4 ms·

my job search is miserable. I want to post a well thought out rant about my experience but idk how to do it anonymously without ruining my chances to get a job

by tayo42 3y ago

my job search is miserable. I want to post a well thought out rant about my experience but idk how to do it anonymously without ruining my chances to get a job looking like a dick online. Every part is horrible: recruiters that don't know the industry beyond buzzwords. this is frustrating, they cant think outside their box "oh you havent done exactly this for 10 years, so i guess youll never do it." I dont think people know how bad of a filter these hr people are. I wrote code that handled tens of millions of requests a second, then you get "oh but were really looking for a sr backend api engineer, this doesnt seem like a good match" like what do you think I was doing? random interviews with no clear goals. "system design" wtf is this, i have no idea what anyone is looking in these within an hour. you want me to design facebook in 45min on a clunky ui? it takes 20 minutes just to talk about some of this stuff. you have to hope to hit their random keywords, but you have no idea what it is. leetcode has been beat to death, that to is horrible. we need you to optimize this exponential algorithm on the fly. basically if you haven't seen the exact problem before, you are not passing these interviews. or you run into the sr engineer, been with the company for years, that seems stuck in their local maximum that's interviewing you, your subjected their random questioning and expectations. the slow pace of everything. schedule an intro call a week ahead with a useless recruiter, schedule your tech screen another week out, now 2 weeks to get 3 engineers to screen you, talk with a hiring manager another week out. > worse getting no response at all. yeah, some company sent me an offline question, one question was write a k8s yaml file, right now, along with 2 other algorithm questions. like wtf was that looking for. no, i havent heard anything back. cant believe i wasted 1.5 hours on that. i dont think ill do any take home assements anymore, there is no guarantee anyone will look or respond. the low balls, "were looking for a staff/team lead, pay is 140k" you are out of your mind with these. I can keep going, the whole thing is horrible. thanks for reading my mini rant

countzeroasl 3y ago
"recruiters that don't know the industry beyond buzzwords. this is frustrating" I am not even in the Tech Industry (Plastics Manufacturing Engineering), and this is the case. There are maybe... MAYBE... a handful of recruiters that have been in the business, working with my industry long enough to actually know what the heck they are talking about. They are ones that have actually gone to plants, gone on tours, asked questions, and tried to understand the difference between a dryer, a hopper, and a barrel on an injection molding machine. Modern recruiting is as much a numbers game as modern job hunting (for the most part) and it is completely idiotic. I don't have really any advice, just wanted people to know that it's not just Tech that is seeing what you're seeing. The rest of us career professionals (16 years here) feel your pain and empathize.
frfl 3y ago
It seems to be a culmination of all the worst the hiring process throws at you right now. Your frustrations aren't unique right now unfortunately, as far as I can tell. But at the same time, either to keep up appearances or for whatever other reason, others don't seem to be freely describing the same frustrations. The public perceptions don't seem to reflect this side of reality either -- the job reports and unemployment rates at all time lows, yet the frustrations you're expressing seems more common that you'd think just looking at the headlines and reports of the job market. For what it's worth, I think it's best to try and ride it out, until the tides turn for the better. I don't know the root cause, but the economic situation (high interest rates) would seem to be the likely root cause, but that's just a guess.
- the_only_law 3y ago
  > the job reports and unemployment rates at all time lows I think this is because the issues described are particularly to software right now. Unemployment is pretty low, but I see a lot more people complaining about barely scraping by or hurting financially. My guess is that it’s mostly crappy jobs. Particularly in my locality there’s a massive divide between rent/property costs and average pay. I was trying to do some basic analysis on my local job market. Sadly, that data is not easily available, but I hand compiled the jobs posted in my area for a few days. There were plenty, but they tended to be low wage, low skill work, or work requiring expensive credentials or extensive experience.
  - frfl 3y ago
    /r/antiwork and /r/recruitinghell both have accounts of people being rejected from non-software jobs as well. Additionally, crappy wages and unrealistic job descriptions. Of course I read those posts knowing there's a certain amount of echo-chamber effect in those subreddits and a small number of posts may not give a clear indication of the overall job market. But certainly provides some perspective.
    - the_only_law 3y ago
      > Additionally, crappy wages and unrealistic job descriptions. What’s interesting, is from what I’ve seen, a lot of stuff is paying a lot better than I remember seeing a decade ago. However, the costs, notably the cost of things you need to survive (especially housing) has managed to far outpace those wage gains in a much shorter period of time. Although that might be specific to my location.
yu3zhou4 3y ago
Maybe the salaries are down and there is higher competitiveness between candidates because people are able to work remotely from low cost of living countries? I'd be happy to take fully remote staff eng/tech lead for 140k USD, because in my country I can make half of it for the same position
- tayo42 3y ago
  Maybe on a small scale but I dont think this is the case. A lot of roles are US only even if they are remote. Hiring out side the US when your exec team and related are all US based isn't as easy as just doing it. Language is hard to deal with. There are also issues with taxes following employment for where the hiring is being done that I dont think a lot of companies are going to put with. Companies can also be conservative about security, not everyone is going to want to have their data in a third world country. Also it seems like europe is cracking down on things you can get away with in the US
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    Not just taxes, but that's a big one * states have different payroll and VAT taxes, and internationally it could get very different and messy * NDAs, non-competes, and things like single-party consent for recording will vary by state and country. California, for example, basically banned non-competes, or else has to offer a lot of considerations to make them effective, but that ain't the case if you're in NYC, London, or Samarkand. * data storage, data-in-transit, data-at-rest and logging rules may be different * compliance rules like GDPR, CCPA, SOX, and PCI-DSS may have restrictions or not fly for one-off remote workers * then there are the very real security challenges, like geofencing IPs, getting 2FA to work with international numbers, making sure you're not MITM'd, or that US / Chinese / European / etc. border security won't scan your laptop as you enter or exit. My last job at a F500 had very strict protocols for travel to China, Russia, and the Middle East -- and for credible reasons. Meanwhile "remote in N. Carolina", even if 100% remote 45 min away, sidesteps a lot of those challenges.
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    > Hiring out side the US when your exec team and related are all US based isn't as easy as just doing it. Language is hard to deal with People talk about this, but really, U.S. companies can very easily hire from Canada, either through an employer of record (like Remote or Deel) or a PEO if they have several Canadian employees. They can also hire contractors and due to trade agreements don't have to deal with taxes at all (U.S. clients are even exempt from paying GST/HST that a Canadian contractor would typically have to charge otherwise). There are no more time zone issues than hiring remote U.S. and there's only a slightly higher chance of a language barrier (since Canada has a higher proportion of immigrants) I wouldn't be surprised if this is affecting the U.S. market (and might be the only saving grace of the Canadian market which nonetheless is in dire straits right now). Other than companies dealing with national security though, I don't see why US remote only would be a thing

by tayo42 3y ago

countzeroasl 3y ago

"recruiters that don't know the industry beyond buzzwords. this is frustrating" I am not even in the Tech Industry (Plastics Manufacturing Engineering), and this is the case. There are maybe... MAYBE... a handful of recruiters that have been in the business, working with my industry long enough to actually know what the heck they are talking about. They are ones that have actually gone to plants, gone on tours, asked questions, and tried to understand the difference between a dryer, a hopper, and a barrel on an injection molding machine. Modern recruiting is as much a numbers game as modern job hunting (for the most part) and it is completely idiotic. I don't have really any advice, just wanted people to know that it's not just Tech that is seeing what you're seeing. The rest of us career professionals (16 years here) feel your pain and empathize.

frfl 3y ago

It seems to be a culmination of all the worst the hiring process throws at you right now. Your frustrations aren't unique right now unfortunately, as far as I can tell. But at the same time, either to keep up appearances or for whatever other reason, others don't seem to be freely describing the same frustrations. The public perceptions don't seem to reflect this side of reality either -- the job reports and unemployment rates at all time lows, yet the frustrations you're expressing seems more common that you'd think just looking at the headlines and reports of the job market. For what it's worth, I think it's best to try and ride it out, until the tides turn for the better. I don't know the root cause, but the economic situation (high interest rates) would seem to be the likely root cause, but that's just a guess.

the_only_law 3y ago
> the job reports and unemployment rates at all time lows I think this is because the issues described are particularly to software right now. Unemployment is pretty low, but I see a lot more people complaining about barely scraping by or hurting financially. My guess is that it’s mostly crappy jobs. Particularly in my locality there’s a massive divide between rent/property costs and average pay. I was trying to do some basic analysis on my local job market. Sadly, that data is not easily available, but I hand compiled the jobs posted in my area for a few days. There were plenty, but they tended to be low wage, low skill work, or work requiring expensive credentials or extensive experience.
- frfl 3y ago
  /r/antiwork and /r/recruitinghell both have accounts of people being rejected from non-software jobs as well. Additionally, crappy wages and unrealistic job descriptions. Of course I read those posts knowing there's a certain amount of echo-chamber effect in those subreddits and a small number of posts may not give a clear indication of the overall job market. But certainly provides some perspective.
  - the_only_law 3y ago
    > Additionally, crappy wages and unrealistic job descriptions. What’s interesting, is from what I’ve seen, a lot of stuff is paying a lot better than I remember seeing a decade ago. However, the costs, notably the cost of things you need to survive (especially housing) has managed to far outpace those wage gains in a much shorter period of time. Although that might be specific to my location.

yu3zhou4 3y ago

Maybe the salaries are down and there is higher competitiveness between candidates because people are able to work remotely from low cost of living countries? I'd be happy to take fully remote staff eng/tech lead for 140k USD, because in my country I can make half of it for the same position

tayo42 3y ago
Maybe on a small scale but I dont think this is the case. A lot of roles are US only even if they are remote. Hiring out side the US when your exec team and related are all US based isn't as easy as just doing it. Language is hard to deal with. There are also issues with taxes following employment for where the hiring is being done that I dont think a lot of companies are going to put with. Companies can also be conservative about security, not everyone is going to want to have their data in a third world country. Also it seems like europe is cracking down on things you can get away with in the US
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  Not just taxes, but that's a big one * states have different payroll and VAT taxes, and internationally it could get very different and messy * NDAs, non-competes, and things like single-party consent for recording will vary by state and country. California, for example, basically banned non-competes, or else has to offer a lot of considerations to make them effective, but that ain't the case if you're in NYC, London, or Samarkand. * data storage, data-in-transit, data-at-rest and logging rules may be different * compliance rules like GDPR, CCPA, SOX, and PCI-DSS may have restrictions or not fly for one-off remote workers * then there are the very real security challenges, like geofencing IPs, getting 2FA to work with international numbers, making sure you're not MITM'd, or that US / Chinese / European / etc. border security won't scan your laptop as you enter or exit. My last job at a F500 had very strict protocols for travel to China, Russia, and the Middle East -- and for credible reasons. Meanwhile "remote in N. Carolina", even if 100% remote 45 min away, sidesteps a lot of those challenges.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  > Hiring out side the US when your exec team and related are all US based isn't as easy as just doing it. Language is hard to deal with People talk about this, but really, U.S. companies can very easily hire from Canada, either through an employer of record (like Remote or Deel) or a PEO if they have several Canadian employees. They can also hire contractors and due to trade agreements don't have to deal with taxes at all (U.S. clients are even exempt from paying GST/HST that a Canadian contractor would typically have to charge otherwise). There are no more time zone issues than hiring remote U.S. and there's only a slightly higher chance of a language barrier (since Canada has a higher proportion of immigrants) I wouldn't be surprised if this is affecting the U.S. market (and might be the only saving grace of the Canadian market which nonetheless is in dire straits right now). Other than companies dealing with national security though, I don't see why US remote only would be a thing