Hi HN!<p>Quick question and a cry for help. :-)<p>My name is Jesse. I've been writing web applications (predominately on the backend) professionally for around 8 years with some downtime here and there for personal reasons. I wrote code as a hobby for around 6 years before that. I've provided links below to GitHub, LinkedIn and so on...<p>There's a major problem with me, the market, or both. I've been absolutely unable to get offers in the last 6 months and out of around 100 applications, I've gotten three interviews, two of which ended short, as in, they cut the interview short. I'd love to blame myself for this but it didn't used to be this hard and honestly makes no sense why this is happening. One ill-mannered lady asked "Why did you only last 6 months at that one position?". My response was "Well my little brother died during my employment there so I decided to take some time to myself to cope.". She cut the interview short right after that.<p>I get a call from a recruiter every couple of days or so and I'm asked a bunch of questions and they put me on their "hiring list" after telling me they had a job in mind for me. I fall for it every time. I've never once gotten a call back about the job (or any for that matter) that they originally pitched from a recruiter in the last couple of years.<p>Don't get me started on the interviewers. I don't know what they're expecting sometimes. I was given around 40 minutes today to solve three questions about two CSV data sets...Couldn't do it in the allotted time. I explained what I was actually able to complete and how I would approach finishing a very rough prototype of a function (that I had 5 minutes to complete btw after setup) and went on to explain that 5 minutes isn't enough to replace SQL implementations... I would need more time. I would have sat there for days learning to implement LSM trees and so on if they had asked. They didn't ask. The interviewer said I should consider trying "project management". Ouch! I asked for tips on solving the problem faster and got a really short and lousy answer that was basically "use python and some library". What in the actual **?<p>tl;dr: What the ** is going on and what have you all done to my job security? I heard some companies let go of a bunch of engineers? I need help desperately. I will give the rest of my savings to whoever can help me figure out why I'm unhireable.<p>p.s: I'll take the first $60k offer I get, so let your bosses know you found them a great deal! I swear it on my honor. After 5 months of searching, I'm officially out of money and have a family to feed. So, don't ask me to relocate (I live pretty cheap already!) but please offer me a job.<p>I love you all.<p>https://github.com/jessehorne
https://linkedin.com/in/jesseleehorne
Your resume reads as if it was written to appeal to an engineer.<p>Write one that appeals to a manager. Talk less about what you did in your previous roles and more about "the business value you provided" in your previous roles.<p>If in doubt, pretend you're your own boss trying to get a raise. What would you say about you to justify it?<p>Specifically, I got my current job (in September) because I was able to tell a story of how I took an MVP and helped move it to production at scale at a previous company. They didn't care about the tech stack or my day-to-day duties.
Just a couple of advices. Feel free to ignore. It won't harm anyways.<p>- linkedin profile looks weak. Elaborate on what were the duties in form of showing up your professional achievements. Like how you improved the product with your work. How you increased company revenue. Did this -> it lead to that. This approach shows your real impact (at least a sign of it). "reduced infra cost for 20%", "latency decreased which lead to more registrations", "hired and structured 2 team", etc..<p>- use recruiters. 99% of time their help will be useless but because there are a lot of them this 1% will cover the rest.<p>- don't spend your time on no-name-another-job-list-platform. it won't work. approach company recruiters directly, apply via linkein or connect with recruiters there.<p>- "I can do everything for 60k" might sound like a red flag. Avoid it during the conversation.<p>- Interview passing is a skill. You need a time and a volume of interviews to train it. Doable.<p>- don't listen to "oh yeah that's a terrible market I can't get a job as well we gonna die poor" comments. you don't know who is behind the comment. like I don't know who are you btw :)<p>Market is not that bad. It's totally ok. Approach it as a project. Code, code, code, read, watch related videos on youtube. Acquire some clarity that you know your shit.<p>I wish you all the luck, you will make it!
Everyone I know is in a similar situation. The tech sector saw thousands of layoffs and a decrease in free money. You're competing against hordes of ex FAANG-ers for limited opportunities during a market downturn.<p>Half my office was laid off and anecdotally, everyone I know is having trouble finding work.<p>Hang in there :(<p>Now might be the time to reach out to your old networks and see if any of them are unofficially hiring. I sent out dozens of applications too and didn't hear back, but reached out to an old contact and they hired me on the spot.
With your background and experience, have you thought about going Indie, at least while you are waiting around in the job hunt?
Read this: <a href="https://readmake.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://readmake.com/</a>
Follow this: <a href="https://twitter.com/IndieHackers" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://twitter.com/IndieHackers</a>
<i>> I was given around 40 minutes today to solve three questions about two CSV data sets...Couldn't do it in the allotted time</i><p>You need to fix this. Is it fair? Probably not, but it's what it is. If you fail the coding test, no one will pass you to the next phase.
2 interviews being cut short seems strange to me. I have been on both sides of the interview table and I have never seen an interview cut short. I would only consider it if the interviewee was bombing hard, like completely lost and unable to write code.<p>My best guess is that you are going up against candidates who are able to
fluently process and manipulate CSV data in 40 minutes, probably using python. If that is indeed the gap that is preventing you from passing interviews, consider grinding leetcode problems, and getting good at filtering, sorting, transforming lists and dictionaries, etc.<p>Finally, I'm sorry to hear your going through this ordeal. Best of luck to you.
I'm a software engineer who switched over to working beside Sales as a Sales Engineer. Referrals are the key to getting customers or getting a job.<p>Reach out to previous co-workers, managers, vendors you've spoken to, anyone. There's bound to be someone who has a broken website that needs to be fixed. It's more effective to spend two hours applying to one job via a warm lead than it is to send 100 applications out to cold leads.<p>Lowering your salary expectations won't help that much. If someone were optimizing for cost, they'd outsource to Southeast Asia or India.<p>Good luck!
I know developers like to put their head in sand and pretend to the contrary, but credentials do matter. Things like security or cloud certifications and security clearances are extremely valuable when looking for employment.<p>What has helped me the least is code quality and GitHub projects/portfolio. This has only helped me in the added technical experience and the ability to talk through a variety of scenarios during an interview.
So for me getting interviews has been a numbers game. I tried customizing my resume, and gave up after a few hundred tries and no responses.<p>Now I’ve built <a href="https://tangerinefeed.net" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://tangerinefeed.net</a> and am using to it to apply to tons of jobs every day. No offers yet, but a handful of interviews at least.
I touched on some good approaches here [1]<p>But they’re aimed at the next tough job market, not this one, so they’re more long term.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nishantjha.org/essays/squeeze" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nishantjha.org/essays/squeeze</a>
> use python and some library<p>Was it pandas? Because it looks like they expected to see <a href="https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/api/pandas.DataFrame.query.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/api/pandas.DataFram...</a>
Hello fellow Iowan!<p>It’s very weird that two different people cut the interview short.<p>I have a couple of NodeJS positions open. If you feel like it might work hit me up on my email and let’s talk.
You are not alone, this is new too: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38167731">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38167731</a>
'"Well my little brother died during my employment there so I decided to take some time to myself to cope.". She cut the interview short right after that.'<p>Fuck that. You're better off not working than working for someone like that.
The job market is shit right now, and it's nearing the holidays on top of that.<p>You need to assume that it will take hundreds of applications. It's partly a numbers game.<p>Maybe try mock interviews if you can afford it? Like with interviewing.io.