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When the job search becomes impossible

jeffwofford.com

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Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#371

Post by crock_smacker »

sfink wrote: post #245
bell-cot wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amusing Idea: Advertise three vaguely-similar positions, only one of them real. Specify impossible-for-honest-humans requirements for the fake two. Then discard all applicants for the real position who also claimed to be qualified for a fake one.

Strict honesty here has always been a losing proposition. The "requirements" section of a job posting has almost never been accurate. It's more of an image they're painting. An honest applicant is one who reads the whole description to understand as best they can what the company is looking for, and sort of holistically matches their own expertise against that picture. If the job posting lists requirements A-F and yo…

> If the job posting lists requirements A-F and you have A, B, D, E, and F, then you'd do both yourself and the company a disservice by disqualifying yourself. Put it in your cover letter if you can't handle the discrepancy.

I’m my experience the problem is that the missing “C” is deep level domain expertise outside of the technical end and that’s just so much more important than the other ones, and importantly, something you can’t really just learn on your own.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#372

Post by monkeyelite »

jofer wrote: post #148

As someone who's recently been hiring (sorry folks, position was filled just a few days ago), it's wild to me how distorted things have become. We had 1200 applications for an extremely niche role. A huge amount were clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic. Another huge portion were just unqualified. The irony is that there actually _are_ a ton of exceptionally qualified…

Your use of nepotism is actually reputation.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#373

Post by azemetre »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #361
BobbyJo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pool of young kids that can challenge the technical ability of someone with 20 years more experience is small enough that I don't mind competing with them for employment.

That’s why AI is dominated by a bunch of 40 year old gen Xers. Oh wait, it’s not! Zuckerberg just gave a 25 year old promising AI researcher a 300 million offer that the researcher said “No” to. He didn’t give that to yann lecun, or yoshua bengio, or Hinton. He did it to a kid. When I go to NeurIPS, it’s mostly grad students in their 20s who are the first authors. The professors are almost always the last authors. 20…

I don't know what this is suppose to say outside of big tech needing a massive amount of regulations and taxations to reign them in.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#374

Post by monkeyelite »

ilaksh wrote: post #111

The thing that bothers me so much about this post is that it reeks of privilege by treating unemployment as if it were mainly just a bad trigger that you talk to your expensive therapist about once a week. For most people in the real world, psychological burn out is NOT the problem with unemployment. The problem is becoming homeless.

Normal functioning adults do not easily become homeless.

There are several drops in lifestyle you have been accustomed to, before that happens.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#375

Post by Balgair »

carlosjobim wrote: post #367
Balgair wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a half week of work without breaks at one resume per minute-ish. I agree that it is a very important decision, but that's also unreasonable for a manager to set time aside to look through. You've just set the other projects that you're already behind on (that's why you need to hire in the first place) back another half week or so. It's like a reverse rocket equation here. You need time to make more time, so yo…

How can that be unreasonable? To work at least half a week for a decision which will cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions of dollars in the long run. What else is the manager doing which is more important monetary wise? And if managers are really too busy with raking in the millions to the company, then it's a fine time to hire somebody who's only job will be to hire more people (not a…

The manager is responsible for $X but only gets paid their salary.

I'm their day to day, hiring is a pain. They need the extra hands, but they have to go through more work to get that person onboard. The activation energy is high, higher now with AI and automated job applications clogging things up.

Then you have onboarding and the continued costs of management of that person. Honestly, most managers would want the smallest team possible in terms of day to day workload.

This is also why AI is appealing. The promise of no sick days, no HR complaints, no chit chat. Just pure work done in plain language. Work done overnight, right, the first time. A middle managers dream worker.

The thing that is more important is the budget. It's always the budget. Nothing matters but the budget. That's the second iron law of beauraracy, of course.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#376

Post by monkeyelite »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #121
titanomachy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "most people in the real world" have at least a few rungs between their current situation and true homelessness. Many people have some sort of family or other community that they could lean on, even in America where family ties are weaker than any other place I know. I have a couple friends who haven't had steady work in years, and they still eke out a pretty reasonable existence living with friends and famil…

"Homeless" is not the same as "living on the street". People living in hotels, temporary trailers (in some places even tiny homes count), living with a friend temporarily, etc are all homeless . Plenty of Americans are much closer than this than you might think working in tech. 50-60% of Americans currently live 'paycheck-to-paycheck' which means the second work stops they're on a timer for missing bills to start com…

> "Homeless" is not the same as "living on the street"

The word is being used to invoke that image.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#377

Post by monkeyelite »

squigz wrote: post #223
strken wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blog posts are aimed at an audience, HN is an audience, and in both cases the audience in question is a technical one with an above-average number of well-paid professionals. The whole framing that the blog post "reeks of privilege" to "most people" is a bit strange. If I were to read a Yachting Monthly article about The Five Most Attention-Grabbing Mega Yachts For The Conspicuous Consumer Billionaire it would probab…

I think people would be shocked at HN demographics. I'm quite confident it's more representative of the average population in terms of things like income than some people seem to realize.

I suppose if you are including European and Indian salaries and American students? But upper middle class students are literally temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#378

Post by monkeyelite »

icedchai wrote: post #119
jackcosgrove wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was always my understanding that software careers are shorter than other technical careers, and the higher wages compensate for this. More than compensate, if you invest early. If by FIRE you mean retire in your 50s, I don't think that's an aspiration. That should be an expectation. You might be able to work a full career in this industry, but I wouldn't plan on it.

Most people don't have the temperament for FIRE. You have to live below your means, save a double digit percentage consistently, and invest. And you have to do it for decades. You need to be able to tough it out through the worst of times (like the dot-com bubble, financial crisis, covid, and random political chaos like tariffs.) You have to tune out the noise and always remember that on a long enough timeline, the m…

And all of that is made easier by having more income.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#379

Post by crock_smacker »

ryandrake wrote: post #198
lovich wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referrals by hiring managers who I have previously worked with and want to hire me aren’t even getting me a phone screen from their recruiters. The majority of employment in tech is with large, corporate firms, and unless you are in the executive tier they all have implemented a massive amount of process to prevent bias in hiring which means that even networking has low impact on getting a job, beyond letting you kno…

Yea, whenever someone says "Just network, bro!" they never actually fully connect the dots between networking and walking into the office on your first day of work: Step 1: Just have coffee with a hiring manager Step 2: Hiring manager says go check out job #41102, and submit your resume. Good luck, bro! Step 3: [???] Step 4: You've got an interview to ace! Nobody ever explains the [???]. They just assume that by magi…

HN has a lot of rich douchebags for which this is the case. Small circle = higher trust.

The rest of us have to figure out how best to rot in a low trust world created by these douchebags.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#380

Post by squigz »

monkeyelite wrote: post #377
squigz wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people would be shocked at HN demographics. I'm quite confident it's more representative of the average population in terms of things like income than some people seem to realize.

I suppose if you are including European and Indian salaries and American students? But upper middle class students are literally temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

All non-student Americans on HN are making 6 figures or something, I guess?
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