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Comment by beepbooptheory | Hacker News Reader

I have a masters in philosophy, graduated with distinction and have top GPA for both runs, but I actually get more responses not mentioning any of that.

These days, as I have been told, getting an email back is less merit based than it is playing the right game for the initial algorithmic screening. Once you get through that though and do interviews, your merits become a lot more important, but the initial step is huge. It has taken me years to get to the point where I get an email back like... 1% of the time. Its a big black box, but you have all the room to experiment with it!

I am really happy for your success though!

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This seems strange to me. The market for engineers is really, really competitive right now. I know we're struggling for applicants - to the point where we've started reaching out to people rather than expecting people to come to us. We're certainly not going to immediately pass on someone who applies with solid experience, especially if they have multiple personal projects that demonstrate skill.

It makes me wonder if there's something else going on here. Are you applying to positions that aren't a good fit for your experience or skills? Like only applying to senior positions when you've only had a few years in the industry or only applying to positions in languages you've never worked in (but want to) ?

I really struggle to believe that sharing code from personal game projects or music tools would hurt (rather than help) your application. (Unless, as mentioned in my other comment, you really cut corners in those personal projects.)

Edit: I see, reading your other comments I see you mention that you're in a receptionist job right now and I think that resolves my confusion. If you don't have any actual work experience, yeah, getting that first job can still be really hard. Everyone wants senior engineers, no one wants to hire juniors. Which fucking sucks, because we have to hire juniors for their to be seniors. But, again, putting good code you've written - even games and music tools - should help not hurt you. So I would examine the code you've written for those tools and make sure it is good, solid code. If not, take some time to clean it up and then try again. (If you can find that time.)

Ok well thank you that makes me feel better. I am constantly coding and making things, I think I am getting better (I am halfway through SICP!), so there is always something new to try out in the resume. But yes, as far as any initial screening goes, I am pretty disadvantaged because I have nothing on paper but my repos.

> The market for engineers is really, really competitive right now. I know we're struggling for applicants

> Are you applying to positions that aren't a good fit for your experience or skills?

I just applied to Google. Specifically, I applied for their lowest-level position, L3.

I "passed" the algorithmic interviews and was told to expect a round of lower-pressure "team fit" interviews the following week. Instead, after multiple weeks of zero interviews, they let me know they were rejecting me instead. So I somehow managed to fail a round of interviews I wasn't even given.

This is what a competitive hiring market looks like?

Most of us will never work in FAANG.

Getting an interview with a normal company is pretty easy though

> Most of us will never work in FAANG.

What's the relevance? Most people won't work there, so the hiring market is competitive? Isn't competitive?

If you meant to talk about me personally, that statement already doesn't apply to me.

this mean that is just too difficult for most of people

It took some time for me to find a job after I graduated as well. I didn’t have any experience, but also I wasn’t networking correctly.

I landed my first part time gigs from a software meetup, and then got a full-time job from networking at a computing conference.

I wouldn’t waste any time at all on emails or recruiters.

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