Career advice for people with bad luck

+1

Companies are selling you during the interview. Sometimes good businesses hire bad people who are good at interviews (maliciously or not), sometimes bad businesses who are good at interviews hire good people (maliciously or not).

I did not takes risks per say, but I was lucky to have this in a limited sense during a period of bad luck (aka the recession of 2007) that really helped me pivot to a better place where today during the COVID Crisis I am providing that support to some of my family....

I feel bad for the higher class pizza restaurant that opened down the street from our house at the end of January after a long time of renovating the building.

Even though their pizza isn't really as good as the fancy pizza place at the mall (it's a mall in a rich area) down by the nearby harbor, which will upset me if it goes out of business because I could take my kids there or visitors and they were made happy by the quality of the pizza.

But this place down the street from me, that is textbook bad luck.

Recommit to doing everything right, with a focus on the little things. Not just work or life. Daily routine and small chores. If you loose focus, acknowledge it and move on.

Focus on what's most important. Don't do anything else until what's most important is done. This helps stop overworking, scrubbing every bit of the kitchen when you should be getting clients or spending time with family.

Once your confidence builds up, take a real look at the top businesses.

Rich and famous?

Or just the public face of a lot of other people's hard work.

That's good! You have to be happy for other people's success. It's a luxury.

A really good credit card makes up a lot of business today. One good client pays the bills. Everything else likely gets a no. Getting a look even if it ends in a no is quite an accomplishment.

It's a fight at the top. A bad one. Some people want to do horrible things. Our side convinces people to pursue peace and knowledge. Sometimes you're just not ready.

There's someone here talking about a 6 month gap in their resume. The job interview is not a court of law. Just say:

"I had my own clients." > "oh yeah? How that go?" "Good! I made more money with them." > "Huh. So why you quit?" "I sold it. I sold the business."

Don't sell yourself short. Don't cheerlead either. Hindsight always makes you feel bad. Decide, and stick to the script no matter what. Admitting to mistakes and relating to people are for the ones at the top of the food chain. They might as well be in a different universe.

Also, there's the killer cold outbreak. If you're willing to work, I think they'll take you. A lot of people well off are not going to risk it. They'll go back home and take care of their family.

My answer, having checked a few of your boxes... Your lifetime wages are going to be lower than many of your peers. This is unlikely to change. Adjust your worldview accordingly. Don't assume any debt that relies on increasing future earnings to be comfortable.

By all means, keep trying, but stay level headed. Success for most is not always right around the corner. Prior to SV eating the world, the only people that said that we all should be entrepreneurs really just wanted you in their Amway downline.

Society doesn't like to show the magnitude failures out there, or worse, the getting-by'ers. There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest making $70k/year feeling like failures, when they are the winners of Kokomo, IN.

Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. Look inward for contentment. Try therapy if your shitty childhood and shitty parents made inward a hard place to look.

I have read that the meaning of life is love and freedom and doing what you enjoy. What that means is different for everyone, but you have to ask yourself what that means to you. If that means have millions of dollars in just a few years, great. Read "think and grow rich" to see who you need to become. Otherwise don't waste you time following what others think success looks like.

The feeling that you are suffering more than other people is the true harm caused.

Your points:

* Graduated at the wrong time: How many thousands of people graduated between 2008 and 2010? That is by definition ordinary. * Never met that magical person to makes your life magical: You said it yourself. Do you think most people meet magical people? * Resilient financial safety net: You've read the statistics, right? Most people don't have a month's income saved for difficult times. * Mental safety net/health issues: OK, there's some randomness here. But many people struggle with some form of this. * Having dependents: Well, blended choice and randomness, to some extent. But controllable usually, if you mean offspring. Adult dependents (parents) are harder, but far less common. * Large company rips off/Some exec derails your project: Normal and ordinary. This is how things work. Disappointing, but don't let it be discouraging. That part is your choice.

I think you're conflating "lack of unusual good luck" with "bad luck". They are not the same. Don't imagine that the lucky individuals for whom the stars aligned are in any way normal. They just get all the press.

(SS is an average, LTD is your most recent)

During my 10 years of illness leading up to my eventual disability, I tried (with varying success) to do the following things:

- Looked for jobs with slightly under full-time work loads to allow me time to rest (found only one for 2 years, but the extra rest helped me slow down disease progression a lot)

- Looked for jobs with full benefit packages, including Short Term / Long Term Disability. If the job didn't offer it I signed up on my own

- Maxed out HSA every year

- Reduced my fixed costs as much as possible to prepare for living on a fixed income; moved to a LCOL area

- Moved to a climate that was better for my health

- Didn't have kids because I knew I wouldn't be healthy enough to bear them / raise them :-(

- Researched how long term disability / social security disability worked (this site is really good: https://howtogeton.wordpress.com/social-security-disability/ )

- Tried to do excellent work so my employers would still like me even with all my sick days

- Have good academic credentials - Have good big corporation names on your resume - Have good connections - Have nice car - Have nice house - Have kids, partner, etc. - Travel a lot when retired

If we based our life against that standard, then it is going to be easier to be depressed once a person's life deviates from it.

The other extreme, suggested by some others here, is to accept and be content about "c'est la vie" concept - life will suck and get over it, and its variations. I think that is wrong because it reinforces the idea there is only one way to succeed and have a good life.

My suggestion is simpler:

- Cover your base: do you have a place to live? do you feel safe where you live? do you have good quality food that you like to eat? do you have a group of friends to hangout and rely on? do you have an income source that is relatively stable?

- Then you can focus on whatever you want to do; free yourself from rigid standards and paths. You can even pursue the stereotypical success lifestyle knowing that even if you fail, you can recover fast and try again.

Reflecting on my career of failure, unfulfilled potential, compared to the biographies of "successful" people, what they all seem to have which I lacked was a mentor.

That person who said "You can do this. I believe in you. Let's talk it thru."

To counterbalance all the people who actively or passively tear you down.

- You do everything right and, like most people, it still doesn't work.

The subtext here though is always "scoring" your success. There is the zen koan about one mans bad luck is another mans opportunity. But it really seems that the message is more "don't measure your own success unrealistically or you will always see yourself as having 'bad luck' when, in fact, you have a great life."

And yet a stranger looks at their accomplishments and thinks that they just didn't have bad luck.

#1 (good luck landing a decent job in 2009) #2 (turns out no one cares about you when you're unemployed) #5 (not Ivy League and mediocre GPA)

Safety net was decent, so I was able to at least look for a job for some time.

#4 doesn't really apply.

One of the hardest things in life is that we don't actually know the "truth", no one does. But what we can do is learn to spot ways we tell ourselves convenient lies - this is why Buffet + Munger did SO much work on studying human biases. If we had a perfect ability to spot every falsehood, we would be left with the bare truth.

Given it's an imperfect system, "bad luck" can be simplified to "you keep missing the truth". And it's often not our fault - how the hell could anyone have known about COVID-19, and impact on their company, far enough in advance to actually move to safer waters prior? But it's worth examining why you made the decision to do X - were there any truths you missed, or lies you told yourself?

Through that process, you can get better at spotting falsehoods or clarifying your values, so that even if you don't ever land on a rocket ship, you find a workplace you are happy at.

For example, one of my early jobs was at a turd of a company. I knew BEFORE that it wasn't a great opportunity. But I was desperate to leave my current situation so I took it. Within a few weeks, I KNEW it was still a turd. But I didn't want to pay the relocation bonus back if I left so soon. So I stuck it out, ended up being there for a few years, and it mostly was wasted time. So now I turn down jobs where I feel like that going in. I need to feel great about the company's situation.

But even that's not foolproof. I had another company where the company was doing GREAT. Fucking rocketship. Then literally within a few months of me joining, it went down the tubes and barely survived. So I also learned to be more wary of quickly growing, younger companies as well.

Now I'm at a steadily growing larger company, that's managed well, and I love it.

One last piece of advance - google "It works". It's a little book about writing a list of what you want and constantly looking at it. I did it during my last job search and literally got an (almost) dream job. Give it a try.

There are some things that are in your control, while others that are not. Concentrate on the former. How can you improve your skills, learn new ones.

Lower your expenses, stay healthy, avoid debt.

It might take longer, because of all the dead ends you have encountered, but eventually you'll get there. But more importantly, don't let those things make you bitter.

A significant portion part of someone's career is based on politics and surprisingly little on skill.

Her original bad luck over which she had no control was an unhappy upbringing, which is truly unfortunate, but that's not the last word on life.

- Your business sector will come back post COVID.

- You can’t control other people

- Control who is dependent on you, and fix your health best you can.

- You can mitigate macro level risks. These techniques come at a cost.

- You can get magic paper at the wrong age, but it costs. Or find other ways in.

Frankly this discussion about luck is incredibly weak. You didn’t get everything you wanted, some things you can control and others you can’t. Appealing to luck might encourage some people to plaster over your mistakes and inability to eat loss with money and submission.

There is no advice to give because you have framed the conversation around what your heart wants and thrown any rational decision making possible into submission to luck.

You aren’t a victim of luck, it is by definition something nobody ever escapes and is a subset of randomness. An easy out for the unhappy. You are still ultimately responsible for your life, even the bits you can’t control. You make your own luck.

The 'friends' part is something that I think can be potentially fixed. 'Friends' who can truly support you AND who are worthy of being supported in times of need are rare. But I think if one searches hard enough and find reasonable people to from an alliance with (without necessarily being friends) this problem can reduced. But it is needle in a hay stack endeavor. Most people in my observation are not worthy of receiving help ( for example they do not save enough money when they earn, so cannot be trusted to have the financial disciple to pay back) or conversely they are not in a position to help ( to cite the same example because they have not been saving enough money, they don't have enough money to lend to you).

Any advice for that?

https://sacred-texts.com/eso/aww/index.htm

xxi The Art of being Lucky.

There are rules of luck: it is not all chance with the wise: it can be assisted by care. Some content themselves with placing them-selves confidently at the gate of Fortune, waiting till she opens it. Others do better, and press forward and profit by their clever boldness, reaching the goddess and winning her favour on the wings of their virtue and valour. But on a true philosophy there is no other umpire than virtue and insight; for there is no luck or ill-luck except wisdom and the reverse.

xxxi Select the Lucky and avoid the Unlucky.

Ill-luck is generally the penalty of folly, and there is no disease so contagious to those who share in it. Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it. The greatest skill at cards is to know when to discard; the smallest of current trumps is worth more than the ace of trumps of the last game. When in doubt, follow the suit of the wise and prudent; sooner or later they will win the odd trick.

xxxvi In Acting or Refraining, weigh your Luck.

More depends on that than on noticing your temperament. If he is a fool who at forty applies to Hippocrates for health, still more is he one who then first applies to Seneca for wisdom. It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it. For something is to be done with it by waiting so as to use it at the proper moment, since it has periods and offers opportunities, though one cannot calculate its path, its steps are so irregular. When you find Fortune favourable, stride boldly forward, for she favours the bold and, being a woman, the young. But if you have bad luck, keep retired so as not to redouble the influence of your unlucky star.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a reliable way to recover your losses besides "get lucky in the future". Your career advice is the same as everyone else's, just with worse expected outcomes.

That being said, what do you actully expect when spending time with work peers? It's supposed to be just relax after work. If it does not "spark joy" then just don't do it. If it does, then do not expect any other value. Friendship is not about how much you can get from others.

Isn't that how most people form friends normally though? Through a shared experience? Especially a tough or formative one? Friends you meet at school, in your first year at uni, in bootcamp, on a sports team, these are how most people meet their life-long friends.

I've also worked at a family company. They may claim you're "family" too, but that's just marketing hype. The truth is the family members will always be better compensated than you for doing far less. And when tough times come, you will take a hit before any family member.

Maybe that's the advice for you, if you're feeling down go have a look around for somebody who has it worse than you and push them further down! Nice work, everybody.

Brush up on the fundamentals. Maybe read cracking the coding interview. And if possible, spend some time working on an open source project, preferably an existing one, not your own (it shows you can collaborate, which is a useful skill if I'm gonna hire you).

When you get asked about this, your interviewer is going to be looking for a few things:

- are you honest about what happened self-reflective about the causes, and take ownership of the parts that were under your control?

- what have you learned from the experience that might help prevent something similar from happening again?

Definitely don't shy away from it, or claim that you quit. Getting fired isn't a dealbreaker, but dishonesty is.

So, if someone asks you "why you'd leave Company X?" (which, if they're a good interviewer, they will), you'll want to be able to say something like:

"Actually, I was fired. I had some medical issues that I let get out of control, and my work suffered. I've got the medical stuff sorted now, and I've learned how to take better care so that my work should stay consistent in the future."

I obviously don't know the specifics of your situation, so that's fairly vague; it's better if you can share specific work strategies that you've since learned, i.e. around managing your priorities/task lists or whatever. You don't need to -- and shouldn't -- go into specifics about the medical side, but you certainly can talk about things you've learned to keep yourself engaged and focused at work.

Good luck!

You might be able to say "I put off seeking medical attention for too long, and it got in the way of doing my job. That was a wake-up call, so I've focused on getting better since then."

Was that the first resume-relevant job you lost because of depression? If so, you can also mention that now you're aware of your medical condition, you're proactively managing it.

If you have been fired from multiple resume-relevant jobs, then don't use the "I learned and won't repeat it" part. In a perfect world, the interviewer should know. Not because you're an immoral worker, but because it's a risk you and your employer would share.

Finally, you "messed up" in the way that a dropped glass hits the floor: no point shaming the glass. Be proud of seeking treatment, but remember there was also luck in that decision. Our ideas of choice and responsibility are more complicated than usual when psychological disorders get mixed in.

Well, I would address this by actually improving your situation: start reading the code from open source projects in your sort of headspace, and set some goal that requires you to do work visible to the public. If you're unemployed, you should have plenty of time to do that.

I get that clinical issues will get in the way of that, but I'm also sure that if you're getting help, you should have some strategies to set aside some time every day. It is absolutely worth it.

> Do I tackle it proactively by outright telling everyone I was canned?

Maybe not that way, but if you have some good evidence you did soul searching and made a daily effort to sharpen your skills and understand how you got yourself into this mess, then that'll go a long way with a decent employer.

When you're ready, drop this Hacker News name. Switch to something like makingChances.

Sounds like restarting may be helpful -- not expecting to continue from where you were -- getting a contracting agency to pitch you and going from there. Once you're in a job, most people don't care about earlier gaps, except that managers who don't know how to collect people who can do the work get fixated on superstitions.

To restate what you're probably already hearing from your therapist: everyone can become depressed. It's something you learn. Some people are more clever at picking it up than others, but everyone can learn it. Depression is episodic. It goes away and comes back. A common recovery is for the gaps between episodes to get larger and the episodes get smaller. Depression grants three super powers. 1) You can see probabilities and how much control you and others have. People without depression cannot. 2) You are ready to serve, even at the risk of your life. This is something that doesn't apply to most of modern life, but does come up now and then. Think of Oscar Schindler. 3) While in an episode, you can be confident that you will not enjoy things. So if you're trying to resist a bowl of ice cream, you have help: you won't enjoy it.

Your negative thoughts and feelings are a natural part of mammalian neural systems, like kicking when you're tapped under the knee and being able to see dim lights easier if you look a little away. Those thoughts and the feeling of dread are not necessary or helpful (in almost every situation). You do not have to respect them. In fact, when they appear, you can disrespect them. They are just an evolutionary glitch that served primitive communities, but were never in the best interests of the people getting them.

There are services which you can pay to call up a previous employer pretending to be a new employer doing a background/reference check on you. They will then report back on what they say.

In the case that they do say something negative, one option would be to hire a lawyer to send them a cease and desist letter. My understanding is it's fairly affordable to do and it's usually enough to get them to stop.

In my case, if I see a gap on a resume I just assume that someone took time off to raise a young child, had some savings and traveled, ect. I wouldn't even ask about the gap, but if it did come up, even a vague "I just needed a break" would be fine. The whole point, if I were to ask, is just to make sure you can partition your personal life from your professional life. (I don't expect you to be perfect. I'm not perfect either.)

Now, hindsight is 20/20, but you could dedicate some free time to an open-source project, a "business," ect. Just enough to put something on your resume to fill the gap. When I worked with someone else at starting a business, my partner spent a lot of time (and money) going to a therapist. I had no problem with it.

Six months is not a big deal. You've been told all your life that gaps in your resume are a problem, and some people here will tell you that they ask about it, but they're all just following a rote pattern. You don't want to work anywhere that actually cares about this. Most people couldn't care less. You can always leave the months off your resume if you're really worried about it.

Do not under any circumstances tell people that you were unemployed or lost your job due to depression or mental health. I'm not going to sugar coat this for you. Never admit this during an interview. It's a bad idea to mention anything health related. It's also none of their business, unless you require an accommodation that needs to be addressed before you're hired.

Companies rarely check references. They might check your employment history, and they might ask for references to check your professional qualifications, but hardly anyone speaks to references. Don't put any on your resume. If someplace cares, they'll ask. Hopefully you have some ex-coworker willing to say a few nice things about you. If not, you might want to say you haven't stayed in touch with anyone from that particular job. If you can't summon any professional references at all, that may slow down your job search, but really, people don't usually check. Don't lie; just don't stress about it that much.

Lying is never a good idea, but you shouldn't be offering up negative information about yourself. Forget about what's fair, legal, politically or morally correct: there's a stigma around mental health issues and you don't want to bring them up with a potential employer.

You'll be fine going forward, although now isn't a great time to be looking for a job, so it might take longer.

- Tell the interviewer you needed some time off and that you're fine now.

- Don't mention depression.

- Don't trash-talk past jobs regardless of merit.

Remember, life is not fair. Don't overexpose yourself if you don't need to.

- I intentionally got myself fired so I could get an extra $25k in salary/severance/unemployment.

- It was my first job out of college.

- I have positive references I can give. (my manager sucked, other people were cool)

- Medical issue is physical and not mental. (herniated disc / sciatica).

Here is my advice:

- Practice interviewing at a bunch of no-name companies you don't care about. I practiced at a dozen or so startups, got rejected by half of them and learned the red flags. Now I'm at the onsite stage at Google / Facebook, both asked about previous employment history, which I talked about, and everything worked out ok because I practiced.

- DO NOT MENTION, OR INSINUATE, YOU WERE FIRED. And don't lie. If you imply that you were fired, nobody will give you a chance. This sounds like a death sentence, but thankfully interviewers don't probe into it too much if you tell the right story in the right way. Find a good narrative and build on it like you would an essay. Practice this. Over and over and over and over again. It's hard to get right, but once you do, it becomes a non-issue.

- I try to avoid saying negative stuff about my last job. It's about 50/50, some hiring managers see it as a red flag and others sympathize. It's best to come up with and practice a few neutral stories to tell them

- Nobody cares about a 6-month employment gap. I know plenty of people that take more than a year off. If anyone asks just say you were focusing on your health, family, hobbies, whatever.

- See as many practitioners as you possibly can about your medical issue. Good ones are hard to find. It took me 20 tries (and $5k down the toilet) before I found someone who could treat me.

- I should have put this behind me way sooner. Moving to a different city helped me a ton. I'd recommend getting an Airbnb in Lake Tahoe or Hawaii if you can afford it.

Good luck.

Managing your depression will always be part of the trip. Don't listen to the voice(s) that say you are a failure/loser/underperformer, just do your best. Say it to yourself whenever you need to: "I'm doing my best, and that's how it will always be."

Strangely, when I know that I'm doing my best despite everything, I feel calm.

I had a looong gap on my resume when I finally felt well enough to start interviewing again. I tried the honest approach and mentioned that I left for medical reasons, and I never made it past the initial phone call with a recruiter. I finally lied and came up with a believable cover story (that I left to work on some startup ideas and did some freelance work) and then I was able to get a job. Keep your lies small, and obviously don't claim you were an employee somewhere that you weren't.

I was paranoid, so when the company I was interviewing with told me they were going to do the background check, I went ahead and called my old companies HR to see what they would say to the new company. All they had listed was my start and end date, not the reason I was terminated or anything. My new company outsourced the background check to a different company, where I had to fill out a form listing everywhere I was employed. I only lied on my resume and I didn't lie on the portion where I had to fill out forms for the job application and the background check. I was never caught in this lie and my new team is happy with my work.

It sucks that we have to do this, but when interviewing companies will take literally anything as a reason to reject you, even if you can do well on the technical portion of the interview.

Impressive.

Most relationships end up the same way. If there is some kind of comparative ranking/selection, even if it is just fame or some recognition. Even sibling rivalry roots in this.

This kind of thinking encourages situations where the employer may have total control over his employees, like with Amazon.

A friend can be someone you have not spoken to in decades but they will help you in a time of need and pick up with you as if it was yesterday.

In a workplace you may adore your colleagues and spend more than forty hours a week in their company but are you being friendly or are you friends? There is a difference. It is not often that a workplace friendship arrangement becomes a true friendship.

In previous times people were not hypermobile. People did not travel on vast commutes just for a highly specialised job. They could get work on their side of town. They could also sell up and move that bit easier for that job out of town.

In a workplace you are not going to become best of friends with someone who lives a 3-4 hour journey away from you as you know from the off that it is a long distance relationship. The drink after work will be as far as it goes.

Of course there will be exceptions.

I am not sure that the older generation have that many close friends anyway, plus there was the stay at home mum phenomenon back then and whilst 'daddy went to work' the true friendships were made by the kids, bringing their respective parents together. Kids don't get chopped and changed like how jobs do so there is more scope for friendships being made through them.

Also, don't talk to people about how their parents met; they'll be in shock that they overcame the fear that they'd become awkward or unprofessional if things broke off.

I tend to make few friends. Of those, I made most of my closest friends at school and the Uni, I'm still in touch with them, and we keep our friendships going through good and bad times. It's an age thing, I suppose. If I were still in my 20s I'd probably make friends at work, too.

I tend to occasionally keep in touch with former coworkers, but I'm an introvert, I tend not to enjoy "afterhours" activities, and eventually all these new bonds tend to fade.

I was in such a situation but after asking for more money I quickly realized that I wasn’t important enough to be paid a little more.

you have to develop a sustainable long term learning habit to hone your skills without being getting burned out and without hoping a dramatic success in the short term.

To get noticed or get an interview you have to identify people there and somehow get them forward your CV and/or build some proof of your skills in form of personal projects which many others like you dont have. Chances you are, you will get atleast an interview somewhere at big tech, if not at google.

If you actually studied then play the odds? I.e apply to the dozens of other large tech companies that pay handsomely. Unless there's only Google in the Netherlands (assuming that's where you are based on the Dutch reference) or you already applied to dozens and got rejected at the paper round by all of them

This resonates. I'm a senior engineer with CS master from top university, 10yoe with leadership skills that prepared the past 4 months and solved over 200 coding challenges. I contacted 18 companies (starting 3 months ago), some of them referrals, some of them from company recruiters reaching out to me (Facebook, Google).

I passed the Google onsite and made it to the FB onsite. I passed all the stages for another company with a "did fantastic" rating but then got denied onsite for unknown reasons.

That means I got through one single paper round from 18 outreachs and it's very frustrating since the ratio is much worse than when I applied 4 years ago with much less experience and requiring a H1B sponsorship. I have so much fire in me to work on consumer products (which my current job doesn't allow) it makes me explode.

Good companies say, and act like, the company is a team. People can work hard together, they can be friends, but they are clear that the reason for the team is to accomplish a goal, and if the structure of the team needs to be changed to accomplish that goal, people will be cut. This team mentality can provide true clarity of purpose, and can eliminate any sense of bitterness if things don't work out. When people are cut from a high caliber sports team they may be immensely disappointed, but if treated fairly they understand it.

The family mentality almost always results in bitterness, because what kind of family kicks out their members when things get slightly tough?

I agree with the sentiment. I am still friends with people that were my direct reports many years ago. But, when I was their manager, I treat them fairly like any other employee. That they were my friends meant that we will hang after work hours. But, as I manager I could not be their friends in work hours. Favoritism will have been extremely unfair for the rest of employees, that still were very good people.

I also have friends that have been my managers. And, in the job I expected to be treated equally than the rest of employees. I guess that we are still friends because we think in a similar way about justice and work ethics.

With teammates has been different. I have been part of awesome teams that we have been friends while working together to later on drift apart as our interests outside the job does not match (quite usually people with children that have limited time to hang out).

The opposite of that are managers that "feel betrayed" when you leave a company that has been mistreating you, or tell you that they expect loyalty to the company that is not reciprocal. They are the "paterfamilias" of a dysfunctional and abusive family. There is nothing worse that a manager that expects to be treated as a friend, with loyalty and sacrifice but sees you as just a number.

That's just basic professionalism. I've been friendly with many of my bosses during and after the term of employment I've worked for them. I would never, ever have expected any favoritism on then basis of that friendship from them, including laying me off if necessary and distributing raises and promotions purely based on merit with no regards to our friendship. Any expectations otherwise, to me, would mean I was being the bad friend.

I'd have the exact same expectations of family if I worked for them.

This is just how it goes. No matter how much we wanted him to stay, there was nothing to be done about it at our level.

This is a big worry for me. I'm leaning towards switching to a loosely related disciple in a few years, but with programming domains. However, when I research jobs in domains in looking at, a vast majority explicitly want at least a couple years in that exact domain, but most want upwards of 5 years.

You're goal should not necessarily be to move up a social-economic class, but to at least provide your children with more opportunity than you had. Inter-generational wealth accumulation is very important.

Most people don't go rags to riches, it's typically families that do so over multiple generations. With poor people focusing on educating their children, who become professionals, who then have kids with the opportunity to make it big. If you look at Bill Gates, he's the son of a judge. Zuckerberg is the son of a dentist. One of the Google founders is the son of a college professor. Even our president came from a wealthy family.

Let me stop you right there. Maybe that works in SV but in most of Europe(the world?) you aint getting in to any well paying job at a big tech company without a degree from a prestigious university or previous experience at equally big and famous companies.

Companies here don't have the FAANG resources to whiteboard everyone who bothers to apply and check their algorithm skills when all the future employee needs to do is work on some CRUD app so they initially select based on how impressive your resume is and run you through some coding test later to weed out the bullshitters.

Although I live and work in a city with one of the top 300 technical universities in the world where graduating means you have to study algorithms, advanced math, etc. almost no jobs here outside or research and academia require knowledge about algorithms. Companies just want an experienced node/python plumber ASAP.

ADDED: I'm sorry, but the people on this thread who are arguing that if you can't get a $200K+ job at Google, you're obviously not even trying have some serious blinders on.

You mean, a remote job in a place with low costs of living. Otherwise, this algorithm doesn't work for people with families. I've been on the job market just before COVID-19 hit. The costs of living in tech hubs are absolutely ridiculous. If it's not housing, then it's something else. For instance, you could afford staying in London with a spouse on a tech salary (the other salary would go straight into savings). But not with daycare, which quite literally costs more than housing.

The problem is this : most creative engineers don't have the mindset to mindlessly study for algorithms interviews, only to then have to spend years in constrained engineering roles.

Sorry but no. Like everyone else has pointed out, this is so far from the truth that I’m actually in awe that someone would write this.

There is a ton of luck involved with getting a job at a good tech company. First being something straight up mentioned in the article - knowing the right people. The chances of a regular hard working person getting past even the initial resume filter takes luck. It takes luck for a referral to find the right hiring manager’s desk.

Get past that and then depending on the company, there’s always the chance that someone interviewing you is having a bad day or maybe the team “fit” isn’t there.

There are a ton of obstacles that come down to luck because it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.

Edit: Since many people are using anecdotal data and survivorship bias as proof that this is true, how about a counter point. I interviewed at a FAANG before and didn’t get the job. Later on, I met someone who works at that company who was able to look me up. I had passed their bar. Not with flying colors but well enough that you would generally get an offer. Why didn’t I? Because that specific team that interviewed me had a skillset need that I didn’t have. But there’s no way of knowing that prior because the job description doesn’t point that out. It’s just how their (and most companies’) process works. So like I said, luck.

According to a Gallup report published Tuesday, over 95 percent of the nation’s grandfathers began their careers by walking straight into a place of business, saying “I’m the man for the job,” and receiving a position right there on the spot.

https://www.theonion.com/report-95-of-grandfathers-got-job-b...

I'd love to be a frontend engineer, UX engineer, creative engineer (I've seen this role at Google, it looks awesome) or a full-stack engineer.

I have:

A bachelor in information science (2012)

A bachelor degree in psychology (2015)

A master in game-design where I learned about Unity3D and C# (2016)

A master in computer science where I learned about cache eviction in GPUs to perform rowhammer via a JavaScript advertizement (2018).

I have done quite a few side projects (not willing to disclose here, email is in my profile). And I have some work experience as a coding bootcamp instructor (1 year, I trained 50 people to become junior web developers at companies like IBM, Capgemini and a top 5 Dutch bank) and a freelance web developer (6 months) and a freelance iOS developer (also 6 months).

I graduated in 2018 and after freelancing for a bit, I took a sabbatical in 2019 (setting up a bar in Thailand with family and friends). When I started looking for jobs in earnest in 2020, Covid started to hit.

I'm practicing algorithms as we speak, I'll be ready in 2 weeks to a month from now. So far I'm facing no difficulties, this stuff is hard work but it's a lot easier than my security courses. Also, algorithms are actually quite fun. There are a few things there that I really want to learn such as a hyper attention to detail. I'm currently training the skill to write a program flawless without bugs from the get go, complete with the fastest time complexity immediately. I know I can get to this level because I'm noticing that for a lot of algorithms just by playing around one can see the best time complexity for it (I find optimizing for the right space complexity a bit harder).

I hope you'll help me with this. If not, and I don't get to a phone screen, well that is my (and many people) their biggest issue. Passing algorithms is not the issue, getting a chance to be interviewed is. I'm a 100% sure I'd rock at the job, as I'm sure that many other people would who didn't get the chance for a phone screen.

I'm from The Netherlands and would love to work in Zurich. I see you work in Zurich as well, I've been to Switzerland quite a few times, it's amazing.

Google teams that I find interesting and want to know more about:

- Google Doodles

- Project zero (though I don't think I'd be able work there since people have a super big track record regarding the security work they do)

- Google Creative Lab

- Google Health

- Google Stadia

- Google Cloud Platform

- Google Brand Studio (though I don't think I'd be able to work there since it's more about people who can shoot beautiful movies)