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Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

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Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

#61

Post by throwawaybcporn »

solipsism wrote: post #45
cj wrote: post #10

Congrats 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 doct…

See my comment above. I don't really get nervous at the interviews... I'm actually fairly collected and confident in person. It's just that lonely, panicky night beforehand that gets me.

It's so torturous, I actually considered having a friend use my email to schedule the interview (or GMAT) for me, then only tell me I have an interview (or GMAT) the day I have the interview (or GMAT). If this situation had gone on much longer, I would have done this.

Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

#62

Post by throwawaybcporn »

raverbashing wrote: post #31
mgkimsal wrote: post #28

A lot of software companies seem to have a set of conflicting beliefs. 1 Iterative/agile software development. YAGNI. Build the bare minimum, then iterate when you learn more. 2. Hire slow, fire fast. A really agile org would be hiring fast too. Now... I know a lot of this has to do with labor laws - hiring an actual employee brings extra baggage. And in the US at least, more people may want to be employees for reaso…

I agree with this sentiment More to the point, they think employees have zero flexibility. That if the employee is hasn't worked with a certain technology (like Hibernate, but has Java experience) this doesn't matter.

This. Above all else, this has driven me absolutely insane. I've immersed myself in and learned dozens of technologies in my past but because I didn't use one lousy framework I don't qualify? Something I could pick up in a week or -- at most -- a month?

This is especially true of startups. They feel like they're under pressure to produce yesterday and don't have time for someone to get "up to speed".

Worst is when they say "Well you don't have any Ruby experience. Maybe you could do a Ruby coding assignment for us." Then you spend the whole weekend cranking out a Ruby application only for them to say "This is great. Well done. But we really need someone with Ruby experience."

desk smash

Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

#63

Post by throwawaybcporn »

mgkimsal wrote: post #29

Maybe 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.

What post did you read?

"Smartling* Cloudflare AppDynamics* DigitalOcean Placemeter* Hatch AppNexus* OpenX ThoughtWorks* Roost"

Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

#64

Post by throwawaybcporn »

a3n wrote: post #7
wallflower wrote: post #5

Congrats! Good luck! Re crippling anxiety - I highly recommend improv classes.

I indirectly second that. A colleague took improv classes for vaguely similar reasons, and he had a positive and helpful experience. Great username for this particular post.

I created this account to comment on an article of a sexual nature the other day but never did. So I reused it. I freely admit it is very weird in the context of my post.

Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

#65

Post by throwawaybcporn »

raverbashing wrote: post #27

I think the job market is eating itself up. This year I sent tons of CVs, very few responses, a lot of technical tests, some interviews where "you don't fit the profile" Companies usually like me when I start working for them, but to "cross the chasm" is hard.

This is how I feel. I've been a badass at everything I've ever done, including being an employee. My last employer begged me to stay and I did for a few months longer.

So to have my fate determined by a short interview over the phone by some arbitrary questions just seems... suboptimal. Inefficient. Stupid.

Someone has to fix the incumbent resume-based hiring process. It is fucked beyond belief.

Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

#66

Post by throwawaybcporn »

kolbe wrote: post #26

Congratulations. Regarding the crippling anxiety: I was the same way from college until a couple years ago. I couldn't, for the life of me, get a good night of rest on the nights before an important event. But simply changing up my diet[1] fixed that problem very quickly. It's worth a shot for you to look into doing that. I know how destructive and terrible it feels to be unable to rest properly. [1] Specifically, I…

Being chronically sleep-deprived is the worst and I appreciate your sympathy.

However, I just can't get behind your dietary suggestions. Corn and wheat are not psychoactive substances. I don't think there's any solid science to support the idea that adding/removing them would affect your general anxiety levels.

As I said in another response, Lexapro gave me one amazing month of clarity away from my condition and it was a near-religious experience. I could make plans again. I became interested in girls again. I wanted to scream from the mountain tops and work as a door-to-door salesman for the pharma company that changed my life. Then I relapsed.

In other words, for some people (like me), there is a serious physiological issue at work that needs a pharmaceutical fix. No amount of vitamins or yoga or whatever is going to change that.

Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

#67

Post by throwawaybcporn »

k__ wrote: post #17
pookieinc wrote: post #11

JS + Ruby/Rails dev here w/ 3+ years experience under belt. Currently looking for job myself and have been for about 3 months. Funny how, like OP, my resume and exp. is "very impressive", yet it doesn't lead anywhere, not even to a phone interview sometimes. I'm attempting the numbers game approach (apply for 100 companies, 5 will get back to you, select from those 5), but I've hit the edge of: what if there are none…

3 years are impressive?

I wish I could downvote this. Maybe the guy went to Stanford or MIT. Maybe his Ruby work is available on Github and is solid. Maybe he did an independent project that showed remarkable creativity and drive. There are any number of reasons his resume could be "very impressive" with only 3 years under his belt. Don't be a dick.

Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

#68

Post by throwawaybcporn »

throwawayTwit wrote: post #43

About 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 inter…

"Hey we're looking for people. Just not you."

That's some cold shit.

Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

#69

Post by throwawaybcporn »

harpb wrote: post #49

tl;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 interviewe…

The key part of your story is that you've made it to SF. I got lucky in 2010 and found a company that would hire me and let me move to a tech hub from my home state. Once I left that job and then the big city (to reduce my burn and work on my independent project), I found it damn near impossible to get back. The fact that I wasn't in the city was a killer for almost all companies, especially startups (where I really wanted to be).

So I moved to the city again for a few months and had a dozen interviews in the first couple of weeks. Some I rejected... some rejected me (obviously), but the activity difference was stark. It was like the floodgates opened.

Everyone should keep that in mind when job-hunting. If you've left or lost your job in a tech hub make use of the time you have left in your apt.

Re: Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

#70

Post by throwawaybcporn »

esonderegger wrote: post #13

Congratulations! It sounds like you've landed somewhere really good. Thank you for reminding us not to give up. A lot of your story sounded familiar, although you were way more persistent than I was. I'm 33, and recently got rejected from two different bay area "dream job" companies after making it through several phone rounds in order to fly out for in-person interviews. The more recent of which, I got nervous the n…

What's hard to stomach about the no sleep aspect of everything is that I think companies/interviewers think "Well if it's fair for one, it's fair for all. They're all under the same pressure, so we'll see who overcomes it."

But that's not true. I know it's not true because I used to be one of the people who didn't feel interview pressure. When I landed a dream-type job a few years ago (which ended up being a nightmare due to a psychopathic boss, but that's beside the point), I remember going into the interviews head-strong, cocky and almost arrogant... which they apparently loved bc they hired me on the spot.

Ha! It makes me laugh now. I'm twice the engineer I was then, but half the interviewee simply because my ego has been recalibrated to reality.

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