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Career advice for people with bad luck

chiefofstuff.substack.com

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Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#371

Post by worik »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #198
mdorazio wrote: post #67

I really want to see more articles like this on HN. However, this is really "career advice for people at struggling companies." The luck part doesn't get discussed in the way I expected. To me, bad luck is things like: - You're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ex. you graduated in 2008-2010/now or your business sector got wiped out by COVID - Despite your best efforts at networking, you simply never meet that ma…

I suspect it's because there isn't much advice to give. My answer, having checked a few of your boxes... Your lifetime wages are going to be lower than many of your peers. This is unlikely to change. Adjust your worldview accordingly. Don't assume any debt that relies on increasing future earnings to be comfortable. By all means, keep trying, but stay level headed. Success for most is not always right around the corn…

"Don't assume any debt that relies on increasing future earnings to be comfortable."

There is some good advice, for everybody!

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#372

Post by worik »

pmiller2 wrote: post #369
protonimitate wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great advice. I see a lot of people in tech with inflated ideas of what success means, and they're almost all tied strictly to salary/net worth. Yeah, having money is nice, but if that's all you base happiness/idea of success on, its going to be a bumpy road. >There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest making $70k/year feeling like failures I understand how this can point of view can develop, but one…

> Yeah, having money is nice, As someone who was broke for many years and now is less broke (cash is flowing, there's money in my accounts, but I'm deeply in negative net worth due to student debt), I think you're understating the issue, vastly. Simply put, money is freedom. If you have it, you can do things people who don't have it can't. If you have enough of it, you can do just about anything. And, I'm not necessa…

"* If you have an absurd amount of money, you don't need to worry about going bankrupt from getting sick."

Or you live in a country with a socialised medical system.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#373

Post by worik »

lovegoblin wrote: post #272
chosenbreed37 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. Look inward for contentment. Try therapy if your shitty childhood and shitty parents made inward a hard place to look. I'd recommend the following: 1. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius 2. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson 3. Letters from a self made merchant - John Graham

> 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson yikes

Well some people need to be told.

In. Simple. Ideas.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#374

Post by mywittyname »

Pamar wrote: post #353
mywittyname wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't philosophy kind of like CS minus the computers? I remember my sister talking about how much she hated her philosophy class and what she described was essentially discrete math-lite.

This is interesting. Can you expand it a bit, please?

From what I remember, her class involved a lot of logical proofs using propositional logic, but in the form of word problems, not logical statements. I.e., if Bob is larger than Alice, then... instead of P -> Q. They also discussed probabilities, but I'm not sure to what degree.

Those two topics are discussed in entry level CS courses as well. So I assumed that the fields might be semi-related if they require the same mathematical foundations.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#375

Post by roolah »

mettamage wrote: post #15

Finally, a post that isn't all hunky dory. I'm at the bottom quartile at the moment, so I'm happy to take any reasonable advice that doesn't sound like: study algorithms and get into Google. Ok, I studied algorithms, got rejected at the paper round. Now what? The tough part isn't passing the interview, it's getting a chance in the first place. This advice is better. Some points that really stood out to me and that I'…

> Ok, I studied algorithms, got rejected at the paper round. Now what? The tough part isn't passing the interview, it's getting a chance in the first place.

This resonates. I'm a senior engineer with CS master from top university, 10yoe with leadership skills that prepared the past 4 months and solved over 200 coding challenges. I contacted 18 companies (starting 3 months ago), some of them referrals, some of them from company recruiters reaching out to me (Facebook, Google).

I passed the Google onsite and made it to the FB onsite. I passed all the stages for another company with a "did fantastic" rating but then got denied onsite for unknown reasons.

That means I got through one single paper round from 18 outreachs and it's very frustrating since the ratio is much worse than when I applied 4 years ago with much less experience and requiring a H1B sponsorship. I have so much fire in me to work on consumer products (which my current job doesn't allow) it makes me explode.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#376

Post by worik »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #341
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rule 12 caveat 1: If it lets you.

Rule 12 caveat 2: And wash or disinfect your hands immediately afterwards, because Lord only knows what that cat is carrying on its fur.

Yep.

How I caught ring worm

Cats are filthy creatures

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#377

Post by dkersten »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #312
dkersten wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t say I had anything against anybody who has kids and falls on hard times. I understand that makes my comment rather off topic in this thread. I do know a lot of people who definitely did not have their finances in order and decided to have children anyway. The children are the ones who suffer most in these cases! This is super irresponsible and selfish. Hell, I once knew a couple who literally said they might…

Here I agree with you in principle - deciding to have a child while not being able to financially support it, and just hoping for the best, is extremely irresponsible and likely to permanently scar a new human being. That said, before judging a struggling family, there are also some other things to consider: - Pregnancies happen by accident. It's both easier and harder to conceive a child than people think. It can an…

I mean, I'm not going to campaign to put any actual restrictions or laws in place and I don't go around judging people or complaining or whatever. But I do think that people shouldn't have children unless they are able to take good care of them, and financial stability is part of that.

I guess my complaint is that many time people don't think of consequences or plan for the future and then other people (their children in this case) are the ones to suffer.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#378

Post by throwaway987978 »

decafninja wrote: post #295
nostrademons wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you're doing a lot of the right stuff. I started as a frontend engineer at Google, 11+ years ago, and you're right that there's a lot of Javascript/DOM/HTML trivia to understand. Google was also one of the few companies that insisted you know vanilla JS cold and don't use frameworks in the interview. It's worth studying up on MDN to make sure you really know JS corner cases. You need to know the leetcode-…

I actually just got my rejection from FB today. Purely JavaScript questions, no leetcode at all. If I were to rewind, I'd have focused more on purely JavaScript tricks and less on other parts of the frontend repertoire. i.e. the time I spent on CSS seems to have been a waste. Also got rejected from AMZN back in December. Made the mistake grinding leetcode during the weeks leading up to the interview, when it turned o…

Keep going. You only need to pass once. :)

I'm kind of in the same boat. I failed all my interviews as well and I have about the same amount of experience as you. I agree that getting into these companies is easier as a junior engineer.

You may want to look at an interview prep course like Outco.io or Interview Kickstart. I haven't attended one yet but will most likely do so once I'm ready to start interviewing again. I think the feedback they offer will be worth it rather than me constantly headscratching after failing another interview.

(The fact that these courses exist just exemplifies the whole problem with software interviewing but I don't fault them for that)

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#379

Post by exolymph »

Sodman wrote: post #264
caymanjim wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably biased here due to the length of my career; at this point, my resume is extensive and speaks for itself. References may be more important if you've got less experience.

I think that's kind of the point of references though, right? Your resume speaks for itself, but you wrote your resume. It's a good sanity check for a potential employer to quickly verify that it's actually accurate. People exaggerate on their resumes all the time. Maybe the 2 interns they supervised materializes as them managing a team of 4. Maybe the project on which their boss did the brunt of the work on becomes…

> I think that's kind of the point of references though, right? Your resume speaks for itself, but you wrote your resume. It's a good sanity check for a potential employer to quickly verify that it's actually accurate.

This is 100% true. However, people are lazy and skimp on due diligence. Just because something is a good practice doesn't mean it's always done :P

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#380

Post by imprettycool »

throw4failure wrote: post #280
imprettycool wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in a similar position as you. I have a medical issue and I was fired in August 2018. Differences being: - I intentionally got myself fired so I could get an extra $25k in salary/severance/unemployment. - It was my first job out of college. - I have positive references I can give. (my manager sucked, other people were cool) - Medical issue is physical and not mental. (herniated disc / sciatica). Here is my advice…

Thanks :) - you are, in fact, pretty cool > DO NOT MENTION, OR INSINUATE, YOU WERE FIRED. And don't lie. It's unfortunate that openness is punished so harshly, but I get it. You're not the first person to caution strongly against letting anyone learn about the termination, so I'll try to move forward accordingly :) > I try to avoid saying negative stuff about my last job Definitely agree. It's one of those things tha…

No problem, hopefully we can get out of this rut! :D

Yeah I only have a sample size of two, but I insinuated I was fired at both, and neither wanted to move forward. Perhaps I should have been blunt about it instead of hinting at it. Or maybe it was unrelated. Hard to tell. There might be a way to talk about it tactfully. For me, it's just easier to not mention it, since it can open a can of worms to talk about negative stuff, cuz I kind of hated my manager and that was what ultimately pushed me to get myself fired.

Regarding hernated disc, yeah it's pretty manageable for me now. I actually found a really good massage therapist that is helping me recover. Unfortunately there's a bit of a hiccup with this Coronavirus thing but it's not the borderline life-ruining thing it used to be

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