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This is terribly useless for anyone else. I’d go so far as to say it is not, in fact, a data point for anyone. - 65 days is a very very short time to be on the

by mlthoughts2018 6y ago

This is terribly useless for anyone else. I’d go so far as to say it is not, in fact, a data point for anyone. - 65 days is a very very short time to be on the market - the coding interview experience of this applicant and requirements of the companies appears to be far more lax than most experiences in tech hiring - it took place right around the pandemic / unemployment / layoff time period which is a nasty confounder to everything - it focuses a lot on start-ups - doesn’t give specifics on negotiation or salary numbers It seems like a fine write-up and all, it’s just critical to emphasize this experience is not translatable to other people. If your experience happened to be similar to this, total coincidence. If you’re trying to predict a future hiring experience for yourself, this won’t offer you that. If you just want to read about someone else’s experience knowing it won’t be related to yours for any reason aside from coincidence and don’t mind it is light on specific salary details, this is fine.

meddlepal 6y ago
> 65 days is a very very short time to be on the market Wait what? Is this just an SF/Valley thing? 60 days on the market is a long time IMO. Long enough that my experience with east coast recruiting is that by the time you hit 30 days offers start evaporating so it makes it difficult to play them off of each other for negotiating purposes.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  If you're not good at modern interviews then it can take some time to find a company that either you get lucky on or that uses a different process.
- Joof 6y ago
  I usually prolong it for travel, but I've always had offers by 60 days in. Anecdote.
- scarface74 6y ago
  I’m on the east coast and over 20 years and 6 job changes (first one was based on an internship). I’ve had multiple offers within three weeks maximum after I started looking. The shortest was 4 days. None have required any serious algorithm/LeetCode type of interview.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    Your experience is such an extreme outlier as to necessitate ignoring it when considering how general job searches go.
itake 6y ago
> - it took place right around the pandemic / unemployment / layoff time period which is a nasty confounder to everything The article was written in Jan. I don't think the pandemic had hit the USA then. > - it focuses a lot on start-ups Mozilla, Stripe, Reddit, Buzzfeed, and Square aren't exactly startups.
marcinzm 6y ago
>- 65 days is a very very short time to be on the market I'm an experienced engineer (10+ years) in a good location. For me, 65 days is absurdly LONG pre-pandemic. Assuming you interview well, you can go from nothing to offer in something like two weeks with most startups. >- the coding interview experience of this applicant and requirements of the companies appears to be far more lax than most experiences in tech hiring How so? Seems pretty standard to me, the usual leetcode stuff with various bits around the edges. >- it focuses a lot on start-ups This is the case for many people especially on this site and the "startups" are very wide in size. So not sure why you consider this to be a non-transferable part.
- nostrademons 6y ago
  > For me, 65 days is absurdly LONG for me pre-pandemic. Assuming you interview well, you can go from nothing to offer in something like two weeks with most startups. Depends a lot on the type of company. I've had startups go from initial contact to offer in about 3 business days. OTOH is Google - I've heard my first hiring process there (5 weeks) was on the short side, and it's not unusual to be held up for 6 months with them.
- Mandatum 6y ago
  I'm always fielding JD's from recruiters. I don't live in SV so I don't get absolutely inundated, but I get quite a few quality opportunities come my way which become useful during negotiations. My recommendation to everyone, unless you're like the guy above me: Even if you're in a stable FTE, right now you should be practicing and fielding job interviews - just in case. If you're made redundant or caught in a spreadsheet, you'll be better to take the package and jump straight into work somewhere else before culture turns toxic. You'll be up against far, far more people than you were when you last applied for a job. This will be stressful. So get in front of it.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    Even when inundated with recruiter calls and having a stellar resume, 65 days is very, very short for job searches. From first interview to shortest possible time you can get an offer at most companies is longer than 30 days anyway. People saying they interview and get an offer in a few days or weeks are often lying and otherwise are major outliers. At my company, for example, the minimum interview process is over 4 weeks, and we are a very competitive e-commerce company with huge pipeline of candidates. We are absolutely not offering people jobs in a fast (less than 1 month) turnaround, and this rarely has any impact on who we hire. This was also very true across the 6 other professional jobs I’ve had, at brand name start-ups, no-name start-ups and large tech companies.
soneca 6y ago
The title says ”a data point”. This kind of nullify all of your rant for me. You can’t say ”it’s not a data point”, it makes no sense. You could argue it’s an outlier, but it is a data point. I am actually glad that it is not someone pretending to have good advice that might fool me into thinking it is actually good advice. It is refreshing to read just one account that I learn what I want from, without been tricked in to believe it’s anything more than that.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  I think you’re wrong. Being a data point isn’t the same thing as just existing. There has to be some space of models or information that can potentially be different because of the example. If it’s not possible for other people’s models to be different as a result, then it’s not data.
wuunderbar 6y ago
> 65 days is a very very short time to be on the market Is it though? For software engineering? > the coding interview experience of this applicant and requirements of the companies appears to be far more lax than most experiences in tech hiring I'm not sure. Difficult LeetCode type questions are less common (based on numerous anecdotal accounts online) everywhere other than with SF Bay Area & NYC based companies than anywhere else.
JSavageOne 6y ago
Sorry I'm going to be blunt here, what an incredibly stupid comment. OP applied to well-known companies like Square and Reddit, shared his resume, interview experiences, and outcomes, and you're here on an anonymous internet forum telling him that this information is completely useless because he didn't mention salary details? I personally found it interesting and helpful as an engineer interested in potentially working for some of these companies. You are incredibly out of touch and socially challenged to tell him his post is utterly useless because it focuses on startups and there's a pandemic. I hope I never have to work at a company alongside you.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  It’s not useful for others to predict experiences from it. It’s similar to the selection bias effect of college professors encouraging students to pursue careers in academia because they did themselves. The career details of the professor might be very interesting, but they are useless. Or to be more blunt, it would be like a lottery-ticket winner saying, “the best career advice is to win the lottery” ... there is no actionable info that a listener can take away or use, it’s purely idiosyncratic. I’m sorry you thought it was a stupid comment, but I very much stand by what I said and feel it is not stupid, rather a very critical caveat.
vertak 6y ago
> this is terribly useless for for anyone else I bet this was terribly useless for you, but for the wider set of readers here its near impossible to generalize as you have done. I haven’t dived deep to search for “here was my job search” stories and I’ve probably read fewer than 5 such posts on HN over the years I’ve been lurking here. However I appreciated this one for its candid sharing of the numbers (number of applications, rejections, etc.) and his resume + cover letters. Unless you are some interview god/goddess who has seen all the resumes there are to see, it’s valuable to see different ways of approaching the job search. I’m currently on the job hunt myself and have bookmarked this article for a reread.

meddlepal 6y ago

> 65 days is a very very short time to be on the market Wait what? Is this just an SF/Valley thing? 60 days on the market is a long time IMO. Long enough that my experience with east coast recruiting is that by the time you hit 30 days offers start evaporating so it makes it difficult to play them off of each other for negotiating purposes.

marcinzm 6y ago
If you're not good at modern interviews then it can take some time to find a company that either you get lucky on or that uses a different process.
Joof 6y ago
I usually prolong it for travel, but I've always had offers by 60 days in. Anecdote.
scarface74 6y ago
I’m on the east coast and over 20 years and 6 job changes (first one was based on an internship). I’ve had multiple offers within three weeks maximum after I started looking. The shortest was 4 days. None have required any serious algorithm/LeetCode type of interview.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  Your experience is such an extreme outlier as to necessitate ignoring it when considering how general job searches go.

itake 6y ago

> - it took place right around the pandemic / unemployment / layoff time period which is a nasty confounder to everything The article was written in Jan. I don't think the pandemic had hit the USA then. > - it focuses a lot on start-ups Mozilla, Stripe, Reddit, Buzzfeed, and Square aren't exactly startups.

marcinzm 6y ago

>- 65 days is a very very short time to be on the market I'm an experienced engineer (10+ years) in a good location. For me, 65 days is absurdly LONG pre-pandemic. Assuming you interview well, you can go from nothing to offer in something like two weeks with most startups. >- the coding interview experience of this applicant and requirements of the companies appears to be far more lax than most experiences in tech hiring How so? Seems pretty standard to me, the usual leetcode stuff with various bits around the edges. >- it focuses a lot on start-ups This is the case for many people especially on this site and the "startups" are very wide in size. So not sure why you consider this to be a non-transferable part.

nostrademons 6y ago
> For me, 65 days is absurdly LONG for me pre-pandemic. Assuming you interview well, you can go from nothing to offer in something like two weeks with most startups. Depends a lot on the type of company. I've had startups go from initial contact to offer in about 3 business days. OTOH is Google - I've heard my first hiring process there (5 weeks) was on the short side, and it's not unusual to be held up for 6 months with them.
Mandatum 6y ago
I'm always fielding JD's from recruiters. I don't live in SV so I don't get absolutely inundated, but I get quite a few quality opportunities come my way which become useful during negotiations. My recommendation to everyone, unless you're like the guy above me: Even if you're in a stable FTE, right now you should be practicing and fielding job interviews - just in case. If you're made redundant or caught in a spreadsheet, you'll be better to take the package and jump straight into work somewhere else before culture turns toxic. You'll be up against far, far more people than you were when you last applied for a job. This will be stressful. So get in front of it.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  Even when inundated with recruiter calls and having a stellar resume, 65 days is very, very short for job searches. From first interview to shortest possible time you can get an offer at most companies is longer than 30 days anyway. People saying they interview and get an offer in a few days or weeks are often lying and otherwise are major outliers. At my company, for example, the minimum interview process is over 4 weeks, and we are a very competitive e-commerce company with huge pipeline of candidates. We are absolutely not offering people jobs in a fast (less than 1 month) turnaround, and this rarely has any impact on who we hire. This was also very true across the 6 other professional jobs I’ve had, at brand name start-ups, no-name start-ups and large tech companies.

soneca 6y ago

The title says ”a data point”. This kind of nullify all of your rant for me. You can’t say ”it’s not a data point”, it makes no sense. You could argue it’s an outlier, but it is a data point. I am actually glad that it is not someone pretending to have good advice that might fool me into thinking it is actually good advice. It is refreshing to read just one account that I learn what I want from, without been tricked in to believe it’s anything more than that.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
I think you’re wrong. Being a data point isn’t the same thing as just existing. There has to be some space of models or information that can potentially be different because of the example. If it’s not possible for other people’s models to be different as a result, then it’s not data.

wuunderbar 6y ago

> 65 days is a very very short time to be on the market Is it though? For software engineering? > the coding interview experience of this applicant and requirements of the companies appears to be far more lax than most experiences in tech hiring I'm not sure. Difficult LeetCode type questions are less common (based on numerous anecdotal accounts online) everywhere other than with SF Bay Area & NYC based companies than anywhere else.

JSavageOne 6y ago

Sorry I'm going to be blunt here, what an incredibly stupid comment. OP applied to well-known companies like Square and Reddit, shared his resume, interview experiences, and outcomes, and you're here on an anonymous internet forum telling him that this information is completely useless because he didn't mention salary details? I personally found it interesting and helpful as an engineer interested in potentially working for some of these companies. You are incredibly out of touch and socially challenged to tell him his post is utterly useless because it focuses on startups and there's a pandemic. I hope I never have to work at a company alongside you.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
It’s not useful for others to predict experiences from it. It’s similar to the selection bias effect of college professors encouraging students to pursue careers in academia because they did themselves. The career details of the professor might be very interesting, but they are useless. Or to be more blunt, it would be like a lottery-ticket winner saying, “the best career advice is to win the lottery” ... there is no actionable info that a listener can take away or use, it’s purely idiosyncratic. I’m sorry you thought it was a stupid comment, but I very much stand by what I said and feel it is not stupid, rather a very critical caveat.

vertak 6y ago

> this is terribly useless for for anyone else I bet this was terribly useless for you, but for the wider set of readers here its near impossible to generalize as you have done. I haven’t dived deep to search for “here was my job search” stories and I’ve probably read fewer than 5 such posts on HN over the years I’ve been lurking here. However I appreciated this one for its candid sharing of the numbers (number of applications, rejections, etc.) and his resume + cover letters. Unless you are some interview god/goddess who has seen all the resumes there are to see, it’s valuable to see different ways of approaching the job search. I’m currently on the job hunt myself and have bookmarked this article for a reread.