As a software engineer, what is the biggest problem you face to land a job?
The demand for software engineers is ever growing, but many software engineers still face problems to land a job. What is the biggest problem here?
You can have 20 years experience with every major programming language and operating environment, but if you don't have the in-vogue framework and most hyped language using the FAANG only container technology then you don't even get a phone screen. Of course YMMV and you could land a job based on your domain experience.
I am NOT spending all my work time balancing binary trees. I am building complex systems that unlock value for customers or internal teams.
Sometimes I wonder if these companies even want to hire people who will do good for the service or are they only looking for busybodies passing some proctored exam.
They try to mimic fads from FAANG companies and end up misapplying things. Just because a framework/idea works for them doesn't mean it will work for the rest of us.
Our company has moved to developer chapter leads as managers, and it's a mess. They have no real power, they have no background/insider info on product strategy, they dont have any better idea of what we are doing since they are on a different team, and they are split between doing their normal dev work and people leadership. Maybe it works for tech companies, but we aren't a tech company.
We have started doing ridiculous code screens or whiteboarding, even for internal postings. Why not just ask my manager and tech lead about my code, or look in the repo for my recent commits? That's going to be much better than some 1hr code screen.
Don't even get me started about the 50 bullet point list of expected skills/competencies in job postings. I also love the ones where we want 5 years experience in a language that's only existed for 3 years. The company only wants experts, yet does nothing to contribute to developing resources into experts.
I'll be honest, I'm not a FAANG level dev. But these companies want to pay less than half of a FAANG salary and somehow expect their devs to be almost as good.
Seems completely obvious but many orgs can’t get there for some reason.
What FAANG does get right is there are very smart people designing the frameworks, tooling, and standards through which everyone else delivers their software. This means that a low skill dev can be amplified in terms of delivery, and can be easily stopped from breaking production.
Yeah, but that doesn't stop management from comparing a candidate to the fiction they had in their minds.
Got rejected because I only passed 3/7 unit tests because I didn't fix a bug that I was seconds away from fixing.
The sad part is the code was well architected, well-made, idiomatic Python that showed my production experience with it.
I don’t know if other fields such as hardware engineering are any better? The salaries might be lower but experience matters. Software engineering favors fresh graduates.
Forced use of Atlassian products
Causes? Who knows - badly written CV, not the right education/background/experience, not applying through the correct channels, everyone else is better - I don't know.
Not complaining - I have stable employment at a large company. But the more prestigious companies aren't even giving me the time of day.
In my last round of job searches, I was being extra picky only applying to jobs where I thought the role would be interesting, but was screened out from nearly all of them, presumably because the domains/tech involved were just so wildly different from what I’ve done in the past. These weren’t even necessary “prestigious” roles but most of them were with companies most people on this site will have heard of.
I have my theories about why this is, but I don’t feel like copy/pasting my ideas at the moment.
A close second are poorly constructed, time-gated take home projects. I am a working dev with a family, I cannot simply carve out 5-10 hours of my work week or weekend to complete some project with vague requirements.