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It’s Hard to Find a Job Right Now
I’m a software engineer at a FAANG company, but my last day is coming up. 2 years ago I was given special approval to move across the country and work remotely. I've since been asked to move back. I have 3 young children, so moving is a nonstarter.
I've been actively searching for a new role for 2 months. I've had 5 phone screens now and have been rejected from all of them. I don't think I can overstate how uncharacteristic of my experience this is. Across all my prior job searches, I have not received 5 rejections in total, let alone in 1 job search. But I have some thoughts on this.
I'm pretty bad at selling myself. Most people overstate their abilities in interviews. My wife tells me I do the opposite. If you asked my coworkers about me, they'd probably tell you I'm one of the best engineers they've ever worked with (not to toot my own horn). My manager would say I'm the most productive employee he's ever had. And I know deep down I'm very talented. I'm obsessively passionate about the field and honestly just find the work fun. I also work my ass off and it shows. But I'm unsure how to communicate anything along these lines in an interview, and I wonder if I come across as less capable because I lack bravado. Usually I just let my work speak for itself.
I have a learning disability. It defies standard characterization, but suffice to say, I have processing difficulties. For example, the other day I was doing a Leetcode problem to find a path through a grid. I've solved problems like this many times. The hardest part for me was writing my tests. Specifically, translating a path to a series of row/col tuples is unreasonably hard for me. In general, simple mental accounting is my achilles heel, but I usually do fine and compensate by taking more time. When I'm asked to move quickly, my performance degrades precipitously. Timed coding problems exacerbate these processing difficulties.
I also find that I don't keep up well with the pace of interview conversation. I interviewed at a well-known internet company the other day. I knew all the material cold but found myself saying things that are slightly technically incorrect. I found myself omitting important questions and details. At my job I slow down and get it right, but I wasn't finding myself doing that effectively the other day.
The same issue happens in behavioral interviews. I'll say things that just don't sound good, or I'll overshare. This make me seem inexperienced. I'll fail to convey nuance as I walk through previous situations. I'm not sure why, but I don't have this issue in the workplace, probably because I've built up a lot of trust as an expert.
I also have performance anxiety during interviews. In my most recent interview, I was given a leetcode-esque problem. It was a trivial recursive problem, and I completely blanked. I hacked out something that was fundamentally broken. After the interview, I solved the problem in a few minutes. This experience was beyond frustrating given the problem was simple.
I've completed 413 unique Leetcode problems to date. I wouldn't say I'm great at Leetcode, hence all the practice, but I'm hardly bad at it. The practice didn't show in the most recent interview, and I'm not sure more practice would have even helped given how capable I was of solving the problem.
This job search is different in that I'm looking for senior/staff positions or technical leadership roles. I've been the technical lead on my past 2 teams, and I'd like to continue it going forward. Part of me wonders if my problem is that the interviewing bar is just higher for these positions. And when I say something that makes me look a little bad, whereas previously it might have been disregarded, now it disqualifies me.
I haven't been job searching that long and the job market is terrible, but this search feels fundamentally different. I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on my situation. I'm open to any advice and also job opportunities.
- PaulHoule 3y agoOn the record I’ll say the average person interviews below their ability and if you can interview at your ability you are practically doing better than your ability. This might look a little “scammy” but I’ll vouch that Bob Firestone changed my viewpoint of job interviews completely https://job-interview-answers.com/ https://job-interview-answers.com/ His course took me from being terrified of job interviews to being willing to do them for fun or just to find out what is going on in an organization. There is another approach to interviewing where you look at it as a flawed process (it’s like they are trying to reject people instead of hire people) and try to subvert it in a gentle way. There are quite a few ways to do this but one of the best is to put on the mindset of a consultant and try to help with the problem the company has right there in the interview, that is, you ask questions to that end every chance you can get like a coiled spring. Now that doesn’t work in a FAANG company because the people who designed these processes are looking for round pegs to go into round holes and know that a person with highly developed narcissism can cheat their way around that kind of organization so the highly structured interview process prevents anyone from exploiting “weak points”. (Once a narcissist gets in they will wield OKRs, stack ranking and similar practices as a weapon against anyone; a person who can convince their superiors that their glass is half full and yours is half empty will rise quickly to the top which is why having a founder as CEO is actually healthy for that kind of organization.) The good news is that most employers aren’t FAANGs. The bad news is that a FAANG history is not going to help you succeed anywhere, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34799308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34799308 for a basic criticism of that kind of environment and why being a senior in that organization qualifies you as a junior in any other organization. So in some way you are going to have to accept a step down and some crawling back up. Good luck!
- throwaway269285 3y agoThis is all really helpful and grounding advice. Thank you. I'll check out Bob Firestone's interview course. You're right, it does look scammy lol > The good news is that most employers aren’t FAANGs. The bad news is that a FAANG history is not going to help you succeed anywhere, see Fortunately I've only been working at one for a few years, so hopefully I'm not too damaged :)