Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

I think people need to be down with how to actually get a job. It varies across industries so I can't speak generally, but I can say how my view has changed over the years, from being naive and a bit bitter to being quite happy with my most recent search.

When I was young there wasn't much choice. I had no network, I didn't know anything about my industry, and I didn't know anything about how hiring was done.

First of all, network 1. A huge number of jobs are not actually open to anyone other than a specific person who is known to the hiring manager already. Someone they've worked with or a second level connection. I refer people all the time to jobs now, and the hit rate is way higher than the anon rate.

Network 2. Recruiters. The good ones will meet up with you, ask you for advice, and generally tend to a huge number of connections. Your main thing to do here is to play the long game. Demonstrate that you're a person who is of interest, if you're lucky as both the product and the customer. Then keep in touch, ping them now and again on LinkedIn. You will get some calls and the hit rate is higher than anon, lower than network 1 but with way more volume.

As for the interview process itself, it helps you a lot to have a lot of leads. You feel bad if you have one lead and you blow it. If you have two or three you'll be more relaxed, plus you can negotiate with ease. You can take a bigger view of processes that you don't like, eg whiteboarding is more of a lottery when you have a whole bunch to do, and you don't take it as personally. People who don't get back to you, oh well, would you want to work there?

I guess a fair bit of it is psychological management, but that's important to make a good impression and to be able to judge the jobs better.

That's viable advice for navigating a system built on nepotism and over-supply of STEM workers. Just saying. Doctors don't struggle finding a qualified job.

Doctors don't change their ideas about what competent doctoring is every five years - and medical schools know better than to hand out degrees to people who lack basic skills.

The number of residencies was capped in the 1980s, so of course doctors don't struggle to find a job. Residents do that.

> You feel bad if you have one lead and you blow it.

This one hits pretty hard for me; I have a hard time maintaining multiple leads at once. I think it's more psychological than actual, but it feels a bit unnatural to put myself out there, as such -- I feel better (on the one hand at least) when I only have to worry about one interaction at a time.

I think it's still something I'll have to learn how to do, unfortunately. Thanks for outlining it so clearly.

I felt the same way as you. I like to focus on one thing.

    I think it's more psychological than actual

Amen. Absolutely 100% this for me. I just completed an engineering job search that took about four weeks.

I did ~40 phone/video calls for ~10 companies. Admittedly ~10 of those calls were simple screener calls which basically just check to see if you have a pulse and can speak in complete sentences. If those two things are true the recruiter shifts into "salesperson mode" and tells you how great the company is and gets you scheduled for the "real" interview(s). So let's call it ~30 "real" calls.

Emotionally this was extremely exhausting for me. I'm the type of person that is very sociable but needs time to recharge afterward because I put a lot of energy into each interaction.

But, I'm typing this to perhaps give you some hope!

The process was very difficult for me in the beginning but it did get easier in the end. With each call I could feel myself getting a little better at it and I felt a little more relaxed.

I think these sorts of numbers are just the reality now. Even though the current market is GREAT for software engineers, the remote-only shift means that there are a LOT of candidates for every job.

It feels like there are 1,000,000 jobs and 500,000 candidates which is theoretically good for us except that we're competing against all 499,999 of the other candidates for every single job hahaha

I tend to focus on 3. More than that and I lose track of who's who and what's what, but 3 seems to be manageable, and provides some choice for me.

This.

Normal disclaimers apply as it is bound to vary between industries, but in my little corner ( banking ), people that can recommend you and recruiters will bring you in faster than just about any other way. Apart from everything else, hiring manager will already be aware of you. My last job I basically got based on interview with recruiter and three person interview with my soon to be boss and his bosses.

The one before that I got based on interview with hiring manager after recommendation from mutual friend, which bypassed HR almost completely ( which is funny, because a year before, I applied there the regular way with zero feedback ).

Point is.. as much as I dislike saying it, play the game; be nice and helpful; people will remember you.

I would generally agree with everything you said. These steps will get you job offers and employment.

But based on personal experience in Europe I do find that networking with recruiters is a complete waste of time. Networking with past colleagues and popping into the local meetup scene plus targeted talks with recruiters at industry conferences such as oscon (rip!) are going to give you way better returns.

I've got 20+ years experience in the industry, I've worked at some well-known shops and I have a decent looking CV with some financial sector experience. I do get the regular Google and Facebook recruiters on LinkedIn but would probably not pass their interview because I am already gainfully employed and do not have the time to cram computing trivia to pass their screen. Due to the financial sector experience I seem to get a ton of recruiters from the UK (and now NL), plus an incredible large number of invites to talk about a "devops engineer position" from German recruiters.

Especially the German recruiters are a complete waste of time. They are so terrible, they keep offering junior to mid-level positions to someone with 20yoe and a tech-lead/staff title to match. Their base comp is usually below 50% of my current base, sometimes barely a third. The UK and NL offers are better financially but still not reaching current TC levels. At this point, it's not even worth replying to their LinkedIn or Xing messages.

If you're at the bottom of the market or just starting out, recruiters or headhunters can be helpful to get an in at a company. But once you have a few years experience, their value rapidly declines, especially if you're aiming at the top of the market comp wise. With experience and a network, you know where your friends are working, if they like the places and you have an easy way to get referrals.

My experience is somewhat the opposite. I work as a freelancer, and I've gotten practically all my projects through recruiters. I've heard of a few other freelancers doing their own networking directly with hiring managers, and if that works, that's absolutely great, because you cut out the middleman who takes a piece out of your rate.

Maybe I'm really bad at networking. I've spoken to plenty of colleagues, go to conferences and meetups, etc, but none of that has ever resulted in an interesting position for me.

Even so, I'm not unhappy with my compensation at all. As a freelancer, at least. Employed programmers seem to be severely underpaid. A year ago, during Covid, a freelance contract ended, and couldn't be extended because of rules, but I didn't want to leave that project yet, so I joined the client as an employee. I had to accept a serious pay cut for that, though, and no matter how much I argued that I had proven I was worth a lot more than that, I couldn't get them to budge at all. I'm currently back to freelancing again. At a very interesting project, at a higher rate than before, again through an intermediary recruiter. I can't seem to get rid of them.

Agreed on the networking.

In terms of recruiters, I've only ever met a single good one, and I'd say generally recruiters, especially the third-party kind, are pretty useless and should be avoided at all costs. The only exception may be if the recruiter owns their own recruiting business as this is a sign they may know what they're talking about.

Recruiters can be pretty easily bypassed by either contacting the hiring manager directly or through networking. I don't plan on ever dealing with recruiters again.

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