4 ms·

the tone of this post is so weird. someone 5x'd your salary and couldn't do it while working on passion projects. am i supposed to feel bad for them?

by j3s 1y ago

lesser23 1y ago
The post is somewhat strange but I think the point of it is clear. Projects aren’t what land jobs. This is contrary to age-old advice of “build a portfolio to show off” which has been repeated for as long as I remember. At least since 2010 or so. Instead the writer discovered what we all inevitably do. Companies don’t really care about what you’re capable of. They care strictly if you’ll bend over backwards, give up everything, and grind leetcode to make it through their arbitrary and demeaning hiring process. At least you can somewhat justify it at FAANG given you need an “efficient” way to weed out 80% of the 30,000 applicants you get a year. But this rot goes all the way down to the mom and pop e-commerce startup anymore. It’s no surprise. I suppose if the writer was a major contributor to a larger project their experience might be different (as you could probably fool ATS and HR using them as experience on a resume). But indeed, no one cares about your toy implementation of a linter. It’ll only get worse in the age of AI slop, AI slop brained company leadership, and leetcode supremacy.
- forgetfreeman 1y ago
  "This is contrary to age-old advice of “build a portfolio to show off” which has been repeated for as long as I remember. At least since 2010 or so." The thing is this not only used to work, it was The Way. You could short circuit the entire technical interview process by sending a link to your commit histories on various open source projects or hell even your GitHub account if you had decent amounts of public activity on there. Even better, a company's unwillingness to accept these in lieu of infantile "coding tests" was a great way to weed out bullshit organizations you wouldn't want to work for in any case. Now that none of that is the case I haven't the faintest idea how one would go about getting a job writing code these days short of leveraging your network to score a nepo hire?
  - lesser23 1y ago
    I have spoken to a few people in the "recruiting industry". In particular, one CEO of one. Both were rather frank discussions. Both told me that it is a complete waste of time to submit resumes and do follow up calls. Rather shocking. Indeed, they both suggested that networking and/or being nepo-hired is basically the only way you'll get in somewhere. That isn't a "big company with big goals" somewhere. This is a trend in almost every sector of software. If you're like a lot of people and need remote work due to not living in one of the 3-4 major tech hubs it's even harder. I do remember a time when projects mattered. I believe my open source work 12 years ago was what got me the job even after I failed their coding test miserably. It probably won't get better for a long time. I've been casually looking around for a new gig and even with over a decade of experience in software across the backend stack (bare metal and up) I don't fit a lot of the requirements. They want junior engineer grind, mid level pay, and staff+ level knowledge. As expected, it's a employer market now, and we're probably gonna be waiting for the glut of new CS grads, bootcampers, etc to give up and move on to other things.
    - BeFlatXIII 1y ago
      > probably gonna be waiting for the glut of new CS grads, bootcampers, etc to give up and move on to other things. If we’re lucky, an Open AI collapse will have Lehman Brothers like ripple effects throughout the rest of the industry. Not only will that flush out the chaff, it’ll also burn out genuine talent, so competition in the aftermath will be easier.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Although, FAANG is kind of an old acronym. Those companies (other than maybe Apple because they’ve always been weird) are more like Microsoft was, when the phrase was coined. In the sense that they are matured companies that aren’t striking out and building new things in new markets. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve lost the “look at interesting portfolios” muscle and gained the “look at metrics” one. Most people didn’t work at FAANG back then, right? You worked at FAANG because you were better than people who took the conventional approach, and the really competent growing companies could figure that out. Not sure who the up-and-comers are now, though.
  - lesser23 1y ago
    What I find interesting is that despite, as you said, FAANG doesn't really have the "genius appeal" it used to have they still demand it. You would sort of expect a company that is in the glacial stages of movement to have more capital and more leeway. If anything, the competition for these positions has gotten even worse despite the work not being anything close to revolutionary or novel at all.
    - bee_rider 1y ago
      I think they aren’t quite totally glacial yet. They are just well along the path. It is a continuous thing. I mean they hired a bunch of competent people over the last decade+. Probably those competent people just don’t the incentive structure to look at portfolios. The competition should get harder; resumes-optimizers are much harder to compete with than thing-builders, in the game of getting hired, right?
ryandv 1y ago
The point is that society elevates symbols to a level of importance above and beyond the things those symbols are supposed to refer to. Thus people valuing the symbols of professionalism over actual engineering prowess; LinkedIn profiles over the person themselves; and LLM output over a human's actual thoughts. Despite this person self-evaluating as having regressed in their engineering skills, all the outward status markers that are supposed to represent outstanding achievement are still there, and project a persona that is not congruent with the author's own self-image. Worse yet, you must play this game of smoke and mirrors because you are "only seen when [you] do the fake crap like update [your] LinkedIn to celebrate 1 year at $FAANG." This also reduces the signal/noise ratio when posers begin aping those same status markers in order to represent expertise where none exists. If you want to experience this directly, I suggest you attend some networking meetups and talk to the newer blood in the cybersecurity industry. Not exactly DEFCON 10 any more.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  And a common blind spot around good software engineers is that software is the hammer for all nails. Someone recently asked me if Mark Zuckerberg was a good engineer. I think the answer is a very, very qualified "yes." He knew enough to bash together a prototype in PHP of a social network site. But he was a very good problem-solver; he managed to find a tool space people found use in, and iterated on it until it got so good it dominated lives and became the primary communication solution for millions of people. He also knew enough about people to hire the right folks to do the hard (and tedious; the tedium should never be ignored) work to turn his prototype into product, scale it, and maintain it. And that's every bit as much problem-solving as implementing a breadth-first search to populate a "People you might also know" list. He didn't need to have Knuth's Art of Computer Programming memorized to do what he did. Software engineering (and the software it creates) are tools. They give us pleasure to use also. But the tools and the pleasure can become disconnected from what gives other people utility and pleasure without some heads-up checks from time to time.
  - dghlsakjg 1y ago
    To put it more succinctly: businesses want to hire people that will help them make money. The ability for a programmer to make money for a business is not as tightly bound to perfect code and passion projects as this person, and many programmers, think.
owebmaster 1y ago
> am i supposed to feel bad for them? He is not asking for that. He is explaining why he feels bad for not being able to continue delivering his top notch work that was done for free before and hoping to be able to do that again in the future. I appreciate that although I have never used his open source code.
dgs_sgd 1y ago
I think the point is that his (perceived) engineering skills were far better when he worked on those passion projects, yet recruiters didn't care. But after grinding leetcode and joining a FANG the recruiters are knocking down his door despite him feeling like a much worse engineer.
- spacemadness 1y ago
  Which is funny because I remember when people online swore up and down you needed open source projects online to get your foot in the door. It’s never been true, but if you’re lucky it might help. Part of me wondered if it was the industry itself spreading that around so they can continue to profit off the use of free software.
  - preciousoo 1y ago
    Best case scenario they were thinking of that one person (0.01% er) who worked on a project that absolutely wowed them. But then even the homebrew creator couldn’t get his foot in the door

the tone of this post is so weird. someone 5x'd your salary and couldn't do it while working on passion projects. am i supposed to feel bad for them?

by j3s 1y ago

the tone of this post is so weird. someone 5x'd your salary and couldn't do it while working on passion projects. am i supposed to feel bad for them?

lesser23 1y ago

The post is somewhat strange but I think the point of it is clear. Projects aren’t what land jobs. This is contrary to age-old advice of “build a portfolio to show off” which has been repeated for as long as I remember. At least since 2010 or so. Instead the writer discovered what we all inevitably do. Companies don’t really care about what you’re capable of. They care strictly if you’ll bend over backwards, give up everything, and grind leetcode to make it through their arbitrary and demeaning hiring process. At least you can somewhat justify it at FAANG given you need an “efficient” way to weed out 80% of the 30,000 applicants you get a year. But this rot goes all the way down to the mom and pop e-commerce startup anymore. It’s no surprise. I suppose if the writer was a major contributor to a larger project their experience might be different (as you could probably fool ATS and HR using them as experience on a resume). But indeed, no one cares about your toy implementation of a linter. It’ll only get worse in the age of AI slop, AI slop brained company leadership, and leetcode supremacy.

forgetfreeman 1y ago
"This is contrary to age-old advice of “build a portfolio to show off” which has been repeated for as long as I remember. At least since 2010 or so." The thing is this not only used to work, it was The Way. You could short circuit the entire technical interview process by sending a link to your commit histories on various open source projects or hell even your GitHub account if you had decent amounts of public activity on there. Even better, a company's unwillingness to accept these in lieu of infantile "coding tests" was a great way to weed out bullshit organizations you wouldn't want to work for in any case. Now that none of that is the case I haven't the faintest idea how one would go about getting a job writing code these days short of leveraging your network to score a nepo hire?
- lesser23 1y ago
  I have spoken to a few people in the "recruiting industry". In particular, one CEO of one. Both were rather frank discussions. Both told me that it is a complete waste of time to submit resumes and do follow up calls. Rather shocking. Indeed, they both suggested that networking and/or being nepo-hired is basically the only way you'll get in somewhere. That isn't a "big company with big goals" somewhere. This is a trend in almost every sector of software. If you're like a lot of people and need remote work due to not living in one of the 3-4 major tech hubs it's even harder. I do remember a time when projects mattered. I believe my open source work 12 years ago was what got me the job even after I failed their coding test miserably. It probably won't get better for a long time. I've been casually looking around for a new gig and even with over a decade of experience in software across the backend stack (bare metal and up) I don't fit a lot of the requirements. They want junior engineer grind, mid level pay, and staff+ level knowledge. As expected, it's a employer market now, and we're probably gonna be waiting for the glut of new CS grads, bootcampers, etc to give up and move on to other things.
  - BeFlatXIII 1y ago
    > probably gonna be waiting for the glut of new CS grads, bootcampers, etc to give up and move on to other things. If we’re lucky, an Open AI collapse will have Lehman Brothers like ripple effects throughout the rest of the industry. Not only will that flush out the chaff, it’ll also burn out genuine talent, so competition in the aftermath will be easier.
bee_rider 1y ago
Although, FAANG is kind of an old acronym. Those companies (other than maybe Apple because they’ve always been weird) are more like Microsoft was, when the phrase was coined. In the sense that they are matured companies that aren’t striking out and building new things in new markets. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve lost the “look at interesting portfolios” muscle and gained the “look at metrics” one. Most people didn’t work at FAANG back then, right? You worked at FAANG because you were better than people who took the conventional approach, and the really competent growing companies could figure that out. Not sure who the up-and-comers are now, though.
- lesser23 1y ago
  What I find interesting is that despite, as you said, FAANG doesn't really have the "genius appeal" it used to have they still demand it. You would sort of expect a company that is in the glacial stages of movement to have more capital and more leeway. If anything, the competition for these positions has gotten even worse despite the work not being anything close to revolutionary or novel at all.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    I think they aren’t quite totally glacial yet. They are just well along the path. It is a continuous thing. I mean they hired a bunch of competent people over the last decade+. Probably those competent people just don’t the incentive structure to look at portfolios. The competition should get harder; resumes-optimizers are much harder to compete with than thing-builders, in the game of getting hired, right?

ryandv 1y ago

The point is that society elevates symbols to a level of importance above and beyond the things those symbols are supposed to refer to. Thus people valuing the symbols of professionalism over actual engineering prowess; LinkedIn profiles over the person themselves; and LLM output over a human's actual thoughts. Despite this person self-evaluating as having regressed in their engineering skills, all the outward status markers that are supposed to represent outstanding achievement are still there, and project a persona that is not congruent with the author's own self-image. Worse yet, you must play this game of smoke and mirrors because you are "only seen when [you] do the fake crap like update [your] LinkedIn to celebrate 1 year at $FAANG." This also reduces the signal/noise ratio when posers begin aping those same status markers in order to represent expertise where none exists. If you want to experience this directly, I suggest you attend some networking meetups and talk to the newer blood in the cybersecurity industry. Not exactly DEFCON 10 any more.

shadowgovt 1y ago
And a common blind spot around good software engineers is that software is the hammer for all nails. Someone recently asked me if Mark Zuckerberg was a good engineer. I think the answer is a very, very qualified "yes." He knew enough to bash together a prototype in PHP of a social network site. But he was a very good problem-solver; he managed to find a tool space people found use in, and iterated on it until it got so good it dominated lives and became the primary communication solution for millions of people. He also knew enough about people to hire the right folks to do the hard (and tedious; the tedium should never be ignored) work to turn his prototype into product, scale it, and maintain it. And that's every bit as much problem-solving as implementing a breadth-first search to populate a "People you might also know" list. He didn't need to have Knuth's Art of Computer Programming memorized to do what he did. Software engineering (and the software it creates) are tools. They give us pleasure to use also. But the tools and the pleasure can become disconnected from what gives other people utility and pleasure without some heads-up checks from time to time.
- dghlsakjg 1y ago
  To put it more succinctly: businesses want to hire people that will help them make money. The ability for a programmer to make money for a business is not as tightly bound to perfect code and passion projects as this person, and many programmers, think.

owebmaster 1y ago

> am i supposed to feel bad for them? He is not asking for that. He is explaining why he feels bad for not being able to continue delivering his top notch work that was done for free before and hoping to be able to do that again in the future. I appreciate that although I have never used his open source code.

dgs_sgd 1y ago

I think the point is that his (perceived) engineering skills were far better when he worked on those passion projects, yet recruiters didn't care. But after grinding leetcode and joining a FANG the recruiters are knocking down his door despite him feeling like a much worse engineer.

spacemadness 1y ago
Which is funny because I remember when people online swore up and down you needed open source projects online to get your foot in the door. It’s never been true, but if you’re lucky it might help. Part of me wondered if it was the industry itself spreading that around so they can continue to profit off the use of free software.
- preciousoo 1y ago
  Best case scenario they were thinking of that one person (0.01% er) who worked on a project that absolutely wowed them. But then even the homebrew creator couldn’t get his foot in the door