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Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

• orliesaurus 12y ago
  Glad to hear a good story on Xmas day :) Well done you!
• jamesturn 12y ago
  Just curious, so this is a university staff position or are you enrolling in a business school as a student? Either way, congrats!
• gmoneynj2000 12y ago
  Just what I needed to hear! Thanks!!
• wallflower 12y ago
  Congrats! Good luck! Re crippling anxiety - I highly recommend improv classes.
  • a3n 12y ago
    I indirectly second that. A colleague took improv classes for vaguely similar reasons, and he had a positive and helpful experience. <reddit>Great username for this particular post.</reddit>
    • pcthrowaway 12y ago
      Well if you're going to use silly tags like '/s' on Hacker News, you may as well make them SGML compliant
    • throwawaybcporn 12y ago
      I created this account to comment on an article of a sexual nature the other day but never did. So I reused it. I freely admit it is very weird in the context of my post.
• ryanicle 12y ago
  Congratulations! All the best! More good things to come for you.
• imagex 12y ago
  Congrats, and a very Merry Christmas to you.
• zerr 12y ago
  Congrats! And as a side-note, I think it is suitable for persons in your [before-job] situation - to ask for internship or contract-to-hire work instead of direct hiring. We all know interviews suck. And working temporally for 2-3 months would be much more effective (for you and the company) to see if you're a good fit or not.
  • throwawaybcporn 12y ago
    Unfortunately, interviewees don't dictate hiring terms. And suggesting a short-term deal probably makes you look weak. I wouldn't recommend this approach to anyone.
• cj 12y ago
  Congrats on the new job! > I suffer from crippling anxiety [...] foggy Xanax brain. Consider asking your doctor about propranolol. It's a safe, non-addictive beta-blocker often used to treat high blood pressure, but it also eliminates the peripheral nervous system response to anxiety, the "fight-or-flight" adrenaline rush feeling: racing heart, shortness of breath, inability to concentrate, shaking, sweaty hands, blushing, etc. It doesn't effect your mental anxiety, but it'll cut out all of the physical symptoms, which makes the mental anxiety much easier to control, without creating any sort of brain fog.
  • mhurron 12y ago
    You forgot to list the possible side-effects. "Crack may cause shivers, night terrors, gay-for-pay, heart palpitations, homicidal paranoia or the sensation that you're on fire. Peeing blood and seeing friends' faces as talking skeletons are possible side effects of crack. People who use crack may also experience 5-7 years in prison where brutal raping may occur. If you experience one or more of these side effects, consult your dealer. You may need more crack. Crack. Isn't it time you see what all the fuss is about?"
  • kbody 12y ago
    I'm not doctor and don't do a good job on my self but theoretically I would try to do some meditation before trying more drugs. The easiest way I found was the headspace app, although I didn't keep up with it in the long-run, but at the time I felt that I was feeling calmer, although it could very well be the ignition placebo.
  • solipsism 12y ago
    +1 for Propranolol. As parent says, it does not affect your cognition! It doesn't make you sleepy or slow or happy or numb or relaxed or lightheaded or anything like that. It affects only your autonomic systems, eliminating the high heart rate and blood pressure, shaky hands, dry mouth, etc. These physical effects often push your normal performance anxiety over the edge, creating a cascading effect. Talk to your doctor if you think it could help, it might change your life -- it did mine, allowing me to become an influential voice at my company with an influential position to match. There's no reason you should allow a biological particularity put you at a career disadvantage compared to others. And it's important to realize anxiety is very often biological in origin, and non-pharmaceutical methods are often not enough. While many people feel that other type of drugs, like benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium, Xanax) cause them to become somewhat of a different person, beta blockers like propranolol can better be described as making you a rock-solid version of yourself.
• pookieinc 12y ago
  JS + Ruby/Rails dev here w/ 3+ years experience under belt. Currently looking for job myself and have been for about 3 months. Funny how, like OP, my resume and exp. is "very impressive", yet it doesn't lead anywhere, not even to a phone interview sometimes. I'm attempting the numbers game approach (apply for 100 companies, 5 will get back to you, select from those 5), but I've hit the edge of: what if there are none that are willing? Thanks for the luck, will keep banging head against wall until a job is found. Happy holidays!
  • k__ 12y ago
    3 years are impressive?
    • infinitone 12y ago
      Given that Rails started 9 years ago, and the whole fad with JS frameworks nowadays, I'd imagine 3 years exp could land you a mid-level job.
    • kachhalimbu 12y ago
      Well it is not the years but what you do in those that matters. I hope parent comments doesn't means 1 year experience repeated for years.
    • throwawaybcporn 12y ago
      I wish I could downvote this. Maybe the guy went to Stanford or MIT. Maybe his Ruby work is available on Github and is solid. Maybe he did an independent project that showed remarkable creativity and drive. There are any number of reasons his resume could be "very impressive" with only 3 years under his belt. Don't be a dick.
      • k__ 12y ago
        You're the one who wants to downvote me. I didn't say anything offensive, just asking a question. Learn the difference between other people saying something offensive and yourself implying some offensive meaning into a neutral statement.
• jarsin 12y ago
  I wouldnt worry about getting passed up by the bigger companies. Everyone knows their interview processes are highly dysfunctional jokes. Then most startup companies copy them because they all think they are going to be the next google etc. My last interview at amazon went like this: Stupid trick coding question over the phone that I did not understand at all. Followed by 3 memorization questions. followed by one question I felt was valid and i know i got it right. I was being interviewed for a specific product that was right up my ally. I could literally build what they had built easily, but they never once asked questions related to the product or my experience. I looked at the product a year later and basically nothing has been done to it.
  • infinitone 12y ago
    I did the new grad assessment test last week for Amazon, I am more than positive I aced both sections, especially the coding questions (passed all tests). Yet somehow I still didn't advance. I have other interviews in the pipeline that were way tougher and I didn't get the solutions 100% yet I still advanced.
    • EwanG 12y ago
      Could be worse. About five years ago I was interviewing at Amazon, and had gotten picked by the hiring manager and all that was left was a "trivial" HR screen. Lady there felt that since I had mainly done consulting I couldn't be trusted to stay at a full time job, and so overruled the hiring manager and I didn't get the position. The rest of the story? A couple years later I had a chance to talk with the hiring manager while he was applying for a position at a place I was working - seems the person HR picked led to their whole unit being disbanded because they failed so miserably. He felt he had to take some of the blame for not keeping a closer eye on the person, but still...
      • throwawaybcporn 12y ago
        During this period, my dad said something that stuck with me: "The interviewing process is very human. There are all sorts of reasons it can fall apart, many that have nothing to do with you. Maybe they've got an inside candidate or someone decides they don't like the school you went to or the tie you're wearing." I've found this to be true in a small number of my experiences. There are certain positions I interviewed for where my history was 100% in line with their needs, the interviews all went well and I should have gotten the job. But then didn't. Have no idea why not.
• esonderegger 12y ago
  Congratulations! It sounds like you've landed somewhere really good. Thank you for reminding us not to give up. A lot of your story sounded familiar, although you were way more persistent than I was. I'm 33, and recently got rejected from two different bay area "dream job" companies after making it through several phone rounds in order to fly out for in-person interviews. The more recent of which, I got nervous the night before and only got three hours of sleep. The hardest part of that rejection was wondering "what if" I had been just a little bit sharper. After the second rejection, I accepted a position with a small defense contractor near my home in Washington DC. The bureaucracy and mindless restriction are sources of endless frustration. The combination of billing by the hour and a long commute leave very little time and energy for keeping up the job search. Reading your story reminds me I have very little to complain about. Thank you for posting. I'll use some of this time off to send out some more applications. Hope you have a great Christmas and good luck once the new job starts!
  • throwawaybcporn 12y ago
    What's hard to stomach about the no sleep aspect of everything is that I think companies/interviewers think "Well if it's fair for one, it's fair for all. They're all under the same pressure, so we'll see who overcomes it." But that's not true. I know it's not true because I used to be one of the people who didn't feel interview pressure. When I landed a dream-type job a few years ago (which ended up being a nightmare due to a psychopathic boss, but that's beside the point), I remember going into the interviews head-strong, cocky and almost arrogant... which they apparently loved bc they hired me on the spot. Ha! It makes me laugh now. I'm twice the engineer I was then, but half the interviewee simply because my ego has been recalibrated to reality.
• ing33k 12y ago
  keep rocking !
• akclr 12y ago
  Good luck and all the best in the new year!
• pXMzR2A 12y ago
  I don't suffer from anxiety. In the last 8 months, I have submitted 270+ job applications, received 3 interviews, got rejected by all three, none of which were high reputation companies. Great to hear you had a success! :)
  • dvirsky 12y ago
    Did you ask for anyone to look at your CV and help you improve it maybe? For what it's worth, I'm not in HR but I interview a lot of people and see a lot of CVs (not hiring currently though). You can send me your CV privately if you want some feedback.
• Arsenije 12y ago
  Hey man congrats on you new job! I have one keyword for you: "mindfulness". Start practicing it. Cheers, —A
• fichtl80 12y ago
  So many sad recruiting stories ... Some thoughts/tipps: Start your interview with: "I happy to be here ... am really nervous, i couldn't sleep last night." ... that removes questions marks in recruiters had about your eyes. Don't tell em about xanax, better, don't use it. @pookieinc 3+ years are not impressive ... i code for 15 years and possibly the guy who are you talking about your job too ... so don't behave like the god of coding. @pXMzR2A 270+ job applications ... hmm your resume must be shit or you apply for jobs you are not qualified for ... i would love to see it, there must be a major bug in it :) ... and btw. congrats and merry christmas
• kolbe 12y ago
  Congratulations. Regarding the crippling anxiety: I was the same way from college until a couple years ago. I couldn't, for the life of me, get a good night of rest on the nights before an important event. But simply changing up my diet[1] fixed that problem very quickly. It's worth a shot for you to look into doing that. I know how destructive and terrible it feels to be unable to rest properly. [1] Specifically, I cut out wheat and corn altogether, reduced my carbohydrate intake to less than 50g a day, and never ate anything with added sugars.
  • throwawaybcporn 12y ago
    Being chronically sleep-deprived is the worst and I appreciate your sympathy. However, I just can't get behind your dietary suggestions. Corn and wheat are not psychoactive substances. I don't think there's any solid science to support the idea that adding/removing them would affect your general anxiety levels. As I said in another response, Lexapro gave me one amazing month of clarity away from my condition and it was a near-religious experience. I could make plans again. I became interested in girls again. I wanted to scream from the mountain tops and work as a door-to-door salesman for the pharma company that changed my life. Then I relapsed. In other words, for some people (like me), there is a serious physiological issue at work that needs a pharmaceutical fix. No amount of vitamins or yoga or whatever is going to change that.
• raverbashing 12y ago
  I think the job market is eating itself up. This year I sent tons of CVs, very few responses, a lot of technical tests, some interviews where "you don't fit the profile" Companies usually like me when I start working for them, but to "cross the chasm" is hard.
  • throwawaybcporn 12y ago
    This is how I feel. I've been a badass at everything I've ever done, including being an employee. My last employer begged me to stay and I did for a few months longer. So to have my fate determined by a short interview over the phone by some arbitrary questions just seems... suboptimal. Inefficient. Stupid. Someone has to fix the incumbent resume-based hiring process. It is fucked beyond belief.
• mgkimsal 12y ago
  A lot of software companies seem to have a set of conflicting beliefs. 1 Iterative/agile software development. YAGNI. Build the bare minimum, then iterate when you learn more. 2. Hire slow, fire fast. A really agile org would be hiring fast too. Now... I know a lot of this has to do with labor laws - hiring an actual employee brings extra baggage. And in the US at least, more people may want to be employees for reasons like health insurance. Even with those considerations, companies should be bringing on more short term contractors, and the ones that work out stay longer. The ones that don't, for whatever reason, move on. The same teams that will say "YAGNI, just build XYZ, ship it, etc" - iow, just get stuff out the door - will hem and haw and take forever looking for a perfect candidate that, in reality, doesn't even exist. It's early in the morning, this sort of makes sense in my head, but I may not quite be making sense. But it's still a seeming conflict that bugs me.
  • raverbashing 12y ago
    I agree with this sentiment More to the point, they think employees have zero flexibility. That if the employee is hasn't worked with a certain technology (like Hibernate, but has Java experience) this doesn't matter.
    • ci5er 12y ago
      Do you find this to be true of the hiring manager, or just the HR department that filters?
    • throwawaybcporn 12y ago
      This. Above all else, this has driven me absolutely insane. I've immersed myself in and learned dozens of technologies in my past but because I didn't use one lousy framework I don't qualify? Something I could pick up in a week or -- at most -- a month? This is especially true of startups. They feel like they're under pressure to produce yesterday and don't have time for someone to get "up to speed". Worst is when they say "Well you don't have any Ruby experience. Maybe you could do a Ruby coding assignment for us." Then you spend the whole weekend cranking out a Ruby application only for them to say "This is great. Well done. But we really need someone with Ruby experience." desk smash
• mgkimsal 12y ago
  Maybe the lesson here is "quit trying to get jobs at tier 1 name brand companies". There are, by definition, only 500 companies in the Fortune 500. There are hundreds of thousands of smaller companies around the country that could use your skills.
  • ChuckMcM 12y ago
    A friend of mine has been trying to get me to start a consulting company along those lines. For companies that need computer help sporadically, a lot of automation to their tasks, and regular checkups. But not full time staff. I think it would be particularly appealing to older engineers who have other things they are interested in and want to be able to scale their hours to their schedule rather than the other way around. Certainly something to think about.
  • dominotw 12y ago
    Many companies on that list like thoughtworks are not tier 1 companies.
  • throwawaybcporn 12y ago
    What post did you read? "Smartling* Cloudflare AppDynamics* DigitalOcean Placemeter* Hatch AppNexus* OpenX ThoughtWorks* Roost"
    • mgkimsal 12y ago
      They may not all be 'tier 1' companies (I just made up the phrase 'tier 1' - 'top tier' may have been better), but there's a commonality to many of these - they're largely well-known names in many communities. I knew Google, Facebook, Amazon, Samsung, Cloudflare, appdynamics, DO, openx and thoughtworks without even batting an eye - the others sound familiar, but I can't say definitively if I know what they do. "Midwest-city tool and die cutting" probably needs someone with this person's skills just as much, perhaps moreso, than digitalocean needs yet another devops guru.
• Kurtz79 12y ago
  Congrats and best luck for the future. In a way it's kind of belwildering how radically different seem to be the job hunting experience for many HW users. You see so many posts like "I had multiple six-figure offers", or "it's impossible to find enough candidates for the position" and then you see posts like this.
  • infinitone 12y ago
    I'm a comp eng new grad with a bit of H/W exp. All I see when I look for entry positions are software?
    • Kurtz79 12y ago
      You could look for embedded software positions. I graduated in Electronics but it was clear for me that I liked software more, and embedded is a good compromise. After a while, if you do ok with your job you could ask to move to more HW focused roles inside the same company.
  • throwawaybcporn 12y ago
    I'm feeling this, too. I was out in the valley recently and talked to a guy in his mid-to-late-20s who said that Apple's signing bonus for him was near 6 figures. This university position I'm considering doesn't pay that in a full year. I guess it's like anything else, the talent at the very top of the scale (or at least perceived to be at the top of the scale) is going to command the most offers and most money. I think that would be fine with me, but the frustrating/infuriating part is it feels like an image game and NOT a meritocracy. The names on your resume (universities and workplaces) seem to matter more than your actual skills. I've seen this at work, first-hand, too. It's hard to describe without giving away an identity, but one of my friends fell ass-backwards into Google as a semi-early employee (pre-IPO) and, on top of a sweet cash nest egg, has been rabidly recruited by everyone under the sun ever since, despite suspect engineering skill. Even went through YC. The snowball effect has been amazing to see up close.
• br0ke 12y ago
  Grats on the job! I hear you about the anxiety. I managed to land an interview with nvidia in 2001 and was so nervous that I couldn't eat or sleep for the 24 hours before the start of the interview (then ate lunch with them at their cafeteria and was wolfing food down like an animal). Didn't fare well, but a year later of hunting and working as a substitute teacher, I ended up working with a great team at FedEx for a while and went to being a "computer scientist" at the army research lab after that. Anxiety is a challenge, but it can be overcome! I'm even in the process of starting with "toastmasters" to get me out of my comfort zone and learn how to be "on" around strangers. Again, congratulations and thanks for sharing!
• akeem 12y ago
  Congratulations!
• websurfshop 12y ago
  It's a viscous circle with all the rejection. Don't take it personal. We live in a cruel world, but that does not make you less valuable as a person. Jesus loves you. Merry Christmas.
• wittedhaddock 12y ago
  I have goosebumps reading this. Thank you so much for sharing. This is meaning.
• throwawayTwit 12y ago
  About 7 months ago I interviewed at Twitter, making it through two phone interviews before failing to solve some tricky algorithms questions in the on-site interview. Recently a Twitter recruiter contacted me on Linkedin looking for referrals and I sent him my resume, only to be told that they were looking for people with more experience, despite significantly more relevant experience on my resume. Is the BigCo interview process just that arbitrary?
  • throwawaybcporn 12y ago
    "Hey we're looking for people. Just not you." That's some cold shit.
    • throwawayTwit 12y ago
      Right? There was the obligatory 'we're keeping your resume on file', but that didn't make it sting any less.
• harpb 12y ago
  tl;dr: There are lot of opportunities for software engineers! 6 weeks ago, I left my job and here's my share of the search experience. 1 week after leaving the job, I got a cold email by a company who is 25-min drive away in Foster City. I did initial call with the HR on Dec. 1. On Dec. 2, I did my first phone interview. I was asked to rate my competency in Python and JavaScript on the scale 1-10. Then the interviewer asked me questions that were targeted at that level. I did badly, but not horribly, with the Q/A on technical parts and ok on some of the basic ones. On Dec. 3, I did second phone interview, which went great in the first half and badly in the second half. In the later part, I just started to get nervous and lost my cool. They still felt I was competent, so on Dec. 4 I did a full day of interview. I did 5 different interviews from engineers to CTO and CEO. By the end of the day, I was offered the position @ 135K. This is where you expect the typical ending of me accepting the salary and living happily ever after. Not so fast there, reader. I pressed for higher salary - 25K more than they were offering. They didn't budge and neither did I, so no cigar. In parallel to interviewing at that company, I also created my profile on Underdog.io. I spent Dec. 5 to Dec. 16 talking with 7 different companies in New York. I saw that their Salary range is lower than in Bay Area so it did not go far. On Dec. 13, I created my profile on Hired.Me. Since then I have had 5 offers. I have made strong connection with one of the company and will be having in-person interview in a month (I have 3 week family wedding planned in Jan :)). From my experience, there are so many companies looking for quality engineers. If you are having hired time getting hired, I am open to talk with you. I personally don't pursue working at big companies for the sake of them being big. I am looking for a company where I fit in based on my programming design sense and culturally. I'm 27/M/Single/SF - so I don't have much constraints as someone who may be older with family or in non-tech savvy part of the county.
  • ILIKEPONIES 12y ago
    One of the co-founders of underdog.io here. Awesome to hear that you talked to 7 different companies through the platform but not so awesome that the salary numbers in NYC didn't line up to your expectations. $160K is relatively high for NYC. We'll be in SF soon so hopefully we'll be able to introduce you to more cofounders/hiring managers that can offer a salary that's more on par with your expectations. :D 'throwawaybcporn' congrats on the new job!
• hemantv 12y ago
  You should get some help anxiety thing. I have seen people let ego / pride decide. There is no shame asking for help when you need it.
• ozy123 12y ago
  Good work! And congrats!
• PaoloGalesi 12y ago
  Read the tao te ching my friend. Read and read it and read it and... Good luck
• phantom_oracle 12y ago
  It's scary to see just how many talented folks there are out there, that are struggling to find some work. It's not like most of you are blue-collar workers either. Those supposed job 'shortages' at those big tech firms seems more like a sinister collusion strategy to flood the market with cheap labour possibly.