5 ms·

> In 2023, I practiced ~200 leetcode problems and learned how to create an LLM but I felt like I was the least employable I'd ever been. You did two superficia

by ctvo 3y ago

> In 2023, I practiced ~200 leetcode problems and learned how to create an LLM but I felt like I was the least employable I'd ever been. You did two superficial things and are surprised you didn't feel more qualified? Practicing / memorizing leetcode and having a rudimentary understanding of LLMs (if I were hiring, we're targeting advanced degrees with a focus in the space) -- yeah, probably not sufficient. This is a feature and not a bug as the employment market moves back to sanity.

itsoktocry 3y ago
OP also had multiple offers they would "not normally accept". We are spoiled in this industry.
- mywittyname 3y ago
  There's no enough information to extrapolate that fact. Were these offers median salaries? Bottom 25th percentile? Lots of companies low-ball candidates because they are happy with Harbor Freight quality candidates, so long as they will work for Harbor Freight prices.
  - eek2121 3y ago
    I had one company ask me to volunteer and another offer $40,000 for a senior dev position.
  - lhnz 3y ago
    I'm the OP (of this thread). The main issue caused by the industry-wide hiring freezes wasn't necessarily income but work/team quality. I've been in the top-10% of incomes in my country for more than 5 years and the top-1% of incomes for a lesser period of time. I was able to get offers in this percentile but the companies making these offers didn't usually hire at this level. If anything, I want to be around people that are more competitive than me, that put a lot of effort into what they do and that can easily walk into high paying roles. I definitely don't want to be the highest paid engineer in the room at a company that frankly doesn't need this. I know this can be seen as entitled but I'm the sole provider of a 4-person family and willing to work hard and prove myself. I'm happy to say that I now have a higher income than I did before being laid off and at a company with more successful people than me and a higher ceiling, however, that doesn't mean I didn't find it significantly more difficult to get a job this time around than I have in the last decade. There are people that are going to have a much harder time than I have.
lhnz 3y ago
I think this is very unfair. In the few months that I was looking, I put in more than 300 hours of study. It wasn't superficial and I didn't attempt to memorize anything — I wanted to understand fundamental techniques, and put a considerable amount of effort in to doing this, treating it as if it were my job. Nobody owes me anything but that doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to point out that this is the weakest I've ever seen the market in my decade or so of experience of it. It's very tough for those that have been laid off. Particuarly those have to support families as I did -- I am a sole earner and have two children. You could benefit from practicing a bit of empathy and not lying to yourself that the market has merely moved back to "sanity" without gaining a bit of recent experience in it.
- ctvo 3y ago
  > I put in more than 300 hours of study. It wasn't superficial and I didn't attempt to memorize anything — I wanted to understand fundamental techniques, and put a considerable amount of effort in to doing this, treating it as if it were my job. If you landed a job, do you think this new ability to implement a CS 101 data structure would let you keep it? Help in your performance in a measurable way? This is what I mean by superficial. The same applies to the LLM work. You studied enough to where you could buzzword it in a 45 minute interview. My response, which I'll be more clear with: Maybe it's not that bad that we're more careful and these superficial techniques are no longer adequate to get someone a job in this industry. > I'm not allowed to point out that this is the weakest I've ever seen the market in my decade or so of experience of it. Don't think anyone is preventing you from doing anything.
  - lhnz 3y ago
    I did land a job making applications for an HFT firm and while I don't think that being able to implement data structures or write my own algorithms is necessarily what will allow me to keep this job, recently I somewhat regularly use the skills I pick up doing competitive programming exercises in my workplaces. Therefore, my answer to your question about whether it will help my performance in a measurable way is: yes.
  - jonnycoder 3y ago

by ctvo 3y ago

itsoktocry 3y ago

OP also had multiple offers they would "not normally accept". We are spoiled in this industry.

mywittyname 3y ago
There's no enough information to extrapolate that fact. Were these offers median salaries? Bottom 25th percentile? Lots of companies low-ball candidates because they are happy with Harbor Freight quality candidates, so long as they will work for Harbor Freight prices.
- eek2121 3y ago
  I had one company ask me to volunteer and another offer $40,000 for a senior dev position.
- lhnz 3y ago
  I'm the OP (of this thread). The main issue caused by the industry-wide hiring freezes wasn't necessarily income but work/team quality. I've been in the top-10% of incomes in my country for more than 5 years and the top-1% of incomes for a lesser period of time. I was able to get offers in this percentile but the companies making these offers didn't usually hire at this level. If anything, I want to be around people that are more competitive than me, that put a lot of effort into what they do and that can easily walk into high paying roles. I definitely don't want to be the highest paid engineer in the room at a company that frankly doesn't need this. I know this can be seen as entitled but I'm the sole provider of a 4-person family and willing to work hard and prove myself. I'm happy to say that I now have a higher income than I did before being laid off and at a company with more successful people than me and a higher ceiling, however, that doesn't mean I didn't find it significantly more difficult to get a job this time around than I have in the last decade. There are people that are going to have a much harder time than I have.

lhnz 3y ago

I think this is very unfair. In the few months that I was looking, I put in more than 300 hours of study. It wasn't superficial and I didn't attempt to memorize anything — I wanted to understand fundamental techniques, and put a considerable amount of effort in to doing this, treating it as if it were my job. Nobody owes me anything but that doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to point out that this is the weakest I've ever seen the market in my decade or so of experience of it. It's very tough for those that have been laid off. Particuarly those have to support families as I did -- I am a sole earner and have two children. You could benefit from practicing a bit of empathy and not lying to yourself that the market has merely moved back to "sanity" without gaining a bit of recent experience in it.

ctvo 3y ago
> I put in more than 300 hours of study. It wasn't superficial and I didn't attempt to memorize anything — I wanted to understand fundamental techniques, and put a considerable amount of effort in to doing this, treating it as if it were my job. If you landed a job, do you think this new ability to implement a CS 101 data structure would let you keep it? Help in your performance in a measurable way? This is what I mean by superficial. The same applies to the LLM work. You studied enough to where you could buzzword it in a 45 minute interview. My response, which I'll be more clear with: Maybe it's not that bad that we're more careful and these superficial techniques are no longer adequate to get someone a job in this industry. > I'm not allowed to point out that this is the weakest I've ever seen the market in my decade or so of experience of it. Don't think anyone is preventing you from doing anything.
- lhnz 3y ago
  I did land a job making applications for an HFT firm and while I don't think that being able to implement data structures or write my own algorithms is necessarily what will allow me to keep this job, recently I somewhat regularly use the skills I pick up doing competitive programming exercises in my workplaces. Therefore, my answer to your question about whether it will help my performance in a measurable way is: yes.
- jonnycoder 3y ago