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Tell HN: I'm having the worst career winter of my life

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Re: Tell HN: I'm having the worst career winter of my life

#101

email sam@corgi.insure hiring full stack engineers in london disclaimer: we are 7 days a week in person

Hi Sam. As you wrote you are 7 days a week, how many hours is it per week?

We don't make people punch in and punch out. We give people the flexibility they need to do what they need to do. If we are not taking care of personal errands etc, we're working on something fun. We do get out and do things as a team etc & take breaks when needed lol.

Edit: To answer your question I work at least probably 14 hours, but there are times when it's less and times when it's more, depends how hard I can push given the constraints. It varies.

Re: Tell HN: I'm having the worst career winter of my life

#104

email sam@corgi.insure hiring full stack engineers in london disclaimer: we are 7 days a week in person

>7 days a week in person Is this sarcasm?

My understanding is that in the UK things are often done 8 days a week.

Re: Tell HN: I'm having the worst career winter of my life

#105

Domain-specific knowledge, having no relation to software engineering per se, is a necessary skill set. The best analogy I can find, if not a tired one, is the equivalence of software engineering to tool-and-die making. In prior generations where manufacturing was king, it was a necessary operational skill set in order to produce things at scale, yet is much less (if no longer) relevant in the age of additive or subt…

I would say you can take opposite route as well. Become even more of a T-shaped engineer than you were before. For me that meant transitioning to vertical roles (i.e., performance engineering) rather than backend engineering. Sure, an AI can understand every level of the stack but reasoning up and down at every level of abstraction still has a human element to it (at least for now).

Re: Tell HN: I'm having the worst career winter of my life

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beggars can't be choosers. If you are having the worst career winter of your life shouldn't you be taking whatever you can get? Whether its 5 days a week in office or full remote or anything in between?

I'm no longer in a location where is easy to commute to a major city. I can't choose to get a job in a big city anymore that's 5 days a week

I empathize with this cause circumstances often force us to move to a less than ideal location, but with everyone doing RTO again since 2 or 3 years ago, you slashed a huge percentage of the job opportunities out there.

Re: Tell HN: I'm having the worst career winter of my life

#107
I certainly am also. 32 years of professional work. Capable and willing to wear many hats, communicate with people of all walks of life (and neuro-divergencies), and even travel frequently.

Over the last two years I have applied to at least 150 jobs. For each application which would accept a cover letter, I wrote one. And I only applied to roles which I really believed I would fit into - I didn't just spray and pray.

I think I've had 4-5 companies that I got to interview with. The closest one to hiring ended up choosing another guy who had a little more frontend experience (this was for a backend role). But they said they really liked me. That's great, but it doesn't help :)

The rest were usually silent rejections. I'm actually grateful when I receive a rejection email (vs indefinite silence).

Along the way, I've built maybe 8 demo projects as part of the application process. I got to show off a few to the companies, and despite delivering what I honestly believe were clean, quality solutions, I didn't get the jobs.

Eventually I gave up applying for some months. It's just to demoralizing to keep trying and getting nowhere. Now I build things that make me happy (for no money), like my new web game, Vector Defense -> https://michaelteter.com/vector.html

I've started applying to companies again. If nothing happens in the next six months, I'll most likely walk away from my tech career and just get a "regular job". Maybe I'll open a gym in Bangkok; they don't have many, and the few decent ones have surprisingly high monthly fees. I could compete; and I love hospitality and providing nice experiences for people. So if anyone wants to partner with me, hit me up!

Re: Tell HN: I'm having the worst career winter of my life

#108

I certainly am also. 32 years of professional work. Capable and willing to wear many hats, communicate with people of all walks of life (and neuro-divergencies), and even travel frequently. Over the last two years I have applied to at least 150 jobs. For each application which would accept a cover letter, I wrote one. And I only applied to roles which I really believed I would fit into - I didn't just spray and pray.…

> my new web game, Vector Defense

That's kind of a throwback. (I know these are different games.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_TD

Re: Tell HN: I'm having the worst career winter of my life

#109

I certainly am also. 32 years of professional work. Capable and willing to wear many hats, communicate with people of all walks of life (and neuro-divergencies), and even travel frequently. Over the last two years I have applied to at least 150 jobs. For each application which would accept a cover letter, I wrote one. And I only applied to roles which I really believed I would fit into - I didn't just spray and pray.…

Hey, for what it's worth: that game was a blast. I forgot how much I enjoyed tower defense. Thank you for the 30 minutes of unexpected fun.

Good luck in your search!

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