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Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

Interviewed for 3 jobs. 1 rejected me for being too broad, 1 rejected me for not being reliable diring the interview (despite good track record and refs), 1 rejected me because they only wanted to hire cheap(ish) devs (2000 - 2500 euro per month).

It was my first round to see the world after graduation. Note: I worked on serious jobs during my studies, no internships, actual jobs.

Will start my serious round soon. If no one wants me for what I think I am worth/can offer, then I will start on my own too. I chose this profession partially because of this ‘power’.

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Reliable? How does one measure that from a recent graduate during an interview? What people get rejected for is astounding to me.

On this case: coming 5 minutes late (it was tough to find), interviewing for 90 minutes and me being late for a meetup with a friend (I told them that). And I looked like I wasn’t taking care of myself according to him (I was in thesis mode, still am). I feel we have different standards about what it keans to take care of yourself.

The first one I get under certain perspectives but it is only one data point. The second one is my personal life and the interviewer made the assumption it would apply to me professionally. Since he made the assumption in his mind, I couldn’t tell him that this person has been late with me a lot of times and that we are fine with it since we can both multitask and do some work on our laptops at any given moment.

...cheap(ish) devs (2000 - 2500 euro per month).

<sigh>

Where is it?

Amsterdam

Thank you. I've been resisting moving last five years, mostly because the kid. But now that he's approaching uni age, I'm running out of excuses :)

Where are you moving to?

Before brexit I was considering UK. I'd heard that speaking English is OK for work in many other countries. No problem to learn another language later.

I had a nice offer for Vienna two years ago but I refused after strong family protests. Now the situation is different for a few reasons so, starting August, I'll be looking again.

It's incredible how different are salaries just crossing the border. One would believe that sharing a common currency that wouldn't be the case, but we earn half the money for the same positions. And not only developers, just any profession.

the fact is many people are not worth more than 2k. certainly not juniors looking at their first position.

Then why isn’t this the case in the US or UK? How are you able to value that. Also all the people were from applied universities (hogeschool). I have been there and have been at normal universities. I feel normal uni people are way better all rounders in terms of thinking, on average (I have seen clear exceptions).

Or maybe INHolland had just terribly bad applied uni students. The vu and uva did not (bad, yes, but not terribly bad - at least everyone understood x = y at a normal uni, even the math haters).

the UK and the US are different markets. cost of living factors into it, our tax system, the fact that dutch people have some protection from firing, but mostly it is the fact that the heavy hitters like google are not here. So if you want a UK/US salary, go to the UK or US. actually, go to London or San Fran.

I council patience. I also council not doing PHP. the salaries are lower for PHP. if you manage to get in at a Java or .Net firm your salary can be raised after a year or two.

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