21 ms·

This is not unusual. My spouse works for Glassdoor. Entry level programmer jobs in Texas will get 2000 applications (not bots) within about 72 hours. Desperate

This is not unusual. My spouse works for Glassdoor. Entry level programmer jobs in Texas will get 2000 applications (not bots) within about 72 hours. Desperate people from all over the US. I think at one time the advice to “play the numbers game” was correct for online job apps. Not anymore. Even more saddening, Glassdoor uses a temp/test sample job ad. It’s for cat sitting. $15/hr. That will get hundreds of apps in 48 hours if someone forgets to take it down (is only supposed to go up for 60 mins max but things happen).

vectorEQ 7y ago
i just find it funny that theres posts about shortages of it people, and posts about a quarter of a million ppl applying to one company. who's lying. :D
- hoffs 7y ago
  Just because someone applied doesn't mean they are any good.
- angstrom 7y ago
  *Shortage of qualified people. I pity the people that have to filter that.
  - hvidgaard 7y ago
    It's crazy what people think is acceptable. At least half of all the people that apply to our junior positions cannot answer simple question such as "how would you find the first "42" in an array of integers, and give me the index". If they don't have an idea of how to count with a for loop and write an if statement, they're not qualified for programming. Some even ask if they can take the "assignment" home and get back to me.
    - pingyong 7y ago
      How do they get that far, does their resume look good?
      - hvidgaard 7y ago
        Their resume states relevant experience, and they have some projects or spare time work in the field.
        pingyong 7y ago
        But it doesn't list those projects? Or does nobody take a closer look at them before inviting them? I mean if they can't solve a problem like that, they couldn't have made anything remotely useful, right?
        hvidgaard 7y ago
        It's less work to spend 20 min on them for an initial interview, than verify their CV. And even if we did start to call around the only thing a previous employer can tell us is if they did indeed work there or not, no specifics.
    - vidarh 7y ago
      > Some even ask if they can take the "assignment" home and get back to me. The amount of cut-and-paste I've seen on "take home" assignments is just staggering. I've only ever used it for pre-screening before scheduling phone interviews, and so only a handful of very simple questions as I'd have considered it unfair to ask anyone to put much effort in that early in the process. I always cut and paste a few sentences into Google. One hiring round in particular stands out to me, as a substantial majority of candidates had cut and pasted answers. There were always some, but that was extreme. The worst thing was that many of them got the answers wrong. I'd have been open to considering them if someone honestly told me they didn't know the answer but was able to find an answer on Google, and showed me they'd been able to look up the correct answer. But we got things like someone trying to pass of a one page cut and paste from an Oracle manual to a question about MySQL that required a one sentence answer as their own. And someone who cut and pasted a reply to the same question from a forum post, but who failed to read on to where other commenters had explained at length why the answer they'd cut and pasted was wrong. I mean, I often search for solutions to things I don't know by heart. Knowing how to find the right solution by search is a skill itself and a developer that knows how to learn can be valuable, but the combination of dishonesty and apparent failure to be able to ascertain the quality of the responses they found was terrifying given that many of these applicants had believable CVs that included years of working as developers elsewhere. (Of course given their willingness to lie about their answers, I can't really trust CV's either given we never got far enough in the process to request references; I'd like to think their CVs were fake too, because the alternative is worse)
      - hvidgaard 7y ago
        If a developer can do simple programming, and then are honest with not knowing the answer to a question "but here is what I found searching for an answer and I think it's x, because y" - would get so many point in my book. That is the spirit of learning.
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      Well I don't know, I recently interviewed on a phone interview and then they wanted me to do some coding during the phone call through some shared codepen solution, what they wanted was not much more complicated then what you describe and something I should be able to do with eyes closed. Really it was exactly in my wheelhouse where I do things a thousand times more complicated every day to general acclaim of the people I work with. And I had the panic/freezing thing I've read about other people having before but never experienced (at least not that extreme) and as a result I totally flopped. I mean I sort of did what was wanted but not completely. I'm not explaining exactly what it was they wanted because it is too embarrassing to even talk about. This has made me consider that maybe the number of applicants I hear about who cannot do the simplest thing has to do with some sort of personal panic/problem/not liking the particular testing method and not some actual permanent incapacity. on edit: and not just embarrassing but also distressing like a guitarist suddenly unable to play guitar. It is actually hard to describe what the experience was.
      - namibj 7y ago
        The term is stage fright, and most do not believe in it until they feel it. The trick is to reassure yourself that your judgement is way good enough, and that you can't do worse than try your best. Of course you need to be fine with presenting unclean/broken/bad code. Train with non-code situations, if you can find them. They are less rigid than code, and thus task your judgment much more, so code won't push you as hard.\
      - hvidgaard 7y ago
        I am sorry you had to go through that, it sound truly awful. I however get so many applicants that I need to reject the majority, and that is about the simplest initial litmus test I can think of. I am rather confident that the majority are not panicking, and those that are get significant slack - I'd rather spend 10 minutes more establishing some trust and comfort if they express the need to me, than outright dismiss them. I'm too emphatic for anything less. If it's any comfort, stage fright is something you can overcome. It's not easy, but it's doable.
        7y ago
- csydas 7y ago
  Neither :) You're missing an adjective from your observation: qualified. For any given position, even when you're pretty specific on the requirements, you will get an onslaught of applicants who have absolutely no business trying to apply for said position, but they do it anyways just because it vaguely matches a skillset they have and they need a job. This isn't a criticism of such persons; it's foolish for people to think that a word for word perfect job exists just for them, and kudos to those willing to be a bit flexible on what they previously felt were non-negotiable aspects of jobs (I am referring to things I personally consider trivial, in this case, but I feel that when it comes time to start negotiating, said items are thrown out first as bargaining chips) We have many employers seeking a specific type of qualified person; we have qualified and unqualified people all looking for jobs; it can be a bit messy to sort the two. This is why the interview process exists.
  - dx034 7y ago
    I believe it's also due to unspecific job ads. Ads for "experienced developers" could require anything from 2-20 years of job experience. Sometimes job titles give it away but quite often, candidates won't really be able to judge if they're actually qualified.
    - lexapro 7y ago
      To be fair, you can be a fairly experienced developer with just two years of job experience, especially if it's a niche.
  - growlist 7y ago
    qualified* (*and will accept what we're paying)
    - meuk 7y ago
      This seems to be very relevant. I have double BSc and MSc degrees in STEM fields and am still struggling to find a proper job. On my first job I made less than 2k (for 4 days a week, but still). I've had offers which were even lower as well. I've seen people in other fields with a lot less education do a lot better. It really makes me sceptic about the shortage of developers in Europe. If there really would be a shortage, surely developers would get paid more.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- austincheney 7y ago
  Applicants are not necessarily qualified. There could be thousands of unqualified people applying for a job and at the same time a shortage of qualified applicants. There are two reasons for that wide distribution: 1. Lack of preparation/expectation management. I have seen people apply for development jobs with no skills or experience thinking the job is there to train them. It is no surprise (except maybe to the applicant) that they are quickly disqualified. It is absurd how commonly this occurs. I have also seen college educated computer science graduates get a job and completely struggle. There is some expectation among some of these guys that they deserve an awesome job, because they went to an awesome school, and everybody has always showered them with praise. The worst is when one of these guys get a job writing JavaScript only to discover it isn't anything like the Java they were taught at school. Instead of accepting reality it is simply easier to blame the language and do everything possible to make it behave and look like Java. epic fail. 2. Selective bias. How do you define competent or qualified? This is completely subjective and varies by organization. I have encountered several organizations where the developers cannot read code. They compensate with assertion testing, frameworks, external packages, layers of tooling and so forth. The unwillingness of a candidate to accept that stupidity is certainly an incompatibility and can be seen as a lack of competence. If the interviewing party likely struggles with literacy it is not something they are likely to test for, for example. In my experience under-confident hiring teams always want super competent applicants until they see what super competence actually is. It sounds absolutely fantastic in theory until they see it in practice. Then the insecurity sets in. What is really tragic about that is not that incompatibilities happen, but that insecure teams often don't see it until far after they have wasted people's time or after they have hired the applicant only to wish they hadn't. My recommendation for experienced developers is to always identify these incompatibilities as early as possible. Unless equity is attached this is so much more important than compensation. --- In a perfect world people would learn to read and write code before applying for jobs, which implies literally reading and writing (not tooling or dicking around with layers of abstractions). We don't live in a perfect world as evident by many applicants and employers.
- inoop 7y ago
  Serious question, have you ever interviewed people for software engineering positions? It's quantity over quality.
  - LandR 7y ago
    This is so true. Expect to reject 95%+ of applicants.
- lunchables 7y ago
  They announced they were hiring 30,000 people. Having even 10 people apple for 1 job isn't highly unusual. So having 200k apply for 30k jobs doesn't seem odd. Plus because its a big announcement from a huge company, it will draw in far more than the usual random job ad on monster.com. I don't see anything surprising about this. One of the largest companies on earth had a huge hiring blitz and it brought in applicants from all over the country (and world, probably).
cdolan 7y ago
Not to hijack, but do you or your spouse have an opinion on the WSJ story about companies intensely curating their reviews (maybe even paying/threatening the employees and/or Glassdoor)? I noticed a local company I follow had fluctuating review counts between 30-45. I wrote a web scraper to see if reviews were being taken down, and for this company, over 20 1 or 2 star reviews have been taken down, but any new 5 star reviews stay.
- shiftpgdn 7y ago
  I had been contacted by a glass door rep about two years ago who "vaguely promised" they could remove our bad reviews if we signed up for one of their paid services.
- ben1040 7y ago
  I used to work for a place where, during the 60 or 90 day check-in with HR after you got hired, HR would put a hard sell on you to write a Glassdoor review. It had the effect of flooding it with 4 and 5 star reviews from people who hasn't been around long enough to see any downsides to their job. Meanwhile, as the company began imploding, the folks jumping ship mostly didn't bother to write a 1 star review on the way out.
  - vidarh 7y ago
    Anyone trying to push me into leaving a review would be a massive red flag that'd instantly make me look for a new job and ensure I'd leave a 1-star review once I had one...
  - rapind 7y ago
    I experienced this too. In fact it was within the first couple weeks of being hired that you were encouraged to post to Glassdoor (and a Linkedin post that they curated). Definitely rubbed me the wrong way, but besides that they were really great people. I don't know if they realize what bad taste this is, just don't care, or if it's really just one person with too much influence creating policy. This was a while ago, so I can only imagine it's become more prevalent. I've come to believe this is pretty much accepted behaviour for SV companies, and I wouldn't put much weight into Glassdoor reviews beyond just checking for red flags.
hourislate 7y ago
>Entry level programmer jobs in Texas will get 2000 applications There are some major Corporations here in DFW, some that have hired 1000's of H1B's (Car companies, Airlines, etc). It doesn't surprise me that Americans are desperate for work.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ahnus6 7y ago
  What does hiring qualified h1b visa holders have to do with anything? The desperate Americans are not qualified for the job. If they were it would be in the company’s best interest to hire the American. The h1b program requires paying a local market wage. Even if you don’t believe it does the effect would be to just lower wages, it would still be better to hire the qualified American at reduced wages rather than sponsor an h1b.
  - hourislate 7y ago
    >What does hiring qualified h1b visa holders have to do with anything? Because as surprising as this may sound to you there are plenty of qualified talent already in the USA that can't compete with the lower wages companies can pay H1B employees. I see plenty of H1B employees who will literally eat shit from management over the fear of losing their status. I'm not against bringing in hard to find talent that we don't have, what I'm against is bringing in cheap labor to replace US Citizens/IT Workforce which is the norm with these companies. Here is a link breaking it down for Texas. https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/map/2016/TX.pdf https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/map/2016/TX.pdf
    - ahnus6 7y ago
      They can't compete? How can they not compete? The link you're showing me shows average wages for the H1-B group near $80k for all occupations. That's well above the median income for Texas, and well well above the poverty line. So if this large pool of workers in the US can't "compete" what are they doing? Refusing to work and therefore making $0 rather than making $98k? That doesn't make sense. You seem to be implying these workers are displaced into other industries. These industries must clearly pay into the six figures, otherwise these workers are still better off competing with their h1-b friends. What industry are all these displaced American software engineers pushed into, pray tell? Your link doesn't prove shit about market wage levels, as often H1-B offers are skewed towards more entry level positions, so of course the H1-B wage of all workers in broad job category may be lower than all native workers of all experience levels. I'm not going to argue the point of whether H1-B's are offered lower pay. As I said, that merely lowers the market price of labor where the H1-Bs are allowed. If the companies were really saving money they could use the mere fact that they have access to H1-B workers and offer that pay level to natives. It would be cheaper and easier. Please explain to me, if there is such a large pool of qualified workers, why they don't work for the reduced H1-B wages that you claim are setting the market rate. What is their better negotiated alternative?
ashelmire 7y ago
> I think at one time the advice to “play the numbers game” was correct for online job apps. Not anymore. Are you sure about that? Most of the posts I see from devs who just got well-paying jobs show them applying to 20+ companies. Usually more. Then they'll get interviews at several, offers from 1-5? It's absolutely a numbers game on both sides.
- chooseaname 7y ago
  This just seems so strange to me. When I look for work, I look for companies doing things I find interesting, then narrow that down to maybe half dozen at most and send them my resume. I don't look for mostly generic developer work, though. I'm pretty specific with the industries and technologies (RFID, HW control systems, etc) (but not necessarily the developer stack; that's easy to get up to speed on).
  - notus 7y ago
    This is the difference between a person who has an established career already and a junior getting their first job. I take my time with job searches and pick companies I like, but getting my very first job was difficult and it wasn't a great job.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mempko 7y ago
But we have such a strong economy!
- 1123581321 7y ago
  No matter the strength of the economy, there will be people who are not good at applying for and getting jobs. That’s who most of these applications come from.
- rayvd 7y ago
  True, but even at low unemployment levels, 3% of a vast workforce is many millions of people. :) (Yeah, I know you were being sarcastic, but the economy IS in good shape)
notus 7y ago
I'm a senior software engineer and my experience is much different for contrast. I get a response from almost every place I apply.
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  How many years of experience did you have when you got senior title?
  - notus 7y ago
    6 years. At my current company you have to demonstrate leadership abilities and also technical ability to get it. It isn't given to people for just existing for a certain amount of time in a specific career. At least not where I work, a lot of places do that which leads to incompetent seniors.
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  I've gotten at least a phone interview from almost every place I've applied over the last half decade, even when I was an entry level programmer. I'm not sure what the deal is. I guess I've just been extraordinarily lucky.
- plausibilities 7y ago
  If you're not a scrub, go through non-scrub recruiters, and manage to get through a handful of high-vis projects relatively unscathed, word travels extremely quickly and from then on out you can pretty much coast mostly on reputation. It's a small world out there sometimes.
dthedev 7y ago
How is "playing the numbers game" no longer the good advice? This article (and your comments) only seem to cement that idea further.
- papreclip 7y ago
  When there are 20 qualified applicants per job you can apply to dozens or hundreds of jobs and beat or negate the unfavorable numbers. When there are hundreds or thousands of applicants for jobs, you can't apply for tens of thousands of jobs. The listings just don't exist. Your only real chance is to find an inside connection and skip the anonymous application portal.

vectorEQ 7y ago

i just find it funny that theres posts about shortages of it people, and posts about a quarter of a million ppl applying to one company. who's lying. :D

hoffs 7y ago
Just because someone applied doesn't mean they are any good.
angstrom 7y ago
*Shortage of qualified people. I pity the people that have to filter that.
- hvidgaard 7y ago
  It's crazy what people think is acceptable. At least half of all the people that apply to our junior positions cannot answer simple question such as "how would you find the first "42" in an array of integers, and give me the index". If they don't have an idea of how to count with a for loop and write an if statement, they're not qualified for programming. Some even ask if they can take the "assignment" home and get back to me.
  - pingyong 7y ago
    How do they get that far, does their resume look good?
    - hvidgaard 7y ago
      Their resume states relevant experience, and they have some projects or spare time work in the field.
      - pingyong 7y ago
        But it doesn't list those projects? Or does nobody take a closer look at them before inviting them? I mean if they can't solve a problem like that, they couldn't have made anything remotely useful, right?
        hvidgaard 7y ago
        It's less work to spend 20 min on them for an initial interview, than verify their CV. And even if we did start to call around the only thing a previous employer can tell us is if they did indeed work there or not, no specifics.
  - vidarh 7y ago
    > Some even ask if they can take the "assignment" home and get back to me. The amount of cut-and-paste I've seen on "take home" assignments is just staggering. I've only ever used it for pre-screening before scheduling phone interviews, and so only a handful of very simple questions as I'd have considered it unfair to ask anyone to put much effort in that early in the process. I always cut and paste a few sentences into Google. One hiring round in particular stands out to me, as a substantial majority of candidates had cut and pasted answers. There were always some, but that was extreme. The worst thing was that many of them got the answers wrong. I'd have been open to considering them if someone honestly told me they didn't know the answer but was able to find an answer on Google, and showed me they'd been able to look up the correct answer. But we got things like someone trying to pass of a one page cut and paste from an Oracle manual to a question about MySQL that required a one sentence answer as their own. And someone who cut and pasted a reply to the same question from a forum post, but who failed to read on to where other commenters had explained at length why the answer they'd cut and pasted was wrong. I mean, I often search for solutions to things I don't know by heart. Knowing how to find the right solution by search is a skill itself and a developer that knows how to learn can be valuable, but the combination of dishonesty and apparent failure to be able to ascertain the quality of the responses they found was terrifying given that many of these applicants had believable CVs that included years of working as developers elsewhere. (Of course given their willingness to lie about their answers, I can't really trust CV's either given we never got far enough in the process to request references; I'd like to think their CVs were fake too, because the alternative is worse)
    - hvidgaard 7y ago
      If a developer can do simple programming, and then are honest with not knowing the answer to a question "but here is what I found searching for an answer and I think it's x, because y" - would get so many point in my book. That is the spirit of learning.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    Well I don't know, I recently interviewed on a phone interview and then they wanted me to do some coding during the phone call through some shared codepen solution, what they wanted was not much more complicated then what you describe and something I should be able to do with eyes closed. Really it was exactly in my wheelhouse where I do things a thousand times more complicated every day to general acclaim of the people I work with. And I had the panic/freezing thing I've read about other people having before but never experienced (at least not that extreme) and as a result I totally flopped. I mean I sort of did what was wanted but not completely. I'm not explaining exactly what it was they wanted because it is too embarrassing to even talk about. This has made me consider that maybe the number of applicants I hear about who cannot do the simplest thing has to do with some sort of personal panic/problem/not liking the particular testing method and not some actual permanent incapacity. on edit: and not just embarrassing but also distressing like a guitarist suddenly unable to play guitar. It is actually hard to describe what the experience was.
    - namibj 7y ago
      The term is stage fright, and most do not believe in it until they feel it. The trick is to reassure yourself that your judgement is way good enough, and that you can't do worse than try your best. Of course you need to be fine with presenting unclean/broken/bad code. Train with non-code situations, if you can find them. They are less rigid than code, and thus task your judgment much more, so code won't push you as hard.\
    - hvidgaard 7y ago
      I am sorry you had to go through that, it sound truly awful. I however get so many applicants that I need to reject the majority, and that is about the simplest initial litmus test I can think of. I am rather confident that the majority are not panicking, and those that are get significant slack - I'd rather spend 10 minutes more establishing some trust and comfort if they express the need to me, than outright dismiss them. I'm too emphatic for anything less. If it's any comfort, stage fright is something you can overcome. It's not easy, but it's doable.
      - 7y ago
csydas 7y ago
Neither :) You're missing an adjective from your observation: qualified. For any given position, even when you're pretty specific on the requirements, you will get an onslaught of applicants who have absolutely no business trying to apply for said position, but they do it anyways just because it vaguely matches a skillset they have and they need a job. This isn't a criticism of such persons; it's foolish for people to think that a word for word perfect job exists just for them, and kudos to those willing to be a bit flexible on what they previously felt were non-negotiable aspects of jobs (I am referring to things I personally consider trivial, in this case, but I feel that when it comes time to start negotiating, said items are thrown out first as bargaining chips) We have many employers seeking a specific type of qualified person; we have qualified and unqualified people all looking for jobs; it can be a bit messy to sort the two. This is why the interview process exists.
- dx034 7y ago
  I believe it's also due to unspecific job ads. Ads for "experienced developers" could require anything from 2-20 years of job experience. Sometimes job titles give it away but quite often, candidates won't really be able to judge if they're actually qualified.
  - lexapro 7y ago
    To be fair, you can be a fairly experienced developer with just two years of job experience, especially if it's a niche.
- growlist 7y ago
  qualified* (*and will accept what we're paying)
  - meuk 7y ago
    This seems to be very relevant. I have double BSc and MSc degrees in STEM fields and am still struggling to find a proper job. On my first job I made less than 2k (for 4 days a week, but still). I've had offers which were even lower as well. I've seen people in other fields with a lot less education do a lot better. It really makes me sceptic about the shortage of developers in Europe. If there really would be a shortage, surely developers would get paid more.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
austincheney 7y ago
Applicants are not necessarily qualified. There could be thousands of unqualified people applying for a job and at the same time a shortage of qualified applicants. There are two reasons for that wide distribution: 1. Lack of preparation/expectation management. I have seen people apply for development jobs with no skills or experience thinking the job is there to train them. It is no surprise (except maybe to the applicant) that they are quickly disqualified. It is absurd how commonly this occurs. I have also seen college educated computer science graduates get a job and completely struggle. There is some expectation among some of these guys that they deserve an awesome job, because they went to an awesome school, and everybody has always showered them with praise. The worst is when one of these guys get a job writing JavaScript only to discover it isn't anything like the Java they were taught at school. Instead of accepting reality it is simply easier to blame the language and do everything possible to make it behave and look like Java. epic fail. 2. Selective bias. How do you define competent or qualified? This is completely subjective and varies by organization. I have encountered several organizations where the developers cannot read code. They compensate with assertion testing, frameworks, external packages, layers of tooling and so forth. The unwillingness of a candidate to accept that stupidity is certainly an incompatibility and can be seen as a lack of competence. If the interviewing party likely struggles with literacy it is not something they are likely to test for, for example. In my experience under-confident hiring teams always want super competent applicants until they see what super competence actually is. It sounds absolutely fantastic in theory until they see it in practice. Then the insecurity sets in. What is really tragic about that is not that incompatibilities happen, but that insecure teams often don't see it until far after they have wasted people's time or after they have hired the applicant only to wish they hadn't. My recommendation for experienced developers is to always identify these incompatibilities as early as possible. Unless equity is attached this is so much more important than compensation. --- In a perfect world people would learn to read and write code before applying for jobs, which implies literally reading and writing (not tooling or dicking around with layers of abstractions). We don't live in a perfect world as evident by many applicants and employers.
inoop 7y ago
Serious question, have you ever interviewed people for software engineering positions? It's quantity over quality.
- LandR 7y ago
  This is so true. Expect to reject 95%+ of applicants.
lunchables 7y ago
They announced they were hiring 30,000 people. Having even 10 people apple for 1 job isn't highly unusual. So having 200k apply for 30k jobs doesn't seem odd. Plus because its a big announcement from a huge company, it will draw in far more than the usual random job ad on monster.com. I don't see anything surprising about this. One of the largest companies on earth had a huge hiring blitz and it brought in applicants from all over the country (and world, probably).

cdolan 7y ago

Not to hijack, but do you or your spouse have an opinion on the WSJ story about companies intensely curating their reviews (maybe even paying/threatening the employees and/or Glassdoor)? I noticed a local company I follow had fluctuating review counts between 30-45. I wrote a web scraper to see if reviews were being taken down, and for this company, over 20 1 or 2 star reviews have been taken down, but any new 5 star reviews stay.

shiftpgdn 7y ago
I had been contacted by a glass door rep about two years ago who "vaguely promised" they could remove our bad reviews if we signed up for one of their paid services.
ben1040 7y ago
I used to work for a place where, during the 60 or 90 day check-in with HR after you got hired, HR would put a hard sell on you to write a Glassdoor review. It had the effect of flooding it with 4 and 5 star reviews from people who hasn't been around long enough to see any downsides to their job. Meanwhile, as the company began imploding, the folks jumping ship mostly didn't bother to write a 1 star review on the way out.
- vidarh 7y ago
  Anyone trying to push me into leaving a review would be a massive red flag that'd instantly make me look for a new job and ensure I'd leave a 1-star review once I had one...
- rapind 7y ago
  I experienced this too. In fact it was within the first couple weeks of being hired that you were encouraged to post to Glassdoor (and a Linkedin post that they curated). Definitely rubbed me the wrong way, but besides that they were really great people. I don't know if they realize what bad taste this is, just don't care, or if it's really just one person with too much influence creating policy. This was a while ago, so I can only imagine it's become more prevalent. I've come to believe this is pretty much accepted behaviour for SV companies, and I wouldn't put much weight into Glassdoor reviews beyond just checking for red flags.

hourislate 7y ago

>Entry level programmer jobs in Texas will get 2000 applications There are some major Corporations here in DFW, some that have hired 1000's of H1B's (Car companies, Airlines, etc). It doesn't surprise me that Americans are desperate for work.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ahnus6 7y ago
What does hiring qualified h1b visa holders have to do with anything? The desperate Americans are not qualified for the job. If they were it would be in the company’s best interest to hire the American. The h1b program requires paying a local market wage. Even if you don’t believe it does the effect would be to just lower wages, it would still be better to hire the qualified American at reduced wages rather than sponsor an h1b.
- hourislate 7y ago
  >What does hiring qualified h1b visa holders have to do with anything? Because as surprising as this may sound to you there are plenty of qualified talent already in the USA that can't compete with the lower wages companies can pay H1B employees. I see plenty of H1B employees who will literally eat shit from management over the fear of losing their status. I'm not against bringing in hard to find talent that we don't have, what I'm against is bringing in cheap labor to replace US Citizens/IT Workforce which is the norm with these companies. Here is a link breaking it down for Texas. https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/map/2016/TX.pdf https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/map/2016/TX.pdf
  - ahnus6 7y ago
    They can't compete? How can they not compete? The link you're showing me shows average wages for the H1-B group near $80k for all occupations. That's well above the median income for Texas, and well well above the poverty line. So if this large pool of workers in the US can't "compete" what are they doing? Refusing to work and therefore making $0 rather than making $98k? That doesn't make sense. You seem to be implying these workers are displaced into other industries. These industries must clearly pay into the six figures, otherwise these workers are still better off competing with their h1-b friends. What industry are all these displaced American software engineers pushed into, pray tell? Your link doesn't prove shit about market wage levels, as often H1-B offers are skewed towards more entry level positions, so of course the H1-B wage of all workers in broad job category may be lower than all native workers of all experience levels. I'm not going to argue the point of whether H1-B's are offered lower pay. As I said, that merely lowers the market price of labor where the H1-Bs are allowed. If the companies were really saving money they could use the mere fact that they have access to H1-B workers and offer that pay level to natives. It would be cheaper and easier. Please explain to me, if there is such a large pool of qualified workers, why they don't work for the reduced H1-B wages that you claim are setting the market rate. What is their better negotiated alternative?

ashelmire 7y ago

> I think at one time the advice to “play the numbers game” was correct for online job apps. Not anymore. Are you sure about that? Most of the posts I see from devs who just got well-paying jobs show them applying to 20+ companies. Usually more. Then they'll get interviews at several, offers from 1-5? It's absolutely a numbers game on both sides.

chooseaname 7y ago
This just seems so strange to me. When I look for work, I look for companies doing things I find interesting, then narrow that down to maybe half dozen at most and send them my resume. I don't look for mostly generic developer work, though. I'm pretty specific with the industries and technologies (RFID, HW control systems, etc) (but not necessarily the developer stack; that's easy to get up to speed on).
- notus 7y ago
  This is the difference between a person who has an established career already and a junior getting their first job. I take my time with job searches and pick companies I like, but getting my very first job was difficult and it wasn't a great job.

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mempko 7y ago

But we have such a strong economy!

1123581321 7y ago
No matter the strength of the economy, there will be people who are not good at applying for and getting jobs. That’s who most of these applications come from.
rayvd 7y ago
True, but even at low unemployment levels, 3% of a vast workforce is many millions of people. :) (Yeah, I know you were being sarcastic, but the economy IS in good shape)

notus 7y ago

I'm a senior software engineer and my experience is much different for contrast. I get a response from almost every place I apply.

WhompingWindows 7y ago
How many years of experience did you have when you got senior title?
- notus 7y ago
  6 years. At my current company you have to demonstrate leadership abilities and also technical ability to get it. It isn't given to people for just existing for a certain amount of time in a specific career. At least not where I work, a lot of places do that which leads to incompetent seniors.
jniedrauer 7y ago
I've gotten at least a phone interview from almost every place I've applied over the last half decade, even when I was an entry level programmer. I'm not sure what the deal is. I guess I've just been extraordinarily lucky.
plausibilities 7y ago
If you're not a scrub, go through non-scrub recruiters, and manage to get through a handful of high-vis projects relatively unscathed, word travels extremely quickly and from then on out you can pretty much coast mostly on reputation. It's a small world out there sometimes.

dthedev 7y ago

How is "playing the numbers game" no longer the good advice? This article (and your comments) only seem to cement that idea further.

papreclip 7y ago
When there are 20 qualified applicants per job you can apply to dozens or hundreds of jobs and beat or negate the unfavorable numbers. When there are hundreds or thousands of applicants for jobs, you can't apply for tens of thousands of jobs. The listings just don't exist. Your only real chance is to find an inside connection and skip the anonymous application portal.