Spreading a little Christmas job-hunting hope

Unfortunately, interviewees don't dictate hiring terms. And suggesting a short-term deal probably makes you look weak. I wouldn't recommend this approach to anyone.

You forgot to list the possible side-effects.

"Crack may cause shivers, night terrors, gay-for-pay, heart palpitations, homicidal paranoia or the sensation that you're on fire. Peeing blood and seeing friends' faces as talking skeletons are possible side effects of crack.

People who use crack may also experience 5-7 years in prison where brutal raping may occur. If you experience one or more of these side effects, consult your dealer. You may need more crack.

Crack. Isn't it time you see what all the fuss is about?"

I'm not doctor and don't do a good job on my self but theoretically I would try to do some meditation before trying more drugs.

The easiest way I found was the headspace app, although I didn't keep up with it in the long-run, but at the time I felt that I was feeling calmer, although it could very well be the ignition placebo.

+1 for Propranolol. As parent says, it does not affect your cognition! It doesn't make you sleepy or slow or happy or numb or relaxed or lightheaded or anything like that. It affects only your autonomic systems, eliminating the high heart rate and blood pressure, shaky hands, dry mouth, etc. These physical effects often push your normal performance anxiety over the edge, creating a cascading effect. Talk to your doctor if you think it could help, it might change your life -- it did mine, allowing me to become an influential voice at my company with an influential position to match. There's no reason you should allow a biological particularity put you at a career disadvantage compared to others. And it's important to realize anxiety is very often biological in origin, and non-pharmaceutical methods are often not enough.

While many people feel that other type of drugs, like benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium, Xanax) cause them to become somewhat of a different person, beta blockers like propranolol can better be described as making you a rock-solid version of yourself.

I tried propanolol. I also tried alcohol, Klonipin, Zoloft, Lexapro, marijuana, meditation, Ambien, Benadryl (by the boatfull), Nyquil... it's been a real struggle.

So far the only thing that has helped (besides the Benadryl for getting me to sleep but not keeping me asleep or making the sleep worthwhile) was Lexapro for one glorious month. Seriously. It was a religious experience. I felt like normal people for a few weeks. Then relapsed.

Hopefully I can get it working again at some point.

Also, I don't really get nervous at the interviews. Actually, I'm as cool as a cucumber. It's just the night before that puts me through the ringer. It borders on panic. Part of my decision to accept the current offer is based on the "Dear God don't make me sweat out the night before interviews" aspect of things.

3 years are impressive?

Hi,

We are having problems finding local devs so we could consider remote hands on deck. Drop me en email on jobs (at) nopio.com if that sounds interesting.

Merry Christmas!

Two of our best engineers came from Hacker News. I'd be more than happy to chat if you're looking. Drop me a note at vivek@entelo.com!

where do you live?

I did the new grad assessment test last week for Amazon, I am more than positive I aced both sections, especially the coding questions (passed all tests). Yet somehow I still didn't advance. I have other interviews in the pipeline that were way tougher and I didn't get the solutions 100% yet I still advanced.

Ha yes 100x this!

I usually add these companies (and if possible, the team in question) and keep track of the position and project as well. They're not going to like it when the chip on my shoulder becomes too big and I decide to compete against them.

Just don't become a super villain like Guy Pierce did in Iron Man 3

I've been offered a job by one company and then later turned down for an interview. It happens.

>Followed by 3 memorization questions.

Did you mean memoization, the optimization technique where you cache intermediate results? Or were they literally asking you to memorize and recite minutiae over the phone?

I always get these two words mixed up, and it doesn't help that Firefox doesn't think "memoization" is actually word.

This reminds me of my Facebook interview. The coding question was "given an array of all the words in the English language, print an array of arrays containing all the anagrams". In studying for the interview, I'd just refreshed on recursion and, in my general nervousness + excitement thinking I'd just been asked a question I'd literally studied an hour before, went right to work generating all the anagrams of each word in the English language.

About 5 minutes after the call ended, my jaw dropped open and I slapped my forehead. To find the anagrams of a word, just parse the set and remove any words that are (a) the same length and (b) contain the same numbers of each letter in the original.

Fizz buzz. And I made it like 1000x harder.

A generous interviewer would say, "Well at least he knows recursion and can do it on the fly in a stressful situation". But this is Facebook and they don't have to be generous. I gave them a reason to say "no" and then they said "no".

But as for "dysfunctional jokes", I have to agree (and you can tell from my OP that I have plenty of experience with it). Asking someone to code on the fly is like asking someone to write a novella on the fly. You need focus and concentration. By demanding it with someone breathing into your ear the whole time, you're simply giving those who are better able to handle pressure an advantage and those who can't a disadvantage. If this were a bomb-diffusal position, you'd want to filter for that. But this is coding, so what should pressure-handling matter?

What's hard to stomach about the no sleep aspect of everything is that I think companies/interviewers think "Well if it's fair for one, it's fair for all. They're all under the same pressure, so we'll see who overcomes it."

But that's not true. I know it's not true because I used to be one of the people who didn't feel interview pressure. When I landed a dream-type job a few years ago (which ended up being a nightmare due to a psychopathic boss, but that's beside the point), I remember going into the interviews head-strong, cocky and almost arrogant... which they apparently loved bc they hired me on the spot.

Ha! It makes me laugh now. I'm twice the engineer I was then, but half the interviewee simply because my ego has been recalibrated to reality.

Did you ask for anyone to look at your CV and help you improve it maybe? For what it's worth, I'm not in HR but I interview a lot of people and see a lot of CVs (not hiring currently though). You can send me your CV privately if you want some feedback.

Being chronically sleep-deprived is the worst and I appreciate your sympathy.

However, I just can't get behind your dietary suggestions. Corn and wheat are not psychoactive substances. I don't think there's any solid science to support the idea that adding/removing them would affect your general anxiety levels.

As I said in another response, Lexapro gave me one amazing month of clarity away from my condition and it was a near-religious experience. I could make plans again. I became interested in girls again. I wanted to scream from the mountain tops and work as a door-to-door salesman for the pharma company that changed my life. Then I relapsed.

In other words, for some people (like me), there is a serious physiological issue at work that needs a pharmaceutical fix. No amount of vitamins or yoga or whatever is going to change that.

This is how I feel. I've been a badass at everything I've ever done, including being an employee. My last employer begged me to stay and I did for a few months longer.

So to have my fate determined by a short interview over the phone by some arbitrary questions just seems... suboptimal. Inefficient. Stupid.

Someone has to fix the incumbent resume-based hiring process. It is fucked beyond belief.

I agree with this sentiment

More to the point, they think employees have zero flexibility. That if the employee is hasn't worked with a certain technology (like Hibernate, but has Java experience) this doesn't matter.

I think this is something that would mostly be taken up by people trying in the early stages of their career. The revealed preference of more senior people is to not push for these kinds of contracts.

A shorter trial period makes a lot of sense, especially as more and more people with weaker tech backgrounds are drawn into software development by the strong job market. That said, internships fulfill this role for a lot of companies. Especially at the larger tech companies, internships seem like primarily an extended job interview.

A friend of mine has been trying to get me to start a consulting company along those lines. For companies that need computer help sporadically, a lot of automation to their tasks, and regular checkups. But not full time staff. I think it would be particularly appealing to older engineers who have other things they are interested in and want to be able to scale their hours to their schedule rather than the other way around. Certainly something to think about.

Many companies on that list like thoughtworks are not tier 1 companies.

What post did you read?

"Smartling* Cloudflare AppDynamics* DigitalOcean Placemeter* Hatch AppNexus* OpenX ThoughtWorks* Roost"

I'm a comp eng new grad with a bit of H/W exp. All I see when I look for entry positions are software?

I'm feeling this, too. I was out in the valley recently and talked to a guy in his mid-to-late-20s who said that Apple's signing bonus for him was near 6 figures. This university position I'm considering doesn't pay that in a full year.

I guess it's like anything else, the talent at the very top of the scale (or at least perceived to be at the top of the scale) is going to command the most offers and most money. I think that would be fine with me, but the frustrating/infuriating part is it feels like an image game and NOT a meritocracy. The names on your resume (universities and workplaces) seem to matter more than your actual skills.

I've seen this at work, first-hand, too. It's hard to describe without giving away an identity, but one of my friends fell ass-backwards into Google as a semi-early employee (pre-IPO) and, on top of a sweet cash nest egg, has been rabidly recruited by everyone under the sun ever since, despite suspect engineering skill. Even went through YC. The snowball effect has been amazing to see up close.