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Comment by avgDev | Hacker News Reader

I work for a non-tech company as a solo full stack dev.

I have been able to interview with fortune 500 companies and get offers.

I have been getting contacted by recruiters from hot startups, Microsoft, Google, AWS, Amazon and Meta.

I am not sure if I'm stupid but I really don't know how "no experience" can be better than wrong experience. There is always things you learn, better negotiation tactics, your value to a business, and all the mistakes you have made.

This sounds like, "if you don't work for these tech companies, you are doing programming wrong". There are many ways to be successful and this POV is toxic imo.

Edit: I would love to hear what the wrong experience is.

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People who agree with the post also say things like "i don't hire people with certs" in IT. Which is a load of bull of course. They want to teach you their own way and disregard industry practices because they are the best.

What I have learned is this also means they don't want someone who will disrupt or question the status quo.

In infosec for example, I work or worked at a place with a lot of really smart people but they have been at the same company long and the idea of doing things in a layered defense strategy (not perimeter/firewall/ids centric) way is "the wrong way" to them even though that is best practice now. On the other end I keep running into people that have worked at startups like uber for a long time and their answer to threats is "use only macs" or "get everyone a yubikey". No shit? Lol

You can't be experienced and not have some bad experience but managers and people in power disregarding experienced people's opinion's without applying critical thinking is laziness and incompetence.

You need experienced people as well as people with little experience but who are motivated to learn on any good team. It's like a sports team lineup, you don't want everyone having the same skill and experience you want them to have what is right for the position they are playing.

As I read that thread, an engineer--possibly just out of a good school--who does well on interviews is perhaps assumed to be a good hire even though they don't have much experience. (Though maybe they did an interesting project or two.)

On the other hand an engineer who took a job out of school in the IT department of some (perceived) boring stodgy company even if they really aren't (Walmart was mentioned) obviously has something wrong with them in the eyes of some even if it's not obvious what exactly. Better to pass and go for the right new grad who is probably a bit cheaper as well.

The engineer who already has a job at a random company has a known skill level and growth trajectory. The engineer out of a good school has an unknown growth trajectory. Conditioned on the accomplishments of alumni at the school and the (subjective) acceptance bar of the school, the new grad engineer could have a much steeper growth trajectory than the established one.

Silicon Valley got this right on the money ironically [1]. If you have nothing to show, people assume a potential future ability level rather than basing their decisions on your actual ability.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo

> Walmart was mentioned

I believe you mean Walgreens (in patio11's original thread).

You're right. I did incorrectly read Walmart. Although I think the same thing probably applies to Walmart Labs in a lot of circles.

Really? Purely from an outsiders perspective, the last I had heard was they used a healthy mix of java, clojure and nodejs- definitely not stuffy or stodgy at the time.

No ideas what they've been up to the past 5 or so years though.

Edit: granted, I have no idea if they'd any ML type services running, and doubted they were blazing any trails with K8s or the like at the time. Still, it didn't seem all that bad.

The question is about outside perceptions about various companies. I agree that Walmart Labs has done some fairly cutting edge stuff.

Just a side note: FAANG recruiters/startups spam pretty much any developer with buzzwords on their socials (LinkedIn/GH/etc). That’s not necessarily a signal you’re hirable at those companies.

It is a signal you can get an interview.

You can get a phone screen and potentially a take home/first round, sure.

Aren't the technical interviews the primary component at these companies at lower levels though?

Hard to imagine someone with a few years of "the wrong experience" who is well versed technically and can handle the coding interview will consistently fail interviews just because the interviewer doesn't recognize their company.

I'm not speaking to whether one with "the wrong experience" can or cannot pass FAANG-level interviews, I'm just commenting on the recruiter outreach from FAANG or startups (particularly AMZ) don't necessarily know or care about your skill, they only care about the buzzwords listed on your social profile(s) and maintaining a "hot" pipeline; aka getting bodies through the pipeline and hoping not to piss off engineering because of the amount of low quality candidates.

Recruiters are (usually) not technical and/or have never been engineers, so the barrier to the first round (if you've been reached out to) is super low and not necessarily indicative as to whether you have what it takes to make it through the whole loop/offer stage.

I don't disagree, it just seems to me the main barrier of entry is getting the interview in the first place since interviews focus on the technical component, not your resume. So if getting an interview is easy, then it follows that worrying about getting "the wrong experience" is not worthwhile.

I'm mostly responding to the article's claims - not saying you made these claims.

Getting the interview at FAANG is easy, not at trendy startups

> This sounds like, "if you don't work for these tech companies, you are doing programming wrong"

He's saying that some people will judge you for working in less prestigious places. He's explicitly condemning that but saying it still happens.

Have never worked for FAANG/MAGMA, but the theory is that if you have `n` years of, say, MUMPS experience at an insurance company, the next candidate with `y` years of Python experience will have a better chance of getting hired---even if `y=0`.

More realistically, you (arguably) have a better chance of getting hired with 3 years of Python exp at a ML startup or whatever, than with 10 years of exp with $unsexy_lang at $unsexy_corp.

> I work for a non-tech company as a solo full stack dev.

If you don't mind me asking, how did you come across this sort of a job? I don't suppose there's a job board for non-tech companies looking to hire a solo full stack dev? :)

I met an older guy in a CS class. We did a project together and became school buddies. Before graduating I wanted to intern somewhere where I would get a lot of freedom. He was high up in a business and decided to offer me an internship.

I did a couple small projects to solve problems they were having. They were successful. I'm now pretty important to the business. I know databases of the ERP system, I have a lot of trust and basically am above the HR and have complete freedom.

When I interview no company is willing to offer the flexibility they do. So, honestly I'm not even sure how one would go about finding a gig like this.

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