That 475k previous TC would have been immediately offputting to most potential employers I would imagine.
2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer
121–126 of 126 posts
Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer
#122You have to ask whether there's real effort put into the 2500 applications. I'm sure I haven't applied to that many jobs. Maybe not even 200 in total. But it's also true that some applications are simply sent off with little chance of getting the job: either my experience was too tangential, or the job appeared to already have an intended taker, or the ad had been there too long to still be live, and so on. I've been…
Maybe, but after 50-60 you really start to tire of it, and start firing off lazy applications for all but the best potential matches.
Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was it actual pair programming (where you actually build something tangible) or was it a leetcode style interview? In a leetcode style interview, I could see being thrown out for debugging. In a true pair programming exercise, I wouldn’t think this would be super common but guess it depends a lot on the exercise. Pair programming is extremely variable with the tasks.
No it was implementing a feature. No palindromes or nonsense like that.
" No palindromes or nonsense like that."
lol, so true.
Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to chime in with a different take from the rest of the comments: there’s lots of tools that aren’t really appropriate to use during an interview. If you’re being asked to do (say) tree traversal, then in real life it’s totally fine to Google it and copy/paste a code snippet. But during an interview, presumably they want to know how much you can do on your own without “help”. It’s not that much of a stretch to sa…
To add more context. The task included interfacing with a 3rd party API that was poorly documented. In order to even see what a response looked like would have been incredibly hard without a debugger. Dumping it to the console would have been many pages of nested JSON. So sitting there twiddling, trying to make sense of an API doc that didn't provide a clear description of the results rather than just run the thing a…
> In my experience, engineers who don't use one are a detriment to the entire engineering organization wasting time and money
Well that's a strong opinion and probably a closed minded one.
Maybe you exposed your mindset and this is part of the reason you didn't get the job.
After all you're being judged on everything, including your attitude. Not just your technical prowess.
Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
If not tailoring it still gets you interviews, then great. But if you're not getting interviews, and you're refusing to do basic things to help yourself, that seems silly and self-defeating, especially if it's an appealing role or company. As a non-dev, I have between a 90-95% response rate when I do apply because I tailor my resume, and I apply to roles strategically and intentionally. I don't begrudge people who ei…
Chances are, the algorithmic/automation that is at the top of the funnel filtering out 90% of incoming resumes doesn’t know or care if the resume it deletes is carefully hand-tailored with love for weeks or if it’s been shotgunned to 1000 companies.
If you’re hand-tailoring it, and you’re still getting knocked out by the system, you’re doing a poor job of it and should probably ask for help.
The endless complaints about ATS and whatever else almost always come from people with objectively poorly written resumes or who are applying to jobs they’re not even slightly qualified for.
Re: 2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer
#126I'm a 30+ year experience SWE. I had my own successful startup exit and after that I skipped FAANG to join the founding teams at other startups founded by Ex-FAANG big names. Unfortunately none of them panned out. I recently went through a series of interviews with a company that were dragged out over two months. Each went very well. My last interview was with a "Senior Engineer" who graduated in 2020 and had a littl…
> "Senior Engineer" You were rejected not because of your lack of skills but to the contrary, you had more skills than that engineer. And that is a threat to that engineer professional future. You made that engineer look bad.
This is certainly a red flag for the organization (not necessarily the whole company).
I have a very senior position in a very large company. I still like to be be in the hiring process of some members of my teams - mostly because I do not want to miss good candidates that may be a bit unusual.
When hiring for my first line, I always wonder if the candidate could replace me. It is surprisingly difficult to find such people, who would be hardcore geeks and want to lead others.
I asked the "would tout like to be in my position" a few times to successful team members. A few responded "sure". I had them present to the board, lead teams, and all but one came back to say that they are done and want to come back to what they were doing. The one that stayed did well, she is a good CTO today.
I can't stand people who are scared by others and would sabotage a team. I can understand that one is afraid of competition but in a sane and big enough organization this can be worked out.