9 ms·

> most programmers I know receive several offers a month :'| Could you take a look at how they're receiving offers and perhaps put some suggestions together o

• not_kurt_godel 10y ago
  The programmers you know aren't very good, sorry.
  • nikofeyn 10y ago
    i am very good at what i do but when software engineers try to act like they know how to hire people, you have problems. i have been interviewed by a company that prided themselves on hiring smart, diverse people who weren't necessarily experienced in a certain field and language. they literally called this out in the job description. the interviewer proceeded to ask me a deluge of very specific questions about said language, including implementation details of the language itself! all of the questions could have been looked up by an intelligent person online within minutes. and this was a well established, small, but well known company. all of my software interviews can be summed up with two words: algorithm questions. but yet, my skills lie in architecture, writing bug free code, general design skills, testing, UI dev and client feedback, etc. none of these skills have never had the chance to be discussed in an interview. i came from another field and haven't spent a lot of time in the algorithm space. i can work through them as needed in interviews just as i do in a job, but that is rarely cared about in interviews. people want binary answers.
    • WalterBright 10y ago
      It's often possible for you to drive the interview rather than waiting for the interviewer to ask your questions. Bring up and expound on your skills if they're not asking the right questions.
      • mgkimsal 10y ago
        Whether or not I get an offer, I tend to the enjoy the process more when I try to be collaborative in an interview process, vs waiting to be asked questions. I naturally want to show off some stuff and ask questions - if even that doesn't go well, it's probably not going to be a good culture fit, regardless of whether I can do the raw work.
  • bpchaps 10y ago
    Or, I dunno, they live in a place without a condensed, ego mad, hyper-inflated job market?
    • briandear 10y ago
      I live in the South of France and my LinkedIn profile says so.. I get at least 10 recruiter emails a week with 3 or them being for remote positions. Geography is not a huge factor, it's about the skill match.
      • marmaduke 10y ago
        Do you work remotely or for a local company? Most jobs I find seem to be in Paris.
      • bpchaps 10y ago
        And I've received 17 this week with difficulties finding jobs still. Mostly within Chicago, but a lot are remote - what's your point? You're still oversimplifying the issue.
    • nommm-nommm 10y ago
      Or are over 30?
  • turaw 10y ago
    How do you signal goodness, though? I wound up with a cushy position (largely by luck), but practically everyone else is barely scraping by. Side projects? Prestigious internships? l337 hax0r skillz? Maybe the 80/20 rule [1] applies and there are only a few, key factors that make some applicants stand out? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle In case you didn't know this but srs you're on hn
  • fsloth 10y ago
    I think the correct conclusion is that their profiles are not visible for recruiters. To my knowledge there is no proven way of finding out how talented one is except working with them for a while. The best way to gauge ones skill level, IMO, is to observe how their code survives contact with the end user for a couple of years.
  • kybernetikos 10y ago
    I've worked with programmers from many of the big names (amazon, apple, facebook, google), and I've met quite a few programmers at least as good in little out of the way companies. I think recruiters massively overvalue having one of the big names on a cv.
    • Joeri 10y ago
      Then again, if you do have a big name on your resume, it lets the recruiter reasonably safely assume you can program well enough. That sort of confidence in a candidate is hard to overvalue.
      • kybernetikos 10y ago
        There are lots of things that can give you as good or better confidence that a candidate can program well enough, and a big name on a CV is no guarantee either.
• ahlatimer 10y ago
  1. Where are you/they? I got a ton of recruiter spam when I lived in SF and a fair amount now that I live in Austin (the majority of which are companies that want me to relocate back to SF). I received 0 when I lived in El Paso, TX (where I'm from). If you're in an area that doesn't have a hot tech market, you're likely going to have a harder time finding a tech job. 2. What technologies do they specialize in? I see lots of job posts for Rails and React and relatively few for COBOL. I see a lot of jobs for Java, but a higher percentage of those are of the lower paying variety. This is likely location dependent and is a bit of a catch-22. 3. Are they any good, but perhaps more importantly, are they able to demonstrate that they're any good in an interview setting? There are a fair number of truly bad programmers out there. There's also a fair number of programmers who may be good but are unable to demonstrate that in an interview. Interviewing is hard to get right -- everyone has their own take on it, and it's rarely backed up back actual data. The people you see getting tons of offers probably have the right combination of location, resume, and interview ability. If I had to pick the single most important factor in getting a lot of offers, it's location. If you are in an area with limited tech jobs, the number of offers you can get is obviously going to be limited as well.
  • Chris2048 10y ago
    In my hometown, I couldn't even get a job in a computer store, let alone software development. :'-/ Getting a career at all without a CS degree required moving away..
• Raticide 10y ago
  I get random recruiters poking me on LinkedIn. Only about 1 every couple months. But I'm not looking for work and not a big user of LinkedIn. I'm in Auckland, New Zealand and have a bunch of experience if that matters.
  • nathan_f77 10y ago
    Hey, from what I can tell, Auckland is still not a great place to work as a software developer. I would probably recommend looking at some companies in Wellington or Christchurch, or becoming a freelancer for clients in the US.
• ryanobjc 10y ago
  Honestly, the first step is: have a job at a well regarded company. There is no stronger signal that you're a good developer than already having a job at a company that has stringent hiring standards. I get multiple serious recruiter contacts a week. Mostly via Linkedin, but also via direct email for the enterprising recruiters. All from companies most people would kill to work for. I even get linked-in email from linkedin recruiters. I ignore most of them. They know it's part of the game. One day in the future I may need them, and there's no point in pissing them off - they're only doing what they can. You gotta have a huge funnel to hire even 1 person (it's probably 1000:1 for contacts/hire)
  • GoToRO 10y ago
    True. I interviewed once and they told me flat out that they didn't really read my CV but they saw I was hired at a big company and they liked that. People are just people no matter what role they have in that moment and most people are susceptible to be impressed by superficial things (like your current company name). Also most interviewers failed the interviews I was in... :)
    • qznc 10y ago
      Makes you want to give them a joke CV with a section "Companies I have not worked at yet" and just list some buzzwords like Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.
  • ufukbay 10y ago
    This is absolutely true and was how I found my dream job or more like how a recruiter found my dream job for me. I'm using Xing since I live in Germany but I think it should work similar on LinkedIn. I can understand that if you are starting fresh you won't be able to be already employed by a well known company. However you have to start somewhere and it's important that you get some experience in the field you want to work in. Obviously this depends on the job you are applying for whether it's a junior or senior position etc. I think it's important that you don't have big gaps in your CV and can show or present strong social/soft skills. One of the most important things for me is to be honest. Be absolutely honest about what you can do and not. Don't flood your profile with all the latest buzzwords and technologies if you never worked with these before. This might attract couple recruiters but it will be most likely the black sheep amoung them. Be serious, honest, friendly, open minded and just yourself. :)
• WalterBright 10y ago
  Programmers can do very well by becoming contributors to high profile open source projects and standards committees. Post pull requests on github, write tech articles, answer tech questions on reddit and hacker news, and do it under your own name. Register yourname.com and put your resume there. Essentially, make a name for yourself instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you.
  • WalterBright 10y ago
    I also know for a fact that many companies go to programming conferences to look for people to hire. Attending those conferences is a great way to network. Even better is to present at a conference.
    • bcook 10y ago
      You seem to be well aware of this aspect of the job market; do you have blog or something with more in-depth musings on this topic? If not, then can you share some tips on how to concisely include a job applicant's open-source contributions in their resume?
      • JanezStupar 10y ago
        Just list them under your projects category on your website. Also that is what your github account is for.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    • d2p 10y ago
      I've also seen a lot of recruiters going through GitHub and contacting people that way lately. People with public source on GH tend to be really passionate devs because they're frequently spending time outside work doing dev.
  • jwdunne 10y ago
    Thank you. This is perhaps the most succinct guide to marketing your skills I've read.
• mostlystatic 10y ago
  Maybe I'm being overly literal, but do some people just receive offer letters without going through an interview process? Sure, I get lots of recruiter emails, but almost all of them are sent identically to 100 other people as well. Most emails I get come from external recruitment firms, only sometimes does someone at a company reach out to me directly. But even then it's only an invitation to apply, it doesn't mean I'm actually especially likely to get the job.
  • briandear 10y ago
    I got a no-interview, no resume offer for a contracting gig simply off the basis that my LinkedIn showed that I worked at "reputable company." I couldn't believe it -- but the contract worked out and everyone was happy. Social proof often means more than a resume or even Github.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • fleitz 10y ago
    Yes. I was taking my wife out to dinner once and a recruiter stopped us (me) in the street to get me to work for their company, technically I interviewed but it's kinda just a formality when they want you that badly. Apparently a former co-worker said I was a genius. As others have mentioned, it's social proof.
  • nfriedly 10y ago
    It happened to me recently, the offer was from someone I had previously worked with who just knew and trusted me. (I also get about 1-2 recruiter spams a week and occasionally one that seems genuinely tailored to me specifically. This might be what the OP was calling "offers".)
• beatpanda 10y ago
  I don't have a big name on my resume (unless you count freelancing for EFF). All I have is a public portfolio and a well-manicured LinkedIn profile, and I get several cold calls or emails from recruiters per month.
• fleitz 10y ago
  Post on LinkedIn, add recruiters as friends (or whatever they are called on linkedin), look for what jobs they are looking for, add those skills to your linked in profile. Wait for them to find you.
• codingdave 10y ago
  In my community, most programmers receive several inquiries a month (or week, or even day)... but saying there are several offers a month would imply they are actively interviewing enough for inquiries to become offers. The "several offers a month" is an exaggeration of reality that I hear often, but when you really dig into it is just that... exaggerated.
  • mgkimsal 10y ago
    Thank you for the clarification - this is exactly my experience too, and that of most others. I don't think I've known anyone in the past 20 years of working who consistently received multiple job offers per month, especially when they weren't interviewing. Most of the inquiries I know of (for myself and others) are generic recruiter spam, or word of mouth referrals by people looking for really cheap work. So yeah, there's lots of work out there to be done, but much of it is in far less than ideal situations.
  • Kurtz79 10y ago
    It's my experience as well. I do receive several "inquiries" per week, mostly due the fact of having left my CV (obviously now very outdated) in many job sites when I was looking for a job in London, almost 10 years ago. They are of the type "Dear [Name], I hope you are well. Would this role be of interest for you in your current situation ? [role description]. If not, do you know some friend of yours that would ? Best regards, [name of person totally unknown to me]." This is not even a serious inquiry, much less an "offer".
• nommm-nommm 10y ago
  This is highly geographic specific, there are no absolutes.
• Iv 10y ago
  the only programmers that I know that have a hard time finding a job are those who only have a very narrow specialization, typically on some web technology. People who focus on solely ASP.Net without an understanding of the underlying tech will have a harder time finding a job than someone who knows several language and understands how a computer works.