The Russians Are Coming
writing.kemitchell.com
writing.kemitchell.com
I'm a black American trying to get into tech and I've sent out hundreds of resumes and applications and work on all sorts of projects learning all sorts of skills. I have had a few interviews, whether they be with teams or recruiters and I feel I get rejected for the most ridiculous or petty reasons. I was referred to a job that required html and javascript knowledge and was given a test where I demonstrated my proficiency, was seemingly approved by the first three people I interviewed and their manager still vetoed me just after looking at me on the zoom call. She literally said, to my face, while smiling, "yeah no," without even looking at the work I did for the test. I have more but I don't want to veer to far off onto a rant, but if you'd like to hear about my interaction/conversation with a recruiter last Friday, I'll gladly share it in a response.
Maybe you don't think this is discrimination, and I'm just gonna have to agree to disagree, and I have met a number of wonderful russian people myself, but I know my experience as a black person getting into tech isn't exclusive (I've read other's experiences on twitter, yeah I know that site is looked down here, but bear with me) to just me, and I'm asking that before you just consider blindly consider one group of people from abroad to be the beneficiaries of your "goodwill," can you give black americans who have worked their butts off to try and get into tech a chance too?
Actually, I think you can take advantage of the situation and look for employment in places where they're not discriminating against ordinary Russians. That likely means they're not bigots in general. I'm not entirely sure, but "How we're supporting Ukraine" banners on tech company websites could be red flags. Any company that is virtue signalling in that way seems likely to me that their management is made up of crypto-bigots (or neo-bigots?).
It might be very hit or miss, considering how many companies simply haven't had the opportunity to openly discriminate yet or may discriminate in unexpected ways, but it's at least a signal to look out for.
Despite how well written your message is and how much sympathy I have for you if true, it's fundamentally whatabboutism ("but what about American racism!") from a brand-new account on a Russia-related thread.
A childhood friend of mine had a girlfriend who was working on the web team at what is now called Ann Inc. He referred me to her, and she and her co-worker on the same team were my second round interviews. Her manager, a brown woman named either Sanae or Sana (I actually know Sana's from college, but my friend insisted I pronounce her name 'San-ay,' so maybe its not the same name?) who saw me on a Zoom (actually Cisco video conferencing, Zoom is becoming one of those brands that are interchangeable with the whole sphere of a generic idea, like Google and Kleenex), immediately smiled and said no. It was late 2020 and... when things like that happen you're just in shock, and you're also disappointed that, once again, you can't start your career. I don't even know who to call for that, and how would I go about proving it?
The story ends with my friends girlfriend and her co-worker quitting and going to work elsewhere, so there was at least that.
Please do brother. These experiences are important to share for us and everyone that’s not us to understand what goes on.
So I sent her my resume at around 10, and she calls me at around 1:30 to ask me if she could move the call back to 2:30. I agree.
I get on the call and she tells me she isn't sure about my 7 year work gap after college for starters. I have been learning how to code for the last several years and taking care of my elderly father. It's also been hard to even find a job... anywhere, as I've mentioned. Covid hit, and the focus was keeping my father safe, as well as continuing to build things and learn new technologies and concepts.
I insisted to the lady that I was proficient in the main skills of the job, which includes, knowledge of the "Wordpress and SquareSpace CMS", SQL Server, HTML,CSS and Windows Server. I point out that the first item on my resume is the link to my WordPress blog that I put up on a VPS (don't want to share for the sake of security by obscurity), and that I have built fullstack apps using Postgres and MySQL and that I can learn and get up to speed with Microsofts dialect of SQL. She told me that employers tell her that "they don't want people who say that they will learn things, they want people who can hit the ground running." She then told me that the position required a candidate to know things like HTML and CSS for 5-7 years, which actually wasn't even in the posting, and I said that no one needs to learn HTML and CSS for 5-7 years. She asked how much I was looking for as far as salary and I said "You said earlier it was 75-95 so I'd be okay with 85" and she told me those numbers were only for people with 5-7 years experience. She told me she was concerned about the 4 project links on my resume (for the sake of keeping the resume at 1 page) and I insisted that she tell the hiring manager to look my github profile, which is linked at the top of the resume. I asked her if she knew how git worked, and that it's really not easy to fake github progress and usage such as commits and branches and merges, to which she said "I know," which I honestly doubt. She asked if I was vaccinated because the job requires you to work on site and I told her I as vaccinated and boosted and that I was looking at my vaccination card on my desk. So it was a laundry list of 'concerns' she had and I had a response for each and every lousy item and I still have radio silence because apparently I'm not a worthy candidate for a job whose posting calls Squarespace a CMS. I told my father about this and he laughs and says it seems she doesn't want to give people like you that sort of job. So, what more can I do if these gatekeepers don't want me to get a job in this field?
Would you like me to tell you the story about how MongoDB reached out to me for a customer support role and they seemingly didn't hire me because I said that you could see if an SSH call to a server completes its handshake instead of using the `ping` command and that I didn't actually use MongoDB all that much (my therapist insists that the second statement is why I didn't get the job) in projects were apparently reason enough to reject me for the $60k/yr position, or is that tldr enough?
What we are seeing right across is the entry level job market is the worst that it has even been right now. Bootcamps and colleges have flooded the job entry level job market as hiring pretty much froze for 18 months. There are a surplus of entry level talent, not enough jobs and companies tend to be more hesitant bring on associate/interns/junior engineers while still unsure of the RTO plans. Onboarding someone new to the job is hard enough remotely, never mind training a brand new engineer up to be productive.
I suspect the talent wars will eventually force companies to start hiring and training up talent, unfortunately we see that only with larger companies like Amazon, Microsoft etc You can search "Microsoft Leap" and check it out. I would also encourage you to try more in-demand skills than front-end web development such as AWS certificates, Azure Certificates , cloud or cycbersecurity work as their tends to be less competition for the roles. Good luck!
I'm glad to see you've already got support and some tips here on HN. I'd be happy to give a bit of my time, as well. If you'd like to share some details privately, I'm kyle@kemitchell.com.
I no longer work day by day as a programmer, but I'm very much still in the industry, and I stay connected in the field.
That isn't to say there aren't plenty whom desire liberty, simply that it's not a requirement of migrating.
2. I expect fraction of Putin supporters among Russian immigrants to be highest among people immigrated in 1990s - many (but definitely not all) from this generation continued to watch Russian TV while living abroad. In 1990x Russia had relatively free press but Putin slowly turned it into a propaganda tool and this slow transition allowed Russian TV to keep old audience.
3. Support of Democrat/Republican IMO has little to do with the support of Putin or Russian government. I don't even think Republicans hate Russia less than Democrats. Trump showed a fondness for Putin but didn't do anything that would benefit Russia, quite the opposite. If you are not in a partisan bubble choice between Democrats and Republicans is not the choice between good and evil, it is an attempt to choose a less evil one. Russian immigrants know too well that socialism failed in the Soviet Union and Democrats talking about socialism can be enough to tilt the scales.
I think were it happen while Trump was actively disparaging NATO, sowing discord among allies, ridiculing soft power of liberal democracies, all happening against a backdrop of deferring to tyrants and dictators, a spinning rotating door of chiefs of staff and secretaries of state at the White House, self-pitying rallies of sycophants, daily scandals, active sabotage of long-standing institutions of government with loyal figureheads, holding military aid to Ukraine hostage for political blackmail, questioning the need of foreign aid for populist points, the pattern of denial, shifting responsibility, blaming others as a response to pandemic… Need I go on?
I don’t think Putin would’ve needed much more than that to tip the scales in his favor.
In my opinion Putin either tremendously miscalculated the timing of the invasion to after Trumps term in the office, or was expecting his second term to bring about even more fertile conditions.
All administration staffing and mean tweet problems aside, there’s a reason Putin waited until Trump was out. Trump was very unpredictable and that alone prevented this from happening years ago.
It’s like Roosevelt said, “yell whatever comes out of your mouth and carry a big retinue of inexperienced but loyal sycophants” diplomacy. Thanks, Throwaway!
I would count photo ops with Putin and Kislyak in the WH as a win, but not as big as Trump blackmailing Ukraine or openly floating a U.S. pullout from NATO. We're talking about the same Trump, right?
The Russians and Ukrainians I have met in the U.S. all bring up corruption, not the failure of socialism. They tend to be pretty clear on their politics.
Well, I am kind of thinking now that we may need to keep the military spending as it is after all.
Considering most want to go to EU, UK, Canada and the US and not eg. Turkeye / Kazachstan / ... They don't share the Putin mindset.
Note: Turkey is popular, bit less than the west according to my observations on telegram where they want to relocate.
I think the solution should be on a government level: a government who doesn't support Russian aggression (and that's is the whole world accept ~10 countries), I'd introduce some sort of a visa/work permit/citizenship requirement for Russians to state if they support Putin or not. I'd also make a video recording of their answers similarly to the citizenship oath in many countries in case they "change their minds" later on. If they don't have a process like that or a similar process, they may introduce people who are pro-war and pro-Russian into their societies. I consider it extremely dangerous for countries that are neighbouring with Russia because Putin's propaganda used "Russians oppression" or "Russians mostly live there" as an excuse for aggression in Pridnistrovia, Goergia and Ukraine. This is especially true for Baltic states were standards of living are higher and they are potential destinations of these new waves of immigrations.
I'm not sure if a business owner can do something like that because it might be considered as a discrimination of political views or something similar. I assume no one was asked during a job interview if they supported Hitler, right ?:)
If you want to know if a Russian person supports the war, among questions like "do you support war in Ukraine/Putin?" you can ask if they supported of annexation of Ukrainian Crimea in 2014. Most Russian immigrants I met said "of course no, it's a crime and a violation of the internal laws". But some avoided answer and said something like "well it's a complex question, Crimea is mostly Russian and they were treated badly", "or Crimeans were suffering", "Crimea was never a Ukrainian territory" or something along those lines - that's a red flag. Or "it's a politics and I'm trying to stay out of politics" is also a red flag. No one will tell you directly that they support the aggression in 2014 after what happened in Feb 24th.
I do hope that "good" Russians will get a better life and "bad" Russians will stay in Russia and enjoy the products of their believes.