Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why the Job Search Sucks

thewebb.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 128 posts

Re: Why the Job Search Sucks

#91

Post by SilasX »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #63
kaspm wrote: post #43

A candidate we passed on reached out and asked for more specific feedback about why we passed. I happened to have some time over the holidays and agreed to provide him with some additional information personally and to meet up for coffee. > It's not you: The first thing I told him was that 80% of whether you get hired at a company is nothing you can do anything about. It depends on the company, your skills, their nee…

See? This! This would make the job search process a lil' less opaque.

How? That's just general "how to do well" advice, it doesn't help explain which of the reasons were relevant to a particular rejection.

And even that comment doesn't give an example of a shortcoming relative to one of those bullet points.

I mean, from the comment it sounds like kaspm literally told the candidate: "hey, sometimes it just doesn't work out, you should be glad at 'batting .200'.". I don't see the actionable feedback.

Re: Why the Job Search Sucks

#92

Post by cantrip »

Clubber wrote: post #83
cantrip wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the vote of confidence, but I'm a decent developer, not a $300k salary developer.

I mean, if you were paid market rates for interviews, you'd have to do a lot of interviews to net $300K. I don't see how that is possible, ignoring the fact that doing that would be about as fun as gold farming on WoW circa 2007.

Never did I say I'd be making $300k per year. $100k a year to do three 5 hour interviews a week for $300k jobs? I would do that in a heartbeat.

Re: Why the Job Search Sucks

#93

Post by Cyberdog »

matthew3 wrote: post #23
phantom_oracle wrote: post #19

The reference point for gaining employment is that dude who wrote Homebrew and got rejected by Google for being unable to "invert a binary tree on a whiteboard" [1] Unfortunately with this and many other articles I've read on HN over the years, the common theme is that decent/good programmers are not making it past HR. Everyone that wants to work in tech should instead navigate through the meetup/social space and bui…

Maybe I've been just unlucky with how many times I've had to google for weird "brew doctor" type incantations to make it happy, or with how (un)smoothly I've found it + a Mac compared to using real actual Linux, but is it outside the realm of possibility that you can make something a lot of people find useful for some situations and still not necessarily be qualified for or entitled to every job out there ? If it's t…

> Maybe I've been just unlucky with how many times I've had to google for weird "brew doctor" type incantations to make it happy, or with how (un)smoothly I've found it + a Mac compared to using real actual Linux,

Have you tried MacPorts? But more to the point…

> but is it outside the realm of possibility that you can make something a lot of people find useful for some situations and still not necessarily be qualified for or entitled to every job out there?

Let's drop the dig regarding entitlement for a moment. Shipping a nontrivial tool like Homebrew and getting pretty much every Mac power user (except me and a handful of other MacPorts holdouts) using it should show far more qualification for an engineering position than inverting a binary tree on a whiteboard. Software is a complete system and process involving decisions and unsolved problems, even if those problems are "how do we solve these problems in a better way than they are already;" inverting binary trees is… an algorithm. One I can probably find with ten seconds and a search engine should I ever need it.

Granted, perhaps Google was hiring for a position where knowing how to invert a binary tree off the top of your head is crucial. Who knows. And I'm sure there are people out there who know that as well as how to create, ship, and maintain a useful product. But if I personally were looking for someone to hire, I know which would impress me more.

By the way, for those wondering, if you're ever asked to invert a binary tree on a whiteboard, here's how to do it:

1. Draw binary tree on whiteboard

2. Remove whiteboard from wall

3. Rotate whiteboard 180 degrees

4. Reattach whiteboard to wall

INTERVIEWHACK

Re: Why the Job Search Sucks

#94

Post by kaspm »

SilasX wrote: post #91
NetOpWibby wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See? This! This would make the job search process a lil' less opaque.

How? That's just general "how to do well" advice, it doesn't help explain which of the reasons were relevant to a particular rejection. And even that comment doesn't give an example of a shortcoming relative to one of those bullet points. I mean, from the comment it sounds like kaspm literally told the candidate: "hey, sometimes it just doesn't work out, you should be glad at 'batting .200'.". I don't see the actiona…

Ah sorry, this is a good point.

Edit: I added the specific examples of each item that I gave the candidate but decided to remove them so as not to expose them publicly should this candidate read hacker news.

People can PM me if they'd like to know more information about the way this particular candidate could have benefited from the above.

Re: Why the Job Search Sucks

#95

Post by SilasX »

kaspm wrote: post #94
SilasX wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? That's just general "how to do well" advice, it doesn't help explain which of the reasons were relevant to a particular rejection. And even that comment doesn't give an example of a shortcoming relative to one of those bullet points. I mean, from the comment it sounds like kaspm literally told the candidate: "hey, sometimes it just doesn't work out, you should be glad at 'batting .200'.". I don't see the actiona…

Ah sorry, this is a good point. Edit: I added the specific examples of each item that I gave the candidate but decided to remove them so as not to expose them publicly should this candidate read hacker news. People can PM me if they'd like to know more information about the way this particular candidate could have benefited from the above.

Ah, that makes sense! Thanks for explaining. Sadly, that was the interesting part.

But I don't really see the privacy issue if the name is left off and there's no way to figure out who it was you interviewed.

Re: Why the Job Search Sucks

#96

Post by ionforce »

ryandrake wrote: post #37
Chyzwar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is complicated. My team is trying to hire but it is almost impossible to get a decent candidate. It is a massive time sink and still depends more on luck than anything else.

The hiring market is like a disfunctional dating market: A whole bunch of mediocre singles complaining they can't find supermodels of the opposite (or their preferred) sex.

So there should be optimal pairing... I guess the problem is if both sides are exercising minimums. "I don't want the best of the shitty programmers remaining, I want someone with at least this much experience."

I don't want some random company, I want a supermodel!

Re: Why the Job Search Sucks

#98

Post by bitcrusher »

The level of pure bullshit that is part of the hiring process these days is mind-boggling. An recent example:

I interviewed for company X, where I spent an entire day with more than a dozen engineers, answering the same types of questions over and over again: "Here's our platform, how would you fix it". At every turn, I would speak about X,Y,Z issues that would need to be solved and how this or that technology might be applicable in a broad case. Diligently, in every session, the interviewers were taking copious amounts of notes about what I was saying... NOT how I was doing on the interview, but rather, the content of what I was saying. "How do you spell Corfu?" (as an example).

At the end, they told me they really liked me, and would have an offer for me in the next day or two... Two days passed and they called with "We're sorry, but you're just not technical enough for us".

I basically gave them a free day of consulting.

I'm not sure HOW to fix the problem, but it is definitely getting worse.

Re: Why the Job Search Sucks

#99

Post by NetOpWibby »

bitcrusher wrote: post #98

The level of pure bullshit that is part of the hiring process these days is mind-boggling. An recent example: I interviewed for company X, where I spent an entire day with more than a dozen engineers, answering the same types of questions over and over again: "Here's our platform, how would you fix it". At every turn, I would speak about X,Y,Z issues that would need to be solved and how this or that technology might…

Now THAT is some straight up bullshit.

Re: Why the Job Search Sucks

#100

Post by scarface74 »

justherefortart wrote: post #31

Filling out 7000 fields on taleo is comical. It's why I use the hated recruiters now. I get to skip the BS of applying online. (At the employer's expense too!) I miss the old days, you submitted your resume, then they called you for an interview. You interviewed and either got hired or didn't (they'd typically call and say if you didn't). Why we need 80 layers of BS between the job seekers and employers is beyond me.…

Why the "hated" recruiters. Only once in the past 20 years have I even thought about getting a job without a recruiter. I applied for 17 jobs through recruiters in my last job search and I knew the technology stack and the salary they were willing to pay before ever starting the process. Out of the 17, only one wasn't interested in starting the process, I got three offers within a month and none of the other 12 rejected me, I took myself out of the running when I found a company I liked.

At no point was I just twiddling my thumbs waiting to hear back. The recruiters always knew where I was in the process. One day, I had 6 phone screens with different companies. Another day, I had a morning interview and an evening interview.

I'm not trying to brag about myself, when you have a recruiter it's just so much easier finding jobs you are qualified for. They've also worked with the company before so they can prep you a little more for the interview.

Also, you hardly ever walk into an interview knowing whether the salary you are expecting is in line with what they are willing to pay without a recruiter.

Post reply on HN