Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've got a couple hundred LC's under my belt but I would still definitely appreciate something like this. Do you have a discord in mind or something else? Currently gainfully employed still, not sure if being laid off is a requirement but I'd like to keep my skills sharp just in case.
Discord would be great. The parent comment was -1'ed perhaps because it came across as selling. Was trying to help folks here as I have recently gone through the ordeal of getting into a FAANG company.
Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
531–540 of 594 posts
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#532Let's be honest, whatever you (any of us) as a SWE were working on previously was probably making the world a worse place also, regardless of what you thought when you first started working on it.
In my opinion the last decade (or two) of tech can be summed up as "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#533You’re probably going to have to fake enthusiasm for the AI-enabled TikTok outfit generator you will be working on. No, it’s not going to make the world a better place. Yes, it might even make the world a worse place. Let's be honest, whatever you (any of us) as a SWE were working on previously was probably making the world a worse place also, regardless of what you thought when you first started working on it. In my…
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#534I survived the dot com crash (yes I'm old). I have hired (interviewing team member, or hiring manager) hundreds of engineers. If you are hearing "let me know if I can help" (number 5) you might be doing something wrong. You should be hearing some version of " I will talk to my boss" or "I will call for you" or "XXX person I know is looking". I have a list of about 30 people who if they call me I'm going to go out of…
What did non-survival look like? I assume you’re speaking metaphorically.
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#535We may revert the hard truths to get soft precautions: - Always have savings that will cover at least 6 months of expenses, now probably a year (if indeed it takes so much time to find a new job). - Socialize outside work, ideally have a network of people that work at other companies that you are in touch with. Sports, charities, churches etc. If this is hard, ask yourself if you are overworking yourselves/spend too…
As someone involved with online privacy&security for a long time... I think almost no one on HN (including myself) can keep multiple online personae unlinked by commercial data brokers for as long as the threat model would seem to require.
If you have alt accounts, consider them low-security that eventually will be revealed, and figured into many employers' data science ranking&filtering, and their AI-model-summarized profiles they can pull up on you. Ideally, it won't be revealed before there's a more enlightened US culture of social tolerance, and more comprehensive and serious US data protection laws, but you can't bet on that.
You might also want to simplify by minimizing use of alts, and instead trying to self-moderate how you put yourself out there. For example, if you voted for a political candidate who rubs a lot of people the wrong way, either own it, or don't rant about it with alts in online public forums. For another example, dating -- without data brokers spying on some of your most intimate private interactions -- is nigh-impossible, but with an awareness of this, you can still try to save some things for offline pillow talk only.
When I created an HN account, I knew I'm more liberal/progressive than a lot of tech people, and that there's some currently popular practices in the field that I'm inevitably going to be outspokenly critical of, and that's going to alienate some techbros and employers. Having my name on the account is partly a reminder to me to try to only say things that I'd be willing to stand behind. (I'm certainly not perfect, but it's an attempt, and always learning from it.)
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#536The lesson here is to be overemployed, do at least one interview process a quarter, and understand that companies don't give AF about you.
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#537#1 it's lonely? April 2020, 1 month into the pandemic. I found the pandemic lonely. I saw less than 1 person a month for the first 14 months of the pandemic. And i find WFH incredibly lonely. I haven't recovered. I'm utterly alone most weeks. I see no one. Even if I go to work, no one is there. I moved cities a year ago and have only 1 friend and 2 acquaintances in the new city. 2 of those 3 are married and I see the…
Loneliness is bad in itself, but it can get worse if you are: - Not going outside every day - Not keeping yourself fit - Eating junk food In my region there is a lot of office only/mostly hybrid (3+ days in the office) jobs, probably for the reason that you mention. Of course when I ask why I need to be in the office people tell me about culture and stuff... But the true reason is probably more along the lines: lonel…
Isn't this the crux of the issue? If OP was getting real human contact, they wouldn’t feel lonely.
This pandemic has really thrown us for a loop. New habits have been formed that are hard to break.
One of the first times I dipped my toe in the social pool in early 2022 was at a tech meetup. A bunch of us who went got COVID. I recovered but was the sickest I’d been in about 20 years. It doesn’t take much to withdraw more.
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#538> Hard Truth #6: Honesty can only hurt you I think the author has come away with the wrong lesson here. Many engineers, particularly those that don't pay too much heed to social mores, think they have some God-given right to share details of all their private interactions publicly. Every tech test they do is pushed to GitHub with an accompanying blog post. Every interview has a transcript (somewhat one-sided) publish…
I don't know about that. Something that makes me sick to my stomach is the current only accepted behaviour to react to being laid off by being grateful to such a wonderful company to have given me opportunity to learn and blah, blah, blah. There is so much dishonesty and fake gratefulness around that anything departing from that, including just sharing that you interviewed a lot and only found dead ends, is a black f…
No. You have missed the point.
Nobody wants you to e grateful when you're not. But you do not have to say what you think just because you think it
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gosh, no - strongly recommending not doing this. (The lying part) Lying is one of the worst things you can do, it usually speaks to an issue with integrity, a concern that comes before almost all of them even intelligence, education, aptitude, skills. Learn the skill of polite deferral, of saying things without saying them, diverting or embellishing a bit - and then only if it's an issue not relevant to the job. If s…
Companies lie to their prospective employees all the time. About how much runway they have, about the work that you'll be doing, about what it is like to work there.
It is morally wrong to lie. You should not do it
The fact that they do it, when they face different incentives, is not a reason for you to
Re: Hard truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies lie to their prospective employees all the time. About how much runway they have, about the work that you'll be doing, about what it is like to work there.
It is not because it is morally wrong that you should not lie. It is because it is very bad for you. Lies beget lies and no one trusts a liar. It is morally wrong to lie. You should not do it The fact that they do it, when they face different incentives, is not a reason for you to
In that particular situation as far as I'm concerned - and not as far as you are concerned - you are free to lie. Because the alternative is going to end with you not getting the job, no matter how qualified you are.