2500 Job apps, 46 interviews, 1 offer

It's clear that you haven't had to get an interview from a non-connection in the last year. It's a literal fucking nightmare unless you have connections that can literally hand you a job. I have 8 years of experience.

TL;DR: Connections don't mean shit. Companies require multi-hour takehomes and then ghost you. Every reply is automated unless you are moving forward. Recruiters take a week to reply to even the most basic updates.

For reference, I've job hunted twice in the last 2 years. The startup I joined in Feb of 2022 folded in Feb of 2023. My style is to treat it like a full time job, usually completely filling my schedule with interviews.

2022 stats: In 1 month I interviewed with 31 companies, received 6 offers in under 5 weeks and had a job secured making ~30% more than my previous role. Of the 25 companies that I stopped interviewing with, 13 were me cutting off the process to save time and 12 were rejections. So ~50% success rate depending on how well you count the 13 that I cut off.

2023 stats: First month I interviewed with 14 companies, was ghosted by 6 of them. GHOSTED. 3 of these were from direct referrals from friends and previous coworkers! Not even my connections could get information on my process! I interviewed just as strongly as my previous year and they vanish, not even with a rejection. Of the remaining 8, 4 were not actually software jobs and 4 were rejections that refused to elaborate at all.

Second month I interviewed with 34 companies. 12 ghosted me, 4 of which required a multi-hour take home assignment. With a mortgage and kids, I was doing it all.

Of the 22, 11 didn't work out for non-performance reasons (found candidate before I was through the process, recruiter misunderstood the role, company moved so slow that I couldn't complete the process). Of these 11, 4 were from connections! They could not get their internal recruiters to reply to me in less than 2 weeks.

Of the 11, I was rejected by 6. Again, with no feedback or even a response when I asked for it.

Of the remaining 5, I got an offer and ended the madness before waiting to finish my remaining 4 interviews.

Is this sarcasm or epic hubris? No-one writes bug-free code, and thinking otherwise sounds like an enormous red flag.

It’s actually worse than that: using a debugger shows that you’ve written so much buggy code that you somehow learned that debuggers exist.

Steer well clear of these people!

There's two reasons I think. (I have ~25 years experience)

1. In your code should know what the edge cases, loop condition issues, etc.

I think this is fair. If you don't know the edge case failures when you write your code, you could end up with something like the Microsoft Xune that shutdown for an entire day over a leap year failure.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/original-mic...

Keep in mind that code review will probably not catch all bugs, it's up to the original coder to write it. This is particularly true if you're the best person on your team, say. Or you're working at a startup where no one can really review your code other than you.

On the other hand well coded unit tests should help you here.

2. It's toxic brogrammer culture there -- where leetcode scores are all that matter. In which case it's probably best you were passed over.

We’re getting a lot of comments from people who are not familiar with different markets. This is HN - where the focus is on Silicon Valley and associated companies. User is posting from having just left Meta. $475k as a PM with 16 YOE isn’t even remotely high when you consider probably living in one of three major cities in the US (Seattle, SF, NYC) and is working for a company known to pay such rates. This is a common compensation - not outlandish at all.

The other aspect is the interviewing. People here are unfamiliar with other markets. If you’re interviewing with FAANG and crew - you probably send out hundreds of resumes. If you’re picking really desperate startups - you might get 25% reply rate if you’re in a good economy. In other scenarios, getting a 2-5% reply rate is common. Thus why people have to apply to so many places and so liberally. You’re just sending the same resume as you do everywhere else.

The other thing is the interview process for a lot of these companies is harder and more selective. You’re competing with people from all over the world and many whom are on visas and want to stay in the USA. Your small shop in a city of 250k that pays one fifth what this person is used to isn’t going to be competing for the same talent.

My point is - wow, yes, people get paid differently in different markets. They also have different interview processes because when you get paid a lot, it tends to bring a much stricter interviewing environment because there are often way more qualified people than they can hire. (Whether you get into FAANG is a mix of luck and preparation - most everyone is qualified enough to do the jobs even if they don’t get hired but the interview process is extremely noisy and highly selective by nature)

I’ve gone through these gauntlets. I had to interview with 100 companies to get one offer. (Including 15 onsites) In other stages of my life, I interviewed with about 60 and got 6 offers. It’s hugely variable and often has little to do with you and more to do with the hiring environment. I was overqualified for most every job I’ve ever had or been interviewed for. As every job I’ve ever had has been a joke in terms of the challenge, the skills needed, or the intellect required. I’m including jobs I’ve had paying $15/hr all the way to $1m/yr. Don’t misinterpret the interview process as really being a strong signal to your ability to do the job. Especially with all the leetcode stuff.