Career advice for people with bad luck

> Obviously the gap is a bit of a red flag that I've been candid about to potential employers

Well, I would address this by actually improving your situation: start reading the code from open source projects in your sort of headspace, and set some goal that requires you to do work visible to the public. If you're unemployed, you should have plenty of time to do that.

I get that clinical issues will get in the way of that, but I'm also sure that if you're getting help, you should have some strategies to set aside some time every day. It is absolutely worth it.

> Do I tackle it proactively by outright telling everyone I was canned?

Maybe not that way, but if you have some good evidence you did soul searching and made a daily effort to sharpen your skills and understand how you got yourself into this mess, then that'll go a long way with a decent employer.

Its been impossible for me to get a tech job in the last 6 months, I stopped with the global COVID outbreak.

In the past I used to have 1 month of unemployement max, from the time I reached out to the first recruiter (internal or third party), to actually starting a job.

Now recruiters all tap me for Level 5's and Level 6's and reach out within 24 hours of my cold submission through their websites - after the disclaimers all say "expect 4-6 weeks for reply".

At first I realized I needed to brush up on Leetcode, what people are actually looking for in System Design interviews, and even behavioral/leadership stuff. A few educational SaaS subscriptions later, I find it all really fascinating. Although when I see the answers to a lot of "hard" problems, I really question my abstract problem solving capabilities. But I know this is not what happens on the job, thats the kicker, but I have accepted that my full time job was getting good at the interview job.

Later on, after I was solving the brain teasers in 5 minutes in the coderpad/in browser compiler, and asking "is there another part to the problem" and getting no, STILL to be rejected, I realized this was not the best use of my time.

I have no idea what people are looking for, maybe I need to delete all my online profiles and pretend my resume has half of the experience (Founder, small acquisition, probably too public and nobody can say so. Maybe they expected a savant and my moderately above average interview performance wasn't good enough.. for me. Seems like a trap for founders.)

I didn't want lower comp ranges and was at least getting interviewed by everyone imaginable... ? I was just about ready to lower my ask, until COVID hit and realized I can't get evicted, my health insurance won't get cancelled, my phone bill and my internet won't either. I don't even want to see what offers look like right now, and there are a ton of other priorities. Low key, I only needed time, but after how gamified leetcoding has become it started becoming a point of pride for me to get accepted. But I don't really need golden handcuffs, I would stay for the 1 year cliff, maybe. I don't think this was oozing through my fascade in interviews, of course I'm passionate about your flying scooter fintech platform :D (eye roll), but feel free to think thats why I was getting rejected.

In my notes it wasn't all rejections. Some (VC backed, and also mid-size) companies said they cancelled the position after talking with me and realizing they needed a completely different role, or the hiring manager didn't really have as much autonomy over the role they thought and the company focused their efforts on another team. In others (Big Tech) they didn't even know I wasn't already in the company, and therefore I was at an inherent disadvantage and pulled harder from internal pool. (Other big tech does matchmaking after an offer).

All I have are anecdotes. I had friend and founder referrals to their current startups, every "in" you could imagine, and still rejections. The silver lining? I did get exposed to Tech Lead, and his soap opera of a life is very engaging! The people you meet along the way, right?

There are definitely personal details that are dangerous for you to talk about with your co workers. It is still legal to fire someone for being gay or trans in a significant minority of states. There are two Supreme Court cases right now purely because of workplace bigotry.

I also don’t know how safe it would be to disclose having a disability or chronic condition in the workplace.

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 magical person who can strap a booster rocket to your career/company

- You don't have a resilient financial and mental safety net in the form of good friends/family early in your career that enables you to take risks, or you got dealt a bad hand in the form of things like dependents or health issues and simply can't afford to take risks

- Despite all your work, you get blindsided by things completely out of your control. Ex. a big company straight up rips off your product/service/side gig or an executive at your company guts your project/department

- You don't have the magic paper credentials to get you through the doors at places you want to go because you didn't know you needed them earlier in life when they were practical to get

These are the kinds of things I want to see tackled with real-world career advice since I think they apply to a lot of people. For every lucky executive or entrepreneur there are many who were unlucky.

I second this.