5 ms·

It is a weird market. I've been job searching pretty hard for the past month in SF and the response has been a bit frustrating. I get tons of people reaching

by xiaoma 14y ago

It is a weird market. I've been job searching pretty hard for the past month in SF and the response has been a bit frustrating. I get tons of people reaching out to me after meeting me at tech meetups, etc, but I'd say over half of those leads end up cutting me at an HR filter before I can even get an interview! From what I understand it's due to two things-- at 34, I'm older than others going for junior positions. I spent a decade abroad after graduation and have only a year of experience at a tech start-up in Asia. I can kind of understand the pursuit of someone who already knows what they're doing, but on the other hand everyone has to start learning somewhere. Sure my bohemian background and experience starting and running a non-tech business and learning multiple foreign languages doesn't translate directly into usable skills here, but I would have thought that it would have been a strong signal I'm capable of working hard and learning quickly. Not to overstate things, I am getting a lot of interest and a few interviews and even repeat interviews. It's just that things are moving very slowly, and I'm not getting a great return on the time I put into it. Also, SF is a very expensive city to live in off of savings earned in a developing country! I think the shortage isn't so much general talent; it's a shortage of people who already have X skill a given business wants right now.

slurgfest 14y ago
"already have X skill" is right but it's not everything. People are irrational about hiring in that they include (filter on) many features which are not really relevant. Like age and weird looking history and lack of salesmanship. These things shouldn't matter if you are just trying to get someone to build things well.
heretohelp 14y ago
Put your public email in your profile, I was about to contact you about my company but I can't because it isn't listed. If you want to find work, make yourself easiest to get a hold of. ;) Also, start hacking up a portfolio.
viscanti 14y ago
It certainly helps to already have X skill. There may be some positions where that's a non-negotiable requirement. For most, you only need to show some experience with something related to X skill, and a willingness to learn quickly. The barrier to entry for programming is very low. Anyone can get started and build things. They can put their code up on github and start displaying what they've learned. They need to keep learning and challenging themselves though. The problem is that there isn't a lot of demand for "smart" or "talented" people who can't contribute quickly. Someone who writes bad code and adds bugs to production software is a drag on everyone else's productivity. In most companies there just isn't the time or resources necessary to teach basic programming skills. You probably don't need to know skill X to land a job, but you need to show that you can learn it quickly. If you can learn it quickly, then start learning it on your own. Most companies in SF don't care how old you are, they care that you can be productive quickly.
- apaitch 14y ago
  It's totally understandable for a 10-man startup to not want to take in a relative newbie and have him/her drag down the team's productivity when they've got to ship in a month. However, for bigger companies (not necessarily giants like Google either) it may well be worth it to invest in a number of somewhat less experienced employees and grow them internally. The only problem, I suppose, would be selecting the right people.
  - ericd 14y ago
    A large percentage of "the right people" will have already invested in learning programming and the innumerable related skills, because that's what they're interested in and have been interested in for a long time. Thus, being a bit older without much experience is a bad signal from a company's perspective. But if you learn aggressively on your own, it can be overcome. Don't expect to learn all the random skills on a company's dime, though - the salaries are too high to justify that.
juiceandjuice 14y ago
You've been searching for a month, you've been getting interviews, even repeat interviews, and you are complaining? Not to make little of your situation, but I don't think you really have a whole lot to complain about, especially because any place with a real HR department is going to take at least a month to get you into a job. Also, SF is expensive, and if you are staying somewhere expensive in the city while trying to find a job, you're doing it wrong. Move out to Oakland/Berkeley or even Hayward/Fremont, one of the other cheaper places and stretch out your money til you find a job... Then be prepared to look for a place to live, which is harder than finding a job in my experience... Especially if you are out of money by the time you get a job and don't have enough for the deposit of wherever you live. Be prepared for things to take a long time, and with that in mind try to stretch out your money.
- rdl 14y ago
  Any employer who can't hire you in a week start to finish either doesn't actually want you or is too defective to be worthwhile. Maybe two weeks if it's out of the area and you need to fly to visit them for the final round of interviews. (the exception being for VP/COO at larger companies where a board would need to sign off)
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- xiaoma 14y ago
  I didn't mean to be complaining. It's just an unexpected outcome for me. I can't remember ever having to look for this long before. About half the work I've done has been under my own employ and 80% it has been in Taiwan or China. Truth be told, I've never dealt with a "real HR" department before! I've got a $500/month place in Chinatown, and really haven't found anything near that price with English speaking landlords. It's not to the point of missing rent or anything that dramatic yet, but I have taken on some $11/hr writing and translation work via various freelancing sites as well as some similarly priced work on a rails project. It's the surest way I see of surviving long enough to beat the chicken and egg problem of getting relevant experience.
antidoh 14y ago
"but I'd say over half of those leads end up cutting me at an HR filter before I can even get an interview! "From what I understand it's due to two things-- at 34, I'm older than others going for junior positions." I hope any HR people who have had your resume cross their desk are sweating at the thought of age discrimination scrutiny. It may be there's a shortage of HR talent, not tech talent.
- bandy 14y ago
  >I hope any HR people who have had your resume cross their desk are sweating at the thought of age discrimination scrutiny. Did Glinda flit in from Oz and wave her magic wand, correcting the past two generations' worth of age discrimination problems in the Valley? Did the EEOC's jack-booted thugs suddenly start raiding offices last week and I didn't read about it in the Murky News? >It may be there's a shortage of HR talent, not tech talent. But they not only have certificates, they have college degrees in HR now! A shortage? That's unpossible.
  - antidoh 14y ago
    I said talent, not bodies.
    - bandy 14y ago
      HR defines talent as certificates and diplomas.
rdl 14y ago
If you're looking for a job, it would be worth putting your email address and a website or linkedin profile or something in your hn profile.
- xiaoma 14y ago
  The LinkedIn profile was a great suggestion. Thank you!
flywheel 14y ago
I wouldn't hire you either. At 34 with a year's experience at a tech start-up, you are not going to get hired when there are people at 34 with 14 years experience at tech start-ups. It's not just a job for some people, it's an obsession, and that is why they get hired. If you want to work in tech, you have to focus on it, stick with it. The people with little experience show it in their sub-standard work. I don't care how good you think you are, you are still going to make the same mistakes everyone else made at your experience level. Companies who want to succeed want experience. Stick with it, freelance and intern if you have to, but you need to start building a portfolio, a track record. If you can stick it out for a few more years getting whatever experience you can get, you'll start to see your luck changing. 5+ years experience is typically where it starts to get easier.
esonderegger 14y ago
I'm in a pretty similar situation (30 years old, no full-time programming on my résumé, but a long history of technical problem solving). One thing I'll add is that, at least for me, the problem of employers only looking for people with X skill right now is not as bad in SF as it is elsewhere. I'm in Washington, DC and the only interest I've gotten has been from companies in the Bay area.
- malyk 14y ago
  That sounds crazy to me. Are you able to get a clearance of any kind? If you are eligible then there should be thousands of jobs in the DC area to choose from. Of course, those aren't super exciting startup-like jobs, but they are places where you'll get a bunch of experience.
  - esonderegger 14y ago
    I already have a clearance. I guess this means I've probably been talking to the wrong people. For the contractors I've been talking to, when I tell them that I write python when I can, PHP when I'm patching stuff I wrote a few years ago, and javascript when it needs to run client-side, and that I spend my days maintaining systems running Ubuntu server I get a response something like "yeah... that's not really what we're looking for. And maybe I've been too quick to dismiss working in a Windows/ASP/VB shop. Those folks have challenging problems to solve too, and reasons for using the tools they use. Thanks for reminding me of that.

by xiaoma 14y ago

slurgfest 14y ago

"already have X skill" is right but it's not everything. People are irrational about hiring in that they include (filter on) many features which are not really relevant. Like age and weird looking history and lack of salesmanship. These things shouldn't matter if you are just trying to get someone to build things well.

heretohelp 14y ago

Put your public email in your profile, I was about to contact you about my company but I can't because it isn't listed. If you want to find work, make yourself easiest to get a hold of. ;) Also, start hacking up a portfolio.

viscanti 14y ago

It certainly helps to already have X skill. There may be some positions where that's a non-negotiable requirement. For most, you only need to show some experience with something related to X skill, and a willingness to learn quickly. The barrier to entry for programming is very low. Anyone can get started and build things. They can put their code up on github and start displaying what they've learned. They need to keep learning and challenging themselves though. The problem is that there isn't a lot of demand for "smart" or "talented" people who can't contribute quickly. Someone who writes bad code and adds bugs to production software is a drag on everyone else's productivity. In most companies there just isn't the time or resources necessary to teach basic programming skills. You probably don't need to know skill X to land a job, but you need to show that you can learn it quickly. If you can learn it quickly, then start learning it on your own. Most companies in SF don't care how old you are, they care that you can be productive quickly.

apaitch 14y ago
It's totally understandable for a 10-man startup to not want to take in a relative newbie and have him/her drag down the team's productivity when they've got to ship in a month. However, for bigger companies (not necessarily giants like Google either) it may well be worth it to invest in a number of somewhat less experienced employees and grow them internally. The only problem, I suppose, would be selecting the right people.
- ericd 14y ago
  A large percentage of "the right people" will have already invested in learning programming and the innumerable related skills, because that's what they're interested in and have been interested in for a long time. Thus, being a bit older without much experience is a bad signal from a company's perspective. But if you learn aggressively on your own, it can be overcome. Don't expect to learn all the random skills on a company's dime, though - the salaries are too high to justify that.

juiceandjuice 14y ago

You've been searching for a month, you've been getting interviews, even repeat interviews, and you are complaining? Not to make little of your situation, but I don't think you really have a whole lot to complain about, especially because any place with a real HR department is going to take at least a month to get you into a job. Also, SF is expensive, and if you are staying somewhere expensive in the city while trying to find a job, you're doing it wrong. Move out to Oakland/Berkeley or even Hayward/Fremont, one of the other cheaper places and stretch out your money til you find a job... Then be prepared to look for a place to live, which is harder than finding a job in my experience... Especially if you are out of money by the time you get a job and don't have enough for the deposit of wherever you live. Be prepared for things to take a long time, and with that in mind try to stretch out your money.

rdl 14y ago
Any employer who can't hire you in a week start to finish either doesn't actually want you or is too defective to be worthwhile. Maybe two weeks if it's out of the area and you need to fly to visit them for the final round of interviews. (the exception being for VP/COO at larger companies where a board would need to sign off)
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
xiaoma 14y ago
I didn't mean to be complaining. It's just an unexpected outcome for me. I can't remember ever having to look for this long before. About half the work I've done has been under my own employ and 80% it has been in Taiwan or China. Truth be told, I've never dealt with a "real HR" department before! I've got a $500/month place in Chinatown, and really haven't found anything near that price with English speaking landlords. It's not to the point of missing rent or anything that dramatic yet, but I have taken on some $11/hr writing and translation work via various freelancing sites as well as some similarly priced work on a rails project. It's the surest way I see of surviving long enough to beat the chicken and egg problem of getting relevant experience.

antidoh 14y ago

"but I'd say over half of those leads end up cutting me at an HR filter before I can even get an interview! "From what I understand it's due to two things-- at 34, I'm older than others going for junior positions." I hope any HR people who have had your resume cross their desk are sweating at the thought of age discrimination scrutiny. It may be there's a shortage of HR talent, not tech talent.

bandy 14y ago
>I hope any HR people who have had your resume cross their desk are sweating at the thought of age discrimination scrutiny. Did Glinda flit in from Oz and wave her magic wand, correcting the past two generations' worth of age discrimination problems in the Valley? Did the EEOC's jack-booted thugs suddenly start raiding offices last week and I didn't read about it in the Murky News? >It may be there's a shortage of HR talent, not tech talent. But they not only have certificates, they have college degrees in HR now! A shortage? That's unpossible.
- antidoh 14y ago
  I said talent, not bodies.
  - bandy 14y ago
    HR defines talent as certificates and diplomas.

rdl 14y ago

If you're looking for a job, it would be worth putting your email address and a website or linkedin profile or something in your hn profile.

xiaoma 14y ago
The LinkedIn profile was a great suggestion. Thank you!

flywheel 14y ago

I wouldn't hire you either. At 34 with a year's experience at a tech start-up, you are not going to get hired when there are people at 34 with 14 years experience at tech start-ups. It's not just a job for some people, it's an obsession, and that is why they get hired. If you want to work in tech, you have to focus on it, stick with it. The people with little experience show it in their sub-standard work. I don't care how good you think you are, you are still going to make the same mistakes everyone else made at your experience level. Companies who want to succeed want experience. Stick with it, freelance and intern if you have to, but you need to start building a portfolio, a track record. If you can stick it out for a few more years getting whatever experience you can get, you'll start to see your luck changing. 5+ years experience is typically where it starts to get easier.

esonderegger 14y ago

I'm in a pretty similar situation (30 years old, no full-time programming on my résumé, but a long history of technical problem solving). One thing I'll add is that, at least for me, the problem of employers only looking for people with X skill right now is not as bad in SF as it is elsewhere. I'm in Washington, DC and the only interest I've gotten has been from companies in the Bay area.

malyk 14y ago
That sounds crazy to me. Are you able to get a clearance of any kind? If you are eligible then there should be thousands of jobs in the DC area to choose from. Of course, those aren't super exciting startup-like jobs, but they are places where you'll get a bunch of experience.
- esonderegger 14y ago
  I already have a clearance. I guess this means I've probably been talking to the wrong people. For the contractors I've been talking to, when I tell them that I write python when I can, PHP when I'm patching stuff I wrote a few years ago, and javascript when it needs to run client-side, and that I spend my days maintaining systems running Ubuntu server I get a response something like "yeah... that's not really what we're looking for. And maybe I've been too quick to dismiss working in a Windows/ASP/VB shop. Those folks have challenging problems to solve too, and reasons for using the tools they use. Thanks for reminding me of that.