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A network engineer in search of greener pastures

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Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#91

Post by idlephysicist »

torlok wrote: post #71

I think that if a site asks you to fill a form along with attaching a résumé, then it's a scam, and they're just using you to train their AI.

Part of me thinks that you're right, but I've applied to _so many_ jobs over the years (prior to AI) that use workday and required that I fill in all the info again. I've also never ever heard back from a company that used workday.

Today I will only apply to a job that requires me to make an account (like workday) if at least one of these criteria are met (i) I am exceptionally qualified (in my own eyes), (ii) I have a reference, (iii) I already have made an account previously. Though thankfully there are many (smaller) companies these days (at least in my current field) that don't require me to make an account.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#92

Post by oblio »

benreesman wrote: post #58
pflenker wrote: post #7

Not to step on the authors toes, but it’s not the job searching that is broken - it’s the market that has shifted to favor companies and to put applicants at a disadvantage, something that hasn’t happened in the IT field for a long time. People reject candidates without a college degree because they can afford to - they still have plenty of applicants to pick from after filtering out the rest. There is no need for th…

The software business has been trying to break the back of its workforce for decades. There was a huge anti-trust lawsuit about it in like 2011 and there will likely be another about the mass coordinated layoffs and hiring freezes in 2023 (complete with tacky EPS beat on tacky EPS beat). This isn’t unique to software of course, the attack on working people is broad spectrum in 2024, but it’s probably the last white c…

> there will likely be another about the mass coordinated layoffs and hiring freezes in 2023

Did you mean 2024?

> This isn’t unique to software of course, the attack on working people is broad spectrum in 2024, but it’s probably the last white collar profession to go down in terms of labor pricing power. Even five or ten years ago it was a seller’s market.

I'm curious of where we are on the curve. Is San Francisco 2024 anywhere near Detroit 2013? My guess would be that it's a "no": San Francisco is in a much more attractive natural location and white collar professions tend to have more flexible individuals than blue collar ones.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#93

Post by idlephysicist »

omg_ketchup wrote: post #59

I just started to fill out a job application from the HN "Who's Hiring" thread, and it required a Loom video of me describing why I'd be a good fit for that specific position. The fuck? Abandoned the application process at this step. I'll do an interview, but creating a video just to get rejected for each job? That's a bit much.

I've never come across that myself, but the audacity of some firms is outrageous.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#94

Post by unsupp0rted »

thmsths wrote: post #81
unsupp0rted wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also the ones that ask for sexual preference (or however it is worded to get you to say straight/gay/other). The goal is to hire someone other than a pedestrian straight white male, of course. They can't outright say it.

In theory that information can only be collected for statistical purposes and should have no bearing on the hiring decision. Any well run org will not show that information to people reviewing resumes, the liability is just too great.

A senior Disney exec was recently caught on hidden camera saying:

> Certainly, there have been times where, you know, there’s no way we’re hiring a white man for this…. There are times when it’s spoken.

> Reporter: How would they say it?

> There’s no way we’re hiring a white man for this role. They’d be very careful how they’d message that to agents.

But this was captured by a controversial source, James O'Keefe's company, whom some consider an old-school journalist and others consider a prima facie con-man.

Whether or not this particular admission is 1) true and 2) from a real Disney exec, would it surprise anybody if this sentiment were common and barely concealed in large orgs?

You can only vilify a demographic group for so many years in a row before university students get into positions of power in big orgs and make sure that the vilified demographic gets shafted whenever possible, in the interest of "fairness".

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#95

Post by neeleshs »

tguvot wrote: post #74
neeleshs wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a startup CTO, I agree you need networking And cybersecurity. I am not sure if you need fulltime people specializing in this though. I used to work for large companies with big on-prem footprint. Networking and security in that world is a different game and warrants dedicated people. But for a startup with two services running in the cloud, with so many out of the box tools? (IDS, WAF, log based monitoring, SDN an…

>As a startup CTO, I agree you need networking And cybersecurity. I am not sure if you need fulltime people specializing in this though. highly depends on function of the service and it's scale >I used to work for large companies with big on-prem footprint. Networking and security in that world is a different game and warrants dedicated people. >But for a startup with two services running in the cloud, with so many o…

That's fair. It's a red flag in general if VP/CTO doesn't have the basics of security in place anyway. My experience in my peer group is that they are all fairly knowledgeable about security, if not experts.

Most startups don't have the scale, there are exceptions of course.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#96

Post by heisenbit »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #39
tguvot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

those "operational" jobs exists today. just not in the small startups, that still didn't figure out, that despite running in the cloud you need networking and cybersecurity people

The longer my career goes on, the less a lot of these cloud services make sense to me. I know why we have AWS deploy our production instances, but why are all of our staging and dev instances running on EC2? Can't we just buy an old PC and put it in the office and run dev builds on that? Sure it might be slow, but it's not meant to handle 100k QPS, it's just for QA

Sorry, this won't cut it anymore. You would loose all the fun instabilities when the cluster is upgraded again, the round trip times could not be optimized by distributing things further, the magic of all the different translation layers between you and the hardware would vanish. Worst of all is not all the money and headache you would save but you also would save time. Why would you do that?

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#97

Post by bityard »

> First, after turning in over 50-100 applications, I didn't have a single email or phone call from a human.

No, that sounds about right.

I came to the conclusion over a decade ago that firing off resumes into the cold dark void of the Internet was a loser's game.

Every single job posted to a electronic jobs board receives hundreds or thousands of applicants. And the MAJORITY of those are people who are actually unqualified according to the requirements of the listing. (A smaller but rapidly rising percent are AI-assisted scammers.)

And, you have to take into account the fact that MOST online job listings are posted because they couldn't find anyone to fill the role who wanted it within the company, or through word of mouth. In other words, most of them are bullshit jobs. Bad culture, low pay, boring work, or all three. Again, not all, but MOST.

Last year I was looking to move onto greener pastures and I tried to prove my hypothesis wrong by dusting off my LinkedIn profile, fluffing up my resume, and hitting the job listings. I applied _only_ to jobs that I knew I was going to be a good fit, skill-wise. The whole year I did not get a single response. The closest thing I got was a cold call from a consultant who sold some complicated mobile backend to the NBA, sat on it for months, then only decided to implement it a week before it was set to go live. I noped out of that one pretty hard.

I did land a job via LinkedIn, but not how you would expect: I sent a message to a former co-worker to see if he wanted to catch up. We had a phone call, he mentioned that his company was hiring, I applied, he referred, and I eventually got the job.

100% of the jobs I have had in my 2.5 decade career, I got through referral or reputation. If you are not including your personal network in your job search, you are very unlikely to find what you are looking for.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#98

Post by bityard »

omg_ketchup wrote: post #59

I just started to fill out a job application from the HN "Who's Hiring" thread, and it required a Loom video of me describing why I'd be a good fit for that specific position. The fuck? Abandoned the application process at this step. I'll do an interview, but creating a video just to get rejected for each job? That's a bit much.

To play devil's advocate: There are many more applicants for tech jobs than there are tech jobs available. When you are drowning in applications for a particular role, anything you can do to slim down the pool to only those who are actually interested is going to be a win.

And I know this is going to sound glib, but it sounds like it worked...

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#99

Post by betaby »

alephnerd wrote: post #37
mlinhares wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's that but there's also this: > However, after heading over to Y Combinator to check out startup jobs, I was again frustrated by the findings. YC Jobs has a category for Engineering, but it's all software. There's a category for Operations, but it's all CEO, CTO, management positions. After searching and searching I was unable to find any listings for any network or cybersecurity jobs along the sysadmin/enginee…

> I was unable to find any listings for any network or cybersecurity jobs along the sysadmin/engineer lines OP has actually fallen behind skills wise. This is why companies have been moving Cloud First - your DevOps/SRE or even your Dev team can also be your Networking and Security team. The writing was on the wall for Network Engineers and old school Sysadmins almost a decade ago, and why so many transitioned into b…

> Not having a LinkedIn is also career suicide at this point.

Not a single job I worked I got from LinkedIn. LinkedIn seems to be spam-only site to me. Thus not sure about that.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#100

Post by betaby »

simmschi wrote: post #38

"I noted, too, that some of these rejections came instantly after turning in an application. [...] I determined that I was automatically being filtered because I didn't have a college degree. Sure, the job posting says it's required, but you do know I have more experience than the average college student my age, right?" Sure, I never studied medicine and the hospital stated that they are looking for a doctor, but the…

> Lawyers, doctors, nurses, even tax accountants go to jail if they practice without being licensed.

Basically never happens where I live, and precisely for the reason you mentioned - those are cartel jobs and cartel protect its members.

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