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> your behavior in this job has an impact on getting the next one Don't over index on this. It's a small factor among many.

fatata123 2y ago
[dead]
milkshakes 2y ago
strong disagree. from extensive experience. it's a huge factor, and good referrals are really the only way to definitely get the job
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- codr7 2y ago
  Yeah, and companies pushing that angle are losing top employees because of it. Because it's stupid. Kissing ass and doing good work are two entirely different activities.
- hx8 2y ago
  Strong referrals almost always leads to a job that your network can place you in. You might have limited options for companies and teams, based on who is in your network. If the job market is abundant then having a strong referral is less valuable, but is often the best path to more senior positions. If the job market is not abundant then a job referral might be a way to be placed in a position in weeks instead of months.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    I keep hearing about these "network placed" jobs on HN, but in 25 years, I've never seen it myself. I keep good relationships with former co-workers, we maintain group chats for each of my previous companies where we keep each other up on our careers. I even went to barbecues hosted by a former manager, until he moved out of the Bay Area. None of these have ever actually materialized into a job. It just doesn't work that way. We're all entry level worker bees and don't have any way to put our thumb on the scale at our own companies. If someone in my network reaches out to me asking for help with getting a job at MyCompany, the best I can do is review his resume, coach him on interviews, and then ultimately point him to the link in the job board, where 90% chance he will be ghosted. Where are these companies where I can tell my boss "Hey, Mike is a good programmer and he just applied. Just give him the job without interviewing! Or accelerate him through the process!" I suppose if it were a two person startup where it was me and my boss you could do that, but at a normal 1000 person CRUD shop with dedicated HR machinery? No way.
    - maccard 2y ago
      On the flip side I’ve worked in 4 companies over 12 years and 2/4 were jobs that I got because I knew someone. The other two, a significant cohort of the people who worked there knew each other from previous workplaces. Nobody is getting jobs without any interviews, but people are absolutely getting interviewed before/without a job listing, or starting the initial screen with recruiter/hiring manager with an upper hand of “Mike said you’re good to work with”. Even at a 1000 person company with HR.
    - pts_ 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - dcrazy 2y ago
        This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works. There’s a great bit in Margin Call about this: Kevin Spacey’s character challenges the plan to sell the firm’s entire MBS portfolio with the point that once their counterparties figure out they’ve been sold a bag, they will never trust them again. The firm insists on the plan anyway, so when Spacey tells his floor the news, he acknowledges that this will be the end of many of their careers, and as compensation the firm is giving each trader a $2m bonus for selling through their slice of the portfolio. They’re basically giving them an advance in exchange for making themselves unhireable, because ultimately the economy is made of people working with other people.
        hn_acc1 2y ago
        That's maybe true in finance / investment / hedge funds. I don't think it applies to tech / software much..
      - jayd16 2y ago
        Lol wut? Where are you getting this?
      - roguecoder 2y ago
        If you can get as good a signal on someone's performance in 5 hours of interviews as you can in five months of working with them, either you are a genius or you are not paying attention at work. I have a guess as to which it is.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Strong referrals may lead to interviews at larger companies. But rarely jobs. You still have to go through the interview process and most of the time how you came in isn’t even known to the interviewer. Now if your network includes directors and CxOs who can just push a job through specifically for you, that’s different. Especially if it is a strategic hire for them. Those types of jobs usually don’t involve formal interviews and they are more of discussions about mutual fit.
    - kmonsen 2y ago
      At least for me that was not true, I came back to Google after more than two years and did not have to interview.
      - hn_acc1 2y ago
        That's returning to a former employer. That's very different if you left on good terms - they already "interviewed" you for some number of years.
  - kazinator 2y ago
    Referrals may operate within a network, but references do not necessarily so.
- groby_b 2y ago
  > good referrals are really the only way to definitely get the job Yeah, no. They're one factor in many. I've managed just fine throughout almost 4 decades of career without referrals. I'm fairly OK with how that career turned out. It has drawbacks. Some of my jobs were odd kinks in the career curve - though I did enjoy them. (Roughly, ESA -> Industrial Automation -> Consulting -> Startup -> Video Games -> FAANG. It is not the straightest path :) Referrals are definitely a large plus (IIRC, the industry stats say about 1/3rd of job offers are internal referrals, even though they are far from 1/3 of the candidates). They aren't the only way, though.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  An internal referral by someone at the company you are applying to might carry some weight, or at least get you a foot in the door (interview), but I think it's been years/decades since past employers were willing to say more than "yes, he worked here", for fear of lawsuits.
  - compiler-guy 2y ago
    This is true in giant companies, but in smaller companies it is less true. In smaller companies, "I worked with this person and they are really solid." carries a lot of weight.
  - roguecoder 2y ago
    References these days are usually with individual coworkers, rather than a company reference. It usually isn't "is this person a good developer?" either. Instead, it is open-ended questions without any one right answer. How much structure did this person like? What about your work place helped them be successful? What role did they play on the project you worked on together? What impact did they have on the team? If someone's reference didn't work with them closely, that's as strong a no-hire signal as if they outright said "this person sucked." If they don't have anyone they can hand you the phone number for who has specific, detailed praise about them and their work, you can safely move on to the ten other candidates who do.
pknomad 2y ago
I respectfully disagree. Parent comment is hardly over-indexing; it's a big factor. The world may be big but the communities are small.
- maiar 2y ago
  Usually when you’re in a shitty situation, all the people who know who you are are also in bad situations and probably can’t hire or protect you. That’s how business works—things go bad at the same time. All correlations go to one in a crash.
  - bckr 2y ago
    Not today or tomorrow, but next month, when one of them has started a cool startup, another is VP at her friend’s company, and the rockstar made it into Big Co
65 2y ago
What ends up mattering more is your ability to form good relationships with co-workers at your last job and sell yourself on your resume. Most of the people who end up getting high paying, high ranking jobs are not very skilled technically, but are skilled personally - even engineers. So I'd say - do your job as well as you can (don't go too crazy with work), be friendly with people in your company, and phrase your achievements in terms of % value/speed/users added.
creer 2y ago
When you are just starting, yes. But after a while, if you pay attention to cultivating it, you amass a significant network. Small factor initially, big one later if you work on it.

fatata123 2y ago

[dead]

milkshakes 2y ago

strong disagree. from extensive experience. it's a huge factor, and good referrals are really the only way to definitely get the job

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
codr7 2y ago
Yeah, and companies pushing that angle are losing top employees because of it. Because it's stupid. Kissing ass and doing good work are two entirely different activities.
hx8 2y ago
Strong referrals almost always leads to a job that your network can place you in. You might have limited options for companies and teams, based on who is in your network. If the job market is abundant then having a strong referral is less valuable, but is often the best path to more senior positions. If the job market is not abundant then a job referral might be a way to be placed in a position in weeks instead of months.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I keep hearing about these "network placed" jobs on HN, but in 25 years, I've never seen it myself. I keep good relationships with former co-workers, we maintain group chats for each of my previous companies where we keep each other up on our careers. I even went to barbecues hosted by a former manager, until he moved out of the Bay Area. None of these have ever actually materialized into a job. It just doesn't work that way. We're all entry level worker bees and don't have any way to put our thumb on the scale at our own companies. If someone in my network reaches out to me asking for help with getting a job at MyCompany, the best I can do is review his resume, coach him on interviews, and then ultimately point him to the link in the job board, where 90% chance he will be ghosted. Where are these companies where I can tell my boss "Hey, Mike is a good programmer and he just applied. Just give him the job without interviewing! Or accelerate him through the process!" I suppose if it were a two person startup where it was me and my boss you could do that, but at a normal 1000 person CRUD shop with dedicated HR machinery? No way.
  - maccard 2y ago
    On the flip side I’ve worked in 4 companies over 12 years and 2/4 were jobs that I got because I knew someone. The other two, a significant cohort of the people who worked there knew each other from previous workplaces. Nobody is getting jobs without any interviews, but people are absolutely getting interviewed before/without a job listing, or starting the initial screen with recruiter/hiring manager with an upper hand of “Mike said you’re good to work with”. Even at a 1000 person company with HR.
  - pts_ 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - dcrazy 2y ago
      This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works. There’s a great bit in Margin Call about this: Kevin Spacey’s character challenges the plan to sell the firm’s entire MBS portfolio with the point that once their counterparties figure out they’ve been sold a bag, they will never trust them again. The firm insists on the plan anyway, so when Spacey tells his floor the news, he acknowledges that this will be the end of many of their careers, and as compensation the firm is giving each trader a $2m bonus for selling through their slice of the portfolio. They’re basically giving them an advance in exchange for making themselves unhireable, because ultimately the economy is made of people working with other people.
      - hn_acc1 2y ago
        That's maybe true in finance / investment / hedge funds. I don't think it applies to tech / software much..
    - jayd16 2y ago
      Lol wut? Where are you getting this?
    - roguecoder 2y ago
      If you can get as good a signal on someone's performance in 5 hours of interviews as you can in five months of working with them, either you are a genius or you are not paying attention at work. I have a guess as to which it is.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Strong referrals may lead to interviews at larger companies. But rarely jobs. You still have to go through the interview process and most of the time how you came in isn’t even known to the interviewer. Now if your network includes directors and CxOs who can just push a job through specifically for you, that’s different. Especially if it is a strategic hire for them. Those types of jobs usually don’t involve formal interviews and they are more of discussions about mutual fit.
  - kmonsen 2y ago
    At least for me that was not true, I came back to Google after more than two years and did not have to interview.
    - hn_acc1 2y ago
      That's returning to a former employer. That's very different if you left on good terms - they already "interviewed" you for some number of years.
- kazinator 2y ago
  Referrals may operate within a network, but references do not necessarily so.
groby_b 2y ago
> good referrals are really the only way to definitely get the job Yeah, no. They're one factor in many. I've managed just fine throughout almost 4 decades of career without referrals. I'm fairly OK with how that career turned out. It has drawbacks. Some of my jobs were odd kinks in the career curve - though I did enjoy them. (Roughly, ESA -> Industrial Automation -> Consulting -> Startup -> Video Games -> FAANG. It is not the straightest path :) Referrals are definitely a large plus (IIRC, the industry stats say about 1/3rd of job offers are internal referrals, even though they are far from 1/3 of the candidates). They aren't the only way, though.
HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
An internal referral by someone at the company you are applying to might carry some weight, or at least get you a foot in the door (interview), but I think it's been years/decades since past employers were willing to say more than "yes, he worked here", for fear of lawsuits.
- compiler-guy 2y ago
  This is true in giant companies, but in smaller companies it is less true. In smaller companies, "I worked with this person and they are really solid." carries a lot of weight.
- roguecoder 2y ago
  References these days are usually with individual coworkers, rather than a company reference. It usually isn't "is this person a good developer?" either. Instead, it is open-ended questions without any one right answer. How much structure did this person like? What about your work place helped them be successful? What role did they play on the project you worked on together? What impact did they have on the team? If someone's reference didn't work with them closely, that's as strong a no-hire signal as if they outright said "this person sucked." If they don't have anyone they can hand you the phone number for who has specific, detailed praise about them and their work, you can safely move on to the ten other candidates who do.

pknomad 2y ago

I respectfully disagree. Parent comment is hardly over-indexing; it's a big factor. The world may be big but the communities are small.

maiar 2y ago
Usually when you’re in a shitty situation, all the people who know who you are are also in bad situations and probably can’t hire or protect you. That’s how business works—things go bad at the same time. All correlations go to one in a crash.
- bckr 2y ago
  Not today or tomorrow, but next month, when one of them has started a cool startup, another is VP at her friend’s company, and the rockstar made it into Big Co

65 2y ago

What ends up mattering more is your ability to form good relationships with co-workers at your last job and sell yourself on your resume. Most of the people who end up getting high paying, high ranking jobs are not very skilled technically, but are skilled personally - even engineers. So I'd say - do your job as well as you can (don't go too crazy with work), be friendly with people in your company, and phrase your achievements in terms of % value/speed/users added.

creer 2y ago

When you are just starting, yes. But after a while, if you pay attention to cultivating it, you amass a significant network. Small factor initially, big one later if you work on it.