I have goosebumps reading this. Thank you so much for sharing. This is meaning.
Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope
41–50 of 82 posts
Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope
#42Congrats on the new job! > I suffer from crippling anxiety [...] foggy Xanax brain. Consider asking your doctor about propranolol. It's a safe, non-addictive beta-blocker often used to treat high blood pressure, but it also eliminates the peripheral nervous system response to anxiety, the "fight-or-flight" adrenaline rush feeling: racing heart, shortness of breath, inability to concentrate, shaking, sweaty hands, blu…
I'm not doctor and don't do a good job on my self but theoretically I would try to do some meditation before trying more drugs.
The easiest way I found was the headspace app, although I didn't keep up with it in the long-run, but at the time I felt that I was feeling calmer, although it could very well be the ignition placebo.
Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope
#43About 7 months ago I interviewed at Twitter, making it through two phone interviews before failing to solve some tricky algorithms questions in the on-site interview. Recently a Twitter recruiter contacted me on Linkedin looking for referrals and I sent him my resume, only to be told that they were looking for people with more experience, despite significantly more relevant experience on my resume.
Is the BigCo interview process just that arbitrary?
Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope
#44I wouldnt worry about getting passed up by the bigger companies. Everyone knows their interview processes are highly dysfunctional jokes. Then most startup companies copy them because they all think they are going to be the next google etc. My last interview at amazon went like this: Stupid trick coding question over the phone that I did not understand at all. Followed by 3 memorization questions. followed by one que…
I've been offered a job by one company and then later turned down for an interview. It happens.
Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope
#45Congrats on the new job! > I suffer from crippling anxiety [...] foggy Xanax brain. Consider asking your doctor about propranolol. It's a safe, non-addictive beta-blocker often used to treat high blood pressure, but it also eliminates the peripheral nervous system response to anxiety, the "fight-or-flight" adrenaline rush feeling: racing heart, shortness of breath, inability to concentrate, shaking, sweaty hands, blu…
+1 for Propranolol. As parent says, it does not affect your cognition! It doesn't make you sleepy or slow or happy or numb or relaxed or lightheaded or anything like that. It affects only your autonomic systems, eliminating the high heart rate and blood pressure, shaky hands, dry mouth, etc. These physical effects often push your normal performance anxiety over the edge, creating a cascading effect. Talk to your doctor if you think it could help, it might change your life -- it did mine, allowing me to become an influential voice at my company with an influential position to match. There's no reason you should allow a biological particularity put you at a career disadvantage compared to others. And it's important to realize anxiety is very often biological in origin, and non-pharmaceutical methods are often not enough.
While many people feel that other type of drugs, like benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium, Xanax) cause them to become somewhat of a different person, beta blockers like propranolol can better be described as making you a rock-solid version of yourself.
Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did the new grad assessment test last week for Amazon, I am more than positive I aced both sections, especially the coding questions (passed all tests). Yet somehow I still didn't advance. I have other interviews in the pipeline that were way tougher and I didn't get the solutions 100% yet I still advanced.
Acing all tests and doing great with question and still not being hired usually means you weren't a "cultural fit" (usually an institutionalized popularity contest).
How can they tell i'm not a cultural fit from an online assessment test?
Unless theres some racism going on since they can see my picture. Thats the only way they can differentiate between 2 people who have the same score.
Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope
#47Congrats and best luck for the future. In a way it's kind of belwildering how radically different seem to be the job hunting experience for many HW users. You see so many posts like "I had multiple six-figure offers", or "it's impossible to find enough candidates for the position" and then you see posts like this.
I'm a comp eng new grad with a bit of H/W exp. All I see when I look for entry positions are software?
Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope
#48Maybe the lesson here is "quit trying to get jobs at tier 1 name brand companies". There are, by definition, only 500 companies in the Fortune 500. There are hundreds of thousands of smaller companies around the country that could use your skills.
A friend of mine has been trying to get me to start a consulting company along those lines. For companies that need computer help sporadically, a lot of automation to their tasks, and regular checkups. But not full time staff. I think it would be particularly appealing to older engineers who have other things they are interested in and want to be able to scale their hours to their schedule rather than the other way around. Certainly something to think about.
Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope
#49tl;dr: There are lot of opportunities for software engineers!
6 weeks ago, I left my job and here's my share of the search experience. 1 week after leaving the job, I got a cold email by a company who is 25-min drive away in Foster City. I did initial call with the HR on Dec. 1. On Dec. 2, I did my first phone interview. I was asked to rate my competency in Python and JavaScript on the scale 1-10. Then the interviewer asked me questions that were targeted at that level. I did badly, but not horribly, with the Q/A on technical parts and ok on some of the basic ones. On Dec. 3, I did second phone interview, which went great in the first half and badly in the second half. In the later part, I just started to get nervous and lost my cool. They still felt I was competent, so on Dec. 4 I did a full day of interview. I did 5 different interviews from engineers to CTO and CEO. By the end of the day, I was offered the position @ 135K. This is where you expect the typical ending of me accepting the salary and living happily ever after. Not so fast there, reader. I pressed for higher salary - 25K more than they were offering. They didn't budge and neither did I, so no cigar.
In parallel to interviewing at that company, I also created my profile on Underdog.io. I spent Dec. 5 to Dec. 16 talking with 7 different companies in New York. I saw that their Salary range is lower than in Bay Area so it did not go far.
On Dec. 13, I created my profile on Hired.Me. Since then I have had 5 offers. I have made strong connection with one of the company and will be having in-person interview in a month (I have 3 week family wedding planned in Jan :)).
From my experience, there are so many companies looking for quality engineers. If you are having hired time getting hired, I am open to talk with you. I personally don't pursue working at big companies for the sake of them being big. I am looking for a company where I fit in based on my programming design sense and culturally.
I'm 27/M/Single/SF - so I don't have much constraints as someone who may be older with family or in non-tech savvy part of the county.
Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope
#50I wouldnt worry about getting passed up by the bigger companies. Everyone knows their interview processes are highly dysfunctional jokes. Then most startup companies copy them because they all think they are going to be the next google etc. My last interview at amazon went like this: Stupid trick coding question over the phone that I did not understand at all. Followed by 3 memorization questions. followed by one que…
[deleted]