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Job Hunting in 2022

mhlakhani.com

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Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#131

Post by klardotsh »

paxys wrote: post #23
asadlionpk wrote: post #6

Sounds about expected even in current conditions. If you are fairly skilled programmer, somewhat senior. These layoffs don’t matter. I assure you that you won’t die of hunger if you quit/are laid off. Plenty of demand for non-coasters.

Anecdotally, a large number of experienced engineers I know at big tech companies have been secretly hoping to be included in an upcoming layoff round. So many people have mentally checked out of their current jobs but are too lazy to grind leetcode and go through interview loops. Unless you are in a financial crunch or have other issues like visa sponsorship, getting paid for 6+ months to fully focus on the next ste…

Now if only 6mo (or even 3mo) severances were the norm outside of FAANG on this wave, it wouldn't have been quite as painful of a lurch for some of us.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#132

Post by Falkon1313 »

ojbyrne wrote: post #44
nvarsj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They had a _full_ pipeline, interviewing every day for three weeks straight. I honestly think I'd be physically incapable of doing this. I'm on the HSP side and even a single set of interviews is enough to drive me into an insomnia/anxiety cycle for weeks. I can't even imagine what this would be like for me. Albeit I admit it's the best way to get the job you want. Maybe I'm in the wrong industry...

Maybe it's just me, but when I have done that, the first one or two are the hardest, then you get in a groove, and become more aware that its just a numbers game.

I don't understand the numbers game approach. It's like a war of attrition - you're definitely going to suffer if you pick a fight with everyone you see.

I prefer the 'choose your battles' approach. Interviewing at 3-5 places (not 35), and being prepared to 'win' before I start, as well as possible.

I do find the marathon interviews are difficult, but the difficult parts for me are front-loaded - the initial anxiety, gradually building to being desperate for a break (or to escape) around halfway through. But then like a runner in the zone or coasting through the second half of a double shift on sleep deprivation, the latter part is relatively smooth.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#133

Post by klardotsh »

avmich wrote: post #15
askafriend wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah if you're good and have the resume/experience to back it up, you won't have any issues getting great offers even in this market. Great candidates are not easy to find in any market.

This must be extremely subjective. Many times over I see very well qualified candidates spending months in this market looking for a position - when it took them weeks before.

Anecdotally, this. I'd never spent more than 3 weeks looking for a job prior to my October/November job hunt post-layoff. This one took about 6-7 weeks, all told (and likely would have come out closer to 8 had one branch path played out). I was intentionally looking for remote-first companies that seemed halfway stable, and was prioritizing those open to sub-40h workweeks (30h, 4DWW, 9-80, etc.), which admittedly, all three shrunk the pool tremendously (each), but particularly on workweek length, I was negotiable. I still had an overall horrible experience with the dozen or two companies I chatted with, and notably got some absolutely wild rejections (however, quite thankfully, also landed somewhere great after sifting through all of these):

- absolute crickets, which made up about 33% of the "rejections" after a phone screen. This was unheard of pre-layoff rounds, but I understand that recruiters themselves suffered a lot of losses in this wave so I somewhat get it.

- "We only hire SREs, and any role leveled Senior+, in San Francisco, there's too much context to offload remotely for leader roles" (this is, itself, such a glaring red flag that I was considering walking from this process anyway)

- "You mentioned your preference to not do Coderpad-style interviews, and sadly, we only hire based on timed+video call Coderpad interviews, good luck!" (I basically never ran into this pre-2022 despite my stance on this issue almost never changing in my career, this was the cause of several rejections this time)

- A subtype of the above, bombing a surprise (or once, "forgot to ask ahead of time and got scheduled for one that I decided to go to anyway") Coderpad/l33tcode/etc. style interview. Rejections on all but one of these, where I advanced and backed out for other reasons.

- Being an SRE not married to Kubernetes I've learned is now often akin to no longer being an SRE. In fact I now question whether I truly consider myself "an SRE" in the current startup climate's sense of the word anymore. As an egregious example, one interview asked me to rate my skills and opinions on Kubernetes specifically. I answered honestly that I thought it was the right tool for many jobs, but not all jobs, and that I wouldn't claim to be a guru at it as I often use other tools that fit the tasks at hand better. Rejected.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#134

Post by csomar »

Sodman wrote: post #39

I get that it's still a candidates market (especially for strong candidates like OP who can get 11 offers from 13 full attempts), but the spreadsheet of questions you should be asking a company linked in TFA has some eyebrow raising notes and unreasonable expectations imho. For example - there's a big pushback that any hiring manager worried about a candidate who don't have required skills they could learn in 6-12 mo…

If you are doing Front-End dev pushing React Components, I think you should ramp-up from Week 1. Some other comment here mentioned this though: some fields it's not possible. If you are doing drivers, kernel, ebpf, or say you are programming Bitcoin main node; you probably need to read a lot before you are able to make any contribution.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#135

Post by listenallyall »

turing_complete wrote: post #124
angarg12 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * They had a _full_ pipeline, interviewing every day for three weeks straight. It's a grind, but you definitely get "in the zone". Additionally, setting this goal ensures that you are being properly proactive/aggressive in pursuing opportunities. As a married man nearing his 40s I can't imagine doing this. I need to keep my full time job to support my family, so just quit and focus 100% on prepping is not an option…

You can take vacation or save some money before quitting. Or just do a few interviews per week while working like most people.

sorry kids, no Disneyland this year, I used up my vacation days back in Feb when I interviewed for a week straight

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#136

Post by claytonjy »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #104

> I completed full interview loops at 13 companies and received 11 offers. I'm glad I got the rejections I did - it was clear there wasn't a mutual match. 11 out of 13 seems like a really extremely good hit rate. Even a 50% offer rate would be really good so I'm guessing this person is way better at interviewing than most of us. As most of these interviews were in in October/November I wonder if it would go as well n…

13 companies where he completed the entire interview circuit. The further you get in an interview circuit, the more likely you are to continue, and thus to eventually get an offer. Only getting offers from 50% of those might indicate you're doing something surprising towards the end, like coming across as a jerk to the skip-level+ the last interview is usually with.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#137

Post by angarg12 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #104

> I completed full interview loops at 13 companies and received 11 offers. I'm glad I got the rejections I did - it was clear there wasn't a mutual match. 11 out of 13 seems like a really extremely good hit rate. Even a 50% offer rate would be really good so I'm guessing this person is way better at interviewing than most of us. As most of these interviews were in in October/November I wonder if it would go as well n…

I suspect you'd be able to land fewer interviews if you repeated this experience now.

However the most interesting stat is missing: compensation offers. I bet offers being handed today are across the board lower than even just 1 quarter ago.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#138

Post by listenallyall »

nsxwolf wrote: post #56
dirtbag__dad wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you prefer a take home or a live coding challenge? I have the total opposite experience. I have rarely done well on a live code problem, I clam up. Tbh it’s humiliating, not representative of my actual skill set, and a waste of everyone’s time. The amount of time I’d need to study to be good at live coding is less than doing a couple take homes for companies I’m actually interested in.

The idea of a take home originally appealed to me, but my actual track record with them is very poor. They are usually too open ended - sometimes they'll say to write some service, that it shouldn't take more than an evening, and then you're left questioning how much they're expecting. Do they want a quick proof of concept? Do they want unit tests? Acceptance tests? Then there's the follow up - often a rejection with…

I strongly agree that rejection w/o any comment on the project you just spent 4-10 hours on, is very frustrating. Of course, it's just a subset of the whole interview process, not just programming, you never know what the actual reason you got rejected was.

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#139

Post by Aeolun »

nsxwolf wrote: post #30
nvarsj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They had a _full_ pipeline, interviewing every day for three weeks straight. I honestly think I'd be physically incapable of doing this. I'm on the HSP side and even a single set of interviews is enough to drive me into an insomnia/anxiety cycle for weeks. I can't even imagine what this would be like for me. Albeit I admit it's the best way to get the job you want. Maybe I'm in the wrong industry...

This is incredibly common. I hate running interviews - we do the leetcode whiteboard pressure cooker crap - it's a policy I have no say in unfortunately. I've had candidates with strong backgrounds go to pieces right in front of me - it's awful to watch and I hate that I had anything to do with making someone experience that. More people than you might imagine take Xanax to get through interviews.

I don’t know whether it’s more disturbing that our interview process is structured so that Xanax is necessary in the first place, or that so many people in the comments jump in to say what a great idea it is…

Re: Job Hunting in 2022

#140

Post by Falkon1313 »

dirtbag__dad wrote: post #42
mikedelago wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't blame you. Take home assignments are ridiculous, anyway. My personal time is valuable to me and it's unrealistic to expect me to do homework just for the privilege of an interview. In my last job hunt, I flat out declined further interview if I was requested to do a take home assignment.

Would you prefer a take home or a live coding challenge? I have the total opposite experience. I have rarely done well on a live code problem, I clam up. Tbh it’s humiliating, not representative of my actual skill set, and a waste of everyone’s time. The amount of time I’d need to study to be good at live coding is less than doing a couple take homes for companies I’m actually interested in.

Personally, I'd prefer an actual small contract gig. Most companies have something tangential that they'd like to have but may not be worth dedicating their full-timers to, or isn't directly in line with their main focus. Some small tool, bit of automation that would help, or minor project.

It gives us an actual chance to work together professionally on a real thing. I get actual pay. The company gets something actually useful (not just a puzzle solution). The team can keep their focus on the bigger stuff. It's kind of a win-win.

It does need to be something rather small and non-critical, yet relevant enough, which might be a little more difficult than just picking a generic puzzle. And requires a little extra setup for the contracting and pay. So I can see why many don't bother.

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