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You would be surprised. While I am not looking, I get recruited often. I probably spend too much time giving recruiters feedback but I can't help myself. I am b

by 20years 10y ago

You would be surprised. While I am not looking, I get recruited often. I probably spend too much time giving recruiters feedback but I can't help myself. I am blunt and honest and recruiters actually respond well to it. I refuse to take captive positions partly because of the craziness in the workplace but also because I can make much more contracting then what most employers are willing to pay. Funny thing is now you are starting to see companies looking to hire contractors and wanting to make the contractors jump through these silly hoops (taking silly quizzes, take home projects, etc.) I always come back with a proposal that includes cost & timeline to complete the take home project. I have gotten a couple gigs that way :)

noobermin 10y ago
You're probably the one-in-a-million he talks about. This isn't good advice for the other 1e6-1.
- jamestanderson 10y ago
  .
  - gjm11 10y ago
    "1e6" means "1 x 10^6", not "1^6". (And it always has done, at least for as long as it's meant anything at all.)
ModernMech 10y ago
I tried this with Google and got the "Well... bye" response. I was contacted by a recruiter who said she "specializes in finding candidates who are already employed". As I guess it goes with Google, she didn't even have a position in mind, she just wanted to put me in the generic hiring funnel. Now, I'm not even a developer; I'm a researcher with a PhD in computer engineering, and a BS in physics. I've taken 1 algorithms course in my life, and that was over 10 years ago. So she asks me, "How much of your time to I spend writing code?" I tell her, maybe 10%-20%. And then she jumps right into asking algorithm complexity questions and generic trivia: what is the average run time of quicksort, what is 356 in binary, estimate 2^20, etc. I was getting some of them right, some of them wrong, but eventually I had to stop her and say "Look, I don't really know what is going on right now. You told me you were contacting me based on my experience, but now you're asking questions that don't have anything to do with what I do. It sounds like the role you're trying to fill doesn't align well with my experience." That was pretty much the end of the conversation. It's not even that I feel like I shouldn't get vetted. I should! But do it based on what I know. Ask me linear algebra trivia, or how robotics algorithms work and their time complexity, or ask me about topology or statistics or machine learning. Why are you grilling me on sorting algorithms? I think if it works anywhere, it's going to be at smaller shops, where they don't have a line of candidates stretching around the block.
- 20years 10y ago
  Yeah it is not going to work at Google or any of the big guys. Google can get away with this. They earned that right imo. Startups that pay crap or most others shouldn't be able to get away with it. They do because developers are allowing them to.

by 20years 10y ago

noobermin 10y ago

You're probably the one-in-a-million he talks about. This isn't good advice for the other 1e6-1.

jamestanderson 10y ago
.
- gjm11 10y ago
  "1e6" means "1 x 10^6", not "1^6". (And it always has done, at least for as long as it's meant anything at all.)

ModernMech 10y ago

I tried this with Google and got the "Well... bye" response. I was contacted by a recruiter who said she "specializes in finding candidates who are already employed". As I guess it goes with Google, she didn't even have a position in mind, she just wanted to put me in the generic hiring funnel. Now, I'm not even a developer; I'm a researcher with a PhD in computer engineering, and a BS in physics. I've taken 1 algorithms course in my life, and that was over 10 years ago. So she asks me, "How much of your time to I spend writing code?" I tell her, maybe 10%-20%. And then she jumps right into asking algorithm complexity questions and generic trivia: what is the average run time of quicksort, what is 356 in binary, estimate 2^20, etc. I was getting some of them right, some of them wrong, but eventually I had to stop her and say "Look, I don't really know what is going on right now. You told me you were contacting me based on my experience, but now you're asking questions that don't have anything to do with what I do. It sounds like the role you're trying to fill doesn't align well with my experience." That was pretty much the end of the conversation. It's not even that I feel like I shouldn't get vetted. I should! But do it based on what I know. Ask me linear algebra trivia, or how robotics algorithms work and their time complexity, or ask me about topology or statistics or machine learning. Why are you grilling me on sorting algorithms? I think if it works anywhere, it's going to be at smaller shops, where they don't have a line of candidates stretching around the block.

20years 10y ago
Yeah it is not going to work at Google or any of the big guys. Google can get away with this. They earned that right imo. Startups that pay crap or most others shouldn't be able to get away with it. They do because developers are allowing them to.