14 ms·

As a hiring manager, the things that stand out to me in your post: - You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman yea

As a hiring manager, the things that stand out to me in your post: - You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative. - You talk about applying to Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Palantir, and other companies known to be very competitive, yet the only real job experience you list in your post is low level customer support. Nothing wrong with aiming high, but you need to also be applying to jobs that are a logical next step in your career. It's extraordinarily difficult to jump from customer support to FAANG engineer, so have a backup plan. - You spoofed e-mails to manipulate executives into meetings. This kind of thing sounds clever in movies or from anecdotes in the 90s or 2000s, but in this era everyone is on high alert for phishing attacks and security breaches. Read the room, and don't commit computer fraud during your application process. Big companies have systems in place to catch these things and you'll get blocked in short order. - No mention of your network. Do you have any contacts or friends or acquaintances anywhere in the industry? Even people you knew briefly from school? People who you worked with in the past who moved up? Reach out and ask if they have any advice for your job search. Going forward, make a point to stay on good terms with the people around you. You can help each other as your careers progress.

veerabadhra 6y ago
This kind of safe advice isn't very helpful for someone who is hustling IMO. Maybe it is useful for someone who's going to become a principal engineer at a large corporate. The parent commenter would be well suited to work at a startup. Unfortunately, startups have also been infected by the corporate virus. In a country that's stagnating, such risk averse behavior makes sense, because there is no reward for taking on risks.
- xienze 6y ago
  > This kind of safe advice isn't very helpful for someone who is hustling IMO. Well are they hustling or looking for steady employment in tech?
- santoshalper 6y ago
  That's weird, where did you get the sense that op is "hustling" (whatever that means)? They spend half their post listing big companies they are trying to get jobs at.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  A teenage boy asked the master "How do I compose a symphony?" The master said "You're too young, you need to start with more modest projects." "But master" said the boy "you first composed a symphony when you were half my age!" "Yes, but I didn't ask anyone how." --- What I mean by this is that "hustling" is something of a unique, rare, or hacking like thing. You can't ask people how to do it, because if they could tell you then everyone would do it and it wouldn't work. I don't mean that like people are keeping a secret, but more like hustling means going through a dynamic and unexpected route and it's not something people can easily reduce to instructions.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    > You can't ask people how to do it, because if they could tell you then everyone would do it and it wouldn't work Coding-camps?
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
      I think a good coding camp is a plausible route to an entry level dev position. I know a Google dev who got there via a coding camp. I wouldn't describe it as a hack or hustle though. It's basically learn the skills required, demonstrate your knowledge, then interview and get a matching job.
    - 8128js8121 6y ago
      saps, paying to learn shit from stack overflow.
    - ryankemper 6y ago
      A coding camp is the opposite of hustling. It's called "bootcamp" for a reason - it's there to impose some structure for those who need it. Also bootcamp is very overhyped. There's some great people that come out of them, but I think mainly the hype is the fact that college is overrated (this is a cliche opinion I know) so bootcamps are there to try to exploit some of the delta that the myopic focus on college degrees creates. But many boot camps are super myopic in their own ways.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ma2rten 6y ago
I don't necessarily agree regarding FAANG. Once someone gets an interview it doesn't matter much what their previous work experience is.
- fnbr 6y ago
  I agree. If OP can consistently get interviews at FAANGs, then that’s all that’s needed for the job.
  - eslaught 6y ago
    To make this even more explicit: if OP can get interviews, then the resume (and the "on paper" job record) is clearly not an issue. The issue is interview technique, possibly the verbal description of the job history, but possibly something else (technical or social). I second other comments elsewhere in the threads here to get a candid friend to help with interview practice.
  - batch12 6y ago
    It sounds to me like it is either a knowledge gap of which they may be unaware, or a personality issue. When hiring in the past, I looked for thoughtful, but honest answers-- even if the answer was "I don't know." Someone talking around the question or bullshitting me resulted in a no. Also, interviewers may be sensing some quality which hint that the interviewee would make existing employees' jobs harder. Dunno if this is happening, but things like talking bad about previous jobs, management, etc can turn folks off. Also, if one implies many previous jobs were problems the interviewer may assume that the employee was the issue instead.
    - djellybeans 6y ago
      I think personality issues are kind of overstated for interviews. Just about every industry has its fair share of jerks and sociopaths that throw people under the bus. Regardless, they have jobs, and almost all of them had to pass interviews to get into their respective companies. These are the workers that set the lower bar for entry into a job, and in the "right" companies, your personality would be passable by those standards to get hired.
de6u99er 6y ago
Where does his article say, that he spoofed emails to manipulate executives into meetings? Only thing I see about email is the one to a VP which resulted in fixing an issue. I bet he didn't receive the credit for it.
- evan_ 6y ago
  > Spoofed number to bypass contact whitelist etc.
kfogel 6y ago
I just want to say that this was a kind, detailed, and thoughtful response -- beneficial to the OP, no doubt, but also probably to others. It was nice to be reminded that sometimes the Internet doesn't suck. Thanks for taking the time to write that reply.
- jart 6y ago
  It's a good comment with the right instinct but for the wrong reasons. The biggest red flag is struggling with personal finance. You can't get jobs like the ones he wants if you live beyond your means and constantly land in hot water with money because people who are like that are at risk of turning to evil to make ends meet.
  - Shugarl 6y ago
    He just spent a year without any steady source of income, should't his saving run out at one point ?
    - midasuni 6y ago
      You should have 40 years of expenses saved in an emergency fund before you start spending a penny on anything /s
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - sgt101 6y ago
        40 years is quite a risk - 120 is far better. And saving this is easier than you think, if you commit to not eating and living outside. Importantly do what you are told, and remember your inadequacy!
  - ehnto 6y ago
    What jobs inquire about your financial history? That seems a little dystopian. Can't get a handle on your finances because you don't have a steady job, better not give them a steady job!
aeoleonn 6y ago
First, OP: STOP CALLING YOURSELF UNHIREABLE. STOP WITH THE SELF-PITY-- Why? You can't simultaneously focus on two things: such as focusing pitying yourself while simultaneously focusing on building & completing your strategy. _____________________ WHATS THAT YOU SAY OP?!, you say you want to CONQUER THE ROMAN EMPIRE, but you only have a dozen pals WITH NERF GUNS? Yeah, guess how that'll work out :P Doesn't sound like a reasonable strategy, does it? Yes, you failed because YOU LACKED A REASONABLE STRATEGY. ANYONE WILL FAIL when they LACK A REASONABLE STRATEGY REGARDING ANYTHING in life, that should be obvious. The solution? Develop a reasonable strategy and fulfill the work involved in the strategy. ______________________________________ Now for the rest of my intended comment: This. PragmaticPulp is speaking about STRATEGY. You need a reasonable strategy, OP. Check out my recent comments for my lengthier reply of advice, but here I'll summarize: * Make small pivots. Don't try to jump to the top, as Pragmatic mentions * Market yourself. Want to be a programmer? Show the world you're a programmer then! How? You need to build an open source project with in-demand programming languages & frameworks. You need a Web Portfolio to show off your projects. A LinkedIn presence. And, put your resume up on job sites. This is basic marketing strategy, OP. Want a dev job? Well, how do you show the world you're a dev? Again, click my name to read my recent replies if you can't find 'em here on the first page of 300+ replies. So, focus on crafting your strategy and then completing the strategy. Keep your head up. Stay positive. Find motivational music & speeches on spotify & youtube-- that helped me get through 4 months of building my full stack app (no one paid me to make it, I simply built it b/c I knew I needed to show the world I had the skills)
- chrisvalleybay 6y ago
  You definitely came in from Reddit, that's for sure.
  - aeoleonn 6y ago
    LOL do I sound liberal? What part of my comment do you dislike? To be fair, I don't expect everyone on HN to appreciate my perspective. The tech world seems to be majority snowflake, or pretend snowflake (go along to get along, in that case). I'm not a politically correct type of person-- I tell people what I actually think and prefer brutal honesty to sugar coated messaging.
jart 6y ago
> You spoofed emails to manipulate executives into meetings. A guy got hired at Google once because he spoofed an email from Larry to Sergey using an unknown DKIM hack he discovered. The OP said numbers so I'm assuming he spoofed caller id. That's kind of like stealing the silverware as far as hacks go. So it doesn't surprise me that would come across poorly.
- Google234 6y ago
  I don’t think that person got hired or even applied.
helsinkiandrew 6y ago
> yet the only real job experience you list in your post is low level customer support Devs are in the lucky position that you can obtain some aspects of 'real job experience' outside of a job. Create a project, or contribute to open source project in an area that interests you - it will hone your skills and give something concrete on your resume. [edit] And make the projects very directed to the jobs you want to get, if security interests you try some hacker bounties - even documenting how you looked for exploits in a blog may be of use.
- aledalgrande 6y ago
  This. You wouldn't believe how much visibility contributing to known open source projects gives you. And you train your communication and collaboration skills (PRs/reviews) in addition to the usual developer chops. Good luck!
endymi0n 6y ago
That's spot on from the advice. I'll add that OP — Your biggest issue seems to be extremely high intelligence, paired with a lack of empathy and social functioning, which created a self-expectation of massive grandiosity. But you keep failing to deliver on it because you can't get your highly powered brain on the streets, leading in self-pity and depression. Not good, but salvageable. How do I know? My life story reads basically like yours into my late twenties — multiple college dropout, extremely high ambitions, always failed. The only difference is that I started that low level support job in a company small enough that somebody saw my talent and got me on the path to second level tech support and then engineering as I continued automating my job away. Had to chuckle as I pissed off quite a lot of people higher up in that job early on myself, but fortunately had a few people reflecting me instead of firing me, which made me understand how I made other people look and feel by my actions. The good news: Empathy is a learneable skill. Aim far lower in a smaller, young and growing (!) company with good potential — but especially with a great boss. Then work hard, SHUT UP your smartass mouth for a year and work your way up while learning what's holding you back with the help of a good coach/therapist. When you apply with the company, read everything you can about what they do and make it about them. Stop trying to impress. For that year, just focus on staying super humble and in the background, learning how value is created for that company and then go on creating that value even if nobody asked you to. Just for a year. Up your ante slowly and only when you feel you have established personal trust and leverage. Empathy a skill where intelligence won't support you but be in your way because of your natural tendency of you showing it off. That makes people feel dumb, and nobody likes to feel like that. Also, some actions like you skipping line management will make them feel they can't rely on you on top. You'll keep failing if people keep hating working with you. Your goal is to find a great manager first and make them look great. And then talk about that. Be the solution guy, not the problem guy. Be the one who goes the extra mile to bring a small win home, not the one who makes the snarkiest comment. You'll never be a "normal" person, but that's ok. Having a sharp profile comes with its own set of (dis)advantages. You can be high functioning if you surround yourself with capable people who know how to work with your weaknesses in order to leverage your strenghts. Your job is finding them, as you'll fail alone.
- shultays 6y ago
  I too suffer from an extremely high intelligence.
sigg3 6y ago
> FAANG Viz. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. I had to look it up (I'm not from around here).
kamaal 6y ago
>>You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative. Things like this are very important. Job hopping is a giant red flag for lots of companies. Nobody wants to hire an employee whose replacement they have to hire under an year.
- throw14082020 6y ago
  It’s not job hopping that’s the problem. It’s unemployment. Companies actually like job hoppers because they learn more, and actually can find those jobs, hence they hop. Job hopping without jobs (gaps) is unattractive but that would be unemployment not job hopping, since the dude is unemployed. I’m saying this only for people who are in utter shit jobs and have the talent to find another one, but are afraid to be classified a job hopper.
  - yarcob 6y ago
    If someone never stayed more than a year at a job that's a pretty major red flag. Most hires will take a year to get productive (where they produce more value for the company than they cost). I would never hire someone if I expected them to leave in a few months (except an intern). There are exceptions. An experienced consultant may be hired only for short, specific projects. But if you're struggling to get hired, you don't fall in that category.
    - throw14082020 6y ago
      It depends how many years they've got. It also depends what your definition of job hopping is. Some people say anything less than 1 to 2 years. https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/job-hopping-v2/ https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/job-hopping-v2/ I definitely wouldn't be moving every 3 months, since the interview process takes time, and picking the right company is difficult. Anyway, I was productive within a week at my current company. Have you heard of companies trying to reduce the time to impact (or git commit) of an employee, some are proud that their employees commit go into production on their first day. If it takes one year to make back the money it costs to pay them, that sounds like we should improve that process or get more value from developers, rather than expect people to stay for longer to earn back their cost. This is clearly a tough topic for some people on HN. I would recommend you just do some interviews (this is not treason), and see what offers you get (this is fair, you might get a nice increase). Then you'll realize its not a big deal for companies (especially the one thats making the hire), it might be bigger in your head and in your existing company.
throwaway79392 6y ago
I can confirm this view in part from a dev perspective. Also I can empathize with the original problem. I've changed jobs more often than I should've and this is an often asked question in interviews. In fact, if I get asked this, there's a 80% likelihoood that it's going to be a "no". So to add some more points: > You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM ... Approach small startups, they judge much less. In fact a very early stage project (3-4 people) might be very happy to hire you because you seem very smart. The salary might be bad but will give you valuable in-depth job experience that will help you further down the road. Also about the executive thing: I wouldn't approach executives because they usually hardly know what the company is doing. (They are there to talk with investors, external stakeholders...) Only exception small places. (< 30 ppl) If I was you I would focus on a technology you like, maybe RoR or Python/Django and develop a small test project. If you feel confident enough even publish it on Github, but that's not a must. Just the muscle memory is good enough and that you can talk about it during interview. (Should be something mundane, like a Todo list or a news article search) And then just look for early stage startups and write them. Or perhaps NGOs, they are also much more open. Once you've stayed at one relevant job for a year or two you can "double-down" on that and apply somewhere else for more... Most places don't care if you are ultra smart but rather that the usual tasks get done in an acceptable way. From past experience that's what managers are complimenting.
DeusExMachina 6y ago
He also mentions a couple of times that he was ghosted after interviews, even at Home Depot. So I would add also add to this already great list: role-play interviews with friends and get their feedback on how you present yourself (dress, tone of voice, behavior, etc.) and what kind of blunders you make.
antihero 6y ago
Has OP tried some sort of personality coaching or something?
godofwar 6y ago
I'm also unemployed. Why should the past speak for me? Shouldn't my github account be enough? Edit: reason for my down vote? I think my argument is fair, it is wrong to look into the candidate's past. Just look at their skills and nothing else Edit 2: down voting without a reason forces me to assume the decision was not rational and thus invalid.
godofwar 6y ago
I think OP could try to join a startup, build some skills and network. He/she will eventually be able to get into a FAANG company. The past doesn't matter. Building skills could be enough

veerabadhra 6y ago

This kind of safe advice isn't very helpful for someone who is hustling IMO. Maybe it is useful for someone who's going to become a principal engineer at a large corporate. The parent commenter would be well suited to work at a startup. Unfortunately, startups have also been infected by the corporate virus. In a country that's stagnating, such risk averse behavior makes sense, because there is no reward for taking on risks.

xienze 6y ago
> This kind of safe advice isn't very helpful for someone who is hustling IMO. Well are they hustling or looking for steady employment in tech?
santoshalper 6y ago
That's weird, where did you get the sense that op is "hustling" (whatever that means)? They spend half their post listing big companies they are trying to get jobs at.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ALittleLight 6y ago
A teenage boy asked the master "How do I compose a symphony?" The master said "You're too young, you need to start with more modest projects." "But master" said the boy "you first composed a symphony when you were half my age!" "Yes, but I didn't ask anyone how." --- What I mean by this is that "hustling" is something of a unique, rare, or hacking like thing. You can't ask people how to do it, because if they could tell you then everyone would do it and it wouldn't work. I don't mean that like people are keeping a secret, but more like hustling means going through a dynamic and unexpected route and it's not something people can easily reduce to instructions.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  > You can't ask people how to do it, because if they could tell you then everyone would do it and it wouldn't work Coding-camps?
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    I think a good coding camp is a plausible route to an entry level dev position. I know a Google dev who got there via a coding camp. I wouldn't describe it as a hack or hustle though. It's basically learn the skills required, demonstrate your knowledge, then interview and get a matching job.
  - 8128js8121 6y ago
    saps, paying to learn shit from stack overflow.
  - ryankemper 6y ago
    A coding camp is the opposite of hustling. It's called "bootcamp" for a reason - it's there to impose some structure for those who need it. Also bootcamp is very overhyped. There's some great people that come out of them, but I think mainly the hype is the fact that college is overrated (this is a cliche opinion I know) so bootcamps are there to try to exploit some of the delta that the myopic focus on college degrees creates. But many boot camps are super myopic in their own ways.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ma2rten 6y ago

I don't necessarily agree regarding FAANG. Once someone gets an interview it doesn't matter much what their previous work experience is.

fnbr 6y ago
I agree. If OP can consistently get interviews at FAANGs, then that’s all that’s needed for the job.
- eslaught 6y ago
  To make this even more explicit: if OP can get interviews, then the resume (and the "on paper" job record) is clearly not an issue. The issue is interview technique, possibly the verbal description of the job history, but possibly something else (technical or social). I second other comments elsewhere in the threads here to get a candid friend to help with interview practice.
- batch12 6y ago
  It sounds to me like it is either a knowledge gap of which they may be unaware, or a personality issue. When hiring in the past, I looked for thoughtful, but honest answers-- even if the answer was "I don't know." Someone talking around the question or bullshitting me resulted in a no. Also, interviewers may be sensing some quality which hint that the interviewee would make existing employees' jobs harder. Dunno if this is happening, but things like talking bad about previous jobs, management, etc can turn folks off. Also, if one implies many previous jobs were problems the interviewer may assume that the employee was the issue instead.
  - djellybeans 6y ago
    I think personality issues are kind of overstated for interviews. Just about every industry has its fair share of jerks and sociopaths that throw people under the bus. Regardless, they have jobs, and almost all of them had to pass interviews to get into their respective companies. These are the workers that set the lower bar for entry into a job, and in the "right" companies, your personality would be passable by those standards to get hired.

de6u99er 6y ago

Where does his article say, that he spoofed emails to manipulate executives into meetings? Only thing I see about email is the one to a VP which resulted in fixing an issue. I bet he didn't receive the credit for it.

evan_ 6y ago
> Spoofed number to bypass contact whitelist etc.

kfogel 6y ago

I just want to say that this was a kind, detailed, and thoughtful response -- beneficial to the OP, no doubt, but also probably to others. It was nice to be reminded that sometimes the Internet doesn't suck. Thanks for taking the time to write that reply.

jart 6y ago
It's a good comment with the right instinct but for the wrong reasons. The biggest red flag is struggling with personal finance. You can't get jobs like the ones he wants if you live beyond your means and constantly land in hot water with money because people who are like that are at risk of turning to evil to make ends meet.
- Shugarl 6y ago
  He just spent a year without any steady source of income, should't his saving run out at one point ?
  - midasuni 6y ago
    You should have 40 years of expenses saved in an emergency fund before you start spending a penny on anything /s
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - sgt101 6y ago
      40 years is quite a risk - 120 is far better. And saving this is easier than you think, if you commit to not eating and living outside. Importantly do what you are told, and remember your inadequacy!
- ehnto 6y ago
  What jobs inquire about your financial history? That seems a little dystopian. Can't get a handle on your finances because you don't have a steady job, better not give them a steady job!

aeoleonn 6y ago

First, OP: STOP CALLING YOURSELF UNHIREABLE. STOP WITH THE SELF-PITY-- Why? You can't simultaneously focus on two things: such as focusing pitying yourself while simultaneously focusing on building & completing your strategy. _____________________ WHATS THAT YOU SAY OP?!, you say you want to CONQUER THE ROMAN EMPIRE, but you only have a dozen pals WITH NERF GUNS? Yeah, guess how that'll work out :P Doesn't sound like a reasonable strategy, does it? Yes, you failed because YOU LACKED A REASONABLE STRATEGY. ANYONE WILL FAIL when they LACK A REASONABLE STRATEGY REGARDING ANYTHING in life, that should be obvious. The solution? Develop a reasonable strategy and fulfill the work involved in the strategy. ______________________________________ Now for the rest of my intended comment: This. PragmaticPulp is speaking about STRATEGY. You need a reasonable strategy, OP. Check out my recent comments for my lengthier reply of advice, but here I'll summarize: * Make small pivots. Don't try to jump to the top, as Pragmatic mentions * Market yourself. Want to be a programmer? Show the world you're a programmer then! How? You need to build an open source project with in-demand programming languages & frameworks. You need a Web Portfolio to show off your projects. A LinkedIn presence. And, put your resume up on job sites. This is basic marketing strategy, OP. Want a dev job? Well, how do you show the world you're a dev? Again, click my name to read my recent replies if you can't find 'em here on the first page of 300+ replies. So, focus on crafting your strategy and then completing the strategy. Keep your head up. Stay positive. Find motivational music & speeches on spotify & youtube-- that helped me get through 4 months of building my full stack app (no one paid me to make it, I simply built it b/c I knew I needed to show the world I had the skills)

chrisvalleybay 6y ago
You definitely came in from Reddit, that's for sure.
- aeoleonn 6y ago
  LOL do I sound liberal? What part of my comment do you dislike? To be fair, I don't expect everyone on HN to appreciate my perspective. The tech world seems to be majority snowflake, or pretend snowflake (go along to get along, in that case). I'm not a politically correct type of person-- I tell people what I actually think and prefer brutal honesty to sugar coated messaging.

jart 6y ago

> You spoofed emails to manipulate executives into meetings. A guy got hired at Google once because he spoofed an email from Larry to Sergey using an unknown DKIM hack he discovered. The OP said numbers so I'm assuming he spoofed caller id. That's kind of like stealing the silverware as far as hacks go. So it doesn't surprise me that would come across poorly.

Google234 6y ago
I don’t think that person got hired or even applied.

helsinkiandrew 6y ago

> yet the only real job experience you list in your post is low level customer support Devs are in the lucky position that you can obtain some aspects of 'real job experience' outside of a job. Create a project, or contribute to open source project in an area that interests you - it will hone your skills and give something concrete on your resume. [edit] And make the projects very directed to the jobs you want to get, if security interests you try some hacker bounties - even documenting how you looked for exploits in a blog may be of use.

aledalgrande 6y ago
This. You wouldn't believe how much visibility contributing to known open source projects gives you. And you train your communication and collaboration skills (PRs/reviews) in addition to the usual developer chops. Good luck!

endymi0n 6y ago

That's spot on from the advice. I'll add that OP — Your biggest issue seems to be extremely high intelligence, paired with a lack of empathy and social functioning, which created a self-expectation of massive grandiosity. But you keep failing to deliver on it because you can't get your highly powered brain on the streets, leading in self-pity and depression. Not good, but salvageable. How do I know? My life story reads basically like yours into my late twenties — multiple college dropout, extremely high ambitions, always failed. The only difference is that I started that low level support job in a company small enough that somebody saw my talent and got me on the path to second level tech support and then engineering as I continued automating my job away. Had to chuckle as I pissed off quite a lot of people higher up in that job early on myself, but fortunately had a few people reflecting me instead of firing me, which made me understand how I made other people look and feel by my actions. The good news: Empathy is a learneable skill. Aim far lower in a smaller, young and growing (!) company with good potential — but especially with a great boss. Then work hard, SHUT UP your smartass mouth for a year and work your way up while learning what's holding you back with the help of a good coach/therapist. When you apply with the company, read everything you can about what they do and make it about them. Stop trying to impress. For that year, just focus on staying super humble and in the background, learning how value is created for that company and then go on creating that value even if nobody asked you to. Just for a year. Up your ante slowly and only when you feel you have established personal trust and leverage. Empathy a skill where intelligence won't support you but be in your way because of your natural tendency of you showing it off. That makes people feel dumb, and nobody likes to feel like that. Also, some actions like you skipping line management will make them feel they can't rely on you on top. You'll keep failing if people keep hating working with you. Your goal is to find a great manager first and make them look great. And then talk about that. Be the solution guy, not the problem guy. Be the one who goes the extra mile to bring a small win home, not the one who makes the snarkiest comment. You'll never be a "normal" person, but that's ok. Having a sharp profile comes with its own set of (dis)advantages. You can be high functioning if you surround yourself with capable people who know how to work with your weaknesses in order to leverage your strenghts. Your job is finding them, as you'll fail alone.

shultays 6y ago
I too suffer from an extremely high intelligence.

sigg3 6y ago

> FAANG Viz. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. I had to look it up (I'm not from around here).

kamaal 6y ago

>>You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative. Things like this are very important. Job hopping is a giant red flag for lots of companies. Nobody wants to hire an employee whose replacement they have to hire under an year.

throw14082020 6y ago
It’s not job hopping that’s the problem. It’s unemployment. Companies actually like job hoppers because they learn more, and actually can find those jobs, hence they hop. Job hopping without jobs (gaps) is unattractive but that would be unemployment not job hopping, since the dude is unemployed. I’m saying this only for people who are in utter shit jobs and have the talent to find another one, but are afraid to be classified a job hopper.
- yarcob 6y ago
  If someone never stayed more than a year at a job that's a pretty major red flag. Most hires will take a year to get productive (where they produce more value for the company than they cost). I would never hire someone if I expected them to leave in a few months (except an intern). There are exceptions. An experienced consultant may be hired only for short, specific projects. But if you're struggling to get hired, you don't fall in that category.
  - throw14082020 6y ago
    It depends how many years they've got. It also depends what your definition of job hopping is. Some people say anything less than 1 to 2 years. https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/job-hopping-v2/ https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/job-hopping-v2/ I definitely wouldn't be moving every 3 months, since the interview process takes time, and picking the right company is difficult. Anyway, I was productive within a week at my current company. Have you heard of companies trying to reduce the time to impact (or git commit) of an employee, some are proud that their employees commit go into production on their first day. If it takes one year to make back the money it costs to pay them, that sounds like we should improve that process or get more value from developers, rather than expect people to stay for longer to earn back their cost. This is clearly a tough topic for some people on HN. I would recommend you just do some interviews (this is not treason), and see what offers you get (this is fair, you might get a nice increase). Then you'll realize its not a big deal for companies (especially the one thats making the hire), it might be bigger in your head and in your existing company.

throwaway79392 6y ago

I can confirm this view in part from a dev perspective. Also I can empathize with the original problem. I've changed jobs more often than I should've and this is an often asked question in interviews. In fact, if I get asked this, there's a 80% likelihoood that it's going to be a "no". So to add some more points: > You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM ... Approach small startups, they judge much less. In fact a very early stage project (3-4 people) might be very happy to hire you because you seem very smart. The salary might be bad but will give you valuable in-depth job experience that will help you further down the road. Also about the executive thing: I wouldn't approach executives because they usually hardly know what the company is doing. (They are there to talk with investors, external stakeholders...) Only exception small places. (< 30 ppl) If I was you I would focus on a technology you like, maybe RoR or Python/Django and develop a small test project. If you feel confident enough even publish it on Github, but that's not a must. Just the muscle memory is good enough and that you can talk about it during interview. (Should be something mundane, like a Todo list or a news article search) And then just look for early stage startups and write them. Or perhaps NGOs, they are also much more open. Once you've stayed at one relevant job for a year or two you can "double-down" on that and apply somewhere else for more... Most places don't care if you are ultra smart but rather that the usual tasks get done in an acceptable way. From past experience that's what managers are complimenting.

DeusExMachina 6y ago

He also mentions a couple of times that he was ghosted after interviews, even at Home Depot. So I would add also add to this already great list: role-play interviews with friends and get their feedback on how you present yourself (dress, tone of voice, behavior, etc.) and what kind of blunders you make.

antihero 6y ago

Has OP tried some sort of personality coaching or something?

godofwar 6y ago

I'm also unemployed. Why should the past speak for me? Shouldn't my github account be enough? Edit: reason for my down vote? I think my argument is fair, it is wrong to look into the candidate's past. Just look at their skills and nothing else Edit 2: down voting without a reason forces me to assume the decision was not rational and thus invalid.

godofwar 6y ago

I think OP could try to join a startup, build some skills and network. He/she will eventually be able to get into a FAANG company. The past doesn't matter. Building skills could be enough