5 ms·

The older I get, the worse I find the experience. I've had so many poor experiences with recruiters over the years, I think I'm becoming allergic. It's getting

by keyle 2y ago

The older I get, the worse I find the experience. I've had so many poor experiences with recruiters over the years, I think I'm becoming allergic. It's getting harder to pierce through the BS layers with all that new meat on the market, and to make the matter worse, recruiters are even less skilled than they ever were and are often offshored now. It's insane today. When I'm on the hiring side, we can't find candidates, and on the other side I can't get through to the right people. My advice is put out feelers with anyone you've had a good relationship with in the past, often via your old networks and ex-colleague, you'll jump in front of the queue and avoid the pre-screening nonsense. They know what to expect from you and they would prefer to have a familiar face they can rely on in their internal struggles. That's how I've landed my last 2 jobs without an interview. The flip-side is always to be helpful to other colleagues. At some point, everyone needs a hand - be that guy - that lends it freely. They'll always look out for you in the future if you look out for them in the present. Become a knowledge source in the company and industry. Soak in as much as you can, become a reference, expose yourself to everyone's job to some degree, providing it isn't a dead zone of silos and the people feel right (not cagey). HTH.

abdussamit 2y ago
So true about the last part! Over my last 8 years, I've learnt that to grow in the company and have a good position, you need to be a rock for at least 1 core area the company works in. Like you said, "become a knowledge source, a reference"
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  This was what I ideally wanted to do. In practive, when I'm laid off every 3-4 years (right around the time I start to feel like I'm becoming a knowledge source), the layoff hammer comes down. Maybe it'd be a bit faster now with 9YOE, but In some ways I also feel like I'm "3 YOE 3 times over".
jongjong 2y ago
Age discrimination is real... I'm 35 and I could feel it kicking in big time. It's particularly obvious in my case because my resume is excellent. I don't say that to brag. Speaking to recruiters and prospective employers is cringe because, for most of them, I'm the best developer they'll meet this year but they can't hire me because of my age, race and sexual orientation. Can you guess them? I think also in my case, my libertarian views on social media and cryptocurrency background have hindered me. My last employer was basically mainstream establishment finance but they still hired me anyway because of my skills and also maybe because the founder was a Christian... But I could feel my crypto libertarian background made them tense. One time (before that job), I interviewed for a position for a major tech company and I cheekily marked my race as 'Ethnic Caribbean' which is partly true since my ancestors have been in the Caribbean for over 500 years... You'd think 500 years is native enough? Apparently not if you look white. First interview, they dangled a MASSIVE offer. They gave me tech tests, I passed them all with flying colours. They set up a meeting with the head of engineering... A formality, they said... Guess what? The fucker never showed up. He sent his sidekick to pretend to be giving me a fair shot. I could see that the guy I spoke with was used to the switcheroo. I can read the mainland whiteboi like a book... With his shifty, guilty, wandering eyes. Always taking advantage from afar. Hands soft as cotton but fanged as a snake. He spoke down to me as if I was a typical whiteboi like him who never got his hands dirty. Oh my friend, I plough the dirt with my bare hands.
- withinboredom 2y ago
  My number one issue is that people can't afford my experience. I often have to dumb down my resume to look like a cog in a machine. Once they hire me, I end up getting 15-50% raises because they don't want me to leave. I don't change jobs often.
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    Modern problems require modern solutions.
- degosuke 2y ago
  Do you think it might be a good idea to keep or your social accounts private? Or it's mandatory to reveal it during recruiting?
  - jongjong 2y ago
    Unfortunately my Twitter account uses parts of my real name. I didn't try to hide it enough. Over time, they must have discovered it. I didn't foresee that society would turn into a censorship totalitarian hellhole when I created the account years before. I'm not controversial or hateful at all. Just Rand Paul level common sense but some people see it as improper.
    - degosuke 2y ago
      Got it... So it wasn't like a step in the process: Hey, by the way give us your X/FB/reddit handles?
- dheera 2y ago
  > Age discrimination is real... I'm 35 That's not really the typical age where age discrimination sets in. In fact 35 is very much a sweet spot where people would respect your experience but you still look young enough to be hanging out with people in their mid 20s. If you really think it's an issue don't state your graduation year on your resume. > my libertarian views on social media and cryptocurrency background have hindered me Most big tech recruiters don't go around searching your social media, it's a liability and they don't have the time for that. Startup founders might, that's another story. If you're really worried about it, just delete it, temporarily hide it, or make that stuff private so only your friends can see it. Stop whining and find solutions.
dheera 2y ago
That works for startups, but most larger companies still won't hire you without an interview, your old collegaues can only refer you to hiring. Very often that's where I screw up. I code computers, not goddamn CoderPads. I run my shit to know if it works, not pretend I'm an interpreter and go through line by line. I cut and paste boilerplate and edit it, not write the boilerplate. Some dude in an interview at a very well known AI company was staring at me on a video call and grilling me about the max value of a loss function whose formula was written in an image, and I didn't have a whiteboard to do the math on. TF do I care? I usually minimize losses, not maximize them.
- netdevnet 2y ago
  Tech folks often complain about the interview experience but a big part of that experience is created by tech folks. Stuff like what you went through is really to blame in tech culture imo
  - dheera 2y ago
    Yeah exactly. I mean really, I have 15+ years of experience and they're grilling me on a correct implementation of quicksort and are going to fail me for an implementation that doesn't terminate when I had nothing to test it on? I WILL stumble because it's not the kind of thing I do. That's the kind of thing a fresh college grad would have memorized and can vomit it to you, maybe without even understanding it. Maybe I'll code you a basic WebRTC conference call app, or train a simple image classifier, or outline an architecture of a massive system for you?
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    Many engineers get weird when they have power over people. In search of perfect, they miss good.
- shalmanese 2y ago
  I'd be wary of almost any startup that hired without any form of interviewing whatsoever. The big difference is that you walk into the interview as a default-yes rather than a default-no, ie: they're on the lookout for any red flags that would cause them to have serious reservations but if no flags pop up, you're assumed in. At big companies, there's more of a formal process but the key is get the attention of the hiring manager and make sure that hiring manager has enough juice to quietly backchannel to whatever process to treat this as a default-yes conversation. A good sign of how effective your manager is at a Bigcorp is how well they know how to work their internal system to get the right people onto their team.
5350-uiop-1130 2y ago
> When I'm on the hiring side, we can't find candidates i had the perception that people's standards and expectations are too high. like it's not enough to just be able to do the job, you have to demonstrate something extra to stand out. when i read the job ads HR posts for my own team, it doesn't sound anything like what we actually do.
chadQuinlan 2y ago
Will agree on the connections side of things. My team recently hired a new engineer, having received of thousands of applicants, including many through the corporate referral program. The only people who made it past recruiter screening were those whose referrers messaged the hiring manager directly. With recruiters getting blasted with unqualified applicants (mostly migrants with only a cert to their name) and AI applications, it's hard to get any legit applications some daylight to be reviewed.

by keyle 2y ago

abdussamit 2y ago

So true about the last part! Over my last 8 years, I've learnt that to grow in the company and have a good position, you need to be a rock for at least 1 core area the company works in. Like you said, "become a knowledge source, a reference"

johnnyanmac 2y ago
This was what I ideally wanted to do. In practive, when I'm laid off every 3-4 years (right around the time I start to feel like I'm becoming a knowledge source), the layoff hammer comes down. Maybe it'd be a bit faster now with 9YOE, but In some ways I also feel like I'm "3 YOE 3 times over".

jongjong 2y ago

Age discrimination is real... I'm 35 and I could feel it kicking in big time. It's particularly obvious in my case because my resume is excellent. I don't say that to brag. Speaking to recruiters and prospective employers is cringe because, for most of them, I'm the best developer they'll meet this year but they can't hire me because of my age, race and sexual orientation. Can you guess them? I think also in my case, my libertarian views on social media and cryptocurrency background have hindered me. My last employer was basically mainstream establishment finance but they still hired me anyway because of my skills and also maybe because the founder was a Christian... But I could feel my crypto libertarian background made them tense. One time (before that job), I interviewed for a position for a major tech company and I cheekily marked my race as 'Ethnic Caribbean' which is partly true since my ancestors have been in the Caribbean for over 500 years... You'd think 500 years is native enough? Apparently not if you look white. First interview, they dangled a MASSIVE offer. They gave me tech tests, I passed them all with flying colours. They set up a meeting with the head of engineering... A formality, they said... Guess what? The fucker never showed up. He sent his sidekick to pretend to be giving me a fair shot. I could see that the guy I spoke with was used to the switcheroo. I can read the mainland whiteboi like a book... With his shifty, guilty, wandering eyes. Always taking advantage from afar. Hands soft as cotton but fanged as a snake. He spoke down to me as if I was a typical whiteboi like him who never got his hands dirty. Oh my friend, I plough the dirt with my bare hands.

withinboredom 2y ago
My number one issue is that people can't afford my experience. I often have to dumb down my resume to look like a cog in a machine. Once they hire me, I end up getting 15-50% raises because they don't want me to leave. I don't change jobs often.
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  Modern problems require modern solutions.
degosuke 2y ago
Do you think it might be a good idea to keep or your social accounts private? Or it's mandatory to reveal it during recruiting?
- jongjong 2y ago
  Unfortunately my Twitter account uses parts of my real name. I didn't try to hide it enough. Over time, they must have discovered it. I didn't foresee that society would turn into a censorship totalitarian hellhole when I created the account years before. I'm not controversial or hateful at all. Just Rand Paul level common sense but some people see it as improper.
  - degosuke 2y ago
    Got it... So it wasn't like a step in the process: Hey, by the way give us your X/FB/reddit handles?
dheera 2y ago
> Age discrimination is real... I'm 35 That's not really the typical age where age discrimination sets in. In fact 35 is very much a sweet spot where people would respect your experience but you still look young enough to be hanging out with people in their mid 20s. If you really think it's an issue don't state your graduation year on your resume. > my libertarian views on social media and cryptocurrency background have hindered me Most big tech recruiters don't go around searching your social media, it's a liability and they don't have the time for that. Startup founders might, that's another story. If you're really worried about it, just delete it, temporarily hide it, or make that stuff private so only your friends can see it. Stop whining and find solutions.

dheera 2y ago

That works for startups, but most larger companies still won't hire you without an interview, your old collegaues can only refer you to hiring. Very often that's where I screw up. I code computers, not goddamn CoderPads. I run my shit to know if it works, not pretend I'm an interpreter and go through line by line. I cut and paste boilerplate and edit it, not write the boilerplate. Some dude in an interview at a very well known AI company was staring at me on a video call and grilling me about the max value of a loss function whose formula was written in an image, and I didn't have a whiteboard to do the math on. TF do I care? I usually minimize losses, not maximize them.

netdevnet 2y ago
Tech folks often complain about the interview experience but a big part of that experience is created by tech folks. Stuff like what you went through is really to blame in tech culture imo
- dheera 2y ago
  Yeah exactly. I mean really, I have 15+ years of experience and they're grilling me on a correct implementation of quicksort and are going to fail me for an implementation that doesn't terminate when I had nothing to test it on? I WILL stumble because it's not the kind of thing I do. That's the kind of thing a fresh college grad would have memorized and can vomit it to you, maybe without even understanding it. Maybe I'll code you a basic WebRTC conference call app, or train a simple image classifier, or outline an architecture of a massive system for you?
- Spooky23 2y ago
  Many engineers get weird when they have power over people. In search of perfect, they miss good.
shalmanese 2y ago
I'd be wary of almost any startup that hired without any form of interviewing whatsoever. The big difference is that you walk into the interview as a default-yes rather than a default-no, ie: they're on the lookout for any red flags that would cause them to have serious reservations but if no flags pop up, you're assumed in. At big companies, there's more of a formal process but the key is get the attention of the hiring manager and make sure that hiring manager has enough juice to quietly backchannel to whatever process to treat this as a default-yes conversation. A good sign of how effective your manager is at a Bigcorp is how well they know how to work their internal system to get the right people onto their team.

5350-uiop-1130 2y ago

> When I'm on the hiring side, we can't find candidates i had the perception that people's standards and expectations are too high. like it's not enough to just be able to do the job, you have to demonstrate something extra to stand out. when i read the job ads HR posts for my own team, it doesn't sound anything like what we actually do.

chadQuinlan 2y ago

Will agree on the connections side of things. My team recently hired a new engineer, having received of thousands of applicants, including many through the corporate referral program. The only people who made it past recruiter screening were those whose referrers messaged the hiring manager directly. With recruiters getting blasted with unqualified applicants (mostly migrants with only a cert to their name) and AI applications, it's hard to get any legit applications some daylight to be reviewed.