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Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)

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Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)

#21

Post by wincy »

linkregister wrote: post #17
Hasz wrote: post #7

> How to Get a Job Idk about this, I have gotten almost every job I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships. The only one that wasn't that way was talking to a (internal) recruiter in college. Don't discount that path. I did not have the best grades or anything, but (IMO) a mix of skills that was a good fit for the job at hand and confidence I could apply them. Most of the people you will interact with in…

That's fascinating. I know only a handful of people who got their jobs through cold applying. The majority of my friends were either referred by colleagues or received inbound recruiter email. That is, with the exception of my cohort in CS undergrad; we attended our university career fair for out entry into the workforce. It's heartening to know that the cold apply method can be successful.

Every job I’ve ever gotten has been cold apply, with no degree except a GED high school diploma equivalent. You can certainly get jobs through cold apply, I get a job offer for basically every job that gets to the interview, even when I hadn’t worked as a dev I had two job offers I had to pick from. I like to think my passion, knowledge, and genuine interest shines through in my cover letters and my interviews.

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)

#23

Post by ido »

wincy wrote: post #21
linkregister wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fascinating. I know only a handful of people who got their jobs through cold applying. The majority of my friends were either referred by colleagues or received inbound recruiter email. That is, with the exception of my cohort in CS undergrad; we attended our university career fair for out entry into the workforce. It's heartening to know that the cold apply method can be successful.

Every job I’ve ever gotten has been cold apply, with no degree except a GED high school diploma equivalent. You can certainly get jobs through cold apply, I get a job offer for basically every job that gets to the interview, even when I hadn’t worked as a dev I had two job offers I had to pick from. I like to think my passion, knowledge, and genuine interest shines through in my cover letters and my interviews.

When did you last do that? I’ve heard from multiple friends that the job market has completely collapsed in the last couple of years & that it’s much tougher than in the past.

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)

#24

Post by hansvm »

linkregister wrote: post #17
Hasz wrote: post #7

> How to Get a Job Idk about this, I have gotten almost every job I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships. The only one that wasn't that way was talking to a (internal) recruiter in college. Don't discount that path. I did not have the best grades or anything, but (IMO) a mix of skills that was a good fit for the job at hand and confidence I could apply them. Most of the people you will interact with in…

That's fascinating. I know only a handful of people who got their jobs through cold applying. The majority of my friends were either referred by colleagues or received inbound recruiter email. That is, with the exception of my cohort in CS undergrad; we attended our university career fair for out entry into the workforce. It's heartening to know that the cold apply method can be successful.

Cold applying works reasonably well IME, but you have to be able to nail the interviews for it to make sense. I'm great at what I do, I only apply to jobs which should be a good fit, and I still only get interviews 1-2% of the time. I then get offers 95% of the time, which keeps the process manageable.

I've gotten 3/4 of my tech jobs through cold applying though [0], and been offered many, many more. I know it's possible.

Ok that note, I love my current job, and I would've never found anything like it through my network. Cold applying was a literal game-changer in that regard.

[0] One was through Google Foo Bar, and one was through Codefights (now Codesignal or something), so those were slightly more tailored than cold applying.

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)

#25

Post by ElProlactin »

kennyu wrote: post #15
ElProlactin wrote: post #14

> These are simply the lies I tell myself to keep on living my life in good faith. I'm not saying this is the right way to do things. I'm just saying this is how I did things. I will do my best to color my advice with my own experiences, but I'm not going to pretend that the suffering and the privilege I've experienced is universal. It's interesting the author chose to wrote this as "advice" given his awareness of th…

How would it be framed? He's sharing what actions that he's taken, that has led to certain life outcomes.

He could just tell his story, explain his approach to life/guiding principles and leave it at that.

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)

#26

Post by tombert »

rvrs wrote: post #8
Hasz wrote: post #7

> How to Get a Job Idk about this, I have gotten almost every job I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships. The only one that wasn't that way was talking to a (internal) recruiter in college. Don't discount that path. I did not have the best grades or anything, but (IMO) a mix of skills that was a good fit for the job at hand and confidence I could apply them. Most of the people you will interact with in…

And I am exactly the opposite - aside from my first job out of university 10 years ago I have gotten every job since through connections

My current job was done via a connection, but every previous job has been through spamming my resume to every job I'm even remotely qualified for and/or I find interesting.

I have a degree now, but I dropped out of college the first time around, and so I didn't have any connections in the software industry, or anywhere really. When I dropped out, I assumed any desk job career was out the window. I applied to Aldi, Lowes, Burger King, McDonalds, Starbucks, and Taco Bell in one day (driving and applying in person).

On a lark, and almost as a joke to myself, I applied to exactly one software job from an ad on Craigslist, and they were the only ones who actually got back to me, thus jumpstarting my software career. I've had a lot of jobs in a lot of different places, and despite knowing lots of interesting people I've only managed to convert that to a job one time.

I have no idea how people use friendly connections to get jobs.

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)

#27

Post by throw913 »

SecretDreams wrote: post #5
jongjong wrote: post #3

My interpretation of the newspaper image-counting experiment is quite different from that of the author. My view is that unlucky people don't trust the system (for a good reason) so they don't trust the text; given the nature of the experiment, it is reasonable that they would think the text is a trap to mislead them. It actually mirrors reality perfectly because most people are constantly misled about everything...…

Fair to say unlucky people are skeptical/pessimistic/realistic and lucky people are naive/optimistic? If yes, the question is why? What came first? Their luck or their perspective? Maybe a couple instances of things working out tips the scales early in life!

> Fair to say unlucky people are skeptical/pessimistic/realistic and lucky people are naive/optimistic?

Optimism vs pessimism is basically only a valid framing in very neutral times. If things really are significantly tilted towards up or down, then you either notice that or you don't, and only framing that makes sense is realism vs confusion/delusion

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)

#29

Post by dyauspitr »

linkregister wrote: post #17
Hasz wrote: post #7

> How to Get a Job Idk about this, I have gotten almost every job I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships. The only one that wasn't that way was talking to a (internal) recruiter in college. Don't discount that path. I did not have the best grades or anything, but (IMO) a mix of skills that was a good fit for the job at hand and confidence I could apply them. Most of the people you will interact with in…

That's fascinating. I know only a handful of people who got their jobs through cold applying. The majority of my friends were either referred by colleagues or received inbound recruiter email. That is, with the exception of my cohort in CS undergrad; we attended our university career fair for out entry into the workforce. It's heartening to know that the cold apply method can be successful.

Every one of my jobs has been cold applying. I don’t like maintaining networks explicitly because it takes a lot of work I have no interest in doing.

Re: Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)

#30

Post by harrall »

jongjong wrote: post #3

My interpretation of the newspaper image-counting experiment is quite different from that of the author. My view is that unlucky people don't trust the system (for a good reason) so they don't trust the text; given the nature of the experiment, it is reasonable that they would think the text is a trap to mislead them. It actually mirrors reality perfectly because most people are constantly misled about everything...…

The reality is that nothing in life can be trusted but everything can be modeled.

For example, you never know what a driver going 60 miles/hr will do, but you do know that the laws of physics say that the driver can’t suddenly go backwards.

Once you figure this out, you realize you can work through absolute chaos because you can work with black boxes.

It doesn’t matter if the media is lying. For example, the source might say there’s this magic pill that has cured cancer, but if that were actually true, we wouldn’t have chemotherapy still. Therefore, without ever having to grapple with the question of the trust, the actual truth is bounded between “fake news” and “there maybe be potential new developments.” If you still care, you can still look into it, but 3 seconds of modeling already gave you a good black box answer.

What people mistakenly do is try to determine if the statement is true or not, but that’s a waste of time in most cases. It’s better to model the system enough to work within it and then move on.

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