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Theres no way I would quit my current job before having another job lined up, if I didn't need to. I do agree that looking for a new opportunity is like a full time job, but when you are already employed the necessity is not as great. I can take my time over months rather than try to treat it like a 9 - 5.

That seems like an enormous risk. I've in the past spent upwards of 6+ months looking for work, and plenty more people have spent much longer. Given Bay Area expenses, if I quit my income, the first thing I'd have to do is temporarily move somewhere cheaper until I found something. Contrary to all the "shortage of engineers" stories, tech jobs do not, in fact, grow on trees.

Doesn't work when you are on a visa, unfortunately. But even if you could, I still think you wouldn't need to quit before you interview, best case may be a couple of weeks off for preparing.

I think this is a crazy expectation.

I last switched jobs while working at Apple last October. Having the BATNA of your current employment is crucial to the negotiation process and I can't imagine forgoing that- if you have no current income that's an insane bargaining handicap.

Anyone with experience absolutely is not going to go for "quit your job, and maybe we'll give you a new one after a week, maybe it won't work out and you are boned"

I had a YC company that wanted me to do a trial week. They wanted me to quit my job when I said I couldn't take off a week of vacation.

When I said no, they wanted me to come out Friday through Monday and since the whole company works on the weekend, they would get 4 days to work with me.

At that point I said I wasn't interested.

That's outrageous. Starting the death march before you even get an offer.

Wow this is next-level outrageous!

Could you share the name of the company so others might avoid them and avoid wasting their time with such nonsense?

Since it was in 2014 and I don't know if they still do this, I won't name them.

I guess the lesson learned is to ask what the interview process looks like before getting involved.

However for this company, I applied online, they sent me a InterviewStreet/HackerRank coding test, and only after I passed that did a recruiter call me, and tell me they wanted me onsite for a week.

>"However for this company, I applied online, they sent me a InterviewStreet/HackerRank coding test, and only after I passed that did a recruiter call me"

This is a huge red flag in my opinion and I would recommend people not agree to this. Why? Because it shows complete disregard for the candidate. "Pass a test and you can speak to an actual human being." Its demeaning. It also shows just how useless many recruiters have become. Part of the job of a recruiter's job and good ones do this, is to get a candidate excited about interviewing with the company and get the preliminary deal breaker questions out of the way to see if it even makes sense to proceed.

And for me that was a perfect interview. First quick question by email to see if I was interested, then some simple test to see if I can really program, then quick interview to see if I have required domain knowledge (all questions were about knowledge required to program effectively, not abstract "how to move mount fuji"). For an introvert programmer like me it's a perfect interview schedule. Also it helps when you are already working and want to check conditions in other company without risk of being thrown out from your current job.

I gave up on those the last time I wasted 4 hours of my life on one of those tests and never even got a rejection email. It wasn't a hard test and I didn't do badly.

Nowadays I just point them at my github. If a body of open source isn't enough to get an interview I'm not interested in working there.

Are you against coding tests in general (especially when you have open source work to point to) or just as a prerequisite to speaking with someone?

Just as a prerequisite.

Agreed. My experience is that recruiters are pretty flakey people(and I'm being charitable in that) - they regularly fail to keep scheduled calls, fail to follow up after asking you for some times to chat, take weeks or even months to respond resume submissions for jobs they are posting etc.

I have no problem with competency testing provided I have already spoken to someone on the team and established contact and registered interest with someone besides a recruiter.

Yep, Skyscanner's HR people keep contacting me asking me to jump through hoops for them.

Initially it was a Hackerrank challenge, now its a (100% Javascript) "Full Stack" take home exercise before you even get to speak to anyone technical.

Dude.

I just finished working for a YC company that not only demanded a two week trial period, but after doing that trial period instead kept me on a contract billed for eight hour days but then insisted I must be in the office from 9 - 6:30 (their "engineering hours"). They wanted me to work close to 50 hours a week for no health insurance while underpaying hours and forcing me to attend all company events including weekend "hackathons" (haha so fun). It was a nightmare and I'm glad to be out of it.

The irony is that it was a company that prides itself on giving people stable jobs and healthcare.

This is silly. Your BATNA can be the amount a competing company is willing to pay you in another offer.

If you lack confidence that you'll be able to find at least another two job offers in a timeframe that makes you comfortable, then I agree don't quit your job.

Anyone with experience shouldn't lack that confidence though.

I'm not wealthy enough to wait for a better offer indefinitely, and the places I was applying to are for all intents and purposes. Negotiating with only X months of runway is very different.

Your argument also assumes that I have a competing offer already when negotiating, but how did I get that competing offer? If you have a job, that solves the chicken and egg problem. If you don't, you don't have the leverage to anchor that first offer, which anchors the second, etc.

Having done both at similar skill levels, I can tell you the outcomes are much better with a job in hand.

Not only that, working for a company like Apple, you aren't allowed to write any code unless its been approved by the appropriate people...that just wouldn't work.

Why would it be a bargaining handicap unless you're running out of money (i.e. desperate)? If you're a strong enough candidate to land an offer at a top firm, it isn't worth it for them to low-ball you and risk spending more resources looking for strong candidates. Besides, if you can get an offer at Company X, you can probably get an offer at one of their competitors as well (which is your leverage).

Can probably get an offer is different from currently working at one of their competitors. It's a) a vote of confidence from another firm that this person is worth hiring b) an anchor point for your salary above where they would normally start the negotiations (yes even for "above average"). It removes all the guesswork of "can probable get an offer". You have one. Right now.

Additionally I've had negotiations stretch on for months. That isn't very comfortable with no income, and is an absolutely enourmous opportunity cost.

>Why would it be a bargaining handicap unless you're running out of money (i.e. desperate)? If you're a strong enough candidate to land an offer at a top firm

The more specialized you are the fewer jobs there are out there that match your skill set. Not every job market is as liquid as that of, say, junior java developers.

Rejecting this job might mean waiting another month or two for another to come along.

Avoiding months of unemployment also isn't just about the hit to your savings it's also about the hole on your CV.

> When did you last switch jobs? I recently went through a round of employment where I quit my job at the beginning.

The tone of this implies that lining up a new job without first quitting is outdated and negative. From the other side, quitting before having a new position can look irresponsible.

I have never quit a job without another lined up and have done quite nicely, myself. Why ever invest in trashy projects when one can get good jobs quickly and easily?

I spent a year not working and had no trouble lining up dozens of interviews when I started looking. However, it did take several months before (a) my interview game was up to par, and (b) I found a company I actually wanted to work for.

What did you do for the year off? I've always believed that tech is one of the most generous industries for this sort of "resume gap" of a year+ but if the question comes up I don't think most people would think highly of answers like "sleep" or "video games", even though more socially acceptable answers like "travel" aren't all that different... I wonder how much it varies from tech company to company. Last time I did interviewing I had an older guy ask about my GPA, and a few wondered what I was up to in 2013 when I had a year off my resume (finishing off school but that doesn't answer what the summer was spent doing, which wasn't much of note).

Generally I told people that I had done a tiny bit of contract work (true) and had been working on my own project (somewhat true, although it never got past the conceptual stage). There were a couple other things, which I won't elaborate on for anonymity's sake, but they were not programming related at all. Even on the projects, interviewers never really dug deep into them.

I suppose sleep and videogames aren't great answers. Taking time off to travel or explore some other interest is almost certainly fine in SV.

Ultimately, I think most places are so hard up to find qualified candidates that as long as you pass the interview and don't come off as a total slacker, you're probably fine. But if you're career-minded and applying to a place that has their career tracks worked out (read, not most startups), you probably want to give that impression to your future engineering manager.

I've done this for nearly every job in the past. However, since moving to the Bay Area, I would never consider quitting my job just to look for another. As one commenter below said, you put yourself at a disadvantage when you're bargaining for compensation.

I can agree that it's pretty difficult to find a new job while still working. However, most companies let you work from home nowadays. You can just interview during that time. Is it ethical? Who cares? It's business; the nature of the beast.

However, most companies let you work from home nowadays.

I don't think that's even slightly true.

I have found a new programming job while still working full time at an old job about 5-6 times now. I almost never had any time off between jobs.

    > I can't imagine finding a new programming job while still working at the old job.

Imagine having things such as: a family, a car, a mortgage, bills, etc.

Giving up a job (therefore your income) just to find another job is not an option for many.

I have all those things, two cars in fact!

At the time I was living in north east Ohio, where cost of living is fairly low. It would certainly be harder in high cost of living areas.

Experiences differ, I guess. I have twice looked for a job while I didn't have one, and I found it to be way, way less than a full-time activity. Updating my resume, posting it to a handful of job sites, monitoring a handful of job sites for new job postings, handling recruiter calls and screenings, just didn't take all that much time. It was maybe a couple of hours per day.

>"Between updating my resume/social networks, brushing up on academic CS, finding leads, scheduling interviews and follow-up interviews and managing/negotiating offers, it was absolutely a full-time job."

Can you break down how much time you spent on each of those tasks that they took up the equivalent of an entire 8 or 9 hour work day 5 days a week?

I think you might be in the minority with your outlook. Most people opt to keep their paycheck and health insurance and vacation time until they find something new. Not least those with families. Also its much easier to negotiate a higher salary using your existing salary as a starting point.

IMO, it's not the literal time taken, but the mental bandwidth needed to do these things (and do them well) that can feel "full time"

to each their own of course

Sure, here's an approximate breakdown:

Morning: 1-2 hours: Study a chapter of CLRS Algos book 1-2 hours: HackerRank 1-2 hours: Studying trivia of technology X

Afternoon was all about sales - updating social networks, filling out applications, talking to recruiters on the phone, scheduling interviews, etc. I probably applied to about 250-300 companies.

I made tweaks as I went - I found that recruiters preferred to talk in the morning, so I eventually inverted the whole thing. I started to sniff out which companies were serious about hiring and which perpetually advertise for talent

This is just a rough framework. Sometimes I'd spend the whole morning on CLRS, or a tricky Hacker Rank problem, other times I'd spend the whole day interviewing.

Before I spoke with anyone at a company, I always did research on them, the company, the company's market, and the technologies they were interviewing for.

>" I started to sniff out which companies were serious about hiring and which perpetually advertise for talent"

Would you be able to share how you sniffed them out or what techniques worked for you?

In my opinion this is one of the largest time sinks. Companies that aren't really hiring.

I see this repeatedly on the HN "Who's Hiring" thread. Companies just perpetually advertise the same roles and very often these are the same companies who seem to have no problem wasting other's people time with flakey recruiters or ghosting or just never responding to candidates. I would love to know if there is a commonality you found?

I also wish there were a better way to share experiences regarding these perpetual time wasters, something akin to hosts respond percentage on AirBnB. And I personally don't consider Glassdoor to be a very good experience or trustworthy outlet.

We often hear about the shortage of talent. And while I don't doubt there is an amount of shortage, I am often left wondering what percentage of this are companies completely broken hiring process. I also wonder whether these companies are even aware of how broken their process and their recruiters are.

> I recently went through a round of employment where I quit my job at the beginning.

From my experience of hiring people and looking for a job myself, this is the exception.

> Between updating my resume/social networks, brushing up on academic CS, finding leads, scheduling interviews and follow-up interviews and managing/negotiating offers, it was absolutely a full-time job.

That is ridiculous, you must have incredibly bad time management skills. Or do you actually think this is very common?

When I first got out of college in '08, it didn't take this kind of effort to get hired. At my previous job, it was also fairly easy - but hiring has changed quite a bit in the last 3-5 years.

I had a company demand I do two phone interviews, plus an onsite, 2 time zones away, for a $50/hr, temporary contract with no health insurance. Obviously, I politely declined to continue, but companies wouldn't be doing that if it wasn't working on some candidates.