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I've been having an extremely difficult time finding a job in tech, and I've been in SF looking since late May now. Contrary to your image of the guy who can't

by xiaoma 14y ago

I've been having an extremely difficult time finding a job in tech, and I've been in SF looking since late May now. Contrary to your image of the guy who can't find a job, I've been networking heavily and for the first couple of weeks, that's all I did. I explicitly decided not to focus on applying or interviewing until I'd had the chance to chat with multiple people with hiring authority, either over beers or coffee. Interestingly a sizable chunk of people I've met at hackathons have been in a similar situation, minus the networking focus. >We all know guys from both those camps, so something must be up. I think what's up is that nearly everyone is chasing the same few attributes in potential employees, one of which is already having expert skills at X thing they want to do. As mentioned in the article, few companies are willing to train entry level or junior level employees and many even have a policy of rejecting any candidates who don't already have a job! This is almost guaranteed to create a bidding war for a small number of people while passing up many others who could fill their shoes after an adjustment period. I fully agree with you about the importance of networking, but when large numbers of hard-working people with a high percentage of the needed skills can't get in without an inside contact, the overall job market for the sector is not hot. Anyone who claims the job market is 'on fire' is either out of touch, full of BS, or both. What is a red-hot job market right now is teaching English in China as a foreigner. There, horribly incompetent people who lack skills, charisma or even valid working papers are hired quickly! Programmers in the US had a similar situation in the late 90's. In 2000, I was offered multiple jobs despite having no programming experience just because I knew some HTML. Interestingly, the market for really low-brow contract programming work has been much easier to crack. I've been meaning to blog about it, but haven't had the chance to fully organize my thoughts on it. Basically there seems to be a bimodal distribution of supply of programming work vs difficulty of the work.

yummyfajitas 14y ago
...everyone is chasing the same few attributes in potential employees, one of which is already having expert skills at X thing they want to do. I've never worked at a place that did this (unless "X thing they want to do" == "basic computer science"). I've always had difficulties hiring. The fact of the matter is that most people you interview just aren't very good. It's hard to find the good ones. This is a complaint about search costs as much as price.
- j_baker 14y ago
  Correction: most people you interview don't demonstrate that they're good, for whatever reason. Is that because they aren't good? Or is there another reason? Since you won't be working with them, you'll probably never know.

by xiaoma 14y ago

yummyfajitas 14y ago

...everyone is chasing the same few attributes in potential employees, one of which is already having expert skills at X thing they want to do. I've never worked at a place that did this (unless "X thing they want to do" == "basic computer science"). I've always had difficulties hiring. The fact of the matter is that most people you interview just aren't very good. It's hard to find the good ones. This is a complaint about search costs as much as price.

j_baker 14y ago
Correction: most people you interview don't demonstrate that they're good, for whatever reason. Is that because they aren't good? Or is there another reason? Since you won't be working with them, you'll probably never know.