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Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

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Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#771

Post by BeetleB »

fallingknife wrote: post #692
BeetleB wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I sympathize with your point, I also see someone who made a really poor choice in picking a college. I'll wager that in every state there is a decent university that will get you a 4 year degree for under $60K. It's as if I compared your average college with a crappy bootcamp. Let's not cherry-pick. The number I want to see is the percentage of college grads with a BS in CS who get a (decent) job within a year,…

I would also say that going to college was a bad choice, but the one I picked was one of the good ones where the name means something. Still a rip off, but a lot of people paid the same for absolutely nothing.

> but the one I picked was one of the good ones where the name means something.

As someone who went both to an average university and one ranked 3rd in the country, I can tell you: The name doesn't mean much in the engineering discipline. Certainly, a CS degree from CMU will likely get you into more interviews, and they probably earn more in the long run, but the person who got his BS in CS from an average state school with a good GPA will almost certainly get a job within a year. Very few exceptions. With bootcamps, I expect that percentage is a lot lower.

As a data point, I work in a top tech company and while people from big name schools are slightly overrepresented, the majority of folks are not from big name schools. Certainly plenty of people from my average state school here have senior positions.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#772

Post by aeoleonn »

chrisvalleybay wrote: post #552
aeoleonn wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, OP: STOP CALLING YOURSELF UNHIREABLE. STOP WITH THE SELF-PITY-- Why? You can't simultaneously focus on two things: such as focusing pitying yourself while simultaneously focusing on building & completing your strategy. _____________________ WHATS THAT YOU SAY OP?!, you say you want to CONQUER THE ROMAN EMPIRE, but you only have a dozen pals WITH NERF GUNS? Yeah, guess how that'll work out :P Doesn't sound like…

You definitely came in from Reddit, that's for sure.

LOL do I sound liberal?

What part of my comment do you dislike?

To be fair, I don't expect everyone on HN to appreciate my perspective. The tech world seems to be majority snowflake, or pretend snowflake (go along to get along, in that case).

I'm not a politically correct type of person-- I tell people what I actually think and prefer brutal honesty to sugar coated messaging.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#773

Post by aeoleonn »

x0x0 wrote: post #764
aeoleonn wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This person is correct in that: You MUST show your programming skills. How? * Github. I spent 4 months programming a project in NodeJS, ReactJS, Postgres, (+ html/css of course) on Linux. I posted the code on Github for the world to see. Within 2 weeks I was hired to my first 100% programming job: $80k, on 1099 contract. Two months later, I was hired on salary at $105k by a different company. Once I had those on my r…

This is certainly a possible route. To be honest, I'm not sure the poster has the ability to carry through a four month self-directed project like that; a bootcamp and/or working as a junior engineer provides far more structure and direction.

You bring up a great point.

I actually attended a bootcamp for 1 week, but thought it was over priced and didn't provide much instruction (25 students, 2 instructors, sometimes only 1 instructor. After a lecture on a topic, I'd spend 95% of the day just googling stuff. Also, the lessons were not structured in a pedagogical way in my experience there. That said, it was just after bootcamps became a thing-- I was one of the first cohorts at the one I attended).

So, I dropped out after the first week and was refunded remaining tuition. I went back to the workforce and learned dev part-time.

Bootcamps seem to be about 12 weeks (that's 3 months) plus about $12,000 or so. Whereas I took 4 months & paid zero. But that said, I already knew how to program when I started my project.

The project was more about showing strangers that I had the skills I claimed to have.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#774

Post by aphextron »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #223
aphextron wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would second this, and also say get any degree. A real accredited CS BS degree is incredibly difficult and time consuming. But a BA can be knocked out in 2 years and makes you infinitely more employable on paper than just a high school graduate for any position.

I'm not sure any random BA can help these days. Anecdotally at least, one of the recurring news stories about Millenials is about how so many can't get jobs with their BA degrees. OP is probably better off going to Lambda School or a similar technical boot camp.

This is just my personal experience. I've been successful in this industry for nearly a decade now, working my way up from junior to senior dev as a self taught programmer that dropped out of high school. It can absolutely be done. But that doesn't mean it ever helped me to have not had any academic achievements. I once held it as a point of pride to be able to make it without a degree. But I find it increasingly embarrassing as I get older and work almost exclusively with people that have those qualifications to not just have that piece of paper. The reality of life is that given identical skills and experience between two candidates, people are always going to choose the one with a degree. And justifying yourself at the higher levels of a career without one becomes increasingly untenable.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#775

Post by yarcob »

jesterson wrote: post #643
yarcob wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> companies are hiring people based on their capacity to actually do the job I think that's what honkycat was trying to say. OP doesn't sound like someone who actually has the skills for a dev job. So the only way they could get a dev job was if they somehow appeared really likeable so they would be hired despite lacking the required skills. (In my experience socially awkward people don't have trouble finding jobs if…

> OP doesn't sound like someone who actually has the skills for a dev job. If you pardon me, I doubt either of us have the senses to judge someone's capacity for dev job. He may not be very lucid at explanations, but it doesn't allow us to measure his dev capacity. Hopefully you'd agree we need slightly more to evaluate that.

I really don't think OP has the required skills for a dev job. It's not just the writing style, it's also the complete lack of any relevant education or experience.

I didn't say anything about their mental capacity, it's quite possible that they learn the skills.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#776

Post by guenthert »

Aloha wrote: post #519
endymi0n wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's spot on from the advice. I'll add that OP — Your biggest issue seems to be extremely high intelligence, paired with a lack of empathy and social functioning, which created a self-expectation of massive grandiosity. But you keep failing to deliver on it because you can't get your highly powered brain on the streets, leading in self-pity and depression. Not good, but salvageable. How do I know? My life story rea…

I have a similar story. I learned at all early age the only thing appearing like the smartest guy in the room was good for was paining a target on your back. I also learned how to emulate empathy, it's not perfect, but it makes up for the natural broken/missing wiring in my head. Also early in my career I talked my way out of several jobs, You might have the best ideas in the world, but if powers that be don't want t…

> I also learned how to emulate empathy,

Please don't. I know a guy who does the same. It comes across as utterly condescending.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#777

Post by _ah »

aty268 wrote: post #741
valdiorn wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Snakedoctor. I've been quite fascinated by this thread. I have a small piece of feedback for you, as someone who's interviewed about 200-300 engineers over my career I've talked to a lot of people and feel like I have at least something of value to add. I hope you're not offering these sorts of hyperbolic "proofs" of your competency to your interviewers, like you've done here. I've seen a few comments from you lik…

What a great reply, needs to be higher up. Out of curiosity, how would you view a younger candidate (myself) who dropped out of a similar T40 school junior year with a boatload of personal projects / companies under his belt? I've had some success, and reached quite a few people, but I'm realizing I may need to settle down at a company sometime soon. I don't want to look unhirable (like OP, in my opinion) but just so…

It's tough to read too much into this single paragraph. I think the key is why you dropped out of school. You need to have a narrative.

1. "I had some promising personal projects, so I quit during my 3rd year of school to launch one of them. I did {X,Y,Z} but ultimately couldn't turn the corner to profitability so I shut down / failed spectacularly. Now it's time to get my feet under me and learn proper engineering for a few years before I try again." --> This is a good story, but needs to be backed up by data regarding your startup failure.

OR

2. "I was tired of school and quit. I had a bunch of personal projects going and hoped to start one of them into a company but none of them really went anywhere." --> This is a bad story. If this is your situation, you may need to suck it up and go back to school to finish your degree. Otherwise you'll need to be incredibly honest with the interviewer about why dropping out was a bad decision.

OR

3. "I had to drop out of school for . I've done a bunch of personal projects, so I have the passion and basic technical competence to succeed. I'd like to eventually finish my degree someday." ( Another good story. Shows humility.

Your biggest risk here will be overplaying your past projects. From a Hiring Manager perspective they're interesting technical toys like a university project, but since they didn't go anywhere they don't mean that much. Not fair, but true. Also: stay FAR AWAY from the word "burnout", because this telegraphs "I have issues and won't be able to do my job."

Communicating that you made a mistake and now want to learn in a better environment for a few years helps de-risk you to the hiring manager and shows good self-awareness.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#778

Post by infinite8s »

ep103 wrote: post #753
ma2rten wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Google (the only FAANG company in your list). We would ask about it, but it's not a significant deciding factor. It might be a deciding factor if you get an interview at all, which team you are interviewing with and for which level. Those decisions are made by recruiters, not interviewers or hiring committees.

And a recruiter is not really looking at your resume as anything other than a wordlist with which to shotgun applicants that might earn him/her commission into the process. And then the engineering team just jumps to leetcode. What's so easy to go missing here is the step where the person is interviewed, as a person, by someone who is not a recruiter or equivalent HR screener, and is technically skilled enough to und…

I don't think internal recruiters (what I believe the GP was referring to) get paid a commission.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#779

Post by davesailer »

Look at state, county, and municipal government. These are all soul-killers but generally come with livable pay and good benefits, and if you have any relevant skills at all, it's relatively easy to find an opening. There is also contract work for these entities, which can give you a chance to meet people, check out the landscape, and note which skills are in highest demand while you find a way to wiggle into the system.

Stay only as long as you need to or the environment will destroy you. Usually I'd say one year max, but you sound like you need more. Use your time to plan your future in detail.

Look and act happy. Defer to "authority" (i.e., the hopeless incompetent mutants who hire and fire). Smile a whole lot. Pretend that you like everyone even if you hate them all. Engage in friendly chitchat and help out with birthdays and potlucks when they come around. Fake it.

If people like you they'll give you a pass on everything as long as you don't set the place on fire or molest their children. If people don't like you then you're out of luck no matter how excellent you are, because it's government work, and government doesn't go broke, and if something doesn't get done today, or doesn't get done right, there is always tomorrow. And people just want to get through the day and go home and forget about it.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#780

Post by aty268 »

_ah wrote: post #777
aty268 wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a great reply, needs to be higher up. Out of curiosity, how would you view a younger candidate (myself) who dropped out of a similar T40 school junior year with a boatload of personal projects / companies under his belt? I've had some success, and reached quite a few people, but I'm realizing I may need to settle down at a company sometime soon. I don't want to look unhirable (like OP, in my opinion) but just so…

It's tough to read too much into this single paragraph. I think the key is why you dropped out of school. You need to have a narrative. 1. "I had some promising personal projects, so I quit during my 3rd year of school to launch one of them. I did {X,Y,Z} but ultimately couldn't turn the corner to profitability so I shut down / failed spectacularly. Now it's time to get my feet under me and learn proper engineering f…

Ah thanks for the reply, and yeah that makes sense. I don't believe it was a mistake as of now, but let me tell my story a bit better:

I got funded by Tyler Cowen / Peter Thiel @ EV and some angels for my first real company (can't link here), and while it wasn't required, I was making quite a bit of money so I left school. (I had a 3.98 my first 2 years in dual Comp Sci / Physics before, so I left with a 3.35 GPA after tanking junior year due to the company)

The unit metrics didn't end up working out, so i've been working on various products since with ~10k users on my previous one. (On my profile, if you care) It's a social app without huge growth though, so i'm not optimistic.

I have one more company i'm building with a friend now in a regulated space before I start recruiting. If this doesn't work out, I need to focus my energy on recruiting for a space i'm passionate about. I've built and launched over 20 websites and IOS / Android apps, and i'm the fastest React / React Native developer I know.

Would that sound batshit insane to recruiters, or someone perhaps worth picking up? I've also done a SE internship at a F400, tutored Engineering Physics, and done some freelancing w/ a 5.00 rating on Upwork if that matters. Thanks.

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