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Panic at the Job Market

matt.sh

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Re: Panic at the Job Market

#911

Post by benatkin »

phpnode wrote: post #884

The author of this article has a reputation for an incredible sense of self-entitlement, he's the person who tried to do a hostile takeover of Redis after making a few minor contributions[0]. In light of that it's not too surprising that he's finding it difficult to find a job that meets his expectations. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9176800

At least he now seems to be self-aware, though it seems likely he wasn't so self-aware at the time of the odd proposal at a conference. Check out the GitHub sponsors link at the top of the article. I'm sure someone's going to take him up on the $12,000/mo one.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#912

Post by galdosdi »

salty_biscuits wrote: post #483
klyrs wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a literal graph theorist, I cannot tell you how frustrating it is that (a) nobody seems to understand my work except (b) interviewers use it as a shibboleth to exclude people from jobs that will never need high performance graph algorithms. That, I never get called for these interviews because I don't use react angles or something, but if they did, I'd crush the interview and fall asleep at my desk once they start…

It is fun if you ever find yourself in this situation because you can play the uno reverse card on the interviewer and ask to clarify with impenetrable jargon and look for rising panic (can I assume the graph contains a Hamiltonian circuit? etc, etc)

You gotta be careful. Some interviewers, especially the ones who are going to be peers, or worse, a peer of the hiring manager, might have mixed incentives to avoid hiring someone who could show them up.

I feel that happened to me once when I was interviewed for a Java job at a stodgy health insurer and the interviewer tried to test my Java and it quickly became obvious he was really very much a Java beginner and I could run circles around him, correcting his misconceptions. I was polite about it but naive, and it quickly became obvious he was offended and gave inaccurate feedback.

Another job, one of my rounds was with a peer of the hiring manager, and he did not ask me anything really beyond introductions, and then he lied and claimed he had asked me several technical questions and I'd failed them, which did not happen. I got that job anyway and accepted the offer, which was a mistake.

So actually, you probably don't have to be careful, because this is a good way to avoid a bad job. Unless you're desperate and need to feed the kids or something. Then feel out the interviewer, and do well, but not _too_ well. Don't make the interviewer feel stupid. Save that for after you've been working with them a while and have built up social capital in the company.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#913

Post by kylebenzle »

anonymousDan wrote: post #900
kylebenzle wrote: post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it was a long article and at first I was with him but after the first few hundred words the author seems to start complaining that his obviously sufficient work is not sufficient to get him a job which is nothing more than a logical fallacy and having a slightly big head, it says nothing about the wider job market as a whole.

I found the article pretty entertaining I have to say. Seems like someone with strong opinions but hey, so what.

Yes, author is a great writer! Bookmarked the blog :)

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#914

Post by cjohnson318 »

bmitc wrote: post #249
evrimoztamur wrote: post #23

I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. This is really key. I have applied for jobs before, and then get questions like: "what's your experience with C++ or advanced graph algorithms?". Only that, none of that shows up in my profile or resume. But they act surprised and completely shrug off how a decade of software and other relev…

I was approached through a recruiter for a job with a 100k-150k pay range, but I didn't get to interview because I had "too much experience" and they wanted someone with 2-5 years experience in the 120-130k range. I had experience with everything on the job description, even the nice-to-haves section. Make it make sense.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#915

Post by kortex »

> If you see people using requirements.txt in the wild instead of a poetry lock file or you see people using the decades-long broken python built-in logging framework instead of loguru you can see there’s opportunities for improvement everywhere

The irony of TFA mentioning the midwit meme.

50 iq - just use python's stdlib logger

100 iq - use loguru or some other custom log lib with fancy colors and formatting

150 iq - just use python's stdlib logger (with your own formatter)

Loguru is great for user-facing applications (especially when that user is a developer), it's pretty, structured out of the box, nice to use API. It's also pretty bloated and adds hundreds of ms of startup latency. Terrible for lambda/Faas cold starts.

Lately I've taken to just making a dict of the various field names and format strings, and json.dumps it into logging.basicConfig, boom, instant json structured logs. Middleware takes care of the rest. It Just Works(tm) and one of the most frustrating things is buggy loggers. The less overhead between `python3 /app` and getting some indicator everything is norminal, the better.

> don’t be bringing your outdated Python 3.7 sand castle to my Python 3.12 cathedral.

This is hilariously pretentious. Yeah 3.7 is EoL and if you're running it you probably need a kick in the pants to update deps, but it's far from the worst python sin.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#916

Post by wojciii »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #666
bmitc wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. This is really key. I have applied for jobs before, and then get questions like: "what's your experience with C++ or advanced graph algorithms?". Only that, none of that shows up in my profile or resume. But they act surprised and completely shrug off how a decade of software and other relev…

In my experience, C++ programmers have the smallest range of programming language knowledge. Basically, their whole world is C++. They have a hammer, and everything looks like a nail. "But performance!" they declare ... when you are writing a single function to reverse a string: "Can I use Python?" In my career and domain, I have never once seen a graph algorithm used, yet 5% of posts of HN are all about them. I gues…

I got my first job (25 years ago it so) after reading a c++ book and doing the assignments. To get this job I had to take a c++ test made by the most experienced developer there. The code I eventually wrote had none of the tested language features.

These days I often work with a mix of C, C++, Python and Rust. I try to avoid c++ as people writing c++ (IMHO) are not writing code that is easy to understand. They usually write code which is efficient but hard to understand. Even when effectiveness is not a part of the requirements.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#917

Post by johanneskanybal »

I feel pretty lucky I don’t really identify with this as a consultant.

Often I get a light version of the full process and if you have a track record and seem like a guy you would want to have a beer with that’s usually enough. There are exceptions but generally speaking.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#918

Post by pilgrim0 »

phpnode wrote: post #884

The author of this article has a reputation for an incredible sense of self-entitlement, he's the person who tried to do a hostile takeover of Redis after making a few minor contributions[0]. In light of that it's not too surprising that he's finding it difficult to find a job that meets his expectations. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9176800

> I can count people that provided an important contribution to the Redis code base in the fingers of my hand, and spare fingers remain. One of those contributors is Matt Stancliff, so I can't (and I don't want) ignore him when he disagrees about how the project is developed.[1]

This quote by antirez suggests they did made core contributions. Also the events you’re bringing to light seem to be rather old and not relevant to the theme. Being self-entitled is a bit cringey, though.

[1] https://groups.google.com/g/redis-db/c/PxFeA0fHgO4/m/zD4IWbX...

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#919

Post by dudeinhawaii »

rafaelmn wrote: post #301
bmitc wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. This is really key. I have applied for jobs before, and then get questions like: "what's your experience with C++ or advanced graph algorithms?". Only that, none of that shows up in my profile or resume. But they act surprised and completely shrug off how a decade of software and other relev…

> As in, a person who has used and learned a dozen plus languages but only tacitly used C++ suddenly will be a complete invalid when trying to write in C++? I've switched at least 5 languages professionally and used probably 5 more for extended periods of time and wrote a decent chunk of C++ "back in the day". I'd say C++ is the least suitable for "learn on the job" approach out of any language I can think of (I'm lu…

I once jumped into a C++ low level dev role having not written C++ in 20yrs (as a teen writing video games).

I think the benefit of experience as the OP is that you have a general understanding of the scope of languages, complexity and how to seek out answers.

I found that focusing on writing modern (as modern as was allowed) code using the most up to date patterns and methodologies meant that my code was generally better than peers that had been hacking C++ for 10yrs but developed bad habits or simply preferred riskier styles of coding.

I don't think C++ is special in being "hard". In fact, the language is so flexible that you can use one of a myriad paradigms that allow for fairly hassle-free coding.

The complexity is usually around the constraints of what you're coding because if you're writing it in C++ it's probably meant to be tiny, fast and memory efficient. That also implies that the problem itself is one that lends itself better to reasoning around as opposed to 42 levels of inheritance in a Java system.

I don't think _every_ developer could switch to C++ but if one of your say 5 languages is unmanaged then it's not rocket science making the switch.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#920

Post by kwere »

globular-toast wrote: post #740
guywithahat wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of minimizing your issue, are you sure you’re paying enough? Mid-level engineers cost ~130-140k (in Houston at least). A few weeks ago I was talking to a hiring manager who found me on LinkedIn and was saying he had a hard time finding anyone. Turns out he was trying to pay 50-90k for a mid/senior developer who had machine learning and robotics experience. I didn’t take the interview

The contradictions in this thread are incredible. If the job market is that bad and you need the money then a job that pays anything is good enough. Are these people just going to sit there until they starve because they're too proud to take a job that pays less than their last one?!

the tech talent is still safe, its "junior" level people that are struggling due to the "downturn" in tech. Probably when big tech fired people, lower level corpos took that talent at a small discount, putting pressure on lower level positions.
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