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Ask HN: How to overcome job search exhaustion?

• jesuscript 4y ago
  The point where you about to give up is the point where you are about to make it.
• powerslacker 4y ago
  1) Take a short break of at least a full day and do something you enjoy. Get some exercise and some fresh air if you can. 2) Mentally prepare yourself for the grind ahead. A lot of the jobs you are applying to are already filled by the time you get there or the job has been pulled due to economic slowdown but the company is still interviewing because they are disorganized. 3) Try and make a list of the reasons why you are pursuing this job and this career specifically. Clarity around why you are choosing to take on potentially hundred of these gruelling interviews can help you keep your eye on the prize. 4) Be conciously grateful for your blessings. Some people never make tech lead but want it, you seem to have accomplished it early and have acquired a ton of valuable experience. There are others in far worse circumstances. Take heart, although this situation is very tough, because you have a set of problems that many would love to have. Hope this helps you in some way. May God bless you.
• Minor49er 4y ago
  I wouldn't get discouraged since most people don't even make it to that stage, and being exhausted is certainly understandable after 40 interviews. But have you analyzed or asked for feedback on what it is that was missing from the interview step that the employer was looking for?
  • moeris 4y ago
    Most of the time that will likely be fruitless. Companies don't comment on why they made their employment decisions because it opens them up to be sued, with no benefit to them. (At my current company, they warn us not to tell interviewees how they performed.)
    • Minor49er 4y ago
      In my experience, I've been told things like "we were hoping for more experience with X which we don't think you have adequately demonstrated", although maybe half of the time I have specifically had to ask for that feedback when HR said that I didn't get the job
  • wincy 4y ago
    Man 40 interviews is a lot though. Maybe OP is just asking for a ton of money?
• jedberg 4y ago
  You gotta change something up. Get a certification or learn a new skill if you have the savings to do it. Get a job in another field that hires everyone -- I once took a job as an SAT teacher while I was between jobs because at least it gave me something to do. Volunteer. Especially if you can volunteer at a relevant industry conference, where you can at least mingle with people who might be able to give you a job lead. Since you said you had 10 years of experience I assume you haven't gone through a downturn before (or maybe got in right at the end of the last one). It's tough but it's a numbers game. Eventually you'll find someone who is hiring, but you may have to do something else for a while.
  • wincy 4y ago
    Last time I had trouble getting a job I just looked at what the most popular language was in my city. Then proceeded to read a book on C# and make a quick and dirty demo project. Had a job within two weeks after looking for months. It was kind of annoying switching to Windows dev but whatever do what you gotta do.
    • hall0ween 4y ago
      How did you find programming language popularity by city?
      • wincy 4y ago
        I mean at the time like five years ago I just literally opened LinkedIn, searched for software engineering jobs, and did a tally of the first 200 jobs or so on a piece of paper. About 50 were C# and 50 were Java, and then a mixture of other stuff. Pretty low tech but it got me a job. I came from a background of doing Elixir and Node.js backend which if someone recognized Elixir seemed to get me brownie points for doing something interesting. I guess whatever site you’re using to look for job listings you could do the same.
      • cvhashim 4y ago
        Job listings in your local area
• snarkypixel 4y ago
  I wanted to make an app to make job searching easier. It's a pain in the ass on both side and imo current tools on the market suck.
  • beranabus 4y ago
    https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
    • snarkypixel 4y ago
      lol :) I have a new take on it that I haven't seen yet, but yeah it seems like such a crowded space not sure I want to get into this mess.
  • fallingknife 4y ago
    Is this really a problem that can be fixed by an app? It seems more like a human behavior issue to me. There is a filter, and people are trying to get through it. It's adversarial, and automating the process makes it easier to game, which is why those solutions have not been adopted.
    • snarkypixel 4y ago
      I think the problem is how the vast majority of inbound job requests are spam or irrelevant, while at the same time there are a few gems out there that can't seem to reach the right candidates.
      • fallingknife 4y ago
        Sure, but how do you address this routing issue? Let recruiters target candidates in a different and more granular way than Linkedin, I guess? But then there is the issue that the paying customers are going to be on the recruiting end (like they are on Linkedin), not the employees, and the recruiters want to spam. I do think you could find a better way to solve this problem, though. Unfortunately I also think that you would run into this problem (https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-steam/ https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-...) except replace Steam with Linkedin.
• justanother 4y ago
  I have been in exactly this position. It does end. In the meantime, make sure you're getting fresh air and plenty of sleep. And try not to schedule an interview every day, you need at least one weekday away from it.
• lgleason 4y ago
  Has the market become this tough/bad?
  • wincy 4y ago
    I don’t think so? I got a job as a team lead two months ago with seven years experience. Not sure what OP is doing wrong here. The market was HOT earlier this year, but I don’t think it’s “bad” at this point. We just hired another dev and are hiring another team lead probably next year to spin off a new team. Maybe OP needs to consider doing mock interviews or something to figure out what it is that’s going wrong? I’m a good interviewee and got the first job I applied for. Maybe you worked at the same place for a long time and developed bad habits? Maybe you’re bad at selling yourself? I once interviewed someone who said he was a team lead at a company for six years. He straight up made up answers to some of the technical questions. It was horrifying. I’m not saying that’s OP but he definitely needs an objective voice to step in and figure out what the malfunction is in the interview process. Maybe ask a friend in tech to perform a mock interview? They can feel silly but also can really help.
    • lgleason 4y ago
      That is what I was thinking as well.
    • NatTheBat 4y ago
      I was also going to suggest mock interviews, especially after 40 interviews and no offer.
  • yrgulation 4y ago
    40 interviews indicate the market is hot.
  • sage76 4y ago
    If you are a young recent grad with FAANG experience on your resume, you will be fine. Otherwise, everyone I know struggles. Interviews are now involving more and more esoteric questions about things that aren't even on my resume, and sometimes questions about tools that can only be answered if you memorized the entire 1000 page handbook of the tool. I have been asked questions about things that were tangentially mentioned in my undergrad in a lecture 10 years ago, and I never used anything close to it in my job. Leetcode hazing varies from place to place. If they insist on the most efficient solution, mostly you are fucked unless you live and breathe algos. The only silver lining is dynamic programming questions have died out, probably because Meta stopped asking them.
• kleer001 4y ago
  > gives me anxiety and makes me depressed Nope. It may not entirely seem like it, but our emotional response to things are ours, they're not inherent in the objects of our focus. At least that's what my old and moldy stoic teachers tell me. > I am exhausted That's the key. That's real. There's no arguing with that. That you know it is the first step. I agree with another commentator, take some time off. But I'd add that the time off should be smaller and more frequent, something calming and sustainable. > I've done around 40 interviews > Technical lead with over 10 years experience Holy smoking duck nuts, that sounds exasperating! You have my sympathy. Someone once asked a man how he was. He replied, “I’m going through hell!” Said his friend: “Well, keep on going. That is no place to stop!” Best of luck!
• durnygbur 4y ago
  Having similar professional experience I'm thoroughly interrogated by people much junior. They're looking for lies, for fraud, for incompetence, for inconsistencies. Once a week or so I just drop CV compiled for the specific opening. My motivation to answer to their sorting-tree-hashmap-angular-state-management teasing is below zero. I'd been hired and I know how it feels like to be hired, if they are into butt sniffing I disconnect. I'm haven't been working for over one year now and I don't care.
• ebbflowgo 4y ago
• dbert37 4y ago
  Interviewing is "selling" yourself. Do you have a portfolio of some kind that you are actually showing during the process? Are you asking for feedback from the organization interviewing you? Following up til you get a "no" is also important. If they say anything besides no, you need to keep following up.
• hellolemon 4y ago
  If you have done 40 interviews, you are clearly qualified for the roles. I think you need to be more selective about what roles you apply to, and spent more time preparing for the interviews. Answer basic questions like why are you applying to that company? What do you gain from that role? People can smell desperation. I only started job searching seriously in July and I even took 2 weeks off in August. I was also unemployed. I only interviewed for the roles that I clearly felt was what I wanted. I spent weeks preparing for them and only did 2 final interviews. One I got rejected due to hiring freeze, but I got an offer for the second one in mid September. So my advice is to really ask yourself why do you want to apply for a role. Don’t machine gun it.
  • registeredcorn 4y ago
    >Answer basic questions like why are you applying to that company? What do you gain from that role? People can smell desperation. Question for you: When you get this sort of question, do you answer honestly, or "honestly"? My current company has been in a pretty steep decline in terms of quality. I feel that they undervalue the work that I do, do not pay me appropriately for the work that I do, are skirting around fundamental things (like paying for job-related education/certs/etc.), and are just generally mismanaging the company. I don't have a problem saying those things - I believe in honesty - however, I realize that me going into an interview as a complete stranger and telling them all of these problems would give that company a very negative perspective of myself. "This guy doesn't even know us, and if this is how he talks about his current employer, he'd probably talk about us the same way too. Pass." Instead, I try to find related-truths, and avoid the direct issues. "I'm looking to see what else is out there, and find new technical challenges. I feel like I have done a lot of good work and that my current company is in a good position, but I don't want my technical skills to deteriorate, so I'm looking to keep my skills up-to-date by tackling new problems." It seems to get a generally okay response, but I don't know if that reeks of some kind of "desperation" or not. What is your opinion on something like that be? I'm struggling to be both truthful, sincere, and give an actual answer, not just "corporate-speak" with buzzwords and non-statements.
    • ghaff 4y ago
• deckard1 4y ago
  There's a lot of woo-woo going on in this thread. You need to find the actual problem. You're making it to the interview, so all these companies feel you're at least minimally qualified for the job. Are you just getting unlucky that all these companies are in a hiring freeze and aren't willing to commit right now? Have you changed up your interviewing, tried anything new? Are you having further post-interview discussions that are turning sour? Money discussions? I would look at doing a few paid practice interviews online. Their services are designed to provide you honest feedback to help you. There may be something going on that you're not aware of and interviewers don't want to tell you.
  • apohn 4y ago
    >There may be something going on that you're not aware of and interviewers don't want to tell you. 100% Agree.
  • Kranar 4y ago
    >There may be something going on that you're not aware of and interviewers don't want to tell you. This is absolutely key, and when OP says something like: "I often get praises during interviews, but never an offer." I kind of feel bad because honestly, many people will give praise to a person just to kind of end the conversation, and I will admit to being guilty of it myself. It avoids the situation where you then have to justify why you didn't like something as if the burden is on me to explain myself, instead of the burden being on them to prove themselves. Kind of sucks but it is a reality one should be aware of.
    • singron 4y ago
      I've noticed that for some interviewers, praise during the interview is inversely correlated with the rating they give (I did a lot of pair interviews, which have similar tradeoffs to pair programming). Good candidates breeze through the main topic, get through some follow ups, and then we let them ask questions. Bad candidates have trouble with the material, so you might have to cut them off early to transition to their questions and some praise makes that feel smoother.
    • 4y ago
• drewfis 4y ago
  >Technical lead with over 10 years experience. I often get praises during interviews, but never an offer. If you have 10 years tech lead experience I assume you are applying for 200k+ base salary positions. The competition for these staff/lead roles is steeper, especially for remote roles during a recession. Take a couple interviews for less senior positions and knock them outta the park, get your confidence back. Probably won't require too much prep and will be low stress if the job is in your stack. Getting an offer feels nice - it's validating, especially in a dry spell.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • sage76 4y ago
    > Probably won't require too much prep That gave me a chuckle.
• wincy 4y ago
  I don’t know OP, I’m a tech lead who has done his fair share of interviews and based on your few comments on HN there seem to be some red flags with how you’re viewing the interview process. Saying “one person derails things because I’d outshine them” seems to externalize the blame. I don’t know that I’ve ever worked with any engineer who thinks they’d be worse off by hiring an extremely intelligent engineer. I’d love to be “outshined” as it’d make my life easier to have someone competent writing code with me and teaching me new things. I have a strong suspicion “I’m too smart” isn’t the issue here. Also, do you honestly think this has been the case at over forty places? That in dozens of separate cases you weren’t the problem, the interviewers were? This seems like an extraordinarily hostile and pessimistic worldview and I’d guess it’d come across in an interview. Eventually you need to do some soul searching into what’s going awry in the interviews. I have a good friend who is a software engineer and is autistic. He speaks about his interviews similarly to what you’ve said. Maybe ask a friend about what they might think is the problem. Be prepared though, because often if you solicit honest feedback from friends you won’t like what they have to say. Also why are you only applying at places that do leetcode style interviews? There’s plenty of places where that’s not the case, especially if you work outside of tech companies. There’s plenty of great Fortune 500 companies that will expect a 9-5 and are doing good engineering out there. Most of them are hiring remote. Although if you’re expecting FAANG salaries it might be harder to find that type of place. I wish you the best and hope you get to a better place. Good luck!
  • digitalgangsta 4y ago
    this. Worth interviewing with someone you know and see how you do. I interviewed a gent once who was very smart but talked my ear off, including cutting me off multiple times. After 45 mins of this, I stopped him and bluntly gave him this feedback. He was stunned and then thanked me as he realized he had been failing interviews because of this and no one had told him. I didnt hire him, but he was very appreciative and he took the feedback for his next batch.
    • busterarm 4y ago
      One of the best engineers that I've ever met is fundamentally unhireable due to the severity of his personality. He's not even a bad guy -- he's very helpful always but unfortunately everything he says just sounds smug or sanctimonious. He can't help himself. It's been sad watching his career struggles and knowing the quality of his work if you can just keep him away from stakeholders and meetings in general
• erehweb 4y ago
  Where do you think you are falling down in the interviews? Is it technical Qs? Behavioral? You might try post interview analysis with a friend or professional.
• sjducb 4y ago
  If you're a former tech lead with 10 years of experience, and struggling to get a job then you're doing something wrong. Have a friend / former colleague who knows you and the industry. Get them to look at your CV and do a mock interview. Then listen to their advice. You are probably making a basic mistake like badmouthing former employers / being bad at leetcode / not having good reasons for gaps / unreasonable requirements ... Increasing resilliance will just make you keep failing. You need to fix the problem that has caused you to fail 40 interviews despite 10 years of experience.
  • mixmastamyk 4y ago
    It's very common to fail interviews these days, you make it sound rare. Employers are looking for any possible reason to say no, and many have unreasonable expectations. Often choosing based on who memorized the most random facts (from an unbounded set) asked today. Your third paragraph is good probably on target however.
    • sjducb 4y ago
      40 failed interviews in a row, with 10 years of experience is rare. If he had failed 5 interviews then I would just tell him to keep going. After 40 failures in tech he needs to stop and work out what he's doing wrong.
      • mixmastamyk 4y ago
        Been there. Other things you can’t change, or are very hard. Getting old, or choosing the wrong degree.
      • hiyer 4y ago
        I don't think they've interviewed at 40 different companies. For someone with 10+ years experience, most companies do at least 5-8 rounds these days. So I'd expect the number of companies they've interviewed at - and unfortunately been rejected at - to be in the single digits. That's not unusual at all.
• umbauk 4y ago
  Sounds like you could benefit from a coach to help you to find out why you're being rejected. It's likely something you're not aware of and if 40 different interviewers can spot it in an hour then I'm sure a coach could too.
• paxys 4y ago
  Assuming you are making it to final rounds, 40 interviews, at an average of 6-8 per company, means you have been rejected by 5-7 companies. If you are aiming for only FAANG-equivalents then competition for the open positions is obviously intense, and your experience isn't too out of the ordinary. I'd wager the best programmer on the planet will have a <50% success rate at leetcode-style interviews. Remember that you are aiming for $300K-500K/yr salary at age 32. That puts you in the top 0.01% of the global population. It isn't meant to be easy. You have two paths forward. Either double down, do more coding prep, more mock interviews, keep applying, and eventually you will get that offer. Or aim for one tier lower and find a smaller company or startup that is a good fit for your skill set.
  • __ryan__ 4y ago
    at an average of 6-8 per company Based on what?
    • paxys 4y ago
      1 recruiter call 1-2 phone screens Maybe a take home test 4-5 onsite interviews 1 call with hiring manager This is the standard process in big tech recruiting.
      • jacknews 4y ago
        It's exhausting just reading this, let alone doing it with multiple companies. How did it get so crazy, or is this only for the most elite companies, and positions? I can't imagine going to all this trouble for a java programming position at a regional insurance company or something similar.
        • sage76 4y ago
          This is the process for almost every company, not just FAANGS.
          • hardware2win 4y ago
• purpleblue 4y ago
  Which part of the world are you located? When you say 40 interviews, do you mean 40 separate companies? You probably need to get your interview behavior evaluated by a friend or someone else. Either your technical chops are not good, or you're giving off the wrong vibe. Maybe get rid of Technical Lead off your resume and shoot for a lower-level position, and see how you do.
  • ipaddr 4y ago
    These days you need to go through 40 interviews to get past the filtering stage
• drivebycmmnt 4y ago
  At this point in your career if you are good at the people side of things you should have former cow-orkers who want you leading a team.
• SuoDuanDao 4y ago
  One thing I found helped during my 9-month job search was to have a project I was working on at the same time. A huge factor why job searching is exhausting is that one doesn't see any progress. Having a 'resume filler' helped me feel like I was still moving in a positive direction.
  • hiyer 4y ago
    This honestly sounds like a great idea. Even if not a side project, maybe learning a new language might help not only as a resume-filler but also to expand the pool of jobs you can apply for.
• thisiswrongggg 4y ago
  Job market is weird and gets weirder and more hostile as you grow more senior and older. Yet, it is a numbers game. Just keep at it and maybe change your focus a bit. E.g. if you target startups leave them aside and focus on banks or health sector. Pivot around.
• m0llusk 4y ago
  Similar situation here with over 30 years experience. Early on there were some obvious flaws in my resume, cover letters, and interviewing. Some of that can be fixed and some of that is just me being anxious and autistic which isn't going to completely go away though to some extent that can be controlled. In general there is a problem that I mostly interview with people who have around 5-15 years of experience and to them my resume and skill set don't fit in the usual boxes. Many replies in this thread are suggesting that there is one thing going wrong but in my case a potentially interesting conclusion is that there are lots of different failure modes coming up. Mostly things come apart in coding evaluations where I get nervous and make mistakes and in general go too slow. Other points of contention that have come up is a lack of experience with specific tools and libraries involved in the work. Experience and methodology with testing and ideas about management is also a big deal. Several interviews have gone off the rails when my take on Agile didn't completely mesh with what companies are doing. So it is good to always look for what in yourself you can improve but also be aware that no one is completely perfect and in many cases even one minor issue can prevent an offer from being made.
  • busterarm 4y ago
    In any good place to work, specific tool experience shouldn't matter unless the company is in a very specialized niche. This is especially true considering you come in with 30 years experience. To be honest, it sounds to me like the headwinds you're really encountering are ageism and your interviewers are trying to throw you off that scent for liability reasons.
    • ghaff 4y ago
      Over and above outright ageism, 30 years of experience also comes with commensurate expectations and, even if not necessarily a specific tool, organizations probably won't hire someone that senior if their experience is only tangentially related to that needed for a role. Someone who is junior you might go "They're bright, they'll pick it up." Hiring a senior person is often about hiring in skills you don't have internally and need.
• confidantlake 4y ago
  If you need a job, any job, try consulting companies. Often they just need warm bodies and if you are minimally competent and aren't a jerk in the interview you will be ok. Definitely get some mocks if you can. There may be something that is easy to fix that you are unaware of. For better jobs, it is not easy right now. On my most recent job search I had 1.5 offers from big tech (congrats you passed but no more hiring this year!), and 30-40 rejections, from the other big tech, to large enterprise, to small startups. If you are only going for the big jobs, might be time to just chill for a while until things start to thaw.
• j45 4y ago
  It's really hard when there isn't much feedback provided. Tech interviewing sucks because it asks you to present linear in the interview to measure alignment but the work is anything but linear most of the time. The phrase be so good no one can ignore you comes to mind for me, but that isn't the only or best way. There is a book by that name that might help you find things about you that you undervalue but are very unique and valuable compared to the rest. I try to think about it in terms of "how many other candidates that you are speaking with have done x?" While searching, spend as much time learning and building something not just with emerging tech but maybe some things you see int he job posts. Level up. Setup a Youtube channel with a daily video journal of what you're learning and keep it in line with a daily slide deck. Embed both in the resume as a link so any technical person seeing it can get to meet you and see how you communicate well before they start interviewing. Ask for feedback on what you could add to your skillset or present differently on from each interview. Maintaining that kind of relationship will help them keep you in mind and hopefully you get some meaningful input. Attend a lot of meetups and local groups for tech, software, or whatever in your area. You will meet employees and the more you can show and tell there as a beginner and as you get to know them they will naturally invite you to things you might be a good fit for without asking. The route of an invitation is much better than applying online. Applicant tracking systems are pretty poor filters, and then HR also is a poor filter because they are illiterate in tech for the most part and play keyword bingo. It's true you can get in front of someone technical and work through that process, but having a warm intro and learning about the company by dropping by to meet someone for lunch, and then learning about it can go a very long way when something becomes available, or a new initiative is in place. If you do find any of the above helpful or useful, happy to chat as peers via email (anyone). Finding and securing your next opportunity to improve your life shouldn't be this hard.
• ilc 4y ago
  Principal Software Engineer here, 25+ years, been a team lead, and architect. Frankly: You are "on tilt." Every interview you take right now, you are throwing out an opportunity. "It looks like I will be unemployed until the next year and I have no idea how to get a job." - This is a self fulfilling prophecy. If you believe that... stop interviewing and rest, let yourself recover from the burnout and grind of interviewing. Let yourself feel like actually wanting to interview and work again. After that: Go back to the leetcode grind, make sure you are RAZOR sharp. Make sure you learn from the stuff people post to brag. Start writing stuff you'd brag about. How do I know all the above: I've tried not doing it, and doing it... I can tell you resting is MUCH better, and the market reacted MUCH more positively to me. I'm talking in terms of offers etc, not just the feedback.
  • sage76 4y ago
    > Go back to the leetcode grind, make sure you are RAZOR sharp. Make sure you learn from the stuff people post to brag. Start writing stuff you'd brag about This could take a LONG time, and where I live, career gaps are a killer.
    • ilc 4y ago
      Took me 1.5 months, after what was effectively a 3 year misstep. I took a 6 month gap. Note, I didn't say you have to write stuff you'd brag about every time. Just be able to do it sometimes. Pro tip: Use python. Even if you don't use the language normally. It is so good at the questions used in leetcode.
• d11z 4y ago
  I’ve been trying for abour 5 years now, longer even; and I’ve too given up. I work for myself now, because I have no choice, no voice, no house.
  • vlod 4y ago
    >I work for myself now, Do you mean as a contractor/consultant or you're own startup idea?
    • d11z 4y ago
      Startup idea, although it is currently on pause due to health issues.
• shadowdevvv 4y ago
  honestly its such a grind with leetcode and system design these days. Just dedicate a certain amount of time everyday towards interview prepping. btw if you need help grinding leetcode, ive created spacedleets.com which helps practice leetcode with spaced reptition. (its free)
• gwbas1c 4y ago
  Been in a similar situation. I was a lead with almost 20 years experience, and I got laid off right before the pandemic. It takes a bit of patience. One thing that I learned is that ageism really isn't a thing, but that most openings really are for people with a little less experience than us. This is because a lot of companies are willing to take a chance on someone who costs less; but set the bar exceptionally high for someone who costs more. To keep sane, I worked on learning projects and only hunted for jobs about 50% of my day-to-day time. My general pattern was to spend a few mornings or afternoons hunting through the "who's hiring" Hacker News thread, and then spend the remainder of the month seeing where it went. By the end of the month I was ready to hit the next "who's hiring" thread. It took me almost a year. Thankfully pandemic unemployment kept me from digging into savings. Some things to keep in mind: I recently worked with someone brilliant who told me he had lots and lots of interviews before finding the job. He occasionally rubbed me the wrong way. I suspect he may have habitually rubbed people the wrong way in interviews, too. Another time I rejected a candidate who was hired against my recommendation, who then went to be a lead. At times he was very difficult to work with, although he generally did the job well. My questions weren't hard, in this case, he interviewed for a job in C# and didn't know how to use a dictionary in a whiteboarding coding session... The interview just got... awkward. Finally, don't forget that getting this kind of job is always a numbers game. Keep trying. Really. Just keep trying.
• dudul 4y ago
  To me it doesn't sound normal. Yes there are layoffs, but I feel like the market (at least in the US) is still hot, especially for good senior people. If you truly went through 40 interviews without ever making it to an offer I'm sorry but there is a problem somewhere with you. At what stage of the process do you usually get rejected/ghosted? 40 seems like enough data points to try to detect a pattern. There is something you're doing wrong, but you can learn what it is and improve.
• ericfrazier 4y ago
  There's a blue tent waiting on the corner for me to live in if I quit job searching. That's my motivation.
• uptownfunk 4y ago
  Do mock interviews and get feedback. Look at good interviewers and take tips. It never hurts to: Be right. Be humble. Be polite. Be practiced. Be introspective. Be experienced. Ultimately you’re meant to go where you’re meant to go. You need one job. There’s a huge dearth of talent. Rejections can be exhausting, take time to find an outlet for the stress and anxiety - strong exercise is a good one.
• dev_0 4y ago
  Hiring freeze in tech now....and more people are trying to find new jobs
• fbrncci 4y ago
  Just keep interviewing, in May my interview counter hit 50 for the year, and 6 interviews later I ended up with a job. I just saw every interview as a opportunity to get better at the process. If a leetcode style interview was mentioned, I would decline.
  • devoutsalsa 4y ago
    When I was desperate, the way I got better at interviewing was interviewing. I just talked to anyone who’d pay attention to me. I remember when I did something like 30 rounds of interviewing on a single week.
• dirtybirdnj 4y ago
  I'm right there with you. I was a backend web developer for 10 years until COVID hit, and after getting laid off I've been bouncing between menial low-wage jobs. I can be a capable, productive member of a development team but the experience I've had makes me look unhirable? I don't really understand it. Once you get "high up" enough in the job market and fall down, there is something that is perceived as wrong with you. It's unfair but it's real. I've been in it for 2+ years. I have reached a point of toxic burnout that I'm having incredible difficulty recovering from. I spend my days at a menial job that causes immense stress and mental anxiety, and then I come home and try to look for jobs, apply to a few before getting discouraged and pass out. The suggestions to "take a break" seem cruel and mocking to someone who desperately needs to pay the bills and can't find a way to work harder to earn more. My only other options are things like housekeeping, diswashing, or other out-of-tech jobs. It's almost impossible to overcome self-hate and shame when every experience you need to "prove yourself" fails and you are unable to justify your value or existence to family or peers. I used to be a software developer now I'm just an angry wage slave.
  • ipaddr 4y ago
    What language/stack are you in?
    • dirtybirdnj 4y ago
      I got started with the LAMP stack but really enjoyed working with Node. I'm comfortable on the command line installing / running things, I've been doing linux based development my entire career with a few unfortunate exceptions where PHP was being run on IIS.
      • throwaway5959 4y ago
        That could be part of the problem (older stack). Do you have any example projects/portfolio with newer tech?
        • derwiki 4y ago
• ipaddr 4y ago
  I tried to get a new position in June/July. I asked for slightly above top salary bands for language/stack. I also tried to find a place without daily standups. I did many interviews/rounds/tests with a dozen places but never got that final offer either. It was strange the number of interview rounds at different places without even lowball offer. It felt like people were just interviewing to interview but too afraid to make the offer. After a month I stopped the process and just remained at my current job. I think companies are afraid to hire but hr needs to do things so they interview. Half of the places I interviewed are still looking for that senior developer and have new monthly job ads. There is something preventing hiring and a different force pushing for conversations/interviews
  • brezelgoring 4y ago
    They have turnover and must keep a healthy pool of candidates ready to go, open positions or not. This is especially true if the interviewing process is long.
  • patrakov 4y ago
    Short daily standups with only your team, that do lead to useful synchronization of understanding within this team, are still infinitely better than bi-weekly 40-minute-long whole-company meetings where most of the time the sales guys announce their new collateral which is absolutely not relevant for me as a tech guy.
• swsdsailor 4y ago
  If you suspect ageism, try interviewing at large companies whos primary business is not tech. Ive rejected candidates who struggled with the basics, for not explaining their thought process, constantly interrupting me (or arguing),not listening to my guidance, some even ran the interview and didn’t think it was worth their time to solve the questions. You have to be able to do the job but also, we have to feel we can work with you and you can adapt to our codebase without having to justify every past decision to you. It’s amazing to me how many people I would have hired had they just worked through the problem step by step, communicated, and taken my feedback seriously. It seems to me there is a serious lack of basics and communication skills out there. I suspect none of the candidates were aware of their mistakes. I never ask trick/FAANG style question. However, I have noticed more junior team members are ruthless with their judgement during the interview process. Find a company with an older demographic, and treat the interview as a peer work session. Whatever you do, don’t give up.
• crnkofe 4y ago
  Having gone through a similar but maybe less stressful experience during first COVID wave my suggestion is to take a break and act on the feedback. I applied to remote only positions and found companies would generally send me some feedback after the interview or some hints as-to what they didn't like. I probably rewrote my CV up-to 5, 6 times over the interviewing period. I also spend way too long digging into standard interview questions and leetcode madness which I'm still not particularly good at. Also don't stress too much over failing interviews. Especially for full remote positions companies are trigger-happy. One, two mistakes and you're out. Request a wage that's too high and you're out without any feedback. Not to mention all the companies that are just doing the interviews but not really hiring and those special cases where they simply ignore take-home assignments.
• empathygeezer 4y ago
  Everybody else wants to give you hope. There is none. I am on a dozen slacks, and these stories of desparation are far too frequent. This downtown is far, far, far worse than 1993, 2000 and 2008. The privileged rich libertarian crypto bros who work at FAANG are all suffering from survivorship bias. Don’t let them makw you feel like shit, their hardships will come in a year or two as well. I am in the same boat. Nearly 25 years of experience, but I got fired a week after Covid lockdowns began and haven’t been able to find anything since. Covid was really hard on me, I’ve lost both my parents, my best friend and maky others. I caught covid while holding my mother when she died of the same disease, and my body has never recovered, nor has my spirit. I ran out of short term savings about a month ago and now I’m living in a friend’s broken down sprinter van after having sold everything I owned. Just sold my laptop, and promised my mother’s ghost I would try until 1 January. Then I will stop taking my medicine and within a day or two I will join her and my dad. This way I wont have to eat into my estranged son’s college fund. Good luck.
  • sage76 4y ago
    I'd tell you that your thought process is wrong, but fuck me I'm in the same boat. What makes it worse is the general perception that money is just raining in tech and I'm somehow deficient for not making millions when "everyone else" is. At least in many other industries like showbiz, people know it's hard to break in and make it. So expectations are set.
    • rrgok 4y ago
      Wow, that hit hard "I'm somehow deficient for not making millions when "everyone else" is". This the same sentence/phrase all me relatives keep saying to me. They all think that, since I'm a Software Engineer, I should be making millions, or at least well above average, and if I'm not then I'm not trying hard enough.
• ravenstine 4y ago
  At this point, I would start asking employers for feedback after interviews. Most may not tell you the whole truth, but some might, and that could be valuable information.
• jimcavel888 4y ago