The one thing I always tell anyone on the job hunt, which few ever seem to take me up on: Informational Interviews.
These are informal "can I take you out to coffee?" talks with people in your industry to see what they are working on, what is happening with them, what is going on in the industry. Every job I have ever gotten is through informal meetings with people I have met through my network (whether its the current newspaper, your friends, parents, relatives, or other).
At the end of every one I ask: "Is there anyone else you think I should talk to?" and "Do you currently have any opportunities at your company for me?". Rinse repeat.
I guarantee investing in 30 informational interviews will yield huge dividends vs. 30 career fairs, a personal pitch deck, starting a blog, dusting off your resume, or God Forbid: applying to jobs through Linkedin.
The results from that advice vary wildly depending on your 10 minute personal skills.
I know someone who happens to be extremely likeable that way. In this case, that person also ends up spending very little effort in fostering long term relationships, or doing the job well, but changing jobs becomes easy: Staying at a place is hard.
Someone else I know has Aspergers, so in a 5 minute coffee they appear to be 'off': unlikable. However, after a few months, care for users, coworkers, and technical competence show through: Instead of a very wide network, they have a much smaller one, but the people in it would recommend them for absolutely any job, warning others that the first impression of the dreaded "culture fit" will be very wrong.
Therefore, some people are great at this, are easily liked, and get very far on meeting for coffee. Others that lack those social graces, or are part of groups that are typically prejudged as incompetent, will fail with this shortcut. The solution is probably still networking, it just might be a very different kind of networking than informational interviews.
I've tried advice like this before, and always results in rejection to even talk or after talking a nice referral to a frustratingly useless Taleo application portal. Maybe i'm not asking the right people but in my experience talking to people and hoping for a job goes nowhere.
I hear this often, and yes it can be very frustrating to get rejections. I've done 200+ informational interviews over my career, and probably gotten turned down by 2000 requests. I wrote a post about this problem specifically a while back: https://grahamwahlberg.com/2016/03/22/informational-intervie...
But summary is:
1) Are you the people you are reaching out to “warm contacts”?
By that I mean is there someone you know who knows them? If not you may want to try to start with people you already know.
2) What level of experience are you targeting for coffees?
1-2 yrs experience engineers? 5-10? 30-40 years? I have found that targeting people your own age yields worse results, but people just a little ahead of you in their career are more likely.
3) What kind of people?
Some people are intimidated by going to coffee with someone new and some aren’t. If you can (and this is tricky) figure out who is more likely to say Yes.
> 1) Are you the people you are reaching out to “warm contacts”? By that I mean is there someone you know who knows them? If not you may want to try to start with people you already know.
So, people with already a well developed social capital are doing better of people without it. News at 11.
The point is that having this "social capital" is not neutral or random.
It's a process where the objective isn't a job, but to get to know people and "make your own luck".
Personally, I find it really swarmy, but the purpose is legit -- talk to people that you don't have to talk to because you work or go to school with them.
For some people, doing the Silicon Valley coffee thing is a meaningful thing. It may not be for you. Maybe talking to an ex-coworker, reaching out to wish someone Happy Birthday on the phone, or something similar makes more sense to you.
I got my first consulting gig because a farmer I worked for as a middle schooler sent a vendor my way when I was in college. I'd drop by and say hello a couple of times a year when I was in the neighborhood. Humans are social creatures!
Any advice for doing this when you're in the middle of nowhere? I've heard of patio11 doing something similar via skype, but it just seems odd to invite people for coffee via skype or hangouts.
Work on open source. Be active on message boards and other social places online where your target community spends a lot of time (twitter, etc). Write blog posts about things you've done and share them in those communities. It's not super fast, but it casts a wide net. And then even if people don't know you, they know about you. Eventually a lot of people will be like "hey, it's lj3, who always responds with intelligent and well-thought out answers... oh, and didn't lj3 write that cool proof of concept for x thing?"
And then you look for people you've interacted with in the community, see where they work, and talk to those people about whether or not their company is hiring. Always ask, even if their careers page doesn't have anything. You never know when a new headcount may have opened up, and just hasn't made it to the careers page yet.
I think this is really hard to pull off. Your best chance is to work on some project that will show off your skills, even if it is your own side project and then proactively contact companies.
Open source projects might be a good idea because there you'll be working together with other professionals that might recommend you if you make a good impression.
I've been on the other side of this a few times. Doing a Skype call is far less effective in getting me to help place someone relative to in person coffee. Better than nothing, though.
Anyone who already has a network is someone who either isn't looking for a job, or who will already find one without any help or advice for you.
For actual computer nerds, they may not have much of a "network". And so there's no one to ask out for coffee. And for them, your advice just sounds strange.
No, this is exactly who needs this. People who have a network are already doing this on daily/weekly basis without even thinking about it.
Identify someone you'd like to have in your network, and approach them. Start with people you find approachable, someone "in your league", but perhaps a few years ahead of you, and work you way up. If you show a modicum of modesty (so, perhaps your first approach isn't Elon Musk) and be unfailingly polite and respectful, most people are in fact flattered that you want their advice.
After each interaction, evaluate it for yourself, and improve your approach. Rinse and repeat.
I agree. What I do as a consulter is to make sure I do a good job (therefore I don't take any project if I don't think I'm a good fit) and then make sure that I stay in touch with my clients and some of their employees in the future. (having a lunch from time to time, or a coffee)
That's why I didn't have to actively search for clients in the last ten years. Employees switch jobs and remember me when their new employer has a project that fits my skill set.
They recommend me and I get the project. In most cases the project/position is never even advertised anywhere before I get it.
One thing in this article that really caught my eye was "Do free work". When I was a young kid I remember my grandfather, who was about to retire from a long career at the power utility having been head of the union, and much beloved by all his coworkers and managers, told me about how he got that job. He had been laid off at a grain mill, and was getting by as a butcher. But a friend of his got him in the door to see the hiring manager at the utility. My grandfather said I'll work two weeks for you for free, and if I make you happy, then you can hire me. After the first day, he was hired. I guess this also touches on the article's point about networking.
It's illegal to work for free today, unless you're a Congressional intern, since they exempted themselves from the law. Lots of "my grandfather..." stories are illegal in today's US, land of freedom and such.
In this case, you could still work for free, as a volunteer at a charity. Or attend user group meetings and give presentations. That is one way to increase your network.
I don't see that in there -- I see where it mentions about writing blog posts is bad advice, so this may be similar. However, I don't think they are saying it is bad per se, just that it won't magically land you a job.
However, presenting in front of a peer group does do a couple things. First, you have to prepare, which helps you realize what skill you actually have. Secondly you end up building a lot of self confidence, especially on the topics that you are presenting on.
Which in my case somehow worked major magic. When I was last unemployed for about 4 months, I seemed to have flubbed a couple interviews. Well, I went to some Linux user group meetings, presented on a couple technical topics I was passionate about, and then offered to help anyone with problems that they were having on any of their environments (this was related to things like iptables configurations, clustering, virtualization, etc). The following week I went into an interview, and it was like I was watching myself on auto-pilot. Identifying problems and offering possible solutions, picking up on what was working or not based on body language, dynamically adjusting my message to fit what the interviewer was looking for, and I landed the job and started the next day.
> I don't see that in there -- I see where it mentions about writing blog posts is bad advice, so this may be similar. However, I don't think they are saying it is bad per se, just that it won't magically land you a job.
Sorry, you're right. I read that bit in the linked article about getting a job with no connections.[1]
> However, presenting in front of a peer group does do a couple things. First, you have to prepare, which helps you realize what skill you actually have. Secondly you end up building a lot of self confidence, especially on the topics that you are presenting on.
I think you are definitely right on that. The more experience you get explaining things to strangers, the better you will do in interviews. I took the "free work" section of the article as being more focused on audition than practice, though.
For very good reason. For every "my grandfather" story, there are probably 5 more whom were simply taken advantage of, with the hiring person having absolutely no intention of hiring them.
It's a basic consequence of having minimum wage laws. Unless you're being picky and want to hear that it's illegal to have someone work for you for free.
In the US, unpaid internships are only legal when they pass a six-part test. Generally, if the intern is doing stuff that benefits the company the internship must be paid. http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/employment-law-and-human-re... lists the six-part test
If an intern is 'working' for free, then it's considered educational. They're not allowed to contribute materially to the business. For example, I can have an unpaid intern shadow me and watch what I do all day, but I can't put any code they write into production.
As I understand it, many of the internships that happen today don't meet the (U.S.) legal requirements, but neither party (the intern nor the company) is complaining.
Basically, the intern is supposed to be learning a trade with some incidental work output, and what really happens is that they are given junior-level labor and some guidance and pointers (i.e. the same thing you'd do with a PAID junior level worker).
As a recent graduate, I know many people who used the "free work for a short term" method to get in the door for a new job. It isn't going to work at very large companies, but at startups and agencies, absolutely. "Illegal" sure, but a smart manager wouldn't turn down a chance to get a great look at a potential employee
Apart from the legal issues that others have pointed out, I would strongly discourage my students from working for free. Canada seems to have a lot of this crap going on - maybe because the labour market in CS isn't that great. Just say no.
I would love to do this and I'm convinced this would land me a job 90% of the time. But laws and privilege and all that stuff prevents me from doing what I believe is in my best interest.
More generally about 80,000 Hours rather than this piece in particular: their advice was pivotal to my taking a dev bootcamp and becoming a software engineer, and donating a percentage of my income to highly-effective charities. They did a one-on-one consultation with me (not sure if those are still available or not), put me in touch with other bootcamp grads, and were generally super helpful.
I'd recommend their advice to anyone, particularly people who think they might be in the wrong job, and want to think about how to best spend their working lives.
I'm the author of the piece. If you know any other good resources or statistics we should incorporate, I'm keen to hear about them. If you disagree with something, feedback is very welcome.
Sorry about that. I find popups annoying too. Unfortunately we just find we get a way higher conversion to the newsletter when we use popups, and since people need to engage over several months to get value out of the advice, getting people onto the newsletter is really important.
Just a side comment, these are starting to be called "doorslams," and you may also be interested in alternative views of your "No thanks, I don't want a raise" dismissal link at http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/
Why don't you offer the content all at once instead of dividing it into 9 weeks of 15-minute chunks once a week? I'd rather spend the 2 hours to read all of it at once, instead of having to wait 9 weeks to read it.
Hey tbirdz, sorry if this was unclear but you can read the whole thing whenever you like by starting here and just going through: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/
However, the sign-up should not take me away from the article. I mean, putting in my email took me to another page in the same tab (not a new one). Also, The landing page post-giving-you-my-email gave me another sign-up pop up. Both these things are super annoying.
Ug, we've been having a lot of problems with our new popup plugin. Once you're signed up, it should turn off all popups. Maybe you're blocking cookies, or it didn't take effect yet.
I agree it would be better to take you back to where you were reading, it's a lot more complex to set up though.
Hi there. I just wrote a full length guidebook on the portion you refer as "Leads". I call them "Informational Interviews". Book is available for free at and I'd love to partner with you guys to reach more people! Content here: http://www.grahamwahlberg.com/book
Have you read Nick Corcodilos's Reinventing the Interview? There is a lot of overlap with your advice (understand the employer's problems, explain your value, etc.) Related to "Do free work", something I always liked, he recommends you actually do the work you're being hired for in the interview. How better to demonstrate how capable you are?
Positive effect, stress and feeling sad taper off, while life satisfaction is log. I don't think we say life satisfaction tapers off, but it's a bit unclear.
I find that most new grads' biggest problem is not getting the first phone screen.
I could have really used this guide when relocating cross-country. Surprise, the interviews and subsequent offers I got were from direct referrals from my personal network.
I've been unemployed for about 14 months since resigning from my most recent role -- a role which my close family and friends characterized as "destroying me."
After becoming unemployed, with enough savings to sustain myself for a long search, I then faced a significant family trauma that required me to move away from Boston (where I had lived and worked for most of the past decade), back home to do basically full-time care for the family situation -- located in a very rural part of the Midwest where e.g. I don't even have reliable access to internet connectivity here.
Despite this, I've managed to start a newsletter/website for one of my interests (by teaching myself simple usage of the Hakyll Haskell-based static site tool), and start a pedagogical side project using Cython to write some stuff using fused types and typed memoryviews. It has been utterly demoralizing to try to do these projects in the midst of my family situation and the lack of resources here in this rural area.
I've done literally hundreds of phone interviews, had 7 different on-site interviews, and received offers from 2 of them (both of which I rejected because they asked me to accept compensation/benefits packages that were substantially worse than what I had when last working).
Most interviews have been OK, but I reject a lot of companies if I pick up on red flags, especially related to start-up culture bullshit or poor work/life balance, to protect myself from the insanity that led to this in the first place.
In my experience, tech hiring is just an unbelievable shitstorm of irrationality. I've been rejected for over-engineering (because I included tests and wrote a necessary sorted dict data structure for a take home submission), for not "focusing enough on product" when submitting statistical analysis code for a data science take home test, for not remembering an obscure fact about GCDs and integer lattice points (even though I had correctly solved two difficult coding problems already in that interview), for not having X years of on-the-job experience in any one of Hadoop, Spark, various DevOps tools, and web frameworks (I am a statistician with lots of scientific computing experience, never applied to positions that list DevOps or web development as important needs, even though I'm happy to learn them on the job).
At this point, my extended professional network has basically given up on me. My grad school friends have recommended me for jobs with biotech companies, Facebook, fairly prestigious finance companies, with endorsements like "he is the best Python programmer I know, and it's not even his primary skill set" -- most reject me immediately because of the gap on my resume.
I don't have any more people to ask for job leads. I scour Indeed.com for hours every morning, which is extremely demoralizing. I have a reasonably significant amount of Stack Overflow rep (> 17000) and joined their career site long ago but have never found a single realistic lead since it's dominated by web framework jobs. Most employers (or their needlessly combative tech hiring staff, anyway) seem to make a point of saying cutting comments to me about my university degrees (two Ivy degrees) and my Stack Overflow rep -- even though I don't ever try to project pride about these things and fully welcome and prefer to be judged solely by my talents and do not want any form of laurel-resting, especially not based on "prestigious" degrees (though, to be fair, I did work extremely hard in university and accomplished many things that now seemingly no one cares about).
Recently I got rejected by Snapchat literally less than 11 minutes after submitting my resume and application through their online application site. It was a form letter rejection in 11 minutes. I started to wonder if maybe the application portal just sends them a Snapchat photo of my resume, so they have to accept or reject before it gets deleted. But I'm so cynical by now that it wasn't really funny.
Practically the only ways I can stay motivated after such a long and soul-crushing spell of unemployment have been focusing a ton on personal exercise, focusing on my family and continuing to help them, and focusing on creative efforts that are 100% not related to software or coding.
The degree of burnout frightens me greatly, but currently the financial demands placed on me by my family's situation are so great that as I no longer can afford any form of health insurance at all while unemployed, I cannot even see a counselor or anything to help process my feelings.
Much like this elementary school parable I read where the Sun and Wind have a competition to see who can get a man to remove his jacket, I am like the man when the Wind character just blows harder and harder -- he just pulls the jacket tighter and tighter.
The more that interfacing with the labor market causes me to deal with bullshit start-up culture, the less willing I am to take a job. I simply will not compromise my standards, even literally to my own destruction. It reminds me of a David Foster Wallace quote: "I had kind of a midlife crisis at twenty which probably doesn’t augur well for my longevity."
I've been surviving this long enough to know there just is no answer to the problem of seeking a job that actually makes your life better, certainly not here in the Hacker News echo chamber -- just look at all of the Who Is Hiring threads, where, for my given skill area, there has been somewhere around a 1% relevance rate (just try searching for NumPy).
I'm not looking for encouragement, sympathy, or (more likely here) unsympathetic market-perspective brass tacks criticism. I just figured it was worth sharing.
My friend, I feel for you. I'm in my late 30s, have impressed my peers and made a contribution in every role I've had but I regularly fear that one bad move will get me kicked out from the industry.
I have two suggestions:
1) After such a long period of unemployment, you need to get "the meter going". I suggest taking an offer below your standard for the following reason ... recruiters/employers will treat you differently when you are employed. Take a job that has some additional fringe benefit ... lets you work remote, has a better social situation, whatever. Just get the meter going somehow and then improve from a position of strength.
2) Consider getting a contact job that is for 6 months to a year. There is no stigma on your resume for leaving such a position since it was a fixed term contract after all.
Consider working for a second-tier tech employer. A lot of bad things are said about large old corporations (heck you may even have worked there) but they have one thing going for them ... they hire a lot (probably because people leave).
Wow, I feel for you, having been there myself a number of times. The playing field is so stacked against applicants it's not even funny. One thing though:
> I've done literally hundreds of phone interviews, had 7 different on-site interviews, and received offers from 2 of them (both of which I rejected because they asked me to accept compensation/benefits packages that were substantially worse than what I had when last working).
That might have been a mistake. When nobody's hiring (as is the case today), you kind of have to take what you can get. Plus, being already employed increases your odds of later getting another job, hopefully back where you should be compensation-wise. If I were an unemployed tech worker today, I would literally take the first job I could get, so at the NEXT interview I didn't have to admit that I'm out of work.
There are a few reasons why I didn't agree regarding places that I've turned down. First, if the family situation continues to require on-going financial resources from me (likely), then it's literally not sustainable for me to accept an offer where the compensation/benefits are substantially worse than what I earned previously. Yes, if the situation becomes dire enough, I may have to, but until it does become dire, I would be setting myself up right away to struggle to make ends meet in that new job, and I don't feel comfortable doing that.
Secondly, taking a job doesn't fully solve the problems that you claim it does. For one, because I have a short stint on my resume followed by a long gap, that makes employers skeptical. If I just take the first job I can get and it turns out to be mind-trashingly horrible to the point of literally, physically not being sustainable to live with it, then I'll have to quit again, making another short stint and gap on my resume.
Most people think that about the 1-year mark is the shortest reasonable stint, so whatever job I take next, I have to believe at least that it is live-with-able for 1 year (my last job emphatically was not) before I am at the point where I could send my resume out and look again. Based on the experiences I've had, this is a fairly significant risk. Not to mention that my earnest, true goal is to find a place where I actually fit in and can focus on investing time in a real career for a long time frame.
Finally, I know reasonably well what I am worth based on past jobs, offers I got in prior years when I was already working. I suspect in at least one case that a company was intentionally trying to use my situation as leverage to low-ball me, and that just won't work. It communicates up front that they aren't excited about me, don't plan to treat me in a minimally healthy way, etc., and is just a massive red flag that I should avoid them for the sake of protecting myself and by extension also my family from what could happen if I take the job and end up being treated very badly.
> There are a few reasons why I didn't agree regarding places that I've turned down. First, if the family situation continues to require on-going financial resources from me (likely), then it's literally not sustainable for me to accept an offer where the compensation/benefits are substantially worse than what I earned previously.
Maybe I haven't had enough caffeine for the day. However, even if the new job doesn't even cover your expenses, isn't some income better than no income? Unless you are using your current free time to gain something.
The current free time is mostly dedicated to attending to the immediate needs of the family situation (which is a complicated mix of medical and legal issues).
If I move, I have to have enough money to adequately cover costs for making arrangements for the situation when I'm gone. If I stay here, I can do most of those things myself, and with little overhead for the ones I can't fully do. Living far away would change it substantially. And there are absolutely zero jobs related to any of my skill sets in this area, and in fact most jobs in this area barely pay a living wage to begin with.
It's not to say I don't want to move -- I very much do and feel it would be best. It just means I have to protect my compensation level and ensure it is adequate for the financial responsibilities that fell in my lap. Earning something close to what I earned previously would be sustainable. Earning something far less would not be, and could easily result in me having to relocate here again once the differential in what could be paid for caught up to us over time.
First, I'm impressed that you were brave enough to post that under your regular account. Kudos.
Second, here's an idea for you off the top of my head, so take it for what its worth:
You are in the middle of an area that most techies consider "flyover country" and that is therefore grossly underserved by the tech industry. I would bet dollars to donuts that there are industries in your backyard with unmet needs you could fill that are worth lots and lots of money.
My suggestion would be to find someone local to you who knows a local industry inside and out, and try to start a company together serving that industry.
If you do consider going down this route, Patrick McKenzie's articles are a gold mine of advice: http://www.kalzumeus.com/
You have my sympathy, I've never had a gap like that but I have struggled with job hunts in less tech friendly areas.
I mean this constructively so please don't take it as a knock, but you seem to be coming at the interviews from a somewhat adversarial perspective. This sentence is what stood out to me in particular:
> Most employers (or their needlessly combative tech hiring staff, anyway) seem to make a point of saying cutting comments to me about my university degrees (two Ivy degrees) and my Stack Overflow rep -- even though I don't ever try to project pride about these things and fully welcome and prefer to be judged solely by my talents and do not want any form of laurel-resting, especially not based on "prestigious" degrees (though, to be fair, I did work extremely hard in university and accomplished many things that now seemingly no one cares about).
Perhaps they were joking around with you about it as a way to acknowledge your pretty formidable credentials? This strikes me as a very odd response (on their part) and I wouldn't expect to see it again and again which is what makes me think you might be misinterpreting their intent.
Anyway, I'm not you. Best of luck to you, I hope you find what you are looking for.
Having a fair share of under-employment for many years, and stressful "have puked blood" positions as well, I can relate and hope you can keep grinding. One thing I told myself is that with every application, I have to "scrape the crusted shit off my skin" so I wouldn't look like I'd been through what I had been through. Piles of rejections, go-nowhere interviews - that's the crud that has to be scraped off because when you get the job you've been angling for, it's theoretically the last application you'll have to submit for a long time.
On a side note I can also relate to being in a market that isn't attractive or even really sustainable in some regards. Where I'm at is not a place to make a living as a musician. Where I'm at doesn't pay top-dollar for my skill-set. Where I'm at is actually where I want to live, and that's something I've come to value. Being in a place I don't like would infinitely compound my negative feelings as well. I find your perspective quite normal, all things considered. Take care.
I upvoted you and I hope your story ends up higher up in this thread as it shows how the Software Dev industry can be ruthless and merciless [Not long ago I thought it was all about solving complex problems and having fun doing it].
I also decided to quit my last job before finding a new one and I have spending more energy than I ever imagined explaining a much smaller gap on my CV compared to yours. In one of the interviews I had recently the interviewer only stopped asking questions about my current situation when I "proved" to him it was possible to survive in an expensive city like London having no income. It was very sad!
Thanks for sharing your story and it was definitely a wake up call (at least for me)!
I feel for you and I hope you find something you'll enjoy very soon. Best of luck!
You reject offers after comparing compensation with your previous job, but forgot to take into account that your old job was 'destroying you' and your new one hopefully wont.
Regardless, the amount of compensation required to eek out a minimal living for myself in the high cost-of-living areas where the jobs are plus send money home to cover the extra labor we'll have to pay for to handle the family situation when I am physically not there add up to something in the range of what I earned before, so it is an amount that is needed, not merely hoped for.
Further, I had two other jobs before the really destructive one, and was paid at the same level in those jobs. In hindsight, choosing to leave those jobs over mild issues was a mistake, but everyone encouraged me to do it at the time. I asked every question under the sun when going through the hiring process with the third place, and absolutely nothing stood out to me as a red flag that would have indicated just how bad it was.
The interviewer also did not give me any time to ask him questions. Also, nothing about the job suggested aptitude in this sort of math mattered, I think they just wanted to screen for Math Olympiad types. I wish they would have just asked me though. I'd happily tell them I'm not a Math Olympiad type, don't want to be, don't value that skill set or believe it translates to better on the job performance, and could have saved them (and me) a lot of time and expensive plane ticket and hotel room.
Well the relation of the GCD function to the problem is hardly obscure. But I agree, unless the role was specifically math-related it's a horrible filter question. Many hard-nosed and otherwise eminently productive and useful systems engineering types I know would surely blank on it, simply because... that wasn't the kind of stuff they geeked out on, in their high school / college years.
I have an undergrad degree in math, a master's in applied math (focusing on MCMC statistical stuff), and a master's degree in electrical engineering (focusing on computer vision), and I did not know this, and it would have taken me more time than was allotted in the interview to derive it for myself. I feel that when I was asked and I said, "I don't know" it was the unequivocally right thing for me to say to capture the status of my knowledge about it, even if I could have derived it with an extended amount of time.
I think this is still fairly obscure, because my first inclination was to do a simple for-loop over the integers between the two end points along one axis, and then compute the floor of the equation of the line evaluated at that point and just check if it was in fact on the line. The context of the interview did not suggest that non-algorithmic thinking was up for discussion, at least at that moment.
In a short period of time, after doing two other programming questions, the idea that a simple formula existed didn't even cross my mind, and in a regular day-to-day job this is absolutely something I would research rather than just know off the top of my head. I'm not saying that as a system engineer or something, but as someone who has always worked directly in a quantitative modeling, statistics, and math capacity, and is seeking that same kind of work going forward.
I don't really know what this means, other than to say that I did a whole bachelor's degree in math, from real analysis to combinatorial algebra, from boundary value problems to the Sylow theorems, from the formal definition of Turing machines to Jordan Canonical Form, and then did 3 more years of graduate level math, and I feel 100% comfortable with myself when I say I never would have independently thought of this GCD-based solution in a short, timed setting.
The fact that I know how to do it now is also 100% artificial, based only on the happenstance of having been asked it in an interview. If I was asked it again, I feel the right thing to do would be to say: "I know how to solve this because I've seen it before, but my solution is superficial, and if you ask me something else in this area, like say what is the intuition behind Pick's Theorem, I will not have any kind of quick command of that topic and would need to research it." Of course, such honesty just gets you rejected, but still I feel it is the most intellectually honest thing to say.
I really feel for your personal situation, and I appreciate your candor here.
Unfortunately, I come from the school of thought often derided hereabouts that this is an excellent interview question, and your unwillingness to engage with the question would've gotten you a bad score for that interview.
Generally speaking I think it's great to start with:
A) I don't know a great solution to that! Would you like me to brute force it? If I, the interviewer, am looking for brute force I'll say yes, code it up, but if not I'll say no, imagine we've already brute forced it and now we've found we need to optimize
B) I won't care if you actually figure out the precise closed form gotcha answer, but I'll want you to engage seriously. It's a test of whether you can discuss and identify patterns in a coherent way when working with a colleague, which is probably the most important signal for me, second only to "will this person get things done in a normal 40 hour work week"
It's entirely possible the interviewer was just a jerk, and wouldn't engage with you, and I feel bad for people who freeze in high pressure interview situations. But at first blush, your response sounds like you wouldn't engage with the problem at hand, and that just isn't the way to go in an interview, if at all possible.
I did A) and gave the for-loop algorithm that examines each integer in the range on one axis, computes the value of the line at that point, and checks if it's also an integer.
The interviewer said this works, asked me the time complexity (trivially O(N), where N is the number of integers in the range on that axis), and seemed happy.
Then he asked if I knew a way to do it using the GCD. I said I did not know off the top of my head, and then he concluded the interview and left no time for me to ask questions.
I think your characterization that I "didn't engage" is not right. The interviewer was also clearly not looking for someone who needed paper and pencil to work out this property, but instead specifically for someone who "just knew" it as an immediate trivia fact.
FWIW, I don't agree this is a good question. It's so-so, and it's fine if the goal is to work through it, but that was not at all the case.
I should also add that I consider myself reasonably good at dumb-shit tricky interview questions. I've done well in stereotypical finance interviews asking riddles, card shuffling tricks, colored balls in urns, drunk man sitting in the wrong airplane seat, etc., as well as more formal probability questions. This simply just came down to me not making an instantaneous connection between the number of integer lattice steps between the end points and the GCD of the ranges. I don't think it's the same as freezing, it's just that that knowledge would never have been accessed in the particular interview setting. It's just not how I think about that problem, and never would have been.
I'm certain you could devise endless algorithm trivia just the same. Print a binary tree in some weird order, rotate a 3D data array, etc. The one and only way I'd ever solve anything at all like that is slowly and by drawing lots of pictures, making some candidate code, putting it into an interactive programming environment with small toy examples, and iterating.
And in all my professional experiences, including a high-intensity quant finance job, that has been more than good enough for any job-related problem, and has also been what everyone else did. Only in interviews have I ever encountered anything like this.
Given your clarification (alternately, perhaps I misunderstood your original post) I retract my criticism. If you drew a picture and engaged, and he actively wanted a closed form and didn't want to see you work it out slowly, then that's a poor interviewer, not on you at all!
I will note that I do occasionally ask "do you happen to know if there's a closed form" for things, as an extra credit kind of thing, making clear I'm curious and I don't expect a yes. Someone could easily get the impression this is a high stakes question if I wasn't clear it's not; conceivably that was the intent in this situation.
But any which way, sounds frustrating and the interviewer was either a jerk or unclear.
I agree with you, but in this case, the standards are necessary. Taking a job that just lands me right back in an unsustainable situation would be worse than going longer and longer with no job. Eventually, I agree it must hit a point where I'm basically barely at subsistence level and any marginal gains are better than none (even if the marginal gains come with e.g. mental health costs of dealing with intolerable employers or something). Right now the situation is urgent, but not so urgent as to merit throwing out all possibility of actually finding a healthy outcome instead of a merely desperate one.
Although you didn't ask for it; my sympathies on your situation, and best of luck with your job search. You should probably add an email or other means of direct contact to your profile, I can't imagine there's no-one reading this that aren't at least a little bit interested in talking to you about a position, or at least a consultancy.
As you're being so open - would you mind sharing a little more detail on "compensation/benefits packages that were substantially worse", or what kind of ballpark you would consider? (Just to be clear, this would be just to satisfy my abstract curiosity about the non-SV US job market - but I also think that if you post an email, also posting something along the line of "only in a position to consider compensation of 150k USD/yr and up" will head off any offers that won't interest you even before they are sent).
As I'm also looking for work right now, I get your frustration with the "Who's hiring" threads, but I don't think a low percentage match there is a bad thing - quite the opposite. I don't view those threads as a slice of the whole job market, but more as a way to discover new opportunities that look like a great fit right off the bat. For me that means interesting product, interesting stack, interesting colleagues and fully remote team. And transparency wrt. compensation is a great plus. And no requirement for a US work permit (I'd not be against relocating, but I generally think that being remote-friendly is a good signal about good processes and culture - and if a company has that, I wouldn't mind some kind of consultancy contract. Which shouldn't require a work permit).
That doesn't leave all that many. But it does leave some.
If you want some constructive criticism / feedback / recommendations feel free to email me, dan at driverdan dot com. I'm a hiring manager and while it doesn't sound like you're a match for what we're looking for I'd be happy to give you some input from the other side.
kind of different circumstances but seeking same..also in the midwest..if you want to exchange notes sometime via email..my email addy is on my portfolio site which is listed in my profile.
You probably have enough exp/skills to go pro-in-biz-for-yourself..have you looked at that as a possibility?
My advice to you would be to be less self-obsessed. It will be important for you and your happiness to come to terms with how little you matter and how unimportant you are to the world. No one cares what you did in university - that was another life.
I think I already feel that way to a strong degree. As I mentioned in my post, I dislike laurel-resting and want to be judged based on talent and work ethic, aspects that have earned me far more praise through my efforts than anything from my university accomplishments. But at the same time, succeeding and winning fellowships and awards in difficult university programs still is at least some degree of evidence of skill and grit, and it's reasonable to be disappointed if others choose to wholly discount it.
As for not mattering in the grand scheme of things, yes of course, that much has been obvious since I was a teenager. I liked a certain Robin Hanson quote when someone replied to his post called "Impatient Idealism" -- at which point he says, "News flash: you are just one of seven billion, so you aren’t going to personally make much difference. The world will have nearly as many problems worth solving then as now, with or without your help." [0]
That quote has been often on my mind at least since 2012 when I first read it.
Haven't read the article all the way, but the "Hey HN, sorry to do this" dialog caught me off guard (I know that referrer headers can be used for it). Nice touch, BenjaminTodd.
For me it comes down to this. Step 1 invest in some skills. That also means skills demanded by the world. In my instance PHP based stuff is fine even if not fashionable. People actually use PHP and there is enough there for me.
I have had other skills to get work with in the past but for now I only care about a few code keywords for codebases I use.
As well as a skill in demand I like to have a second string to my bow, this being another work thing. This can be an appreciation of retail sales through working in a shop, this may be useful to a client in retail that has bricks and mortar stores. Having worked in science can also be that second string of related experience.
Then there is the matter of being able to show confidence and enthusiasm in all communication. As per the mocking quote at the top, confidence and showing that does matter. As does enthusiasm.
Also, aptitude is important. You have to actually believe the job is as good as yours and to be convinced of that fact. That has to be as certain as your mum doing Christmas Dinner, not to be questioned or thought negatively about.
I very much believe that self belief is really important and that it should come if you do have in demand skills and acceptable recent experience. Exams etc. matter not in an in demand sector.
The connections section is both focused entirely on LinkedIn (arguably a worse form of Life Invader than Facebook; I refuse to use either of these or any other such service).
How is someone that values their privacy supposed to get a job or even break in to having a job where they make connections to peers?
> How is someone that values their privacy supposed to get a job or even break in to having a job where they make connections to peers?
You can't really connect and socialize with people online without being a little lenient about privacy.
Still a social network, but Twitter is great. I can ask more "famous" people to retweet a tweet from me asking for jobs or even get them to connect me with someone (if you spent a bit of time meeting them). Also, depending on your community their chat or forum may help. For React, I've gotten interviews and contracts from their chat. For real life, meet ups are good though you gotta be a bit extroverted.
I'm not sure there is another way. But if you are in IT, and don't mind working with recruiters, LinkedIn is an incredibly efficient way to hook up with tons of recruiters willing to find you jobs doing exactly what you're looking (and qualified) for.
We just lost a guy with barely 2 years experience on a lark response to a recruiter on LinkedIn. He made some ridiculous requests and the recruiter hooked him up.
Of course there is. The guy who recruited me for my current position basically took a look at two things: my website / blog and my GitHub profile.
He was able to find far more useful things than he could by simply looking at my LinkedIn profile. He found out about me because he tweeted that he's looking for someone and one common "friend" (friend is a bit of a strong word here since I have never met that person offline at that time) replied to his tweet mentioning me.
This is not how it works. Recruiters generally spam everyone based on an inventory of jobs they have, and half the time, the recruiter is more interested in pumping you for information about where you currently work or where else you've applied.
When recruiters do put you forward for a job, they require you to give up all negotiation power in advance, and generally they are paid bonuses on top of their commission if they can ensure a candidate accepts a low salary. When they say "my commission is based on the salary you get so I'm trying to get you the most that I can" it is, truly, complete bullshit.
When you make ridiculous requests of a recruiter, they don't help you. They just get off the call and figure you're not enough of a shmuck so they won't be able to fool you, and auto-dial the next possible shmuck.
Even if you're a LinkedIn user (and it is very, very dubious whether LinkedIn adds or subtracts value for users), dealing with head hunters is a terrible idea unless you love being jerked around, misled, and having your time wasted.
The cases such as what you describe are so exceedingly rare as to warrant basically being ignored. That guy won the recruiter lottery, but it was still irrational for him to play.
After pouring through your comments throughout this thread I'm kinda left with the following conclusion (take it for what its worth, a random person on the internet): you have a mindset problem, and you're generalizing to the point that you wouldn't be able to accept nearly any job, or be happy in one.
You've determined:
Most companies are bad/wrong/awful/burnout machines
All recruiters are either spambots or leeches
If you have this mindset, you've set the bar way too high. You say you've turned down many positions, and yet are in a big financial struggle now. Take a job that doesn't sound quite as bad as the others, before you're forced to take ANY job. I'll bet this rubs off on anyone who's interviewing you as well. You obviously have the skills and experience necessary to be a good engineer from what you've said, but engineers are in higher demand now than just about ever. If you can't find a job to your liking, the problem is you, not the industry.
I understand where you're coming from, but I also feel there's a serious argument to be made, Moral Mazes / Peopleware style, that most companies are bad/wrong/awful/burnout machines. The fact that open-plan offices are widely used is a perfect example. It's a condition fundamentally at odds with the productivity it is alleged to facilitate. Cost has long been disproven as a favorable factor for choosing open-plan, as the productivity losses quickly destroy any real estate savings. Instead it's about status and affiliation -- accepting non-functional designs in order to seem impressive looking in a superficial way.
And something like open-plan offices are merely the tip of the iceberg. Superficial reasons for big showy tech re-orgs around the latest and greatest trends are very similar. The ambient background of political dysfunction intensified in start-up environments, etc. Huge exposes in major media outlets describing the way e.g. Amazon employees are made to cry frequently at their desks and encouraged to use gossip hotlines to backstab colleagues, followed shortly by their own CEO releasing a statement to shareholders basically saying if you don't like the cutthroat, anti-human environment then just get out. ...
It is a mammoth challenge to find employment that is minimally acceptable for human cognitive health. The way corporations behave, a la Moral Mazes, is just exceptionally maladaptive for human cognitive function. There is real theory behind it.
In my own experience, part of what made my previous employment so disastrous is that it involved an employer doing some substantially illegal things to me -- to the point that I had to hire an expensive employment attorney when leaving that company and go through a bunch of hoops to document things. Maybe you've been lucky to never have been treated this way by a company, but I can tell you it's real, and many, many executives go absolutely unchecked and have incredibly harmful views about how they believe they are allowed to treat people.
You're getting all your news and concepts about how to work from one perspective - your reply confirms to me that your assumptions are killing you. Many many companies allow remote work. I have an open office which I dislike, but I can also work at home 2-3 days a week.
It's true, people don't trust companies like they did in the 50s, for good reason. Many many people though have families and work is not the highest priority in their lives. There are entire industries full of people that respect each other and just work 9-5.
You are being taken in by the anecdotes and horror stories and ignoring the vast majority of people who are paid well, go home to their families on time, rarely have to do overtime, and aren't terribly worried about a layoff but could find another job easily. People in many companies are treated with professional and personal respect. It's not that hard to find one even. But you need to believe they exist or your mindset will just be one of trying to find all these triggers and land mines you've set our before yourself.
I have no college degree or any eminent qualifications, and am not the best coder around. But I have had no problem getting hired into good companies that respect me and I think its because I don't allow myself to get jaded after many setbacks.
I appreciate your reply, but I also feel you are too nonchalantly dismissing something like e.g. Moral Mazes, which is a significant longitudinal study of bureaucracy and management hierarchy, using tools from academic sociology. It's not just some fly-by-night opinion.
In my experience, it is extremely hard to find jobs that provide a combination of paying well, allowing you a personal life, and having reasonable enough hours to avoid excessive fatigue or burnout. I've interviewed with places top to bottom and had four post-graduate jobs, all of which failed in at least two of those categories while having appeared like they would succeed in all of them when I did interviews. All of my friends and colleagues report similar anecdotes, as do many, many commenters here. The anecdotes describing jobs in which you feel you are well paid, have a feasible work/life balance, and freedom to pursue a personal life, are unequivocally in the minority. That's not "my perspective" ... that's just collecting data in the wild.
And though I think I've had it bad, my experiences have been like a dream vacation or something compared to what my mother has lived through in her job as a court reporter in a small town courthouse. Rampant sexism, ageism, uncompensated overtime which is not allowed for her position, bosses (judges) who demean her, yell at her, do illegal things like carry out their private landlord affairs in their judges chambers during work hours and force her to handle the paperwork for it.
Or my brother, a factory worker in the area whose work stories almost cause me to have an aneurysm out of frustration. More uncompensated overtime, overtly insulting and demeaning bosses, sales staff who make jokes about all the catered meetings they get and how they will leave the day-old food out on the factory floor because the floor workers are so desperate for a free meal that they'll eat anything. He earns just barely over the poverty line, has no vacation, commutes around 40 miles each way plus traffic, and every single other job in the region that he could possibly get is no better. All so he can just barely service college loan debt that has been utterly useless for getting employment.
The problem of finding employment that can sustain human cognitive health is massive and hearing you utterly dismiss it like this makes me feel like you reside in an incredible bubble where you've been shielded from what it's really like, and that while I appreciate your advice, it is just not applicable.
Again, I'm just saying you're comparing the perfect vs the better than almost anyone else (by your own admission). Paying well to you might mean 400k a year, I don't know. I think its eminently possible to get 100k-150k/yr as a senior developer and not work over 40 hours a week. Maybe not where you live though, but remote I'd imagine you could easily find something for 80k at 40hrs a week or less.
I do understand the drudgery of work, and how it can hold back cognitive development and just plain be unhealthy at times. I don't understand how you can compare against your mother and brother's experiences and still come out saying you won't take a job. I'm admittedly in a fine place right now, but I remember very clearly when I wasn't.
I'm not talking about mere drudgery. Look, I've got a decent amount of work experience. I know the 40-hour grind. I know how to navigate tricky relationships with colleagues. I know how to deal with and succeed in average-case corporate politics. None of that is what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about abject treatment. Being demeaned, discriminated against, yelled at, spoken to in exceedingly unprofessional ways and having no recourse to defend yourself, and being 'punished' for things that the executives may dislike, but for which it is literally illegal to punish employees (like violations of the NLRA).
That's the big stuff. Smaller stuff would be the ubiquity of unhealthy working conditions, bait-and-switch jobs that require incomprehensibly higher quality work experience than what they plan to give out, severe politics, and overwork (which, seriously, I don't know where you are finding these magical 150k jobs for 40 hrs a week. The experience of literally every single software professional I know is completely at odds with that, and my own experience is as well).
That you glibly throw in things like "but remote I'd imagine you could easily find something for 80k at 40hrs a week or less" is frustrating. For example, in my current rural living situation, I do not even have access to stable high-speed internet. I use 4G tethering through my phone just to browse the internet most of the time, and even that is slow and spotty. There is no way I could work remotely here, and even at that $80k would not be enough for basic cost of living plus support for the on-going family obligations (and would be a drastic pay cut for me anyway). To boot, there really isn't a large supply of remote jobs. I frequently check for them at Stack Overflow Careers, We Work Remotely, and other sites, and there's just nothing. Like most other sources, I have to filter our tons and tons of irrelevant web framework jobs, and for what's left, nothing is remote. Even finding jobs that offer adequate (or any) relocation assistance is incredibly hard. Basically, if you don't already live in a glamorous urban area, you get shit on. That's not just some angsty comment. That's just simply what has happened when I search for a job.
Many of the things you say sound reasonable on a surface layer, but there isn't the substance behind them. The reality of the situation is just not within the bubble you've been able to experience. That's not your fault -- indeed it is near impossible to adequately get someone to understand my situation. Many of my friends are used to spending tons on eating out at expensive urban restaurants, buying expensive subscription services for fashion and entertainment, living with ubiquitous public transit and easily available access to high-speed internet, etc. They can't understand life in poor America when you flip all those things and live hundreds of miles from any region which could even remotely offer a relevant or minimally-well-paying job to support your immediate needs.
If you live in an area like that and don't even have a reliable Internet connection, then no wonder you don't have a job. Blame yourself for where you have chosen to live rather than the evils of corporate greed.
Have you even read any of the rest of the thread? You sound ridiculous.
I had no choice but to move here due to a significant set of family medical and legal circumstances that I am supporting (both financially and by doing full-time care, childcare, and other tasks every day). This is where my immediate family is from (one of them still owns and operates part of some farmland, not here but in North Dakota) -- I didn't choose this, but it's my family's history. I don't prefer living here, but I prefer to make sure my family is OK rather than abandon them for urban entitlement.
The fact that you think people should "blame themselves" for choosing to live here is outrageous to me. At the least the people around here are good-hearted and care about other humans. I'd rather live around here than around people like you, absolutely.
It was analyzed considerably in the book Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams which even has a chapter entitled "Bring Back the Door." Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Stack Exchange and Fog Creek, is also deeply committed to providing private offices even for workers in Manhattan, and had some SO tech bloggers recently wrote up a little about the cost per square foot and some other financial considerations when searching for new urban office space.
I don't actually consider this to be interesting or controversial. It's been talked about and thought about significantly since at least the 80s when Peopleware was written, and even much further back. Christopher Alexander also talks about the detrimental effects of poor office design in The Timeless Way of Building.
You can Google for dozens of studies about communicable diseases in open plan offices, decreased morale, cognitive health problems related to lack of privacy, fatigue caused by listening to music for too many hours, effects of curtailing workplace conversations and speaking superficially to avoid overstimulation from constant contact and interaction, etc. etc.
I'll put some links at the bottom (you can easily find summaries of Peopleware and it's easy to find the Stack Overflow real estate blog posts). But before I do, I just want to point out that the whole issue is well modeled by what Michael O. Church called "artificial scarcity" -- that executives and corporate management are fully aware of what they are doing and that spending money of gaudy and over-the-top open-plan offices with climbing walls, gourmet cafes, and hideous open-plan sweatshops workspaces, they are perpetuating a hedonic treadmill atmosphere. Getting that coveted private space becomes the carrot they can dangle, basically starting you out by making you work in poor conditions and making you feel like you must sublimate away your human needs to signal loyalty, and if you do that long enough, you might be rewarded with a physical environment that supports basic human needs like privacy and quiet. Many firms just do cargo cult copying of trendy start-ups, and so they do this by accident. But you really do have to put your radar out and be extremely careful not to work for the firms that do it intentionally -- places where, as described in Moral Mazes, there is real, intentional effort placed on social engineering employees and pitting their intrinsic human needs against what the employer demands of them.
I once worked for a company that had offices across the U.S. Their Columbus, Ohio, office mostly housed executives, regional sales, and a large portion of the company's senior HR staff. When a new CTO took over, he was able to rally others in the company to a mandate that "engineers like open-plan spaces" and that they needed to radically alter their current office spaces, moving into artsy neighborhoods of metro areas, loft spaces, creating a cross-country theme of exposed brick and ductwork with fancy kitchens, glass walls, etc. Totally cliche. Douglas Coupland couldn't have scripted it better.
When I did my exit interview with that company, I talked with an HR rep from Columbus about how the distraction and noise of the open-plan layout in Boston was just killing me. As an introvert, it made me feel exhausted and like eyes were constantly on me no matter what (even if people overtly insisted they weren't). And it was just impossible to work. She told me that the exact same thing happened to the Columbus office, and that there was not even an engineering presence there. Most people there had 10+ years of tenure with the company and had always worked with private offices, and in fact really needed them because all of them handled private HR calls and employee personal matters all day every day, things that can't be done in an open-plan area. Now they were constantly crowding each other out of booking the few private conference rooms and making everything exceptionally hard.
Amazingly, the company spent over $12 million on just that Columbus office re-design!! They actually spent money to tear down productivity-enhancing privacy features and replace them with superficially trendy open-plan designs that were overwhelmingly obviously counter-productive, all under a mandate about engineering which did not even take place in that office location!
When people try to tell me it's about saving money, I just laugh. Maybe for some bootstrapped start-up accepting zero outside funding. But for any company with VC backing or any established, revenue-generated business, it's a million percent bullshit.
> "Our results categorically contradict the industry-accepted wisdom that open-plan layout enhances communication between colleagues and improves occupants' overall work environmental satisfaction considering previous researchers' finding that satisfaction with workspace environment is closely related to perceived productivity, job satisfaction and organisational outcomes, the open-plan proponents' argument that open-plan improves morale and productivity appears to have no basis in the research literature."
You do have to be extremely careful about confirmation bias, of course. You can Google a zillion opinion pieces arguing voiciferously for or against open-plan offices. But the real productivity research does not lend any support to them.
Peopleware is already on my mailing list and I've just added Moral Mazes too.
Would you say, then, that corporations who switch to open plan offices are just acting irrationally? They think they're going to get a benefit out of it but actually it's a net negative?
As long as developers continuing agreeing to work for them without transferring the negative externality (degraded productivity, degraded mental health) back on them (by boycotting companies with open-plan seating for example), then we are facilitating the rationality of their actions.
It would be irrational if they really, actually wanted your productivity, but they don't. Mostly they want create in-paper head count with fancy credential and experience, who all look and act like cliche nerd stereotypes to impress shallow investors.
They are hiring you to effectively be an office decoration, not a productive worker. So open-plan eye candy is rational so long as the workers themselves refuse to stand up for being treated in a minimally healthy way and refuse such companies.
They are hiring you to effectively be an office decoration, not a productive worker. So open-plan eye candy is rational so long as the workers themselves refuse to stand up for being treated in a minimally healthy way and refuse such companies.
In theory, sure, but does it hold up in practice? In theory, programmers have leverage right now because there is more need for their expertise than there are programmers to fill that need. In practice, I see businesses who are perfectly willing to leave those positions open for years rather than change their hiring and/or office policies. Boycotting them won't change this because "best practices" in tech are viral and completely irrational. They work more like fashions than they do peer reviewed research. Even if everybody boycotted those startup companies and they had absolutely no engineers, they'd still get funding and they'd still influence tech "fashion". They've gotten really good at it over the years, too, employing propaganda techniques right out of Mao's little red book[0].
Anyway, all of that is to say we the employees don't have the leverage people think we do, even when our work is in demand. We're being manipulated en masse and most of us would rather work and keep ourselves fed and comfortable than take on any kind of risk. After all, if we were able to tolerate risk we would have opted out of this nonsense years ago and started our own company.
I was going to say that this seems like an overly cynical reaction to the parent poster's anecdote. But then I read your story in another comment that described your 14-month unemployment.
I have had good experiences with recruiters from LinkedIn, leading all the way to reasonable offers. To be fair, I have the halo effect of being currently employed. I acknowledge that the software industry has a highly irrational aversion to unemployed developers, much to its detriment.
I do want to add that for new graduates and the currently employed, recruiter messages on LinkedIn aren't strictly a fishing expedition and do lead to offers. n=2 in this comment thread, though.
I sincerely hope you find what you're looking for. As trite and uninformed as it sounds, perhaps temporarily moving back to Boston or another high job-density area would help overcome this. It wasn't clear in your other post if you were willing to relocate.
I'm definitely willing to relocate, but cannot do so unless the company provides relocation. If I can move for a definite job, that's one thing, and I can make arrangement here in the family situation to handle that. But I can't put the family stuff on hold just to move on a whim and maybe find a job. Even when I was already living in Boston, I didn't have much luck there and especially found the start-up working conditions quite poor.
I have been in a similar situation before. At that time I took whatever I could get and downplayed my qualifications which were orthogonal to the work. It was literally a short-term, moderately dangerous laborer job so enthusiasm and talk about my exercise regimen helped me the most when applying. At the time I didn't have to support a family so I was more flexible with income.
I'm sharing my anecdote to illustrate that maybe it's worthwhile to accept some red flags for stable employment for a year or two. I don't know your situation in detail so there are likely many factors I haven't considered. I wish the best of luck to you.
> When recruiters do put you forward for a job, they require you to give up all negotiation power in advance, and generally they are paid bonuses on top of their commission if they can ensure a candidate accepts a low salary. When they say "my commission is based on the salary you get so I'm trying to get you the most that I can" it is, truly, complete bullshit.
You are dealing with some really bad recruiters (the type that spam everyone) if they force you to give up any/all negotiation power. I've found a number of jobs through recruiters and I always got a 10-20% increase total cash compensation and full negotiating power to say no or ask for more before saying yes.
I've dealt with several recruiters each from Huxley, NJF, Selby Jennings, Open System Technologies, Crystal Equation, Workbridge Associates, Jobspring Partners, Cybercoders, and Grady Levkov. And also one from Gina's Tech Jobs, and two freelance recruiters who had been recommended to me by friends.
If, for example, you say you won't reveal your previous salary or your current expectations until after speaking with someone to get a sense of whether you're a good fit for the role, then they will throw every excuse at you to get you to say a number first, and if you still don't, they simply will not work with you. No matter how much I practiced and no matter how politely and professionally I dodged the question, I did not ever encounter a single recruiter who would agree to help me without first having me name a concrete, specific number for my salary.
In a few cases, the recruiter even told me that to submit any applications on my behalf, they needed years of salary history including any equity or bonus payments. In one case when the number of years needed was 7, when I refused, I never heard from her again. That recruiter was actually referred to me by a trusted friend who had used her help to get a job, so it was not some fly-by-night scamster. While my friend, I guess, was OK sharing 7 years of data with some random recruiter, I was not, and so they simply did not contact me further.
On the few occasions that I've opened up about what would actually make me excited about a job (having a quiet, private office is by far #1), they basically just say "yeah right, never going to happen, move on." So if I stick up for what I am seeking (or at least was seeking at that time) they also just discontinue all contact.
Finally I just gave up on this and stopped ever telling recruiters anything at all that I felt they might think would make me 'weird' or 'unusual' or 'quirky' to present as a candidate, but because they all solely cared about getting that concrete salary number in the first conversation, this largely had no impact other than at least making the conversations take less time.
They also often submitted my email/phone/resume to their general recruiters, so then I started getting spam mail and unsolicited phone calls at odd hours about positions that are extremely inappropriate for someone with my particular background.
The time spent patiently explaining my background and current career goals to recruiters has been painfully wasted. If there is some way to locate good recruiters apart from the firms I've contacted and the people referred to me by friends, I certainly do not know how to do it.
If someone can do all of what they propose, he could as well package his day into some kind of product or service, and then sell that instead.
One reason why people want to be employees and not enterpreneur-cum-salesman is exactly because they do not want to do all of that, or are simply not capable of doing all of that.
Ever since I learned to repackage my hourly efforts into sell-able products and services, I stopped looking for jobs and just sold products and services instead. In the end, an employer is just someone who repackages your hours into sell-able products and services.
> since people need to engage over several months to get value out of the advice
This is false.
> I find popups annoying too
I do not believe you, if you did you would know that often the first response to popup annoyance is to close the window.
What do your analytics actually say happens when that popup shows? It will show that I was reading your article up until that appeared, then I entered garbage for an email and closed the window.
Will my email GoF##k@yourself.com be counted as a success or failure for your popup?
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. If you have money, you will have more opportunities than if you don't. Same with having a big network. But you can develop a professional network just by talking or writing - it takes some time, but it's not as much of a gamble as getting rich. It's fine to "behave very awkwardly". You're not asking these people to be your friends, you're talking about an industry that you're interested in.
Why is it necessary? Well, think of you and job openings as nodes on a graph. Each job is only going to look out through its network until it finds someone to fill it. The more connections you have, the better your odds of being found early in the search - which in this case, means being found at all. People are just nodes on the graph between you and a job. Again, they don't have to be social connections. It's in their best interests to find a good candidate quickly too.
But it's not "punishing" people for not being outgoing. This is actually actionable advise: if you network isn't hot, start lower, and warm it up first. It's hard, yes, and if you're really socially awkward, it will take some training to get used to. Nobody says you'll have to enjoy it, but sometimes the path to success have some unenjoyable steps along the way.
It is "actionable" exactly like the rich guy's advice to "just make money" is actionable. Outgoing personalities have no trouble with it, but you can scream at introverts all you want and end up claiming "it's all their own fault, I told them what to do, if they don't listen it's their own problem".
At the end of every one I ask: "Is there anyone else you think I should talk to?" and "Do you currently have any opportunities at your company for me?". Rinse repeat.
I guarantee investing in 30 informational interviews will yield huge dividends vs. 30 career fairs, a personal pitch deck, starting a blog, dusting off your resume, or God Forbid: applying to jobs through Linkedin.
http://www.grahamwahlberg.com/book
I wrote a free guide on this if anyone is interested, would love feedback.