Ask HN: 0/30 in the job hunt. Is this typical?
I'm able to get interviews for the majority of positions I apply to and typically do pretty well through the first few rounds of interviews and even homework assignments (that I once swore off). I tend to do poorly in technical interviews, or so my 0-for-30 streak would have me believe. And I'm not sure what to do.
I honestly believe that if any company called up anyone I've worked with over my career they would vouch for my capabilities. Somehow my behavior or responses in technical interviews must be suggesting that I don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm considering taking myself out of the workforce, or at least stop applying for jobs. What tech jobs don't require a technical interview? I've built the tech for several startups both as part of a team and by myself, I've managed teams, mentored engineers, launched products...
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 32.0 ms ] threadInterviewing is a skill like any other, and it's worth practicing. I know it's not great to have to "play the game", but it'll help you greatly in your career. I recommend two things - programming contests (TopCoder, HackerRank, etc.), and practicing with friends - get a whiteboard and get your friends to interview you. Repetition is key.
Think of good answers to higher level questions. For example, "why do you want this job?".
Reflect on common patterns in your interviews. If you sit down and think about it, do you know why you aren't passing? Are you unable to solve some problems? Are you going slowly on the interview problems? Do people have trouble understanding you? Do you get in arguments? Do you struggle with the management sort of questions - i.e. "talk about a time that you had a disagreement with someone on your team"?
One good signal is to think of how many hints do interviewers typically give you? If it's one or two, that's typical, but when you find yourself getting 5+, it's usually a sign that you're doing poorly.
Some common problems that I've seen from candidates.
- Can't solve problems. Especially when people run in some direction without asking clarifying questions.
- Really messy code. Interview code isn't going to be great, but I've seen some really messy code.
- Slow movement. Sometimes I'll have a 3 part question, and candidates will spend the whole time solving the first part, often needing many hints.
- Lack of opinion. I've seen a lot of candidates that try to be agreeable, but just end up having no opinions. "What frameworks would you consider for monitoring?" "Oh, whatever is best. Monitoring is really important." This is really important for senior candidates.
- Lack of answers for the high level questions (again more toward senior candidates). Q: "Talk about a time that you've had a disagreement with someone on your team?" A: "Oh, I haven't really." Q: "Ok, how about a time that you made a technical decision that you ended up regretting." A: "I can't think of anything, we've made good choices." Q: "What about a time that you've disagreed with a decision from senior management?" A: "Got nothing." Q: "What kind of software do you like working on?" A: "Oh, anything really."
What would be the point of taking yourself out of the job force. You can try applying Accenture or some other consulting company. They don't really technically grill you.
These organizations tend to suck up a lot of the oxygen in the room. So for perhaps 20 of those 30 of your interviews, there's plenty of good talent that they turn their nose up at. Speaking from experience, the harsher the interview, the more likely it is to be the case that you never had a chance.
If you're going through spammy recruiters, consider not. There's a factor of cognitive dissonance going on where prospective employers want to hire you, but can't get past the principle of paying the recruiter's spiff (if you're seeking $180k on contract, this would've been ok, but not by the time they add the recruiter fee, they decide you're not worth $205k). The employer will waste everybody's time in the process. This looks good (they think) to the investors.
Push instead of pull to get your next job. LinkedIn, AngelList, a number of other sites.. when it's a good fit, the interview will be suspiciously easy.
Identify a problem the company has and offer a solution. When exactly to play the card in the interview is up to you, maybe you can even phrase it in to a question, I think most employers ask if there are any further questions at the end of an interview. If you can than sprinkle some expertise on the solution, even better (comparing it to some problem you solved in the past, not bragging about expertise).
If you can't find anything concrete, maybe you find a few maybes you can ask for and have a solution ready when they admit that something is a challenge. They definitely will see that you know where things could get difficult.
The culture today systematically lacks respect for seniority.
You don't give non-standardized technical screenings to candidates with a demonstrable track record. What are you trying to do by screening people? Are you saying that the applicant is potentially fraudulent?
Why isn't their technical screening standardized? What is it testing for? Is there confirmation by an independent body the screening represents the responsibilities of the role?
Some more factors:
- If it's a startup and you have 10 years of experience, you'd have more experience than most founders. Outshining the master is super-unemployable, unless they're willing to split equity and let you in as a co-founder. Then they're serious. Otherwise, you're just another programmer to them.
- The person interviewing you doesn't want to hire the person who replaces them. Then they'd be stuck job hunting like you. Unless they're retiring in the near future, being too good is probably going to get you a sham technical screening, or some excuse that flunks you early on.
- There is a reporting bias. Due to survivor guilt, you don't see people chiming in every time they get their time wasted.
Any founder worth a grain of salt, i.e. one you'd want to work for, realizes their weaknesses and strives to hire people smarter than they are.
There are also times where they are ecstatic at first, but something happens. I don't know - maybe someone's being a bad reference and I have to check on them, or I come off as ragged to them, who knows. Maybe I'm just so honest and candid I talk them out of hiring me.
Part of it is me. In job interviews, I make myself vulnerable, rather than assertive. They already Googled me (whether they admit it or not) and know what I can do. This is someone I'd work for, not an equal. Can I trust them to have integrity and be fair? Because that's what employment is, they have overwhelming power over your life.
Or maybe they move their line of thinking forward, "where are we going to put him?"
I've created open source applications from end-to-end. I have my own way of doing things. I'm enough of a force where people use my software on their machines, import my libraries, and use my documentation. That's a lot to process. Compare that to a fresh candidate on a clean slate that passed their technical screenings. On top of that, there's a couple of hundred to pick from.
Hiring me poses friction and risk. The applicant that passed all the tests conformed and regimented themselves to follow instruction? That's a worker, not a mover/shaker.
See what I mean? It's great to be a "somebody" in a technical field, but sometimes even founders realize their "quest for talent" isn't really so.
But based on this post, I think your issue is you're playing by their rules, doing their take homes and tests, to make it into the pool of "safe picks". Unrealized to many is that hundreds throw themselves at these tests, and they exist only to give the one flipping through resumes less eye strain.
It's not a dignifying experience.
These technical screenings are a sham. They protect entrenched streetwise careerists and lock out honest, reliable people who get stuff done. It promotes imposter syndrome, and wastes thousands of hours of time. This is one of the biggest problems in tech.
To repeat: the reason you don't hear more of this is people don't like to announce they're a failing at "getting a job". It's universal in most cultures being unemployed is being a failure. Understandably, people aren't going to publicly announce their struggle.
They think it's them. Sometimes it is. But if you've interviewed over years, or many many times, you've ruled out the quirks. You're now going to have to come to grips that you're not crazy, that there are systemic realities outside your control pushing you out. Probably ones which don't jive with the ideals of (fairness? merit? esteem?) of being a software developer.
What do you fill your time with, while you're job searching? I don't think you said.
> To repeat: the reason you don't hear more of this is people don't like to announce they're a failing at "getting a job".
This is reassuring to hear. It's really easy for me to feel crazy and depressed with the constant rejections. Crazy because I'm constantly being told that I'm not able to do the exact things I've been praised for doing again and again in the past.
> I think your issue is you're playing by their rules
I think you're right. I need to try something else.
> What do you fill your time with, while you're job searching? I don't think you said.
I've kept to my workday routine every day since becoming unemployed. Interviewing takes up a lot of the time. Aside from that I have some side projects that I work on occasionally. However my computer was stolen during the move, and I lost a lot of early prototypes that hadn't yet made it to Github. Sometimes when I try to work on one of those projects I just get caught in depression feedback loop. I released (and sold out!) a record last week, so I'll spend some time this week making a small app to help me fulfill those orders.
I think that's what would be best for business.
So, back at a company called Buzzr, we had an opportunity to hire a very talented programmer known in the Drupal community. Many many accomplishments, it's safe to say if we took him on, it'd radically change our day to day operations (we needed to do something, in my opinion). He really did espouse the best of the concepts of Drupal, which was perfect, since we were a Drupal SAAS platform.
We didn't take him on. There wasn't much chat - but I was able to scoop up hearsay of why: He'd shake things up too much; too opinionated.
Here's the thing though: who would he be butting heads against? Nobody really had strong technical opinions. I was really junior at the time, and would be honored to work with him.
If you're somebody that has accomplishments and a track record, you're going to have opinions and a style. And for some reason, even startups where there is open room for delegation, decision makers lean toward protecting their turf. Even in situations where they couldn't do better themselves. Even when they're desperate for help.
We're making the mistake of viewing organizations being game theorists that make the most optimal decision - that's not always the case. Organizations don't hire, divisions and teams within them do. In practice, it's more nuanced and political.
It's safe to say, the decision maker's self-preservation overshadows the business making the best decisions.
Sometimes irking the decision maker's pride - disdaining something superior to them - is enough to end the process. It's less cognitive dissonance to just move to the other 999 applications in the pile, than worry how we're going to manage a generative, creative force. The narrative shifts to finding the most "appropriate" candidate based on the hiring manager's sense of safety.
That's my anecdote.
Also, how did you come across these 30 interviews?
If I was determined to get another coding job in a large company, I realized I simply need to conform, study, and prep. It only makes logical sense for them to have this system to filter out the huge number of applicants, but for me its like a waste of my time, reviewing and memorizing the specifics of a bunch of stuff that I may continue to never use.
It's almost like my "imposter syndrome" early in my career lead me to put on a veil of self-confidence and to "try hard" to prove myself. Which actually led to positive interview outcomes (I used to ace each one I went to). Now I am confident in my skin, and don't feel the need to compensate, which, I'm realizing, actually has a negative effect on people's perception of me as an engineer.
If they're interviewing people and giving them trivia questions, they fundamentally don't understand the job.
We keep docs open all day. That's what browser tabs are for. Even seemingly basic stuff. Too much to keep fresh in memory.
I don't remember libtmux's API (a library I created). How do you expect me to remember python standard libraries I never used?
It's futile to explain to the interviewer - no matter how gently - that it's not the way it's done. That's being a prima donna. That's upstaging them, and going to be taken as a slight.
Part of the reason I'm passive in interviews is they already googled me (even if they don't mention it). They know I can program. If they're throwing curve balls at me, I ask myself if this is someone I want as a colleague. Is this someone who would take my technical advice.
I leave the interview with a sense of relief I don't have to live through the hell of a nightmare boss or toxic environment. Like a MoBA game, this is the chance to dodge early.
Screening can works both ways.
Look for shorter term contract gigs. Those are usually real, and once you get in the door, it's often easier to suss out what is real and what is not, and who the players are in that org. Many of the best employees that I've seen hired at non-entry levels came in through that route.
I initially applied for shorter contract gigs, but I found they had the same interview process as full-time salaried gigs. In the future I'll push back on some of the interview requirements for contract work.
Do you known/guess whether the problem is the actual technical part, or everything surrounding it, which makes you appear as "sub-optimal cultural fit", e.g. person that is so nervous that they make everybody else feel uncomfortable too.
One time in particular I matched on every single technical requirement in the job post, only to be told that "experience with our tech stack isn't important as culture fit". I'm still not sure if he said that because he believed I didn't have the tech experience and wanted to make me feel good, or if he knew I had the experience but already knew he wasn't going to hire me.
Maybe next step is to figure out WHY you are perceived as bad culture fit?
Do you have any obvious issues like being very nervous in interviews, or underlying general issues such as anxiety, or just being a very quiet person?
Yes, all three. The nervousness and anxiety are especially heightened during interviews, but I don't experience either on the job. Does that make me not a culture fit?
Why don't you A/B test yourself? Take double dose of your favorite anxiolytic and dress more casually to next interview and see what happens. If you fail again then it's 31/31 and not a big loss.
I am available (to you or anyone else) for mock interview sessions.
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