitive function. There is real theory behind it.

In my own experience, part of what made my previous employment so disastrous is that it involved an employer doing some substantially illegal things to me -- to the point that I had to hire an expensive employment attorney when leaving that company and go through a bunch of hoops to document things. Maybe you've been lucky to never have been treated this way by a company, but I can tell you it's real, and many, many executives go absolutely unchecked and have incredibly harmful views about how they believe they are allowed to treat people.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#102

Post by johnward »

mhurron wrote: post #58
random_rr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

calm down. Newsletters drive Internet business. If you don't know this... Don't walk outside, it's an even scarier place out there. Don't like pop ups? Close tab, move on. Or... Throw a childish hissy fit on HN over free content. You know, whichever sounds better to you.

When the content owners of something that is annoying you show up in the same thread your in, it is appropriate to voice your complaints to them.

Yes and if the owner hears your complaint and doesn't care because he knows you're the vocal minority just move on.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#104

Post by p4wnc6 »

snark42 wrote: post #99
p4wnc6 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not how it works. Recruiters generally spam everyone based on an inventory of jobs they have, and half the time, the recruiter is more interested in pumping you for information about where you currently work or where else you've applied. When recruiters do put you forward for a job, they require you to give up all negotiation power in advance, and generally they are paid bonuses on top of their commission if…

> When recruiters do put you forward for a job, they require you to give up all negotiation power in advance, and generally they are paid bonuses on top of their commission if they can ensure a candidate accepts a low salary. When they say "my commission is based on the salary you get so I'm trying to get you the most that I can" it is, truly, complete bullshit. You are dealing with some really bad recruiters (the ty…

I've dealt with several recruiters each from Huxley, NJF, Selby Jennings, Open System Technologies, Crystal Equation, Workbridge Associates, Jobspring Partners, Cybercoders, and Grady Levkov. And also one from Gina's Tech Jobs, and two freelance recruiters who had been recommended to me by friends.

If, for example, you say you won't reveal your previous salary or your current expectations until after speaking with someone to get a sense of whether you're a good fit for the role, then they will throw every excuse at you to get you to say a number first, and if you still don't, they simply will not work with you. No matter how much I practiced and no matter how politely and professionally I dodged the question, I did not ever encounter a single recruiter who would agree to help me without first having me name a concrete, specific number for my salary.

In a few cases, the recruiter even told me that to submit any applications on my behalf, they needed years of salary history including any equity or bonus payments. In one case when the number of years needed was 7, when I refused, I never heard from her again. That recruiter was actually referred to me by a trusted friend who had used her help to get a job, so it was not some fly-by-night scamster. While my friend, I guess, was OK sharing 7 years of data with some random recruiter, I was not, and so they simply did not contact me further.

On the few occasions that I've opened up about what would actually make me excited about a job (having a quiet, private office is by far #1), they basically just say "yeah right, never going to happen, move on." So if I stick up for what I am seeking (or at least was seeking at that time) they also just discontinue all contact.

Finally I just gave up on this and stopped ever telling recruiters anything at all that I felt they might think would make me 'weird' or 'unusual' or 'quirky' to present as a candidate, but because they all solely cared about getting that concrete salary number in the first conversation, this largely had no impact other than at least making the conversations take less time.

They also often submitted my email/phone/resume to their general recruiters, so then I started getting spam mail and unsolicited phone calls at odd hours about positions that are extremely inappropriate for someone with my particular background.

The time spent patiently explaining my background and current career goals to recruiters has been painfully wasted. If there is some way to locate good recruiters apart from the firms I've contacted and the people referred to me by friends, I certainly do not know how to do it.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#105

Post by dang »

sqeaky wrote: post #28

> since people need to engage over several months to get value out of the advice This is false. > I find popups annoying too I do not believe you, if you did you would know that often the first response to popup annoyance is to close the window. What do your analytics actually say happens when that popup shows? It will show that I was reading your article up until that appeared, then I entered garbage for an email an…

This crosses into personal attack, and you can't do that in comments here. Please (re)-read the following and don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11864766 and marked it off-topic.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#106

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #19
p4wnc6 wrote: post #5

I've been unemployed for about 14 months since resigning from my most recent role -- a role which my close family and friends characterized as "destroying me." After becoming unemployed, with enough savings to sustain myself for a long search, I then faced a significant family trauma that required me to move away from Boston (where I had lived and worked for most of the past decade), back home to do basically full-ti…

Wow, I feel for you, having been there myself a number of times. The playing field is so stacked against applicants it's not even funny. One thing though: > I've done literally hundreds of phone interviews, had 7 different on-site interviews, and received offers from 2 of them (both of which I rejected because they asked me to accept compensation/benefits packages that were substantially worse than what I had when la…

[deleted]

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#107

Post by driverdan »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #5

I've been unemployed for about 14 months since resigning from my most recent role -- a role which my close family and friends characterized as "destroying me." After becoming unemployed, with enough savings to sustain myself for a long search, I then faced a significant family trauma that required me to move away from Boston (where I had lived and worked for most of the past decade), back home to do basically full-ti…

If you want some constructive criticism / feedback / recommendations feel free to email me, dan at driverdan dot com. I'm a hiring manager and while it doesn't sound like you're a match for what we're looking for I'd be happy to give you some input from the other side.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#108

Post by mdpopescu »

rhizome wrote: post #82
BenjaminTodd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry about that. I find popups annoying too. Unfortunately we just find we get a way higher conversion to the newsletter when we use popups, and since people need to engage over several months to get value out of the advice, getting people onto the newsletter is really important.

Just a side comment, these are starting to be called "doorslams," and you may also be interested in alternative views of your "No thanks, I don't want a raise" dismissal link at http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/

Thanks; some of these are so bad they reminded me of [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tunnel_under_the_World

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#110

Post by chris_va »

lj3 wrote: post #89
graham1776 wrote: post #69

The one thing I always tell anyone on the job hunt, which few ever seem to take me up on: Informational Interviews. These are informal "can I take you out to coffee?" talks with people in your industry to see what they are working on, what is happening with them, what is going on in the industry. Every job I have ever gotten is through informal meetings with people I have met through my network (whether its the curre…

Any advice for doing this when you're in the middle of nowhere? I've heard of patio11 doing something similar via skype, but it just seems odd to invite people for coffee via skype or hangouts.

I've been on the other side of this a few times. Doing a Skype call is far less effective in getting me to help place someone relative to in person coffee. Better than nothing, though.
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