13 ms·

All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

363 points by BenjaminTodd 10y ago

BenjaminTodd 10y ago
Hi everyone, 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.
- sshykes 10y ago
  Please get rid of the annoying "this will only take a second" popup, I was reading but closed the window immediately when that shit started.
  - BenjaminTodd 10y ago
    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.
    - tbirdz 10y ago
      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.
      - robertwiblin 10y ago
        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/ https://80000hours.org/career-guide/ Or you can watch the whole thing starting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VRL-ByuQuo&list=PL-BRtcBm4Yj6ZpOG49cbHut0gtuCEVXfk&index=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VRL-ByuQuo&list=PL-BRtcBm4Y... Most people don't have time all at once and report wanting to do it in a few sessions. Where on the site wasn't sufficiently direct about that? :)
        BenjaminTodd 10y ago
        We'll also add a free ebook at some point.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - rhizome 10y ago
      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/ http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/
      - mdpopescu 10y ago
        Thanks; some of these are so bad they reminded me of [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tunnel_under_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tunnel_under_the_World
  - thenobsta 10y ago
    I understand the pop up. 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. Content is good though.
    - robertwiblin 10y ago
      Hey thenobsta, that's a good point about it redirecting you to another page. I'll discuss it with our tech guy tomorrow.
    - BenjaminTodd 10y ago
      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.
      - rhizome 10y ago
        It isn't any harder than saving the current url to a cookie and redirecting to that value afterwards.
- graham1776 10y ago
  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 http://www.grahamwahlberg.com/book
  - BenjaminTodd 10y ago
    cool, I'll take a read
- enimodas 10y ago
  In part 1, income vs life satisfaction, maybe for correctness you could mention that the functions don't taper off, they behave logarithmic.
  - BenjaminTodd 10y ago
    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.
  - BenjaminTodd 10y ago
    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.
- cottonseed 10y ago
  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?
  - BenjaminTodd 10y ago
    no, thanks, I'll check it out.
henryaj 10y ago
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.
p4wnc6 10y ago
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.
mjevans 10y ago
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?
- merpnderp 10y ago
  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.
  - p4wnc6 10y ago
    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.
    - merpnderp 10y ago
      Maybe I should contact his recruiter and find out :P don't tell my boss.
yumaikas 10y ago
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.
- robertwiblin 10y ago
  Hah that was me actually! :D Glad it brought a smile to your face.
- Xcelerate 10y ago
  That made my day as well. I'm actually debating subscribing — it's not often that you find someone who tends to that level of detail.
  - robertwiblin 10y ago
    We hate pop-ups too, but it's the only way we can make ends meet and keep the site running. :)
merpnderp 10y ago
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.
- oppositelock 10y ago
  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.
  - strasser 10y ago
    > It's illegal to work for free today Really? What law is this?
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf 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.
  - derekp7 10y ago
    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.
    - vonmoltke 10y ago
sqeaky 10y ago
> 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?
- random_rr 10y ago
  calm down. Newsletters drive Internet business. If you don't know this... Don't walk outside, it's an even scarier place out there. Don't like pop ups? Close tab, move on. Or... Throw a childish hissy fit on HN over free content. You know, whichever sounds better to you.
  - mhurron 10y ago
    When the content owners of something that is annoying you show up in the same thread your in, it is appropriate to voice your complaints to them.
    - mynameisvlad 10y ago
      Sure, but there's mature ways of voicing your complaints that involve tact and common sense.
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      Voice complaints? Sure. Throw a tantrum? Not so much.
    - johnward 10y ago
      Yes and if the owner hears your complaint and doesn't care because he knows you're the vocal minority just move on.
- robertwiblin 10y ago
nicerobot 10y ago
Don't be "old".
- idrios 10y ago
  But still have "experience"
- johnward 10y ago
  Or have a family
linkregister 10y ago
I really liked this link that was mentioned deep in this post: http://cultivatedculture.com/how-to-get-a-job-anywhere-no-connections/ http://cultivatedculture.com/how-to-get-a-job-anywhere-no-co... 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.
TempleOS 10y ago
I am king solomon. I made the thrid Jewish temple. I have the first documented SETI contact -- God. I proved God ending centuries of philosophy. I am the most famous human in all history. Suck my cock, Fraiser, yiou retard niggerf.
J_Darnley 10y ago
Summary without all this marketing/HR bullshit: have Linus Torvalds' skill and be willing to work for 10k.
graham1776 10y ago
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. http://www.grahamwahlberg.com/book http://www.grahamwahlberg.com/book I wrote a free guide on this if anyone is interested, would love feedback.
- kirykl 10y ago
  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.
  - samfisher83 10y ago
    This hasn't worked too much for me either.
  - graham1776 10y ago
    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-interviews-what-to-do-when-they-say-no/ 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.
kelukelugames 10y ago
Does HN take feature requests? I wish there is a save button.
- el_benhameen 10y ago
  Vote a story up, then go to your profile and click "saved stories". All stories that you've upvoted are listed there.
  - gear54rus 10y ago
    Which is annoying to no end, these should be 2 different things IMO.
known 10y ago
Project yourself as a highly skilled wage slave
Hoasi 10y ago
"Do free work" "Negotiate after you’ve started" Terrible advices, right there.
LionessLover 10y ago
It's amazing, this site is more and more like reddit or Slashdot. This comment is heavily downvoted? It's punishing people for not being outgoing. More and more silly and baseless "I don't like this" downvotes n this forum. Actually, the number of people who are comfortable to follow this advice is likely far lower than the opposite. Also, it depends on your history: As an introvert you don't have a useful network to begin with, meaning the ones that are in your network tend not to be the well-connected types either. This is like advice from a rich guy "why don't you do it like me and make money?" Why is it necessary for everyone to be of one personality type? Why shouldn't people be able to get a job equally easily when they don't have the network and the drive to connect to lots of people, who actually behave very awkwardly when forced to do so?
- sp332 10y ago
  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.
- mseebach 10y ago
  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.
  - deleted 10y ago
Theodores 10y ago
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.
lazyant 10y ago
> it’s better to have 2 impressive achievements than 2 impressive achievements and 3 weak ones. This is logically false but psychologically true.
moribondus 10y ago
The article is a bit absurd. 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.

363 points by BenjaminTodd 10y ago

Hi everyone, 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.

sshykes 10y ago
Please get rid of the annoying "this will only take a second" popup, I was reading but closed the window immediately when that shit started.
- BenjaminTodd 10y ago
  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.
  - tbirdz 10y ago
    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.
    - robertwiblin 10y ago
      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/ https://80000hours.org/career-guide/ Or you can watch the whole thing starting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VRL-ByuQuo&list=PL-BRtcBm4Yj6ZpOG49cbHut0gtuCEVXfk&index=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VRL-ByuQuo&list=PL-BRtcBm4Y... Most people don't have time all at once and report wanting to do it in a few sessions. Where on the site wasn't sufficiently direct about that? :)
      - BenjaminTodd 10y ago
        We'll also add a free ebook at some point.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rhizome 10y ago
    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/ http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/
    - mdpopescu 10y ago
      Thanks; some of these are so bad they reminded me of [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tunnel_under_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tunnel_under_the_World
- thenobsta 10y ago
  I understand the pop up. 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. Content is good though.
  - robertwiblin 10y ago
    Hey thenobsta, that's a good point about it redirecting you to another page. I'll discuss it with our tech guy tomorrow.
  - BenjaminTodd 10y ago
    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.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      It isn't any harder than saving the current url to a cookie and redirecting to that value afterwards.
graham1776 10y ago
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 http://www.grahamwahlberg.com/book
- BenjaminTodd 10y ago
  cool, I'll take a read
enimodas 10y ago
In part 1, income vs life satisfaction, maybe for correctness you could mention that the functions don't taper off, they behave logarithmic.
- BenjaminTodd 10y ago
  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.
- BenjaminTodd 10y ago
  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.
cottonseed 10y ago
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?
- BenjaminTodd 10y ago
  no, thanks, I'll check it out.

henryaj 10y ago

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.

p4wnc6 10y ago

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.

mjevans 10y ago

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?

merpnderp 10y ago
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.
- p4wnc6 10y ago
  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.
  - merpnderp 10y ago
    Maybe I should contact his recruiter and find out :P don't tell my boss.

yumaikas 10y ago

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.

robertwiblin 10y ago
Hah that was me actually! :D Glad it brought a smile to your face.
Xcelerate 10y ago
That made my day as well. I'm actually debating subscribing — it's not often that you find someone who tends to that level of detail.
- robertwiblin 10y ago
  We hate pop-ups too, but it's the only way we can make ends meet and keep the site running. :)

merpnderp 10y ago

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.

oppositelock 10y ago
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.
- strasser 10y ago
  > It's illegal to work for free today Really? What law is this?
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf 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.
- derekp7 10y ago
  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.
  - vonmoltke 10y ago

sqeaky 10y ago

> 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?

random_rr 10y ago
calm down. Newsletters drive Internet business. If you don't know this... Don't walk outside, it's an even scarier place out there. Don't like pop ups? Close tab, move on. Or... Throw a childish hissy fit on HN over free content. You know, whichever sounds better to you.
- mhurron 10y ago
  When the content owners of something that is annoying you show up in the same thread your in, it is appropriate to voice your complaints to them.
  - mynameisvlad 10y ago
    Sure, but there's mature ways of voicing your complaints that involve tact and common sense.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    Voice complaints? Sure. Throw a tantrum? Not so much.
  - johnward 10y ago
    Yes and if the owner hears your complaint and doesn't care because he knows you're the vocal minority just move on.
robertwiblin 10y ago

nicerobot 10y ago

Don't be "old".

idrios 10y ago
But still have "experience"
johnward 10y ago
Or have a family

linkregister 10y ago

I really liked this link that was mentioned deep in this post: http://cultivatedculture.com/how-to-get-a-job-anywhere-no-connections/ http://cultivatedculture.com/how-to-get-a-job-anywhere-no-co... 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.

TempleOS 10y ago

I am king solomon. I made the thrid Jewish temple. I have the first documented SETI contact -- God. I proved God ending centuries of philosophy. I am the most famous human in all history. Suck my cock, Fraiser, yiou retard niggerf.

J_Darnley 10y ago

Summary without all this marketing/HR bullshit: have Linus Torvalds' skill and be willing to work for 10k.

graham1776 10y ago

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. http://www.grahamwahlberg.com/book http://www.grahamwahlberg.com/book I wrote a free guide on this if anyone is interested, would love feedback.

kirykl 10y ago
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.
- samfisher83 10y ago
  This hasn't worked too much for me either.
- graham1776 10y ago
  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-interviews-what-to-do-when-they-say-no/ 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.

kelukelugames 10y ago

Does HN take feature requests? I wish there is a save button.

el_benhameen 10y ago
Vote a story up, then go to your profile and click "saved stories". All stories that you've upvoted are listed there.
- gear54rus 10y ago
  Which is annoying to no end, these should be 2 different things IMO.

known 10y ago

Project yourself as a highly skilled wage slave

Hoasi 10y ago

"Do free work" "Negotiate after you’ve started" Terrible advices, right there.

LionessLover 10y ago

It's amazing, this site is more and more like reddit or Slashdot. This comment is heavily downvoted? It's punishing people for not being outgoing. More and more silly and baseless "I don't like this" downvotes n this forum. Actually, the number of people who are comfortable to follow this advice is likely far lower than the opposite. Also, it depends on your history: As an introvert you don't have a useful network to begin with, meaning the ones that are in your network tend not to be the well-connected types either. This is like advice from a rich guy "why don't you do it like me and make money?" Why is it necessary for everyone to be of one personality type? Why shouldn't people be able to get a job equally easily when they don't have the network and the drive to connect to lots of people, who actually behave very awkwardly when forced to do so?

sp332 10y ago
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.
mseebach 10y ago
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.
- deleted 10y ago

Theodores 10y ago

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.

lazyant 10y ago

> it’s better to have 2 impressive achievements than 2 impressive achievements and 3 weak ones. This is logically false but psychologically true.

moribondus 10y ago

The article is a bit absurd. 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.