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> If you're going through the front door, you've already lost. I've heard that advice in various forms but I must say (anecdote incoming) - in my own 30 year c
by commandlinefan 5y ago
> If you're going through the front door, you've already lost.
I've heard that advice in various forms but I must say (anecdote incoming) - in my own 30 year career, the best jobs I've ever had were the random ones that I just applied for and the worst ones were the ones that somebody I knew from before recruited me in from outside.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agohmm, I guess I can say a reasonably good one and the worst one ever that almost made me quit programming came about this way. The same guy recruited me in both places.
- xpe 5y agoHow many jobs have you had? You talked about the best and the worst. Can you comment on the relationship between (y-axis) quality of job and (x-axis) strength of personal connection before you joined. If you plotted a scatterplot, what relationship would you find?
- commandlinefan 5y agoI've changed jobs ten times since 1992. As it works out, exactly half of them I was recruited into by an internal reference and the other half I found on a job board like Monster or LinkedIn. By far, the two best were relatively large organizations that I applied to cold, and the two absolute worst were actually the ones I was most actively recruited into by former co-workers. I suspect that the problem in both of the latter cases was that they worked so hard to bring me in that they ended up overselling me - I'm good, but I'm also a human who has two kids to look after. On the other hand, if I'm "just" the best candidate from the pile of resumes, expectations seem to be reasonable.