Comment by batt4good | Hacker News Reader

Comment by batt4good | Hacker News Reader

Getting let go from FAANG basically because I didn't ignore huge red flags while getting hired (thought bc it was a FAANG there wouldn't be atrocious mgmt policies etc).

The requirements for the position as the recruiter described was Go / Elixir experience, did my code screen / take home in elixir and nailed it, principle engineer reviewed my code and green-lit my application mostly bc he was also a devout elixir fan. My manager had a language barrier and seemed pushy when I did my on-site and told her I wanted to use the normal allotment of time for the take-home (they fast tracked my app which would've only given me two days for a take-home that is usually give 5 days). Learned the team wasn't doing any Go / Elixir (was "maybe going to transition at some point" and never did) and was basically just servicing a shitty monolith built in Ruby.

Lots of $$$ so I just decided to take the offer, since my prior situation was a startup that was trying to avoid paying me my full salary and boss didn't "believe" in benefits.

Team at FAANG was also socially inept enough to always send my comments up to my boss instead of team member meant to onboard me - first task was also horribly scoped and made me look like an idiot for double checking my work (small fix with HUGE implications and side-effects if done wrong, with flaky tests galore). Boss berated me for being the only person who would tell her I wasn't going to be done at the end of the day, but never caused a critical problem in prod. Basically got fucked when I admitted a mistake that I promptly fixed and re-deployed, proving their BS "nobody gets blamed for fuckups" policy was definitely bullshit.

I got paid $20k to leave as my team was let go for unrelated reasons (you can guess which FAANG) and did some work with a friend on a startup for a few months. The transition out / lack of luck searching for new jobs really kicked me in the stomach and confidence - and on top of that I'm still looking for work. But hey, hopefully 2020 goes better.

"I'm still looking for work".."was basically just servicing a shitty monolith built in Ruby"

I hope you take this a a constructive criticism. Most dev jobs are shitty monolith in <replace with a old tested server side language>. If you are unemployed, especially if you are umemployed, you need to get a bit more humble and forget about latest shiny tech. Find a company/team that is solving real problems and then go make a difference for them. Tech stack is a nice to have but don't expect it always to be the shiniest.

I wish you good luck. I was in your place couple of years ago. The only way out of this situation is to apply. As from the other post that you have had somebody has already mentioned, you probably did not have many opportunities due to holiday window. I suggest you double down and start applying and interviewing from Jan 2020. Trust me, this is just a number game. And as others have said, nobody is not 100% sure how to properly interview a candidate or find a great developer.

Dogpiling onto the well-wishing. Having recently been through a bit of interviews at various places, can't help but wonder - how does (and is it even possible) a candidate defect this toxicity or the interview stage? With the 20/20 hindsight, were there any tell-tale signs?

I have very limited experience, but the few that jump out to me emanate from a few conversations I had with employees during my on-site. For context, the role was for a "Golang / Elixir Engineer" during my onsite all anyone talked about was relatively new code written in Ruby and only mentioned Golang or Elixir in a "maybe 8 months down the road" way. Language barrier with your manager seems innocuous, but the problems I ran into were deeper and seemingly cultural. (she expected to only be told things were going right, nothing was ever her fault, asking for help is indicative of weakness or incompetence etc. - I'm trying to not sound racist but other employees had similar comments)

Also, it took me quite a bit of time to work through the mental gymnastics as to whether I was just bad at my job or if I was in a toxic environment. In hindsight it was definitely toxic - as an example senior engineers on my teams were being put in a position where they had to make decisions TPM's should be making (but still hung out when they made the wrong decisions).

So, nothing _really_ jumped out, though there were weak clues/hints. I am not a coder, so it isn't obvious to me that a mention of a technology being "8 months down the road" is unreasonable. But now it would be.

Language (and, it appears, also a culture) barrier with management is... tricky since we don't want to come off as racist/*-ist. Not sure how to evaluate it, aside from asking scenario questions if the manager. Maybe if there manager, during their interview, didn't care about finding the candidate's behavior when they reached their knowledge limits is another sign?

That sucks, I truly hope you’re in a better place now

Thank you kind stranger :)

Unfortunately, I'm still unemployed but luckily my BS detector has had a nice upgrade, I've at least sort of improved my algo skills and had some time to think about what I really value in life.

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