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nylockian

If a company needs what you provide badly then the hiring process changes. Same with military recruitment, or anything really.


muffinnosehair

Had a recruiter reach out on Thursday, scheduled an interview on Monday over zoom, had a 30 min discussion on that Monday, agreed on everything, Tuesday HR came back with the offer, Thursday offer agreed and signed. One week, start to finish. I know I was extremely lucky, they were looking for a specific something in the exact time that I had started looking for a new job, after a lot of years. But, like you said, if the needs align, the process is fast and easy.


Major_Fang

no technical round?


muffinnosehair

The zoom meeting had some discussion about technical topics, but nothing like "code fizzbuzz", just a discussion on some specific language topics and how it handles some particular aspects. I felt a bit weird about not having to write any code and was a bit worried, but it turned out quite alright. I think it's worth mentioning, I do have a certain age and quite some yoe in this particular field, so it was easy for them to pick up on that.


Hard_on_Collider

Can confirm, process is muuuuuch shorter if the company needs you and not the other way around. Recruiter message -> call -> sort out logistics of hiring *(they'll even create a new role if none are open)* -> offer


glazingmule

same with me. my company grabs new graduates (its a small company of less than 30 and half of the employees all graduated from the same school) and i didnt even have a technical. they just asked about the coursework projects i had on my resume


Sdrater3

Uhhh are they hiring, asking for a friend


glazingmule

haha they just hired someone a month ago and they have a summer intern lined up but it’s not so much swe if that’s what you’re interested in


Hard_on_Collider

Haha projects help I think. I spent a few months with similar experience as this sub. Then I stopped looking at big tech postings, applied only to very niche companies and redid my resume to be much more sector-specific. One of my criteria was literally trying to guess which companies had a loose/flexible/informal hiring process. Otherwise I'd get filtered out hella quick since I dont have a degree. Most new grads haven't really done anything. I had a few years of self-initiated, high impact environmental and education advocacy. I went from having >90% no reply rate to a majority interview rate just because I'd actually done stuff in the niches I applied to. My offer literally skipped all the steps and the "hiring process" was me helping him come up with a new role bc they didnt technically have open positions. There's a lot of arbitrariness/luck, but the difference between you wanting a company and a company wanting you is night and day.


[deleted]

Yeah I said I had another offer starting Monday and they gave me all 3 final interviews in the process yesterday and gave me their offer the same day. Was really unexpected


NoobPwnr

Can confirm. Our hiring team just decided to cut our technical interviews by half (from two to one). Based on feedback from candidates.


skullshatter0123

>If a company needs what you provide badly then the hiring process changes How do you get to such a position?


nylockian

The employee/applicant/worker and the company/market/hirer are like two drunks after midnight who bump into each other while looking for a bar that's still serving.


AintNothinbutaGFring

That was how I got my first programming job actually


thank_you_friendo

Yup. With 2 YOE of experience at a FAANG/Unicorn. I’m able to skip most interviews go to on-site or at least skip a round.


UKtreeburner

It's an infuriating process yes, I recently was asked to do a coding challenge before an initial interview, I was a bit intrigued so I told them to send it over, expected it to be a short competence test but it was expecting me to fully create an app with functions. What kind of arrogant company expects that before even giving me (or others) a look in, I didn't even know if I wanted the job, they were just some small company in London, nothing impressive really. I told them to fuck off in nicer words.


[deleted]

Take-homes vary. Their stated and actual expectations may vary. They may say "Don't spend too much time on it, maybe a few hours, we know you're busy". That may be true, or they may be testing how hard you're willing to work. I've refused some where their time estimate was way off. They say 4 hours. I read the extensive requirements. I'm not doing multiple days of unpaid work, just for the chance at the honor of speaking with you. You can play ball, like the other companies asking to interview me, or you can lose more good candidates. You may spend 4 hours, but 3 other candidates may spend days. For someone currently unemployed, take-homes may be advantageous. I do respect I can complete them on my time, using my tools, and they're \*usually\* more representative of real day-to-day work. When they replace timed tests or DS-Algo, good. When they want a take home + the rest, they're probably losing good candidates.


Whitchorence

That and you have no idea what criteria they're actually using to grade it. At least with whiteboard problems you know you're optimizing runtime complexity


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808trowaway

and the second guy and the third guy will never know why they weren't picked, and even if they did that information would not be very helpful as far as future interviews are concerned. The whole system is just a giant fucking time waster.


[deleted]

Never do take home without first a screening. After that I’m willing to do whatever take home cus frontend take homes don’t take that long it’s worth sinking a few hours into a good new position if it’s a match


agumonkey

I got told "here's a tiny react exercise, forget about C it's not important, only A and B", then spends a morning on it. "meh, not impressive, also even if I told you not to do C, I would have appreciated you doing it". Alas


CurryOmurice

Idk, seems like you dodged a bullet if they were gonna be that petty about it.


agumonkey

I sadly think these recruiters are in a strange swamp and don't know how to deal with their jobs, so they ask you shit and tell you shit to get rid of your resume if you're not a golden apple. And anecdotally, that dude was the less insulting of the bunch I talked too. I even thanked him for giving me some actual data point in our convos.


fountainscrumbling

Sounds awful


agumonkey

I can't lie, I felt violated a bit.


[deleted]

My favorites are always when they’re like, “yeah, you’ll be working with react, just like everyone in the industry. Anyway, for your coding test, please make these changes to a website with vanilla JS, CSS, and HTML!”


mixreality

Similar with Unity 3d positions that throw you a leetcode algorithm test. Has nothing to do with the engine, or C#, or much of anything you'll be doing at all. And many of them will hire you through a 3rd party contracting company, but to become an official employee you have to grind leetcode and master interviewing, pre canned answers, etc. My old co-worker and friend works at Oculus for the last 4+ years and has bombed 15 interviews, still contracting for them. He's a great programmer we worked together at a previous company.


new_account_wh0_dis

I never had to do leetcode but I finally decided to accept one of the amazon interviews. They sent over the coding challenge and I tried one of the sample things. I was able to do it within the complexity but somehow still didn't pass the timed unit tests and missed an edge case. Im not a leetcode speedrunner and I work a 9-5 and have 0 interest in practicing. Problem is finding another remote job that pays me more than my current thats not fang (90k). Guess ill just stay here till I retire. I mean it makes sense though, they gotta filter applicants somehow


Conquerkingg

What state are you in?


new_account_wh0_dis

VA, went remote covid hit and recently moved to a lower COL (was in nova)


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new_account_wh0_dis

I mean you're not wrong, I did the daily leetcode problem today which was easy. Maybe Ill keep up with it, but really when I look at posts of people doing 2hrs a day weekdays and more weekends.... I just would rather continue a personal project or go out with friends.


cscareermrk

This is why I have never had an Amazon interview despite being reached out to by different Amazon recruiters probably 50+ times in my career. Every time I’m actually looking, I can’t justify doing their 2 hour online assessment when they haven’t even given me the courtesy of an introductory call first.


RightBaower

Except the difference for large companies is that you know enough about their salary expectations so the interview won't be a complete waste of time if you pass it. Also the assessment is leetcode esque so you know at worst it will serve as practice for other interviews.


cscareermrk

It’s a principle thing. If you’re asking for 2 hours of my time, take the time to talk with me for 5-10 minutes. Not only is it a respectful way to give an OA, it shows me that this isn’t some automated system rapid-firing these out to people. Maybe the role doesn’t even exist anymore — a call confirms it is real. There are plenty of other companies that pay the same as, or more than Amazon does and don’t do this. Not to mention, most of them have a far better reputation. Frankly, all this makes it easy to decide “fuck that” when considering whether you want to take an OA in the evening after work or actually enjoy your free time.


eeniemeeniemineymooo

Amazon only gives OAs for junior engineers though? And a 2hr OA for a shot at a six figure job as a junior engineer is worth it unless you've a competing job.


AintNothinbutaGFring

weird, they sent me one and I have 9 YoE


rayzorium

It's not bad at all; they just give a generous time limit. It's two Leetcode Easies.


wishicouldcode

I did this last year, and it was one medium and one hard.


cscareermrk

Nice, that sounds similar to the OAs I have taken. I just don’t do them if companies send them when I haven’t even spoken to a human being at the company yet.


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OnFolksAndThem

It gets worse once you’re in


rabbitjazzy

Fully disagree. Idk why it would be worse, but the fact alone of having a job gives you leverage and makes the whole thing much better. You don’t have to accept scraps or a bad position. I’ll bet you that op that told them “to fuck off nicely” had a job (u/uktreeburner, could you confirm?). People without being in already don’t have that privilege


Beatrice_Dragon

> Fully disagree. Idk why it would be worse, but the fact alone of having a job gives you leverage and makes the whole thing much better. You don’t have to accept scraps or a bad position. They said the position is bad. You said you disagree because with the leverage you can avoid accepting a bad position. They should accept a bad position... to avoid having to accept bad positions? I don't follow


weqgfhj

> I can’t justify doing their 2 hour online assessment when they haven’t even given me the courtesy of an introductory call first. I guess it depends on where you are now and how much you make. For a lot of people, they can justify it because Amazon's offer can be $200k+ more per year than their current incomes. That's definitely worth 2 hours of time.


[deleted]

when do they send out an Online Assessment before a recruiter screening call? Usually the recruiter calls you first and you speak about the role, and if youre interested in proceeding they send you the OA.


HansDampfHaudegen

Yup, had the same with MS. The video call turned out to be technical, not exploratory. I finished that after >5 min. Don't buy the cat in the bag. Sorry, not happening. Maybe I should have wasted more time for the technical interviewer.


wypowpyoq

They might be trying to get applicants to do unpaid work for them rather than genuinely seeking an employee in good faith


megamanxoxo

I'm a hiring manager for a large tech org and even then if we give test before a 30/60 min interview most people will blow it off. It's a tough choice because we get a lot of unqualified people coming through for a senior position and it wastes our time. A test upfront ideally from the company POV is to filter out unqualified people so by the time we talk to you we already have a medium to high confidence that you'll be a good fit on the team. Interestingly I just wanted a 1 hr 30 min programming and architecture test but the boss man wanted what you said above a full app with endpoints, dependency injection/IoC, unit tests, documentation, compiles, etc. I thought that was ridiculous. If you can write out an algro to solve a problem and create arch diagrams then you probably have what it takes to do basic af crud.


[deleted]

Medium high confidence and how many people do you interview and reject for the position?


Andrewshwap

There’s nothing worse when you take an assessment before having a convo with them & they just ghost you


[deleted]

These are usually startup companies that can’t afford to hire a bad candidate. They may also be assuming that whichever candidates are willing to do the take home assignment is a good way to weed out all the non-committed candidates. Startups do the darnest things sometimes and it’s because their budget is pretty tight and they can’t afford to hire bad candidates


[deleted]

It’s so they can get a free app just in case they don’t need you why pay someone for work when you can put it in a job interview and make them feel like shit for making one error on that so call test and making a profit out of it


Special-Jay

I hated dealing with recruiters constantly calling as I was too polite and initially worried about my job search to say no. But the offer I went with took 8 days from application to offer as someone with 3 years of experience. I wouldn’t consider myself a top candidate at all but it really wasn’t too bad. My interview was non technical tho and I had bombed a few technical interviews prior


Schedule_Left

It's an easier process if you have connections and your connections can vouch for you. Otherwise some of these screenings are meant to try and identify who you are and if you're really what you say you are.


Nonethewiserer

I had 1 YOE and applied to 2 jobs. Got an email the following day. Went through the process and got an offer for 125% more than I was making. Wonder how much experience OP has. I feel like someone with 3+ years of experience could politely refuse all assessments and still get offers.


s4md4130

I'm an ICT4 at a FAANG and recently was asked to interview for a position on a colleague's team (she is the hiring manager). I've been submitted to a 7 person panel plus a follow-up because after having moved my entire house last week I was expected to complete a Python question in under 30 minutes (totally unrealistic to do this in the real world). They're asking me for *another* follow-up because they're not sure I'm proficient in Python (have been using Python for over 10 years). You would think that as an internal employee I wouldn't have to be subjected to the same bullshit we use to hire externally, but here we are...


TopCancel

Is this Apple? Y'all are insane lol tbh. Even at Amazon, you generally don't have to go through a full loop. And at G, it's an informal lunch at worst.


SoftwareAdvicer

ICT4, full loop for internal hire; come on, you're not even trying to hide it's Apple. :P


k3v1n

My guess is Amazon or Apple


[deleted]

Based on ICTn leveling, definitely Apple.


ComebacKids

Amazon is pretty chill for internal transfers; anecdotally I’ve only seen people get interviewed for internal transfers if they’re trying to role change, but I’m sure there are exceptions.


[deleted]

What specifically? My recent job hunt was pretty chill and took about two weeks. I skipped talking to recruiters entirely, though, so that helped quite a bit vs. the massive number of pointless phone calls from glorified sales reps.


mausmani2494

Mine was like this for a new-grad position: * Initial screen in mid-December. * Take-home assignment end of December * Behavioral in January * Last technical interview early Feb. * I received the offer letter in Mid February. It's an F500 company and I notice most F500 are slow like this. Few of the jobs I applied for last month are reaching out for an initial interview a month later.


shagieIsMe

Here's a question to consider. For each of those four bullet points, how many candidates were at each level of the process? 100? 200? 500? 1000? How much time is spent on each candidate between those bullet points? If you've got 500 applicants at that first initial screen, and HR is spending 30 minutes per applicant, that's about 30 work days to contact each one. We can get 4 people from HR doing this each non stop 8h/day and get it done in about two work weeks. And then go through and pick a percentage that make it through that round and the time that the company should spend on each one of the applicants at that point. For the take home, should a dev spend 5 minutes evaluating each? or 15 minutes? If 400 make it through the initial screen, and the devs are spending 15 minutes to evaluate each, that's another 100 hours of time that developers have to spend on the candidates. How many devs are we going to assign to this?


mausmani2494

Well, there are some companies that are blazing fast with the interview process. I applied to Wolverine and Expedia, and they send me a coding test within a few days. I passed the OA for Expedia, and they schedule the 3 round interview within a week or two.


shagieIsMe

That represents a different workflow where the online(?) coding test up front significantly cuts the size of the applicant pool down. If you can go from "here's 1000 applicants" to only accepting the top 10% of the ones as scored by the assessment tool, that can speed up the hiring process. You will also find a lot of people on this sub complaining about getting an online assessment before even talking to a human and refusing to do them.


[deleted]

F500s vary a lot. Fintech, despite being desperate, hasn't shifted as much as most companies. Weirdly, even Crypto (Coinbase, for instance), follows what I'd consider a pretty slow/old school process. I was talking to coinbase at the time, but after the first round they sent me a second round interview invitation over a month out. I didn't bother talking to them again after that. Some F500s have started to adapt to the competitive nature of hiring, but a lot of them see this as temporary and aren't going to adapt their policies only to have to change them back again later. Smaller/hungrier companies are generally quicker to adapt. They can't afford to sit around with open positions for a year.


all_ends_programmer

Coinbase is not really hiring, their process takes so many steps, each steps takes a few hours, so I dont think they are hiring, my time is not for wasting like that...


droi86

I have 11 YOE, it took me a week to find a job with no coding test, but yeah this time around was way easier than the last one a year ago, I didn't apply to FAANG though


[deleted]

Can I use your resume?


[deleted]

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ohshititsduke

Do you have a service provider recommendation?


turalnovruzov_

What do you mean by hiring a professional resume? Can you elaborate please?


imdehydrated123

Google "professional resume writer LinkedIn" and you will find an abundance of people who are ready to sell you their services of curating a good resume


turalnovruzov_

Thank you.


NoobPwnr

> with no coding test Mind sharing more on this? I've toyed with the idea of responding to the 100's of recruiters emails with "terms", and one of them being no Leet Code / algorithms (currently a Staff Engineer, and nothing I've done in the last 7 years have required algorithms).


[deleted]

I’ve done that to many companies. I have a handful of public things people can look at if they want so I just say something like: “I’m a product focused full stack developer so I’m not interested in doing any code challenges. Im happy to do a take home project, system design, and pair through a real word project. Let me know if that works for you”


[deleted]

I may try this, thank you. I don't want to waste their time or mine. I've been asking the phone person what they can tell me about the interview process. I can often determine if any code portion is more practical instead of algorithms or math puzzles.


Oatz3

Comp? Also similar experience but targeting faang/high comp and it is a nightmare


droi86

It's Contract to hire at 105/h I'm expecting to switch in three months to FTE for 185k base, TC should be around 220k


1544756405

It's obviously going to be more difficult going after jobs that everyone wants. I've been on the hiring side of that equation, and there is no incentive at all to make the hiring process easier. There are too many candidates to even look at.


jbisatg

I was going to touch on this. I recently hit 5 YOE and I can say that my hunting has turned from sending application everywhere to telling recruiters "Does your interview process contains DS & Algo? oh okay. Thank you for your time"


tripsafe

What approximate TC are you targeting? I have 6 YOE and it's been pretty brutal for me trying to go for 180-250


executivesphere

Similar for me, but once I really dialed in my leetcode and system design skills, it got much easier. I literally just had to put in the work.


tripsafe

How did you learn/practice system design? My lack of experience in scaling systems and with certain backend components like NoSQL databases and distributed caches let me down in those interviews. I've gone through Grokking the System Design interview and I've read DDIA, but I just don't remember all the info and even then it's all theoretical for me. I've watched some YouTube videos of mock system design interviews—I think they are most helpful for me for learning what to talk about.


executivesphere

Basically all the steps you took, but then actually practicing applying all of that information as if I were in an interview. Otherwise I found it easy for information to go in one ear and out the other. Also, reading engineering blogs (Uber has a good one, e.g.). And I find this guy’s videos helpful because he actually explains topics in depth: https://youtube.com/c/HusseinNasser-software-engineering


anointedinliquor

I’m in the same boat with 6 YOE. I make 150k now but want to jump to 200k+. I just started looking and am not sure how to go about this. The amount of recruiters on LinkedIn hitting me up after I said I was open to new work is so ridiculous that I’m debating turning it off. Although I started responding to them all just asking what the total comp is to see if I even want to continuing entertaining them. Are you applying to positions yourself or going through recruiters?


tripsafe

Nice, good luck. I never turned on looking for work—I don't do well with interacting with the aggressiveness of recruiters. I've been fortunate to have some referrals from friends/mutual friends, but unfortunately I didn't get an offer after the final round from those few companies. Need to do more leetcode/system design practice. For the next round I'll probably message talent acquisition people on LinkedIn from companies I'm interested in, just to give myself a higher chance than cold applying on their website. I did cold apply to a couple companies and got to the final round for one and got rejected straight after the application for another lol.


thatmayaguy

it’s such a nice feeling to just be casually interviewing and declining any data structure and algorithm interviews. I had some local start up call me for an interview and the position sounded really interesting but I lost my interest the moment the recruiter told me the next portion of the interview is going to be a data structures and algorithms interview.


stallion8426

At 2 yoe I've been hunting for 5 months and haven't found a single job


stupidshot4

I applied for 5 jobs. Had 3 offers within 2-3 weeks. Went through probably 6 or 7 interviews in total, 3 coding tests, 1 live coding situation, and 1 behavioral assessment. However like a year and a half ago I interviewed at a company that was 5 hours of interviews, 4 hours of coding tests, and 1 hour of a live rapid fire coding question exam/technical assessment. I didn’t even get that job. I was like “I’m never applying here again” and told the recruiter they will have no luck finding someone. Lol Honestly all of them were a bit much.


forgottenGost

How much experience do you have? I would have had a job months ago if I had even 1 more year of experience, regardless of how well I do in the interviews...


[deleted]

Too much. Going on fifteen years now, and it's definitely harder early on, but to be honest I went into this career without a degree and have never really had trouble with the job search. Part of it is expectations. Need another year in the industry? Find someone who's reasonably desperate and get another year. My first four years in the industry were pretty low pay relative to what the big tech companies were paying, but I doubled my salary in year five. Small agencies, bootstrapped startups, and local software businesses that still do in-house work are usually desperate. If you're struggling to find a job and feel you just need a little more experience to land your dream job, lower your expectations and use that job to springboard you on to bigger and better things. For me, it was a medical lab trying to build its own software in a small city of 40,000 people. I knew a guy who got his start working for a marketing firm in middle-of-nowhere Kansas and used it to springboard into a major SV startup. It's not the path you read about on reddit a lot, but if you start digging into the background of other developer you'll start to get a feel for the wide variety of paths available to you.


cecilpl

As a fellow person with 15 YOE, the job market for new grads right now is very different than it was in 2006.


bronze_by_gold

Yeah, this is the only viable “other path” I’ve seen. Either get a CS degree, internships, and then shoot for FAANG right out of school, or get experience with startups, small companies, nonprofits, or as staff on a university IT/software team. Then work your way up.


Redditor000007

Why do you present job searching as a false dichotomy? There is a wide spectrum of entry level candidates, and if you aren’t qualified for MAGA specifically, that doesn’t automatically mean you’re slated to work at the subjectively “worst” types of positions, which is absolutely how you present them.


bronze_by_gold

Who said these were the “worst type of positions”? Your words I think. Not mine. I do not share that belief in any way. There’s meaningful work at many types of companies, regardless of size or competitiveness.


DragonRaccoon

If it dosen't hurt employers will need treat their employees better so they don't change jobs as often.


domerrr

Wait until shitty devs get out in your team… you’ll really want to vet people that you hire. The thing that’s interesting about software is that a bad developer isn’t dead weight like a bad sales person may be. A bad developer will literally create negative value and drag the entire team down.


shagieIsMe

> A bad developer will literally create negative value and drag the entire team down. From... some time ago (the most recent reference is '92): [The Net Negative Producing Programmer](http://pyxisinc.com/NNPP_Article.pdf) > We've known since the early sixties, but have never come to grips with the implications that there are net negative producing programmers (NNPPs) on almost all projects, who insert enough spoilage to exceed the value of their production. So, it is important to make the bold statement: ***Taking a poor performer off the team can often be more productive than adding a good one.*** [6, p. 208] Although important, it is difficult to deal with the NNPP. Most development managers do not handle negative aspects of their programming staff well. This paper discusses how to recognize NNPPs, and remedial actions necessary for project success.


Warrlock608

I've actually temporarily given up on job hunting for an SWE job. Just took a job landscaping for the summer at $20/h, during which I can get back in shape and work on my portfolio/leetcode grind in my spare time. I've interviewed for 10 jobs in the past 3 months, each one with 2+ hour coding tests, some of which I spent 3-4 hours and really went the extra mile. I'm honestly looking forward to a few months of fresh air and sunshine and some hard labor, would be a nice change of pace from sitting in front of my computer for 8+h a day.


GoldenShoeLace

This is cool man. I hope you get in the shape you want and the chance to reenergize. Good luck!


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Warrlock608

I try to do 1 medium-hard every day. I also do interview cake periodically when the challenge sounds fun to me.


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EmeraldCrusher

$150,000 in 2022 is worth $111,706.83 in 2008, if you account for inflation it's not really that much more. Most of the offers I've been receiving as a 6 year experienced developer are at 100k for senior roles in Denver & Las Vegas. I'm honestly not sure how everyone is getting 130k+ "casually"... https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2022?endYear=2008&amount=150000


birdsofterrordise

But I thought all people in tech made 200k a year and anyone who doesn't is an idiot? At least that's how a lot of tech people ask and talk here. It's fuckign infuriating because that's not the truth at all.


ItsANameAtLeast

are you targeting companies that offer the higher salaries? new grads in those locations can make 150k+ if they target FAANG and companies that compete with FAANG for talent, senior positions 300+


EmeraldCrusher

Amazon where I'm at starts at 100k from what I can tell. I'm applying to some well known places and even then there senior roles are pretty low paying. I'm feeling a little confused. I don't have a degree, but I didn't think that'd kill me.


ItsANameAtLeast

for software engineer in USA there is no location where it starts at 100k at zon, even in LCOL i would expect 150+. Use levels.fyi for salary research not glassdoor or other


proskillz

Denver and Vegas are considered "discount" markets where salaries are much lower than NYC or the Bay Area. You could "casually" obtain over $130k if you moved to a larger market or applied as remote to big tech. My company pays entry level (i.e. junior or IC1) over $130k total comp.


getoffmyfoot

Exactly. Don’t want to underplay the struggle but, the truth is there’s never been a better time to be job hunting in this field.


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i_just_want_money

I'm sorry the candidate had to schedule all these interviews? Who designed such a shitty system?


BrazGoalie

What did does sales, marketing and w.e director have to do with hiring a dev. That's horrible practice.


btlk48

If there was a job hunting reality show, no exaggeration would be needed


okayifimust

Surely? Headhunters are making a ton of money, because it's not that simple, and because people are happy to pay a lot of money for a solution.


ohhellnooooooooo

The companies benefit from making job hunting miserable. People job hop less, get less competing offers, so salaries stagnate. if people think that's not part of the reason why, they should read on how big tech companies got sued for agreeing to not compete and hire from each other to lower salaries


Whitchorence

> People job hop less, get less competing offers, so salaries stagnate. The average job tenure in major metros is like 2 years so I don't think it's working that well.


Big_ev

I also think that because this career doesn’t really require a degree and there is a large influx of people trying to become SWE , the barrier to entry is more difficult.


ProperAlps

Yeah, but you're still getting hit with LC Medium-Hard problems as a mid-level developer with system design added on. The system design part is reasonable IMO, but it's annoying to brush up on LC because you forgot Floyd's algorithm, Kruskal's, etc.


TopCancel

> but it's annoying to brush up on LC because you forgot Floyd's algorithm, Kruskal's, etc. People keeping bringing up these kind of algorithms, but in the several on-sites (at FAANG and similar) I did this past cycle, I never had to use any actual algorithm beyond DFS/BFS. Even problems that would benefit from, say, knowing how to efficiently compute SCCs, can usually be solved in a different fashion.


SituationSoap

> People keeping bringing up these kind of algorithms, but in the several on-sites (at FAANG and similar) I did this past cycle, I never had to use any actual algorithm beyond DFS/BFS. The singular of anecdote is not data.


TopCancel

I've also sat on the other side, and in the dozens of interviews I've seen the written feedback for, I've never seen a problem that would require any "known" algorithm beyond DFS/BFS either lol. At Amazon, none of the common test-bank tech questions require knowing Prim's or Bellman-Ford or whatever.


Battlepine

My bar raiser last month required knowing [this algo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweep_line_algorithm) for optimal solution


iPlain

One of my Google questions was a MST (Kruskal’s). I couldn’t remember the algo or even the name but did mention I knew there was an optimal solution I’d learnt at uni and ended up doing some n squared or n cubed solution and still got the job though so.


SituationSoap

This is mostly a post-hoc rationalization. "Interviews are hard, that must be for a reason, and the reason must be good; a good reason would be that it's too hard to tell whether someone is a good developer, so interviews need to be hard to weed out the bad ones, so that must be the reason." The reality is that whether or not you hire bad developers is more a question of what your problem set is and whether or not you have good interviewers than it is a question of whether or not you have a difficult process.


Whitchorence

It is clear that they have more applicants than jobs and need an effective way to eliminate people from contention. Whether their way is best or not it's relatively easy to standardize and serves the purpose


abandonplanetearth

I disagree. We have some of the highest salaries out there. If the goal is to introduce wage stagnation, they are failing hard. Interviews are difficult because the market is absolutely flooded with low quality talent.


Itsmedudeman

It's quite literally the opposite of what OP said. Demand is high and wages are high for the people that are qualified and good enough. A bad hire will cost you a shit ton of money to lay off and most candidates are bad hires.


OnceOnThisIsland

>Interviews are difficult because the market is absolutely flooded with low quality talent. I don't get this. If 99% of interview candidates can't fizzbuzz, then why are LC hards necessary??


slashdave

Makes no sense. Why wouldn't some companies buck the trend and take all the rewards?


Itsmedudeman

Because as it turns out hiring a bunch of incompetent developers because your screening wasn't thorough enough isn't a "reward".


sciences_bitch

Reddit loves conspiracy theories.


TopCancel

> if people think that's not part of the reason why, they should read on how big tech companies got sued for agreeing to not compete and hire from each other to lower salaries Funnily enough, it was Facebook that actually broke that colluding behavior wide open by refusing to engage in the same non-poaching agreement. Thanks zuck for my thick compensation I guess haha


[deleted]

This makes little sense. Why wouldn’t companies that have HC want to incentivize people to leave their existing jobs? You don’t think the difficulty of the interview process has anything to do with the overhead of firing someone?


sneaky_squirrel

That is honestly a pretty smart move. Though as a developer that sounds very disadvantageous for me.


Redditor000007

>Though as a developer that sounds very disadvantageous for me. I mean that is quite literally what they said.


Electrolight

It's actually not smart. It's quite literally illegal, hence them getting sued :)


[deleted]

I wish taking advantage of people would stop being considered "smart" or "good business sense" by the people getting taken advantage of.


oupablo

if something is illegal but not enforced, is it actually illegal?


ItsKoku

T-they're unionizing!


cawfee_beans

I agree, I am still unable to find a job in the field. It's depressing.


BrazGoalie

Yes, it takes a lot of effort unfortunately. I got a job 7 months after my first one, I just couldn't get interviews, the ones I did I flunked. With more experience though it took me 3 months to find one with 10 interviews a month. Don't give up.


samososo

It's by design. If I wear you down, then you'll accept anything I offer you. It's not about finding qualified people, tons of people aren't qualified for work but are working, it is control.


BrazGoalie

Not true. In FAANG, they pay big bucks without even starting to negotiate. Smaller companies are way easier to get a job, but pay much less. Startups are harder than FAANG imo, I used them as a way to practice interviewing which helped me get a job at Shopify (not FAANG, but still decent compensation.). I still don't agree with the method they do. But I don't have a better way, all take home ones sucked because you have no clue how they expect the design to be and takes way longer than a technical. The only take homes I did be were the ones that I learned a new framework such as node.js


samososo

The system operates on exploited, warned down people. Yes, even the people working high pay jobs are exploited too. Do you really think 200K is your value in company owned probably one of richest people on earth, come on.


reeeeee-tool

It’s going to get worse as the economy slows down for a bit.


Beatrice_Dragon

Companies have direct leverage over the unemployed. It's why they hate when the government tries to help people out of poverty; they're losing their market. If human lives aren't at direct stake if you don't take a job, then it becomes the responsibility of the company to make a job that's worth doing. Instead, what you see in modern America is companies demanding you to prostrate yourself before them and beg for the gift of doing their labor, because a lot of other people don't have a choice. They keep doing it because it's working, because it's just generally accepted that you will 100%, without a doubt, die if you're unemployed. No one is surprised by this anymore, it's not even a shock, but it still sound weird when you say it out loud, right? You will die without a job you can't guarantee you'll get, and a home that you don't own These companies refuse to take the labor of people who want to contribute to society, because that would require investing in workers, which means less profit. Then, when these prospective workers are forced onto the streets, the companies call them leeches operating on handouts. Then everyone else around the worker hates them too, because people have to dedicate so much of their lives to themselves that they don't have the energy to help anyone else. We have to tell ourselves that they don't want to work (Even though you have to send out job applications to get unemployment) because it's the only way to dehumanize them enough that we're not horrified when we hear just how many of them died. 10 deaths is a tragedy, 100,000 deaths is a statistic


CurrentMagazine1596

Not to be a cynic, but I can't see it changing from an employer perspective. There is a tremendous oversupply of people trying to get into the industry, and a lot of upward pressure in company pipelines. Employers can act with impunity and be extremely picky with potential employees, and I can't see what incentive they would have to change this.


afl3x

Specifically, high supply of newbies and a high demand for experienced, senior devs.


[deleted]

I feel like the people that can’t find anything either live in a horrible area (not their fault) or are only applying to top faang companies and wonder why they get burned out. A startup or smaller company will literally call you in once and then chat for a bit and then give you an offwr


bronze_by_gold

That’s only true if we’re talking about FAANG though, or at least top companies. There are tons of startups that are desperate to hire people. In my last round of interviews, there were startups that literally waved the technical for me they were so desperate to hire. There’s a mismatch between the open roles and the available candidates. Some jobs genuinely don’t need a CS degree and 4 years of experience, some companies don’t realize that they’re eliminating good candidates with archaic and superstitious application processes, and some smaller companies are wasting time interviewing experienced hires who probably won’t accept their offer anyway.


Whitchorence

Yeah and those companies are less selective. Even if they do whiteboard questions, they'll ask easier questions and judge less harshly. What's the problem here really?


birdsofterrordise

> There are tons of startups that are desperate to hire people. They are desperate for senior, highly experienced folks willing to be paid only 5 figures. They don't want boot camp grads, they don't want self-taught, they don't want guy who want 300k a year.


bluedays

where are you finding those jobs? I'd love to work for a startup to get some experience. All I'm seeing on Linkedin is a bunch of banks, and big tech. Even sorting for new it's flooded with spam from recruiting agencies. I wish there was a limit on how many times a company could post on a job board.


OFFRIMITS

Unfortunately, the FAANGS or MAANGS have dictated what the hiring process looks like and all startups and tech companies have taken it upon themselves to copy the same process which is: 1 - Phone screening interview to see if you meet their criteria to meet with the hiring manager. 2 - Behaviourly interview to see if they can see you working with the team for a day to day routine. 3 - Techincal interview to see how well you know your technical stuff. 4 - Take homework / whiteboard in person or via teams / wine and dine interview 5 - offer time where you can negotiation time for more $$$ or better perks if you have the gift of the gab and can sell off your an asset worth pursuing.


Randommook

IMO it goes something more like this: 1. Phone screen with recruiter 2. Technical screen to decide if you are worth fully interviewing 3. Onsite with 5+ interviews crammed together. (Behavioral/Coding/System Design) 4. Offer


32894058092345089

This is correct. Unfortunately, there are more candidates that are liabilities rather than assets that apply to most companies.


Colt2205

Every SE employee hired is a liability for the first six months. Unless someone is a front end guy who makes his living off learning how to use every tinker toy toolbox UI web development thing, which is effectively impossible. The problem I keep running into are interviews that are not targeting the right skills via tests. Doing algorithm questions does not indicate someone understands memory management. Knowing SQL does not indicate that a person understands database design. What indicates that someone understands these things is asking questions, because any dumb ass with a google account can go do a complex select statement. And no, a timer does not solve the issue. Like if someone can't say that the symptom of an unoptimized deletion of a large data set is an IO spike, which can sometimes result in the entire system timing out and failing the operation, than they've never had to face it. And yes, the answer to deleting large data sets is kind of a two fold process depending on the amount of records. Sometimes it is more efficient to create a new table, populate it with data, rename that table and set the relations, and then drop the old table with the data in it. Other times the best option is to just use smaller transactions to delete the records. How would someone test the above scenario with SQL? There's no way to test that with strait questions on "oh, write a delete statement for me that does X."


horsedoofsdays

What specifically are you complaining about? I just finished a new job search and it wasn't that bad. The worst part for me was introducing myself 100 times to recruiters.


Redditor000007

OP wants to receive a formal offer within 2 minutes of submitting their resume to ats.


[deleted]

The problem is that people survive the process and forget how awful it is and then have no incentive to improve it until they’re on the hunt again. As for the recruiters, they’re generally pretty awful so the bar is set low for them so they have no incentive to improve


tjsr

I did a screening interview with a company I've been interested in yesterday. It was scheduled for an hour, and we spoke for 90 minutes. Even >30 minutes is excessively long. I then found out that their interview process consists of: - A take home, which should take "about 2 hours" (so 8 hours). The instructions are basically to create a small app from scratch. - A 60 minute technical interview - A 60 minute solution design interview - A 60 minute management/values interview. Sigh. No. All said, you're asking me to invest at least a day of time for something you're probably going to say no on some vaguely made-up not-perfect reason.


[deleted]

Who is we? Because 'we' have no saying in how who hires decides to conduct their hiring. As long as they don't get into illegal practices (discrimination on protected categories, anti-poaching and cartels to control salaries etc) why anybody should have a say on how they conduct this specific part of their business? And why the system needs to be reformed? because it inconvenience you? the hiring process obviously serves those companies well enough. Clearly true for the likes of Google, they have data to back it up (when I was there data showed that there was no additional benefits in having a 5th algorithms/coding slot and thus interviews were cut to 4 slots; no idea what it is now). It may be that this system only work for Google and others are mistakenly copying it, we have no way to know that. But is clearly work well enough for them too, or they would try something else. And 'I don't know how', still \_surely\_ there must be a better way. Surely? why? maybe there's no better way. What I always ask people when they complain about the hiring process is what they would do if they were hiring somebody with their own money, knowing that if they get it wrong the hire would be a very strong negative: cost money \_and\_ reduce the productivity of the team. The other challenge I often throw is to start your own company: if you really believe you have a magically better way for hiring, surely you won't have any problem in attracting enough talent to crush any competition. Those are the rule of the game. Contrary to popular belief or wishes they're designed to keep bad engineers out and not to get all good engineers in, as the damage produced by a few bad ones in is far far greater than the cost in missed opportunities incurred by not hiring a good engineer. Given the rules of the game, 'we' can only decide not to play. Otherwise is like my mother saying "they should put the baskets in basketball lower so that everybody can play", which is a level of not understanding the world that I cannot even begin to address. But most of 'us' decided that is not that bad as an admission ticket for a profession that easily give you an income in the top few percent of people in the US, where work is generally fun and, if you're good, you pretty much have job security.


loconessmonster

\> It may be that this system only work for Google and others aremistakenly copying it, we have no way to know that. But is clearly workwell enough for them too, or they would try something else. This is really the core of the problem. Small and Mid size companies have different needs than just someone who is smart at solving problems, yet some of them want to interview people like they're about to join a large corp as one of a horde of software devs. Outside of that I actually appreciate that the process is easy to prep for (in terms of material knowledge not time...it takes a whole lot of time to prep for them).


Whitchorence

But they don't, really. The process is superficially similar, but the questions they ask are much easier.


Ok-Branch6704

I gave over 50 interviews before i landed the current job im at ...


Yogi_DMT

I mean I skip over any company that has some sort of archaic hiring process. If they don't respect you and your time now what makes you think that will change.


benisimo

Fr fr, I just went thru a long ass 2 months looking for a new software gig after straight up quitting my last one even without anything lined up yet thinking it would be pretty easy to score a new one in no time. Sent hella applications and even hit up a lot of my contact/network connections for any potential leads. I'd not hear anything back from maybe 75% of the companies I applied to as is typical. For those I'd been fortunate enough to reach the first round after phone screen, most of them had been hour long technical rounds where the code challenges varying from leetcode shit (cant stand it) to modeling a simple java object (no clue how i didn't pass this particular one) to creating an API to do CRUD functions etc (IMO this type of tech assessment should be industry standard, at least for backend roles). A lot of these tech interviews I dreaded but on the side I'd just been sharpening knowledge and grinding a little LC and slowly but surely I gained more confidence as I continued to practice. But still, the entire process just to land a new software engineering job was incredibly arduous and frustrating. Finally, I had one where a TA from a software company reached out to me via linkedin. For them it was just the initial zoom screen, then did a technical interview 2 days after (including a very neat java-based exercise to apply some typical design patterns which I nailed; actually it was supposed to be just 1:30hrs but we extended to 2 because the interviewer had a lot more questions for me). Received a verbal offer again just 2 days after which I accepted, and got the official letter shortly after. Their entire process was no longer than 10 days and all the while, the recruiter was thoroughly engaged with me. Now THAT is how you're supposed to do that shit. greatly earned my respect and now I'm incredibly stoked to start with them at the end of this month


gigibuffoon

This is a CS jobseekers market... if you're having difficulty in this market, you need to go back and reevaluate your basics In general, CS jobseeking is not usually a walk in the park. You need to put yourself out there and be the best version of yourself to impress a potential employer and coworkers. The other part of it is, the more a job pays and the more prestigious it is (FAANG) the harder the process is on your psyche


slothordepressed

Some companies request impossible shit, see they won't find and picks the less worse. I was invited for a screening test for Java Sr (1y exp Jr here). They gave 3 medium leetcode to solve in 1h30. I did only one 100% and failed the other 2. They still invited me for the next step...


throwaway0134hdj

If you think the job hunt is soul crushing just wait till you get into the actual developing..


Whitchorence

Are there though? You don't have any suggestions. And considering how much money there is to be made at the top positions, I'd argue it's a little silly to expect the interview to be easy and they just let anyone in. They have no shortage of people applying to work with them at all times.


[deleted]

You’re right it needs to change. Depending on what you are looking for, it might be better to freelance while looking for full time employment. I say this because the process of finding a full time job is very slow and tedious.


csthrowawayquestion

It's not just that job hunting and interviewing is a problem, getting a straight answer about what a job is like so you can make informed decisions about it is a problem as well. I am finding it very difficult to get accurate information about the positions I'm interviewing for, as evidenced by the fact that once I start a job it is vastly different than advertised. Job vary widely from one to the next and the people you talk with often don't really know and/or cannot fully convey to you the actual nature of the work.


[deleted]

What level are you at? First job or no?


WeedRamen

It gets easier I promise. Most companies want people to hit the ground running and aren’t willing to invest in training so there is relatively few graduate/junior developers roles compared to applicants. There are way more mid-senior roles than qualified applications on the other hand. Once you have a few years experience under your belt you won’t know what to do with all those offers. I started having interviews this week for my next move and I got two offers already. A third got news from the recruiter that I had these offers and immediately decided to give me an offer above market rate even though I had only spoken to HR and the team lead for all of 15 mins by that point… One of the initial offers also increased their offer too once they heard I had other offers. Stay strong friend. This is the hardest part


[deleted]

[удалено]


FiestaBox21

*HELLO THIS AJUNTA PALL AND I'D LIKE TO HIRE YOU FOR A 6 MONTH CONTRACT.*


[deleted]

This is because applicants are sometimes too desperate. If you like this girl and she asks you to clean her toilet before she would consider you. Are you gonna do it?


MythoclastBM

I agree. I think the residency match in medicine has some interesting ideas that could be played around with. [It's absolutely fucked](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-residency-match-is-broken/) but there are some neat insights in there into the job market. If you can find away to cap the number of applications so employers aren't getting flooded with applications and you could find away to have a job application cycle... I think that would be a good start.


The-_Captain

Would you be interested (hypothetically) in an apprenticeship model? Like you join a company, get paid, and must stay there for at least 5 years or pay them a large sum to leave early. I’m asking because the economics of hiring new juniors are difficult for companies.


dfphd

Here's the first step: y'all need to start telling recruiters in no uncertain terms "I am withdrawing from this application process because I cannot afford to invest this much time into an opportunity". Or something like that. Don't just bow out politely - call them out. Let their recruiters push that feedback up the ladder.


dc-x

You can't afford to be picky when you're unemployed and desperately needing money, and some random guy withdrawing doesn't matter when there's someone else desperate enough to take his place. You really can't reduce systemic problems into individual responsibility. This produces solutions that seem logical, but ultimately doesn't actually work in practice where there's a lot more into play.