penningtron wrote: Sat Apr 06, 2024 8:10 am

cakes wrote: Fri Apr 05, 2024 4:21 pm It's such a humbling process to find a job, my soul is mostly crushed at this point, so these little wins have been revitalizing me. Can't say I'll 100% get any offers, but I'll take any win I can get!

I hope the rest of you still looking have some little wins to share yourselves. We could all use some uplifting stories.

Unfortunately more of the same for me this last week or two: interviewing against 6 other candidates for roles I would have had unsolicited recruitment DMs for 3 years ago. I even spent a couple hours doing a project that kind of reeked of "doing free work for them"* but beggars can't really be choosers right now. At least it was sort of fun..

I basically need to abandon what I was doing and move onto something else (both the roles and the sectors). What used to work clearly doesn't anymore (I figured that out a while ago, but still get sucked back in sometimes).

*anything beyond initial 15-45 minute interviews should really be paid. It would force the other side to make fuckin' decisions too: there's zero reason to put 4-5 people thru multiple rounds of interviews and assessments. It's a waste of their time too.

I think quality of employer is important. I know it's hard to be picky, but I generally avoid places that essentially waste time or try to get free work out of you.

I don't think you should give up.

I just had to do one of those coding challenges - an online editor, 3 questions in 90 minutes, and if you leave the tab you automatically fail.

I thought I wrote really elegant code in the first question, only managed to get the second one written but not passing, then had to submit it. Oh well, I thought, I'm sure lots of people didn't make the third. Then afterwards I realised I left out ONE line of code in Q1 that's really important. I had meant to include it, but was so rushed about moving to the next questions I didn't have time to run the test cases and catch it.
It'll probably just fail the test cases and they won't look at it at all.

It kills my soul knowing how competent a coder I am in the job, but still getting filtered out by these weird, unrealistic test scenarios that don't say anything about your actual capabilities.

Thank you for letting me vent

This will be my semi-regular posting of jobs for the State of New Jersey, my employer.

Here's the deal, you can work from home 2 days per week. You have to live in New Jersey. The pay isn't great, but the benefits are good.

Most of the Executive branch department jobs are in Trenton. Others are in Newark and elsewhere. There are cheap-ish places to live around here, 45 miles from Philly and 70 miles to NYC.

https://www.nj.gov/csc/jobs/announcements/otherstate/

click on other state job opportunities. tons of IT jobs under OIT. take a look.

Also check NJ Transit.

Because you can't profitably look for work 8 hours a day, it can be helpful to also have some kind of useful hobby that benefits the household. I built (overbuilt) a shoe storage arrangement for our hall closet. It makes us happy in its small way. I'm also trying to grow tomatoes from seed. Neither of these things is especially lucrative in terms of hourly wages, but they both provide a kind of satisfaction that is otherwise in short supply among the unemployed.

LuciousSandwich wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2024 10:17 pm Because you can't profitably look for work 8 hours a day, it can be helpful to also have some kind of useful hobby that benefits the household. I built (overbuilt) a shoe storage arrangement for our hall closet. It makes us happy in its small way. I'm also trying to grow tomatoes from seed. Neither of these things is especially lucrative in terms of hourly wages, but they both provide a kind of satisfaction that is otherwise in short supply among the unemployed.

The time void of this process is real, and it never feels like you're doing enough. In addition to applying and interviews, you have to research companies and roles, possibly refresh certain skillsets, and ideally practice interview questions. Oh, and you should be enrolled in fuckin' Linkedin Learning courses or whatever cuz you're seen as a lazy piece of shit if you "aren't working on anything". I'd love to turn it off for like, half the week maybe and work on home or yard stuff exclusively. Of course, even DIY projects cost money. Bleh..

I've been lucky enough to keep my media-related job since 2015. Since then, we got bought by a bigger company, who also bought our biggest competitor, and then we became the competitor. I have survived multiple regime changes and rounds of layoffs. 2015 sucked for looking for jobs, I can't imagine how bad 2024 job-searching is. I feel like the axe will fall on me as the Powers That Be look to replace my job or my teammates with AI or some dogshit.

My fingers remain ever-crossed.

penningtron wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2024 8:39 am

LuciousSandwich wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2024 10:17 pm Because you can't profitably look for work 8 hours a day, it can be helpful to also have some kind of useful hobby that benefits the household. I built (overbuilt) a shoe storage arrangement for our hall closet. It makes us happy in its small way. I'm also trying to grow tomatoes from seed. Neither of these things is especially lucrative in terms of hourly wages, but they both provide a kind of satisfaction that is otherwise in short supply among the unemployed.

The time void of this process is real, and it never feels like you're doing enough. In addition to applying and interviews, you have to research companies and roles, possibly refresh certain skillsets, and ideally practice interview questions. Oh, and you should be enrolled in fuckin' Linkedin Learning courses or whatever cuz you're seen as a lazy piece of shit if you "aren't working on anything". I'd love to turn it off for like, half the week maybe and work on home or yard stuff exclusively. Of course, even DIY projects cost money. Bleh..

For those of you in the tech sector, I would recommend spending some money on something like Frontend Masters or Coursera to learn more and/or hone your skills within your career. Especially true if you are having trouble passing code challenges. The ROI on paying something like $40 for a month's worth of course work to do in your spare time is immeasurable.

From my personal experience regarding tech jobs: it appears to me that anyone under 5 years experience is going to have a very tough time getting a call back. Mid-to-Senior level--especially the higher levels--is highly sought after right now. 62% of tech jobs posted on LinkedIn, for example, are remote. Many other jobs are hybrid, some hybrid are remote if you live over 50 miles away from the office. My point being is that you are no longer competing from within your community, but the entirety of the US/North America and sometimes including Europe. This is why you see 100-300+ applications for a lot of jobs, especially high-profile. From what I have gathered talking to recruiters (internal and third-party) is that after last-year's layoffs, the return to hiring in the tech sector is about quality over quantity, as opposed to what the opposite happening before. This is why a lot of hiring right now is weighted heavily on senior-level experience and the jobs for junior-to-mid have become more competitive for this reason.

This means there are some options to play with: what's available strictly in-office? What's hybrid in your area? Be on top of jobs as they post and try to apply early. Look for smaller companies who might not be able to draw in the same interest as bigger ones. Be choosy, which is slightly counter-productive, and with this be specific about what you are looking for. If you can talk to a recruiter that is from a recruiting company and not internal to the company you are applying to, do it, because often times they will have other roles they can help you find. Recruiters make money on placing people at jobs, so use that to your advantage. I really think being specific about what you are looking for is important, or at least if you want options, be specific about each path and be specific about what you are looking for in a role you are applying to.

Another interesting thing I've been seeing is tons and tons of new investment in web3. What is web3? Blockchain technology. There's some crazy, curvy paths into it if you are new, but an easy in if you are familiar enough with crypto. First and foremost, know that a lot of crypto companies (the legitimate ones anyway) are aware of the bad actors and criminality found in crypto that gives crypto a bad name and there is a lot of push to bring in compliance officers and lawyers to help legitimize cryptocurrency and wipe away the stains of the past. That being said, there's a ton of new startups and maturing startups that have a lot of cash on hand to hire, with a lot of early-day sense of urgency to hire and build. This is both good and difficult news. First, early startups are generally looking for senior level engineers, due to the fact that they need people who can be self-directed and work somewhat independently. Second, some of these startups are either hybrid or full on-site. Not to go into details on this, but if you've ever worked in fin-tech, there's some good reason for this, but it is not the rule for all web3 companies. Third, the availability of engineers with experience in the web3 space is limited, with about maybe 100k head count. Web3 companies are desparately looking to recruit anyone into the field. Just having some knowledge in crypto or blockchain would be a huge advantage. For example, I currently work for a crypto company within web2.0. Coupled with the fact that I understand the basics of blockchain and can speak the lingo, on top of being a senior-level, I've had tons of web3 recruiters knocking on my door (which is the reason I a writing this, I've been asking a ton of questions and providing the answers). So, this is a potential avenue to explore for those of you curious. Blockchain is here to stay, we are looking at a new era of transparency and future regulatory bodies (either by government or self) for the purpose of attracting as many people as possible into decentralized finance, because there's so much money to be made by both parties, the trader and the exchange. That being said, I can see web3 moving into more traditional things not entirely related to defi as the technology progresses and is more dispersed to engineers. For example, why couldn't we have a blockchain twitter app? Imagine having your identity truly anonymous and not owned by Elon Musk. So, this is a very new, but fertile space to move into (not that web2.0 is going anywhere anytime soon, we still need secure CRUD and shit like that).

TL;DR Spend some money, hone your skills. Consider hybrid or on-site to increase your chances. Look into web3, there's a ton of potential there.

andyman wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2024 6:30 am I just had to do one of those coding challenges - an online editor, 3 questions in 90 minutes, and if you leave the tab you automatically fail.

I thought I wrote really elegant code in the first question, only managed to get the second one written but not passing, then had to submit it. Oh well, I thought, I'm sure lots of people didn't make the third. Then afterwards I realised I left out ONE line of code in Q1 that's really important. I had meant to include it, but was so rushed about moving to the next questions I didn't have time to run the test cases and catch it.
It'll probably just fail the test cases and they won't look at it at all.

It kills my soul knowing how competent a coder I am in the job, but still getting filtered out by these weird, unrealistic test scenarios that don't say anything about your actual capabilities.

Thank you for letting me vent

That sounds fucking awful. I have done some online challenges, but never have I ever seen the loss of tab focus immediately fail you. I often ask at the start if googling is OK and it usually is.

The sick part about online challenges is that exactly what you are saying: you are stuck using an unfamiliar editor, with a time-limit crunch, with someone watching you, and in some cases not able to leave the tab, and often times given problems that are impractical to the job requirements.

In some cases (at least my last live tech challenge), this isn't as dire. The first technical that made me upset and start this thread, was terrible because as I entered the Zoom, there was not really an introduction, just get to the coding challenge. The instructions were written in a very weird way, either to be tricky and dubious or a language barrier, because the person on the other end was in Germany. Though the challenge was tough, it was actually practical to the job, so I'll give them that. My last tech challenge at a different company was wildly different: we spent 10 minutes talking, which eased my anxiety tremendously. They gave me the link to the editor way ahead of time, which allowed me to become familiarized with it (and the site also provided tons of practice challenges), I was able to use google, and the challenge was very practical to their needs. (I was a little lucky, the challenge was something I was very familiar with and had done recently).

I think take-homes are great, but I can see why many companies don't do it because of fear of applicants using AI. Personally, I think the best way to do tech interviews is to first have a technical conversation to understand what the applicant knows. Then, provide an option for take home, backed up with a conversation about how the solution was made, so that you can hear clearly thought out answers; or, the applicant can do a live code.

I was really fretting over this one tech challenge last week. I spent all this time doing hardcore code challenges, working with a colleague who is also on the job hunt to do challenges in front of each other, and then reading up on system design challenges, because that was also suggested to be part of the interview. I would say I pretty much over-prepared, but the tech interview turned out to be really awesome. We spent a half hour talking, then moved into the tech challenge, which was a system design collaborative discussion, which then moved into a final conversation. Everyone was super chill and very skilled, and I think we all got a good sense of each other just from fucking talking. (Crossing my fingers I get the job, but I know I'm at least one of three candidates).

cakes wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2024 2:54 pm From my personal experience regarding tech jobs: it appears to me that anyone under 5 years experience is going to have a very tough time getting a call back.

True. It's having 2 opposing effects: 1. roles that were once considered entry level are asking for as much as Masters Degrees now which is laughable and 2. over-qualified people are taking jobs beneath them just to get something. I've had both of those things happen, and no matter how well an interview goes I probably can't compete with someone with twice the experience willing to work for less.

From what I have gathered talking to recruiters (internal and third-party) is that after last-year's layoffs, the return to hiring in the tech sector is about quality over quantity, as opposed to what the opposite happening before. This is why a lot of hiring right now is weighted heavily on senior-level experience and the jobs for junior-to-mid have become more competitive for this reason.

I think there's some truth there (not so much quality vs quantity, but 'doing more with less'), but also senior engineers can call the shots on being exclusively remote, and a lot of them straight up quit places that reintroduced on site requirements late 2021-22.

Most traditional companies went to some kind of hybrid model but that can vary as much as 1-4 days per week. I haven't heard anyone speak highly of those situations: there are still tons of Zoom meetings, and sitting in half-empty offices isn't exactly the Office Culture we were sold. But I certainly wouldn't rule out (and haven't been) those jobs within reason.

cakes wrote: My last tech challenge at a different company was wildly different: we spent 10 minutes talking, which eased my anxiety tremendously. They gave me the link to the editor way ahead of time, which allowed me to become familiarized with it (and the site also provided tons of practice challenges), I was able to use google, and the challenge was very practical to their needs.

That just sounds like an interview conducted by people who know what they're doing. The assclowns who ask you to write out a challenge on a fucking notepad shared through the interview screen don't have a fucking clue what they're actually looking for, and I don't take poorly conducted interviews personally anymore (I once had that scenario with someone I found out got promoted to tech lead like 2 months prior. I was probably one of her first interviews, and the only thing she 'asked' was the FIZZBUZZ challenge. I withdrew my application 5 minutes after the interview). Fortunately code challenges aren't as common for most roles I apply to, and it tends to be more process and scenario focused.

Positive vibes: While I'm waiting to hear back on the final response for two interview processes I've completed, I started the process with two more companies that are way more interesting. I'm scheduled for the second interviews for both today, one technical, one conversational. As I'm preparing, I finally hear back later than expected from one of the jobs that they want one final interview with the VP of engineering. While I think this is great, it puts me in kind of a bind... because this place is on the bottom of my list for a variety of reasons, but not a bad job per se. I now have to be strategic about timing things. Luckily, I have these two second interviews today. The technical one could go badly... or not. It almost takes the pressure off. The other one though, is very exciting and I had a 30 minute interview with the director of engineer turn into an hour and a half long conversation. Probably one of the best introduction interviews I've ever had, we got along so well, plus the job and the challenges and the tech stack are very interesting to me and on top of that, it's probably one of the best paying jobs among the bunch with the most potential for upward mobility. However, they have a pretty rigorous interview process, so it's going to be quite the balancing act. I feel like next week is going to be full of anxiety and tough decision making. I'm not complaining, it's very positive. I'm just not looking forward to it.

In the meantime, I've been coaching two devs on interviewing and technical challenges. One is a mid-level who currently works under me. Another is a guy I met on reddit who is trying to get his first tech job. He's super smart, self taught, but obviously picked the wrong time to get into tech... however, he's got a take home tech challenge that I've been reviewing for him.

Crazy times. I can't wait for it to be over for everyone. Good luck out there!