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Comment by anothergoogler | Hacker News Reader

> The calls usually go something like this.

> Me: “First thing, is I am looking for a remote position just long enough to allow me to save for a vehicle.”

> Recruiter: “Sure. spends 20 minutes gathering as much information about me as they can”

> Recruiter: “We’d love to move forward with a position but you do not have a vehicle and the position requires you to have reliable transportation.”

Why would do you that? The recruiter and employer don't care if you unicycle, hitchhike, swim, or teleport to work. The conversation should be about your skills, experience, professional goals. The recruiter won't feel good about shopping you around if you make it sound like you're going to quit once you've saved a couple grand for a used car.

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I suspect the author may want to sit down with someone and do a ton of practice interviews so they can be told here is 5 or 10 pieces of information that you should not volunteer to a recruiter. Here is another 5 or 10 ways to honestly answer/avoid some questions. That being said it seems like at some point the author may need to level about not having the best people skills but I am not sure how to say that without coming off as a big red flag. It seems like a very good sign that the author isn't blaming everyone else for their problems.

https://www.pramp.com/ - Practice coding interviews live for free

Parent comment was talking more about practicing the softer, more social questions rather than hard skills and problem solving questions.

That's what pramp does... it's a video interview so you practice talking as if you were in a real interview.

I was thinking that the author should just say "yes" and move on. Afterall, going to work an hour early using the bus IS reliable transportation.

You wouldn't want the the interview to feel like a sappy therapy session. You should steer it to the important questions.

Public transportation is _really_ bad in some places. Where I live, sometimes you can be two hours later than the schedule would suggest relying on public transit. I suppose you can then go to work 3 hours early to compensate. But it sure doesn't make it easier.

And I live in a reasonably sized city, it can be even worse in other places, like no bus route at all.

Our society is not set up for poor people, let alone homeless people. _everything_ is harder when you are poor, and an order of magnitude more so when you are homeless.

I think because the author is living in Iowa there may not be adequate public transportation? This struck me as odd too. Unless you’re a true rockstar (as in a public / semi-public figure with a great track record) no company is going to let you go remote for the first few weeks when the company doesn’t allow fully remote work. It seems like a really strange criterion to have and it’s probably THE major reason the author hasn’t been able to pass interviews, technical skills aside.

I can't wait until the MTA gets so bad that people tell me, "you take the subway? sorry, we're not interested."

But in some sense, having a reliable vehicle is a microcosm of a particular location and mindset. Nobody I know owns a car. We still mostly get to work on time, though.

He's in Iowa. In these midwest states (Nebraska for me), public transportation is very scarce.

Most jobs out here require we own a car, or have some way to reliably get to work. Most of the time that does not involve public transportation in any way.

That's worth a whole discussion in and of itself. Iowa is a terrible place to be: Homeless, looking for a tech job, without a car.

Yeah. My comment was not meant to be a smug "hah, country folk" comment, but rather a reflection on how poor urban planning hurts so many people. I legitimately believe that it's impossible to work for certain companies in Iowa if you don't own a car. And you can tell from the story how hurtful that is to individuals and those companies.

Does everyone have a driver's license there? In France none of my friends (and I) have one and we never really needed one.

Yes, pretty much the only places in America that you can survive without a car are New York and San Francisco, but who can afford the rents? I lived in Honolulu for several years and took the bus to work there, but it worked because I had a reverse commute and because the island is small and the ocean prevents expansion in several directions, the bus routes pretty much only run in two directions, which makes commuting possible, whereas in Chicago you would probably have to take a bus and then a train and then change trains to get to work and that would add up to about two hours commute each way each day - a deal breaker for me.

I would say Chicago too.

So how do for example blind people who cannot drive find work?

A better question is "What jobs can blind people do?"

All jobs that involve sitting in front of a computer and typing things.

Kinda ignorant.

Less than 20% of people who are partially or totally blind are employed[1]. The vast majority simply don't.

[1] http://www.afb.org/info/blindness-statistics/adults/interpre...

You can reliably get to work by walking... if you are homeless, you can reliably get to work by sleeping in the parking lot. I just really don’t see how not having a car is at all relevant to the question of reliably getting to work.

I think I'd focus on remote freelance work via sites like Codementor and the usual sites like Upwork (yes pay isn't great but there are some good gigs there) or your personal network. A recruiter is incentivized by filling the role, and that's usually the result of checking boxes. Unless they have no other candidates, what reason would they have for going the extra mile?

Or maybe driving to different locations is part of the job requirements?

Most jobs in the states ask if you own a car because if you don't then the likelihood is that you will either be late for work because of unreliable public transportation, or you would miss work because the person who is giving you a ride can't do it every day. So if you don't have a vehicle, you simply aren't hired because they predict you'll cause them problems.

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