Ask HN: Anyone else struggling to get a software dev job? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Anyone else struggling to get a software dev job?

105 pointsineedausername179 comments

Recently interviewed with a medium sized company for a backend dev position.

They said I passed the interviews and promised an offer. After a month of "trying to find a customer to place me", telling me I'm a fantastic candidate etc. they finally decided to cancel the verbal offer until maybe next year.

I've recently had other bad experiences were they basically try to find excuses to cut me on interviews. It's like I'm answering the questions correctly minus one, so I'm disqualified.

I don't remember job searching being that hard even a few years ago, anybody relates?

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I was struggling to find a job with big corporations and also with startups backed by big VCs (the trendy ones with a lot of big corporate clients) but I had no problem finding jobs with independent bootstrapped startups (quite the opposite; I had to turn down offers and they were outbidding each other)... Weird.

If you're going through interviews which are going perfectly and companies are backing out at the final stage with weird excuses which don't make sense, you could be in the same situation as me. I'd recommend to NOT apply for any big corporation or VC-backed startup; only apply for bootstrapped startups; you will save yourself a lot of time. Some of these bootstrapped startups are very successful/profitable and growing quickly.

I had a lot of weird stuff happening to me. One big name company I was interviewing with (and perfectly matched for) seemed very interested to recruit me; they told me they had several different possible roles open for me and already hinted to a high salary... Then after the final interview (which seemed to have gone very well), I got an email saying "The role has been filled." - Whatever happened to all the other roles they said I would be suitable for? I had wasted hours on a challenging tech test (which I aced) and did 3 interviews - I thought the final interview was meant to be a formalty. Sometimes I think that maybe I've been blacklisted by big tech.

> Then after the final interview (which seemed to have gone very well), I got an email saying "The role has been filled."

I would guess that one of the many people you interviewed with decided they didn't like you. That would shut down the whole process and give you no meaningful explanation. I think it's an example of how hiring is really quite bad, hard and bears little relationship to performance.

No, it means that he was just one of several people interviewed for the position, and either they liked someone else more, or they already had someone considering an offer when they interviewed him but were interviewing a backup in case the other candidate declined.

I doubt that, for a big company there are always a bunch of roles. It would be unusual to get through the interview process successfully and then be dumped after they've made the effort because there was another good candidate. My experience with big companies, on both sides, is that they would make an effort to place someone.

There are a huge contingent of people whose idea of “performance” isn’t aligned with those around them. Given some of the absolutely terse personalities I see on HN sometimes, and the wider developer community, I always take these “I aced the interviews” stories with a grain of salt. I’ve certainly interviewed and ultimately rejected candidates who ace the technical component but have some other blatant showstopper.

I do agree with you about people's attitude to how they did in technical tests. But I also think all interviewers having a veto is the wrong approach. However, I don't think companies really have time or inclination to do it any other way.

I think I do well on both technical tests and the conversational side. I'm basing that on ratio of offers.

> But I also think all interviewers having a veto is the wrong approach

It's based on people assuming that others will use that veto reasonably. Company i work for had a veto system but i don't think it was ever used. It was also essentially 3 level system "hire", "probably not" and "i object to this person ever working at this company"

I've heard the latter being expressed a few times but only with candidates that nobody was keen on.

> but I had no problem finding jobs with independent bootstrapped startups

Is there a particular place where you go to find these?

Speak to an independent tech recruiter/agent who deals with many clients and tell them that you're looking to work for a bootstrapped startup. Those who work with startups usually know their backstory.

Generally speaking, I wouldn't search for bootstrapped but rather sustainable. Plenty of companies that raised a seed and become profitable. Just that the current situation of the company would be a reveal during the interview where you should ask whether the company is profitable or what is the runrate and plans for the next round. Nonetheless, here is one resource: - https://peoplefirstjobs.com/

I was thinking about creating something similar for ages, regardless of profitability or money. There are so many great companies out there.

is that the sole respurce you use? is that where you found your current employer? please suggest others if you do use others.

Big companies can be more bureaucratic, disorganised and so on. In feel like big companies are suited to people who can master the interview hoops, gauntlets and summersaults and small companies need someone who can clearly just get the job done.

You're probably disagreeable. I'm struggling too. Have you tried agreeing with absolutely everything? That's what your competition is doing.

Next time a company tells you about their mission statement, stop them midway, eyes open in awe, and say "That's my mission statement."

Do the same thing when they tell you about their tech stack. Or anything else. I'm not kidding. The last applicant agreed with everything, and you need to agree with everything harder.

Agreeability and disagreeability are two separate skills but the tech industry sees it as a spectrum. They do not hire disagreeable people.

Good advice

Good advice? This is AMAZING advice! I can't remember the last time I received such great advice. This advice is like a gift from the heavens. Life changing stuff right here.

There's an offer in your inbox.

This is an excellent point you made here, I'm not a people pleaser and really need to think about this better.

That transparent obsequiousness would be a huge red flag for me. I guess I'm disagreable.

You don’t need to be cynical about being agreeable. You can just have a positive disposition, smile when you sit down, and find the positives instead of surfacing the negatives. A lot of people get an ego kick feeling smarter than others because they’re more cynical.

The trick is to not be transparent about it.

This may be true, but wait until you get hired and you disagree with a lot of what they do or say, internally. You will not be able to let it be known and you will hate the people, your job, and everything. It may be better to find another team that you agree with if you don't desperately need the job.

"They do not hire disagreeable people."

And this is why skilled people can't find a job. Unless you can kiss a*s you won't get hired. This is wrong! If some one agrees with every word you say, this should be a red light. This might means the person don't have a mind of there own. Unless you want to hire a robot ^_^

I dunno I'm an asshole and I'm having to beat people off with a stick at the moment. However in UK and there is a market vacuum.

Anyway you don't have to kiss ass. All you have to do is have a solution to problems and ability to shape ideas not just cut them off. Unless it's nodejs. That can just fuck off.

When I hire people myself I'm looking for people who are opinionated but can back that up with experience and evidence and thought processes which show how the conclusion was reached. I really don't want to hire passive production monkeys.

It works, the following words made me rich:

- Great idea

- Makes total sense

- That's how I would do it

- I agree

And this is not a joke.

Well a team has to come together around a shared goal. If a team is made up of people who disagree with what the team is trying to do... it's not a team

I think people often share common goals, but “how” is where disagreement tends to be. And I think that’s healthy. Some friction in decision making will often yield better decisions.

> Some friction in decision making will often yield better decisions.

I agree. The problem starts when this sort of friction continues after all the decision-making is done and starts manifesting as contrarian positions towards how the project is being conducted, always insisting that their idea was better, and even assuming aspects of sabotage.

It's one thing to determine a path forward, but an entirely different thing to assume a "my way or no way" stance.

Even if I don't agree 100%, I'll find myself saying these things. Especially in today's world of pointless Zoom meetings, endless "check-ins", it's often not worth arguing. Rarely is anything mission critical. (If it's a "big deal", I will disagree.)

them: "We should switch to rebase! I read this blog!"

me: "ok."

(even though this will cost hundreds of productivity hours - explaining it to new devs and wondering why all your history disappeared again, sigh you shouldn't rebase on a public branch! , gah fuck it)

Is this a hill I’m willing to die on?… again?…

Yeah, sure, sounds like a great idea.

I worked on projects where rebase was the norm, even for public feature branches.

Not a problem.

Rebase is a tradeoff of handling merge conflicts with achieving a commit history that is far cleaner and audit-friendly.

The point being that some technical choices are not black and white, and people mistake baseless personal opinions with technical truths. There's an awful lot of workable grey areas with tradeoffs.

If a team member insists on pushing his personal opinions as the truth, challenges and opposes each and every proposal that does not match his personal opinion, and drags on personal vendettas in decisions that didn't went their way... I'd say that no matter where their tech skills are, that person is still incompetent and a liability in any team.

>>And this is why skilled people can't find a job. Unless you can kiss a*s you won't get hired.

You're trying too hard to rationalize away personal problems and your inability and/or unwillingness to address them.

The opposite of disagreeable is not "kissing ass". The opposite of disagreeable, to start off, is not being a total asshole. No one's technical prowess is impressive enough to ignore the fact that they are completely insufferable. A project survives extra weeks or even months, but a team does not survive an eggeegious team member who makes everyone around them miserable.

Take a long hard look at yourself before throwing blanket accusations at anyone and everyone around you.

As the saying goes, "if someone is an asshole, they're an asshole, if everyone is an asshole, you're the asshole"

"I do not hold all the exact same beliefs as you" is not at all the same thing as "I am a disagreeable person."

"I will say yes to absolutely everything you say" is not at all the same thing as "I will do a good job."

There are absolutely far too many workplaces where you are expected to kiss ass to be hired or to progress.

Personally, I know that I would never feel OK working there, so I don't see the point of trying to pretend I'm an ass-kisser in interviews. I actually am an agreeable person, overall; I just want to find a place to work that will be OK working with me, not with some extremely different false face I have to spend a huge amount of energy putting on every day just to get paid there.

That’s not an unreasonable take when it comes to companies.

Missed calls, days to hear anything, weeks of back and forth, constant apologies, spaced out mgmt, PMs, euphemisms, platitudes, a whole bunch of typical humans nitpicking every sentence and syntax structure, unpaid wages… it’s rampant across society and we all keep accepting it.

You’re turning this into a blame game on one person when there’s plenty of anecdotes, legal cases, and data to show that company’s are full of assholes.

What makes someone an asshole?

>> You're trying too hard to rationalize away personal problems and your inability and/or unwillingness to address them.

Stop your anonymouse trolling on HN and seek some professional mental health you really need it.

Every time I've hired someone like this they've made awful decisions. The same thing that makes them so agreeable, I think, makes them awful at making decisions.

>>"They do not hire disagreeable people."

>And this is why skilled people can't find a job

Which is a good thing because it makes it affordable for startups to hire skilled people.

Agreeing is pretty much always the best move in the beginning. If you after careful consideration thinks something is wrong, you better be ready to offer an alternative or make a compelling argument for dropping it. You'll also have to have earned their trust, otherwise you're just some random stranger with an opinion.

Even so, it’s a lot of work trying to get your opinion heard over the noise of people with terrible ideas.

While I'm sure there are places where that's the winning move, I think most companies are just fine hiring from the majority of folks who fall somewhere on the spectrum between "agree with everything as hard as possible" and "argue/complain in the interview to the point that it becomes a culture-fit red flag".

If you're looking for technical work and are really getting rejected because of something at the culture-fit level (which is where "agreeableness" falls), I'd say it's less likely that you're insufficiently kiss-ass/agreeable, and more likely that you're being identified as "potential problem teammate" material for other reasons.

This is the kind of terrible advice that many people (including many programmers) think is great advice because they don’t see nuance in the world.

To get a job you don’t have to agree to the nth degree with everything that’s said to you. You just have to be a nice more-or-less qualified person who’s enjoyable to be around and communicate with. That’s a foreign concept to many people (not just programmers) so they look for some “trick” like never disagreeing.

It’s even better that this trick makes them feel better about being a miserable wet blanket because they’re putting one over on the interviewers.

Counterpoint: I interview developers regularly and my current company is 100% looking for agreeable people. If you say you love doing TDD and pair programming, then you are half way through being hired.

If you mention reservations about either, that's going to cost you.

It may “cost them” but they may not want the job either after that point depending on the context of the question. I really dislike pair programming if it’s required all the time and would kindly thank you for your time and look elsewhere. If they want a job at all costs I guess I can’t speak to that.

On a side note, oh man the stories I could tell you. Pair programming all the time is like an evolution of Foucault's panopticon. You police yourself because you are closely being watched all the time and your peers will tattletale to your manager if you don't pair hard enough.

It's brutal.

You police yourself so you do well at the thing your bosses want you to do well at? That sounds awful.

I disagree but I don't think a discussion with you would be productive. The sarcasm tells me you are not going to engage honestly. If you wish to learn more about the negative psychological effects of being watched all the time, there's plenty of material online for you to read. Particularly, Foucault and the panopticon.

To be honest, I think you’re the one who won’t engage honestly.

Here’s a question for you: What are the benefits of being watched all the time?

I understand that from the employee’s perspective they might not like being watched all the time and that it can affect their behavior. It can also prevent them from doing their best work.

That said, there are reasons why an employer would want to watch their employees all the time. If the employee dislikes it enough and thinks they have better options, they can stop working there.

Doesn't the culture of being watched all of the time result in people staying later and doing things to appear busy but generally not productive? In Japan that culture is present in many offices but in the west we've adopted a different balance.

My impression is that you certainly were angling for a very specific negative interpretation of what the person you were responding to was saying, namely that that person was implying they didn't want to perform the duties of their job. They were not saying this, they were saying that constant surveillance is not good.

The only reasons an employer has to constantly be watching relate to paranoia or micromanagement, i.e. a lack of trust in the professionalism and competence of their employees. This is abysmal and the employee quitting or not is unrelated, much as how bullying is bad even if technically an employee can quit. Not to mention that quitting is not an optional for everyone, depending on their circumstances.

The truth is that some people can’t be trusted and aren’t that competent. These people may be cheap to hire though. Pair programming and/or monitoring of them is a way to get a predictable baseline out of them - even if that baseline is very low. You can say it’s a bad decision by the business, but it’s their bad decision to make.

It's their bad decision to make, and it deserves criticism. If you're basically intentionally hiring terrible performers and the only way to ensure an adequate baseline is to literally monitor them 8 hours a day, I hope that that company goes out of business. The alternative is to promote a culture of competence whereby other employees will want to set such a baseline for other employees such that abysmal performance does not slide but without someone hovering over your shoulder your entire tenure.

Maybe hiring is overly biased toward agreeableness but both ends of that spectrum are really bad, one end has people-pleasers and yes-people who provided no feedback but give a false confidence that they do, but at the other end is folks who shut down every idea because they don't immediately know how it can be implemented or it doesn't immediately pass their existing filters.

I think there's a middle path and I think I'd try to apply it interviews, rather than "just" daily life and work, and that's to assume there's something of value where the other party is coming from, and use your creative powers to try to find that value. Make an attempt to understand the other party with an understanding that your thought process may have to play with things it reactively thinks are bad and solve within that framework before either rejecting the bad thing or finding out it's wrong.

Don't blanket accept or reject their mission statement or tech stack, come with a creative curiosity about it.

More relatable perhaps is the idea of charisma. If I’m interviewing a technically skilled person who is a bull in a China shop when it comes to personality, it doesn’t matter what they create - they’re breaking the team with their oblivious nature.

If people will actively seeking other teams because of a new member’s personality, it’s something you can bet will be looked for look for in an interview.

> Do the same thing when they tell you about their tech stack. Or anything else.

Another dimension of the "it depends" response to this is seniority.

If you're relatively junior, or will appear relatively junior based on your resume, don't express strong disagreement, but rather eagerness to learn. The team wants you to be someone who can contribute, and help them make progress towards their current goals. You're not there to re-evaluate decisions about their stack based on the glimpses get you get during the interview process.

But if you're quite senior, the team perhaps wants you to help them level up or improve. Agreeing with everything would also suggest you don't have something new to contribute that helps take them beyond the track they're on now. Don't disagree without a good reason, and be able to explain your thinking. Ask questions before you arrive at a position. Understand why the fence is there before you advocate its removal. But insightful, constructive "disagreement" can still be a way to demonstrate the value you'll bring.

Seniority yes but also consulting. Consulting is the only place I've ever found success.

Even if you are senior, I wouldn’t outright disagree. You never want an interview to go a negative direction and disagreement is generally by its nature a negative event. Instead use phrases like “have you considered…”. It doesn’t convey active disagreement, but offers a way to state your direction more hypothetically. Even if the position is there to help them improve, you still need a level of diplomacy and the interview will likely try and reveal that.

This is general work advice not just interview advice

bad: I disagree with the way this is done/this is just bad. Lets do X!

good: I see the motivation with the current approach and understand the goals but i wonder if we might be better served by doing X instead. Usually this allows for Y benefits, but I'm open to discussion here.

Add some fluff to ensure nobody gets defensive and articulate your flexibility (even if you don't really have it)

I'm not sure where OP's question would lead anyone to decide they were disagreeable unless you know them. I also would never advise anyone to lie or mislead during an interview because the people who hired them will know they've been had and that can be harmful for future relationships. My best advice is to always be nice, polite, and kind; and for all we know, OP might be doing that already.

Funny, I typically hire people who are skilled, but disagree with me in some way. I want to be challenged and grow a diverse team.

My previous boss, who offered me a CTO position a couple years after having been hired as a freelancer, said the thing he appreciated from me the most was that I wasn't afraid to say "No, Paul. Let's not do that. Here's why."

Sometimes the boss has a bad idea, if you're the tech guy it is your responsibility to decide if it has legs or it's a waste of time. Many consultants say yes to anything because even wild-goose chases are billable. But honesty and integrity tend to pay off in the long run, IME.

> Next time a company tells you about their mission statement, stop them midway, eyes open in awe, and say "That's my mission statement."

As somebody who only does technical interviews, I must say, you better cut that crap out before you get to me. Because I just puked a little.

I worked at a company with the mission statement "To deliver well-qualified users to customers." Yeah, claiming it's your personal mission statement wouldn't go over so well.

i think w3c really missed out by not specifying a sarcasm tag for html.

Right? At least server codes got a teapot!

I'd call it hyperbole, not sarcasm, because I do actually agree with the underlying point. I'm a big fan of absurd humor and obtuse humor.

The other reason for this, is you want to present the enthusiastic side of you.

A candidate that is energetic, excited, and passionate about programming. Practice this in front of the mirror. Record yourself.

Expressing genuine interest in their problem space and challenges will get you further than feigned agreeableness.

Playing the hiring manager's advocate:

Why should I hire you if you don't like my mission, my tech stack or my culture when there are clearly a bunch of talented people who do like all of them?

Would it not serve both of us for you to shut up, be grateful for the work while you keep looking for that perfect fit? Or even better, just keep looking and I'll keep looking for someone who genuinely likes the way we do things.

So you think that they just want to hire simple yes-men? Is is really that simple?

It sounds like the core of your personality issue comes down to you thinking that this is the dichotomy.

Most companies are on a soft or hard hiring freeze right now. Many growth efforts are funded through debt that has recently become expensive. Even if a company doesn’t rely on debt for growth they are probably waiting to see if macro trends point to how hard of a recession we’ll go through before readjusting budgets. Come January most companies will reopen hiring aligned to macro trends in the economy and their own fiscal makeup.

What’d important to know is right now is a critical point before trends show how bad things may get. During this period companies tend to hold their breathe.

Of course, usually most companies will backfill for positions so you can find those even during a freeze.

Without knowing too much about the original poster's particular circumstances, I expect this is probably the answer. If you can endure until early next year, things may improve.

I am not on the market as a software developer anymore.

I completely shifted my mindset since closing off my own company and stared working as an UX designer.

Since I am considered “old” (hello, ageism) in the UX design profession, I don't expect someone to judge me by my proven experience and accomplishments of the past.

I don't give my honest opinion on the given issue. I ask more follow-up questions and let others give the direction of the solution.

Furthermore, I consider my self a facilitator of processes, my focus is on a communication and documentation part of the work. The other stuff (actual design work) is somewhat automatic.

The tricky part is how one navigates the landscape of responsibility, but adaptation to a political point of view is a must.

Actually, I found out that my employers are not paying me to deliver good UX for their users.

They are paying me to visualize and validate their own biases and let them freely contradict themselves.

In short, I UX'ed the hell out of the employment process. And when the users (company, PM, teams) are happy everything is fine.:)

I think this is why people burn out on this profession. At the end of the day someone’s agenda is always more important than the users.

Struggling for almost 6 months to find work for which I have 15+ years experience, with all sorts of shenanigans occurring at every stage, despite finding hundreds of "open" and actually appropriate positions.

Hiring is broken; very many reasons for it; I suspect many of these companies aren't actually hiring but haven't yet figured out that it's uncool to waste everyone's time pretending.

Same here. 16 years experience, I've been looking for 6 months. To be honest I haven't been trying very hard the last 3 months, because it's fucking exhausting.

A lot of LinkedIn recruiters and even people off HN job threads wasting my time. Contacting me, great interview, saying I'm a perfect candidate, and then ghosting me. That or I must have become really terrible at interviewing and reading people.

Freelance job boards are useless unless you're a junior React dev or want to get into a Web3 crypto startup. I've been out of the job hunting circus for a while, and it's been dire.

That said, I asked a little too much for a position at a dream company I always wanted to work for, but at least they graciously came back to me to say "we would have hired you, but your salary expectation are a way out of our budget so we went for someone else." Oh well, live and learn. The economy's a little tight these days, so one needs to adjust their rates accordingly.

A lot of software jobs require, say, 3, 5, or 7 years of experience, and they're looking for someone who is minimally qualified, or possibly even slightly underqualified who will see it as an amazing opportunity that they are lucking to have and grow into - and not someone who has essentially already done that job for many years.

You may have more success if you can identify and move into a role that requires, and values, 15+ years of experience - probably management of some sort.

Same. It does feel like they want to hire only yes-men.

I’m not on the market but I have noticed my recruiter email spam has shrunk from multiple emails a day to maybe once a week at most. Quite a turn around.

I'm still getting spammed at a fair rate, but it's possible that there is some general hiring freeze going on.

I get about one recruiter mail a year, I wonder what I am doing wrong... (or right)

What are you an esoteric language engineer or something :).

Hello, we love your profile, you should join our high energy PHP team!

You shouldn't keep your emails too private.

Age, maybe?

I'm a computer programmer in my early 40s and I've started seeing a decrease in unsolicited LinkedIn emails once I got to 35, give or take a year or two.

37yo here and still have to fence recruiters off

I get plenty, but only when I set my LinkedIn account to open for jobs, and they’re usually crappy jobs.

Maybe that means all the recruiters are being laid off

Same here. The recruiter email and LinkedIn spam has definitely declined.

I went from one a day and 200+ views/month on my LinkedIn profile to one every couple of weeks and ~50.

I did just announce that I was running a startup, though, so I just assumed that the sharks will start circling in a couple of months hoping I fail and need a new job.

Part of it may be due to the recent layoff's as well. For recruiters, that's a much warmer lead to work as the individuals have come from well known companies and maybe in a position to accept a lower salary range given the circumstance. Happened with the startup I worked at once. When recruiters find out the company is closing down, which is known prior to the public announcement, they start reaching out to place you elsewhere within the industry.

YES.

I am getting flooded with offerings but just for the "Stay in your cubicle and write code for a boring company, but we have a pingpong table so we're super fun" cringe jobs. It's like recruiters have to make some dumb quota to make and just spam everyone. Nobody truely cares anymore. Engineers are really desired and recruiters know that, but they also kinda judge you negatively for it. Like smiling at you but hating your guts at the same time. (A lot of recruiters where hired during covid19 to find SEs)

Others want to make you pass 25 different psychological and programming tests that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual job, and some you have a great conversation with but never hear back from

It sucks. Big time.

> It's like recruiters have to make some dumb quota to make and just spam everyone.

Pretty close if not the truth.

People's memories are so short...

There have been thousands of layoffs in the tech world in the past few months, valuations of the biggest companies on the planet have been halved. Winter is coming.

The last few years of near million dollar compensation for engineers is the anomaly, not the norm. You're going to have to adapt. But summer will arrive again one day.

You don’t have to fail an interview to not get a job. You just have to not be the best.

Maybe someone else answered questions faster or more confidently. Maybe someone else’s background is more aligned. Maybe someone else clicks more.

Remember there is the minimum score to get a job and the competitive score.

There is no such thing as “finding excuses” for the most part. They didn’t like you, didn’t feel confident in you, or liked someone else better.

Are you really answering questions correctly? I’ve never seen an interview where I can confidently say I answered everything absolutely correctly, meaning “the most correct”. Asked the best questions, answered the most optimal algorithm, explained it the smoothest way possible, etc.

If you think you have, you likely have a perception problem. Ask yourself those questions again, video record yourself answering them and watch yourself.

Oh, there’s definitely those moments where you see the interviewers face fall, their eyebrow raise, or repeat the same question multiple times. But that doesn’t necessarily mean your answer was wrong, just that the interviewer thought it was.

I dunno, my current employer is happy with me, and all employers have always been happy with me for going on 14 years now. I’m rather inclined to think I’m more likely to be correct than the little snot interviewing me and asking me dumb JS doc questions.

Most jobs get reposted, so I'm assuming they keep rejecting people looking for the purple unicorn.

A "verbal offer" is just talk and worth nothing. If someone makes a verbal offer, say thanks, look forward to the paperwork and a start date... and keep applying and interviewing.

Nothing is final until your first day of work (and that cuts both ways).

In my experience since September 2020, I've been without a job despite having graduated from university/college with a bachelor's degree in computer science. It doesn't help that I didn't attend any internships (because of focusing on getting classes done), which affects the connections I know well, and my inability to drive as of this post. The only way I have been getting any relevant experience is through personal open-source software projects, either through making my own, or contributing to existing ones.

Well, this has gotten a little better since I'm working a seasonal job doing shelf stocking (retail job for 90 days since last Monday; 2 days per week, 4 hours per day; 8 hours per week), and is for getting work experience. I got it only with the help of a job recruiting agency. It's not involving computers much, but it's better than nothing.

I'm really surprised you weren't able to land anything in 2021 when companies were binge hiring. It might be because new grads working remotely aren't worth it. It might be something with how you're interviewing, where you're applying, or where your degree is from. The lack of internships hurt somewhat, but not so much you can't land a job in a year in a booming tech environment.

> which affects the connections I know well...

For the most part, no. It's not the connections, it's a stamp that you have a small amount of experience, and for the companies running the internships, it's for their recruiting pipeline. Especially if it was remote, the connections just won't be all that valuable.

> my inability to drive as of this post

If you have to commute and don't live somewhere with good transit, yeah, this is a problem.

> job...shelf stocking...is for getting work experience

It's great that you're doing something and having a little spare cash is nice, but this experience won't help you get a tech job.

Up top, I said 2021. 2022 is different, and I'm not as surprised.

What state/region? It surely can’t be this bad for new grads…

If you are open to relocating, note that in your resume and make it clear when applying. Being open to move will unlock more oppty.

Beyond the retail/seasonal job you need to build a portfolio of tech projects. Things you’ve built for SMBs or even biz ideas you’ve worked on. Prep for the “what have you been doing since graduation” question from prospective employers.

It's really going to depend on your experience.

Low years of experience or a poor resume/CV? Yeah, I bet it's a bit harder than usual.

10+ years or a great resume/CV? You're still getting flooded, although Amazon and Meta spam have stopped for a bit.

I'm at 5+ and I'm working on making my CV more professional, tbh I almost always get an interview opportunity if/when I pursue a relevant job position.

"trying to find a customer to place me" makes it sound like this is an agency. Is that the case?

No, they do both internal hiring and outsourcing.

Well looks like they were just wasting time and there never was a position.

If they won’t set up a first interview with their client after one conversation, they either don’t have anything or they have a tenuous relationship with the client and are afraid of presenting another bad candidate.

If you talk with them as if meeting the client is the expected next step, they’ll take you more seriously, too.

Yeah that line sounded very off to me as well, I'm not sure if it's a communications barrier or if that's what they actually said.

> It's like I'm answering the questions correctly minus one, so I'm disqualified.

That's been pretty almost every interview for me. The ones I get further are the ones where I can answer every question right (or are a bit more relaxed, which has been the exception, not the norm). If I get a single question wrong (or struggle somehow) but otherwise did well, I often don't get the benefit of the doubt and get passed over.

Fastest and most obvious 'getting disqualified for giving one incorrect answer' was when I was called for a technical phone screen for Facebook (many years ago, probably a decade ago at this point) by someone who sounded like they didn't understand anything technical, just had three trivia cards provided by someone on the engineering team with the question and a single term answer.

I was told 'correct' after my first two questions, then after the third question, I answered it in a general sense but without using the term that was apparently printed on their card, was told "Wrong, the answer is blah, thank you for your time." And I got a rejection email a few days later. I was only asked those three questions, nothing more.

I don't remember what the answer was anymore, but something like "toll booth messenging" something like that, it was for an iOS position, I was a lead developer of a small team and had released a half dozen games and apps on the app store already, including one I developed from scratch[1]. Still quite proud of a platforming game called Tracklapse and wish the company was still around and the game still on the store[2].

I don't really do iOS development much anymore, except working on a Swift game for a while that I eventually abandoned (working on something cross-platform now), so I don't really remember what the answer was anymore. A quick google search didn't bring up anything obvious.

[1]: https://youtu.be/uy08ohBLGhE [2]: https://youtu.be/BJ3NNLnKPdQ

As a huge fan of Dice Wars style games (I find Risk a bit too much nowadays), I have no idea how I didn't encounter Proximity. Is there still a usable version out there on any platform or a similar game you'd recommend?

TLDR: The original Flash game of Proximity is still playable on Newgrounds (via an emulator)[1], but that's it from me out there at the moment, but I'm working on new versions. You can probably find some unofficial versions of the game made by other devs in the meantime, though.

I'm working on new versions now but I keep changing scope and platforms when I should just focus on getting something out there again. Proximity 2 iOS code would require too much reworking of the graphics (2D pre-Retina) and the codebase to be worth it at this point.

I also released Proxmity 2 on Xbox Live Indie Games on the Xbox 360, but then the XNA framework died (I probably could have released Proximity 2 a couple of years earlier even, but I got a job working for a small video game publisher that was considering publishing Proximity as an official Xbox Live title, but while I did end up working on an Xbox Live game as a producer while working there (Double D Dodgeball), it wasn't anywhere near as well received, for various reasons, one of which being that it relied heavily on its online mode and we had unexpected network issues at launch that weren't present when testing on Xbox's sandbox network[2].

I left Proximity 2's code dormant for a long while, then a couple years ago I tried converting it to Monogame and was surprised how easy it was to do so, spent some time upgrading various things in it (upgraded from 720p to 1080p graphics, localization support, 6 player support, reworked map selection screen, some other enhancements).

I was getting a little frustrated with scaling of the 2D graphics for different resolutions, though, and eventually decided to just make the leap from 2D to 3D and rewrote it from scratch with that in mind. Wanted to rework it to be friendly for Twitch streamers (let hundreds of people play in Twitch chat along with a streamer), but that just ballooned the scope again, trying to just get what I've got working with pass and play or bot players like Proximity 2 and get it up as an alpha game on Steam.

Proximity 2 probably could be released on Steam in the meantime I guess, but it wouldn't have some features people would probably expect from Steam games, like achievements and whatnot, because I really don't want to sink too much extra time into it considering the 3D version is coming along and should eventually have all the same features (and more).

I also have a basic Pico-8 version I never quite finished so I didn't release (I probably should do that) and I spent a weekend porting that to PlayDate, but I'm holding off on releasing that until I get my PlayDate console shipped to me and try it out. The graphics on it are extremely basic though, I kind of feel like I should spend more time on them, especially with other quite pretty puzzle games other devs had made on the Playdate already, but I should also not just sit on the game either, like I did on all the other platforms.

I also let myself get distracted with working on a Unity version for a little bit, because I really wanted to make a VR friendly version, and came up with a bunch of clever things to make the game deeper (multiple territories, resources, supplies, squads with special troops, etc), but I decided that's just asking for another couple of years of development and I can always do that after I get the other game out there.

Also the success of Wordle (and my day job making React apps) made me want to make a simple web version again. One of these weeks I might sit down and knock that out. Not sure if I should use Phaser game framework or try to just use javascript and CSS like Wordle did. It's easier to manipulate square grids with CSS than hex grids, though, so I'm leaning towards Phaser.

Part of the reason it's been so long is I spent about 5 years pursuing board game design instead of coding games in my spare time. I struggled to find publishers willing to sign my games, though, despite being a finalist in a couple game design competitions. I did get one game signed a few years ago, but the pandemic threw a monkey wrench in things and it could be another couple more years before it comes out. Anyway, I don't need a publisher to release video games, so I finally switched focus back to those again.

I need to get a proper online multiplayer version at some point too, but that's again just too much scope for the moment (I was trying to bypass it a bit with the Twitch and or Discord chat support instead, so I could put that off a bit longer).

[1]: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/183428

[2]: https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/double-d-dodgeball-review/1...

Thanks for your detailed reply and sharing your story with us! I can tell you definitely have a lot of passion for this stuff and I hope you get to spend more time on it all :-) Admittedly I am a bit of a sucker for simplistic, 2D games (hence Dice Wars, Galcon.. and Sudoku ;-)) but it would be interesting to see other takes on it. It might be worth tying in with a Ludum Dare competition to get more eyes on it.

The Newgrounds version worked fine for me to get a feel for the game. Once I got playing I realized it was quite familiar and that I had played it before, just many, many years ago, so thanks for the nostalgia!

Maybe it was a question about Grand Central Dispatch? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/DISPATCH

I also feel the same way about getting all but one question. I usually make it all the way to the end of a really grueling process before getting rejected.

Good guess, but I think I found what it actually was: Toll-Free Bridging[1]. Basically how you can use many Core Foundation types and NeXTSTEP classes interchangeably, like CFLocaleRef and NSLocale.

Never really had to use it myself, at least IIRC, but I was aware of the concept generally. But because I didn't answer by saying 'Toll-Free Bridging', I was done.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ge...

Yeah, totally relate! 5+years here too!

They always oh you are good but we found someone with more number of years and whatever... I still thank God the industry is such that you never feel desperate. Partly, because you always have part-time gigs coming through and also you're well compensated.

Wishing you good luck man! You're not alone.

Yeap it's true there's always cake on the table :) good luck to you too.

But as Milton Waddams said, "the ratio of people to cake is too great".

Currently looking myself. It's rough out there. And companies will never give you any useful feedback, so you're just left with self-doubt.

Yeah and it might be the case that the timing is pretty bad, hiring freezes probably matter.

The hiring freeze and the bleak looking economy right...

Companies are not hiring as much they were when the world economy was booming. And for those of us outside the US, in Africa, to be precise, there's now less remote on HN whoishiring. The remote jobs posted there now are mainly for those domiciled in the US. I would have to look towards other platforms come next month. I've always used HN to connect to top companies but for a while things haven't been that good.

Giving feedback is fraught. Some people take it SUPER poorly, which ruins it for the rest of us. I think it's fair to ask what module of a multi-part interview was scored the lowest, and maybe that would give you some direction. If it makes you feel any better, I regularly see experienced people from (insert any of the 4-5 top tier tech company names) that fall flat on their face in a coding interview. Not practicing for 6 years doesn't make you better at this specific skill. At my current company, we understand that and work around it in the interview process, there is plenty of room to flex system architecture muscles or other mastery to override a lacking DS&A module.

Table stakes (and it sucks to say this, but it's true) is you've mastered the leetcode/cracking the coding interview style questions. I'm a self taught SW engineer so I had to spend about a year cranking on these type of questions before I was proficient. I spend a month or two reviewing before I start any interview cycle.

Do you have any idea where your weaknesses might be?

I've been grinding LC myself for the last half a year or so, it is fun but at the same time it sucks that we need to do this to pass interviews.

Just a counterpoint I've been working in the software engineering industry for 20 years and never once had to do any sort of grinding on leet code or anything else.

I've found that the problem-solving whiteboarding that is common in the industry reflects my university comp sci education (binary tree, big O notation, etc).

On the other hand, I also have zero interest in working for a FAANG so that might have something to do with it.

If you have good recall and a solid comp sci background you’ll pass the table stakes part of the interview no problem. Crazy thing is I get candidates all the time who can’t explain any data structure beyond a list or map. I was trying to set a bar so the OP could know what to improve on if that was the weak point.

Is it right that a lot of companies want you to invert a binary tree on a whiteboard to get a 400-600k TC job? I dunno. But that is the state of things, to me it seems pretty easy to just study for a couple months and then remove that hurdle from the process.

> Some people take it SUPER poorly, which ruins it for the rest of us.

Yeah, unfortunately some candidates get very abusive if you tell them why you've chosen not to move forward (ex. one sent me numerous nasty emails for months after they were rejected). I still like to give feedback to everyone, because I'd rather live in a more honest and direct culture, but it's very understandable why most employers don't.

My thoughts are that companies don't receive any return in giving you feedback and it's easier to claim retaliation/fear/liability* as the reasoning for not doing it. I'm not sure why anyone thinks ghosting the person reduces their ability to retaliate. Maybe a company could ask a candidate to sign a NDA if they would like feedback otherwise let them know they may not hear back from you.

I don't discount your situation above or pretend to know all the aspects, however objectively looking at it, blocking the persons email address would solve some of those issues. I assume most places do this. Noting that even if you didn't give them feedback, ghosted, or rejected them, they could have also sent numerous nasty emails anyway.

I would like to see at some point some of the same professionalism, such as you show with your feedback to candidate's, from all companies that "evidently" have huge wishlists and want to hire professionals.

* I haven't found any sites or papers that have tracked giving / not giving feedback to candidate's and the prospective results outside of anecdotal situations.

* I did notice that some places such as Dragos do list feed back as part of the process. <https://www.dragos.com/blog/what-to-expect-when-interviewing...>

I suppose my weakness is that I don't apply to companies that have LeetCode interviews.

But seriously, I honestly dont know. When I ask for feedback, even during the interview, I get, at best, a "I think you're doing fine" answer.

All the companies I worked with, the interview process is a bit like this:

* there is a pool of interviewers for each set of subjects

* hiring manager picks the subjects, and thus people are signed up for that pool get an interview slot.

* interviewers talk to the candidate one on one (sometimes two on one if there is someone in training or it's a pair panel). They avoid talking to each other until everyone finished with their interviews, so as not to bias each interview. No "This candidate is great" -- never discuss the candidate until everyone is done.

* interviewers fill out a form with feedback. The form contains info about what was asked and how the candidate did.

* hiring manager gets all the forms and makes a decision based on what is on the form. No side channel "Hey, I said 'hire', but really it should be a 'no hire'". If the hiring manager has a question, there is a recorded feedback mechanism in the form where details can be solicited.

* HR keeps all the feedback forms

Asking if you were better or worse than the previous candidate is a no-no. They are not going to tell you, and you shouldn't ask. Because of that, you can't gauge whether you are the best candidate or not, which means you don't know if you got the job.

You can ask if you did well, and they will give you a bland "You did fine", because they don't know if you will be hired or not. Also, most interviewers understand that it is a pain, so when they say "I appreciate you coming in", they usually mean it. Everyone's been on the other side, and we really do appreciate you coming in, and most of the time you really did do fine, and that's all we can say. It's rare to get a really bad interview. In those cases where the interview is awful, I try to say find something positive and then say "well, try not to worry too much". The goal is to be honest, non-committal, and supportive at the same time - because maybe the person might come back and interview later, or maybe they will tell their colleagues, and the last thing you want to do is to give them a bad experience or make them think you are giving them a hard time just because they couldn't answer some questions.

Only the hiring manager knows, at the end of the process, what all the feedback is. Even if you think they did great, if several other people on the panel don't, it's probably a no-hire. The person who met you at the door, offered you coffee, and is shepherding people in and out of the room doesn't know, either. They will try to make you comfortable, make sure everything goes smoothly, and tell you that you did fine.

Only in extreme cases will you get meaningful feedback during the interview. One time I asked one of our standard questions, and the candidate refused to answer. He started arguing with me, saying it wasn't a good question. It was pretty shocking. We don't just ask any question, the questions are reviewed by other people. If I give you a program and ask you to calculate the running time, don't refuse to do that because you don't like the program. It doesn't matter if you don't like it, just answer the question. After you answer the question, you can mention why this type of program is often unnecessary. So that was one situation where I gave feedback, along the lines of "It's not a good interview if you don't answer the question". Please don't have a chip on your shoulder. I know interviews can be irritating and nerve wracking, but let's just get through it with professionalism and a minimum of drama. Odds are good that you did fine, and if even you didn't, there's no point in worrying too much about it.

Fair enough. The company I work for now doesn't do the leetcode style questions in interviews either, which I like. But... one of the most talented developers I know, this self taught FE engineer who is fast, builds sensible abstractions, and is simultaneously concerned with pixel level detail and building a framework that automates things for everyone didn't study the leetcode stuff either, he doesn't find it relevant because he is already good. I agree, but the thing is, you're just giving some box checker a reason to put a red X in your box if you don't know this stuff. It's silly, it's not that hard to learn, and we all know we're going to be asked it at some point. Not learning it kinda says something too. That talented engineer has been rejected by places I know needed his skills, for that reason.

I don't want to wax on about why we need DS&A tests in SW interviews, I think it gets taken to a silly degree and is in no way the only marker for what makes a good engineer. I just think that, as an interviewer, if I ask a question that I'm required to ask as part of the interview loop, and I get some comments about how these questions are silly or the candidate just falls on their face and can't do it... it shows more than a lack of time spent with cracking the coding interview. It shows lack of preparation and you can extrapolate that to the rest of the candidates work. If that person thinks the prep is silly, the prep we all know we need to do for a high paying job, and they just don't do it... it doesn't say anything positive.

Luckily at the company I work at now, you have plenty of chances to prove you just didn't refresh DS&A knowledge and you can still be hired, but why have your docket show up to the panel with an extra thumbs down when passing the bar is so easy... I don't know.

> It shows lack of preparation and you can extrapolate that to the rest of the candidates work. If that person thinks the prep is silly, the prep we all know we need to do for a high paying job, and they just don't do it... it doesn't say anything positive.

But that isn’t true. A surgeon isn’t asked to do a quick review of random medical facts before they take an interview.

I refuse to submit to this ridiculous process, and therefore I’m always failing out in the leetcode part. I’d rather spend my time doing something useful or relaxing.

They take stringent board exams and go through residency, if that existed in software I’d agree with you. It exists in law, other engineering fields have to go through a rigorous process to be a professional engineer and be able to stamp drawings.

The leetcode questions are just Data Structures and Algorithms questions. If you can talk through a couple different data structures, accurately describe the time complexity of your solution, and implement a half working solution you’ll pass. If you haven’t studied DS&A then I don’t think you have worked to perfect your craft, and I don’t want you on my team. This isn’t a trivia test, it’s a small bar that is trivial to get over.

I think this does exist through university degree's and certifications(eq. board exams), previous work experience(eq. residency). I mean a doctor and engineer aren't expected to have mock operating rooms, CAD tooling, do side projects, etc on their own to refresh their skillsets going to another hospital or firm. Most of their case work or projects can also be used as part of their portfolio.

This all required from companies that face no penalty if you start on day one and don't have proper tooling, make up applications and tooling as needed, no standard software workflows, side step security policies, etc. Seems a bit rich asking candidate's to be of such high caliber when the company isn't also held to same standard outside of high compensation.

At least in the US exercise the 90 day period maybe plan 3 months of severance and move on. It probably amounts to the same effort anyway, not that I know of any company that is tracking this or making the data publicly available to study.

I guess if you want to make 10x what a typical person makes, you jump through a couple hoops. I just fail to see the point in lamenting the process or purposefully removing yourself from it on some principle. DS&A studying and time complexity analysis, if you didn’t do it in college, can be learned in a couple months of focused practice. Or you took a class and payed attention. These seem like small things to me to get the big paycheck.

  | I just fail to see the point in lamenting the process or purposefully 
  | removing yourself from it on some principle. DS&A studying and time 
  | complexity analysis..

Well I think there are a few different things here. In your previous comment you mentioned supporting DS&A questions because there are no standards or peer reviews for software development unlike doctors, lawyers and engineers (civil, structural, etc). I think if answering the DS&A questions guaranteed a job at the end or was used ubiquitously in the software industry there would be less push back on this. As the previous poster alluded to doctors, lawyers, and engineers are asked to speak more to their current work and not review some process they previously only used briefly in school, with the understanding that getting their degree and certification means they can learn or refresh on a new concept. While there is incomplete data related to hiring there are a number of anecdotal stories that DS&A are just used as elimination questions without consideration for existing or relevant work experience. DS&A is useful for new software developers that have no work experience outside their initial schooling. Otherwise people who have developed systems or projects can speak the the actual pitfalls and their resolutions.

I agree with you that knowing or thinking about DS&A as part of honing your developmental skills or working with a new language is useful, however I think the scope of it as a sharpened skill provides overall diminishing returns as most people only brush up on it for interviews. This is what I would surmise the previous poster was alluding to in that its not a generally called upon skill in day-to-day software development use, so what purpose is there in asking about it unless a performance issue/enhancement was part of the general discussion.

It is also possible that companies that ask these types of questions are providing indicators of how they operate. To some making a ton of money isn't what they are after so eliminating these types of companies is beneficial to them. Otherwise if 10x the money is your goal, then as you said its just a small hurdle.

One piece of advice: Use the last 5 minutes of each interview to ask questions yourself. About the company, the job, the people, etc. Also ask for feedback on your interview.

A lot of us are told to specifically not give feedback on the candidate's interview directly. Refer to earlier comment of mine, some people take it REALLY poorly. If you've been in industry for a bit I'm sure you've heard the stories.

Still he can ask. If the interviewers don’t give an answer, well, he will not be worse than before.

On the flip side, most candidates never tell you why they declined—they just disappear without a trace.

That being said, I'm committed to giving every applicant direct feedback. Feel free to apply to Grit. [0] https://getgrit.notion.site/Grit-Job-Board-31942eda7b0e49478...

The few times I've gotten feedback, were not exactly helpful.

I recently got feedback that I "didn't have enough experience working with other teams".

What I was actually asked in the interview was to tell a story about a time I'd worked with another team. Apparently that story wasn't good enough... somehow.

Companies rarely give honest feedback, if ever. This is partly out of risk aversion but mainly because they can't admit they are dysfunctional. As far as they are concerned, if you leave with a neutral or positive impression overall, it's a win for the recruiter. That rules out saying anything truthful about the team, hiring manager, or work culture. Recruiters can usually tell you a great deal but they are barred from doing so and they also have zero incentive: if you leave with a mildly positive impression there is a chance you will let the recruiter connect with you on linkedin and search your contacts for matching skills, but if you have a very negative impression then you will give an anti-recommendation to your friends and also decline the opportunity to add the recruiter to your network.

From the companies that did give me feedback I have learned that I really don’t want them to give me any.

It’s almost invariably “I didn’t like the way you named this variable” kind. I can’t ever let it go when I get a result that is so clearly biased/bullshit.

I'm seeing this as well. I sometimes ask, if a NDA is part of the interview, if there will be useful feedback, sometimes there is sometimes there isn't. There will always be people that have difficulties with getting feedback but I imagine saying its a liability is an easy copout for a company that doesn't want to tell you that giving feedback doesn't benefit them so they don't want/see the need to do it.

One interesting thing that happened to me was I kept at the interviews and found a few that flowed more like the conversations I would prefer to have at an interview. This helped with dissipating the self-doubt as I was constantly re-iterating on the positions I was applying to, the companies, job description wording, etc. and seriously questioned "Is this the state if hiring?"

I'm in the cybersecurity realm coming from a sysadmin, networking, background with a recent masters. Companies want people with years of experience as if most businesses outside aerospace and the government in the last 10 years made security a high priority. My observation is that insurance companies realized the risk related to policy payouts and "now" security is a requirement of future riders/contracts.

Maybe not as easy as at the peak, but still not that bad. However, you can definitely have just a run of bad luck, no matter what the job market is like. Maybe try companies in a different industry than the ones you've been interviewing for so far?

Yes, that could be the case. I'll keep looking, I'm not in a hurry too.

This is where the prudence that led you not to be in a hurry pays off.

I've seen decent people gave difficult searches every year for the last 12, there is a randomness to this and a specificity to any individual's job search.

But with some patience you can keep your standards reasonably high and that will serve you well for years to come.

It may just be the timing. We are in the midst of what may be a recession: tech stocks have taken a beating because of tightening monetary policy, and companies are loth to increase investments, including hiring employees. It may also be that you do not have experience that matches expectations closely. In my experience, people say they do not care about experience matching what they need but then go ahead and do design/architecture discussions during the interview that will go well only if you already have prior experience with what they want.

One way to eliminate the latter would be to interview with for jobs that require experience that substantially matches yours.

As someone in Asia, who is competing with remote US/EU job offers, there is one big tip which I want to throw out here, and that is to create a gargantuan digital billboard with your face, name and your skills on it. I have a remote job now, earning well, but since the future isn't promised, I keep interviewing and networking. Most of the requests for interviews I get, come in through my own website, which has quite a footprint on both Google and YouTube (5 videos). It's not a huge website or presence, but it certainly gives me an edge over most applicants. I also more often get contacted by companies themselves, rather than recruiters through those sites.

Another tip I keep giving, is to keep interviewing while being in a job or getting your next job. Don't grow complacent. I average an intro or interview per week, sometimes two. For two reasons, firstly to get better at interviewing and talking about my own skills and goals. And secondly, to not having to start interviewing when I need it. Regardless whether I stay in my current position for 1, 2 or 5 years. I want to have my current job lined up, the last thing I want is to stress needing a job when I don't have one.

> I don't remember job searching being that hard even a few years ago

I think, that if you go about interviewing, by just submitting a CV and cover letter, then things have certainly become much harder. As for some, interviewing has become quite a game to stay good at. I interview for the sake of interviewing. I have now declined at least 5 good offers this year because I already have a job.

I agree with this. Interviewing is a skill like any other that can get stale. It's good to keep it sharp and you never know, while practice interviewing you might find a place you end up really liking.

Should backend devs invest more on soft skills instead ? I've seen bunch of folks succeed at soft skills rather than technical skills and can pass the interview easily.

First of all this has to mean nothing, if they take someone else this does not have to mean you are bad, this just means the other person was perceived to be a better fit.

And there can be deciding aspects way beyond your pure technical abilities, like personality, symphaties, ability to communicate clearly, humour and so on. Especially in smaller companies you might be the future collegue of the people you are interviewing with, that means if they don't get the feeling you are a guy they wanna work with, that will be a pass.

A good idea for you would be to make sure your self image matches with the external image you produce for your surroundings. I don't know you at all, but I know many people in our profession who would interview absolutely horrible and still be convinced afterwards that they did a good job and are the best candidate.

That means the first thing you should do is to ensure you are not lying to yourself and are 100% aware of your shortcomings and your strengths. One technique to do this is the Johari Window: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window

> medium sized company for a backend dev position

> trying to find a customer to place me

It sounds fishy; you may have actually interviewed with some recruiting or contracting firm, not with the actual company with the backend dev position, that being their client.

That client bailed on them for whatever reason and so the job vaporized; then they scrambled to find another one (which they need to make money off you).

A few years ago it took me a few days to find something, this time around it took me a few months. I've had a few experiences similar to you where I was basically told an offer was about to be sent and then it just doesn't happen, or I was rejected after what I thought was a great interview. Don't let it get to you or take it personal and just keep pushing.

Was this a consulting company? That means they hired you a role that wasn't actually funded. They're not usually so transparent about it. Basically they interview to fill roles for projects that aren't sold yet. If they are sold, they need to staff up fast so they can't wait. If the sale falls through they leave candidates dangling.

Not a consultancy.

It was peculiar. I had to fill internal CV on their system too, with more details than the original.

First they decided to hire me for a customer instead of internally saying the customer needs 2 weeks to answer, then getting rejected because "something changed" and customer is looking for Senior+ (wtf??).

Same thing with other customers until finally nothing left, and we love you please let us know if we should contact you next year for further offer, as it takes too long.

"They said I passed the interviews and promised an offer. After a month of "trying to find a customer to place me", telling me I'm a fantastic candidate etc. they finally decided to cancel the verbal offer until maybe next year."

I get downvoted everytime i say this. But, from the recruiters that actually speak afterwards, there are too many good resumes on the market: FAANG. They are everywhere trying to get a remote gig. Anywhere in the bay/ny is hosed for non remote. I have no idea why everyone is trying to hire first to be laid off FAANG. PRO TIP! You can use linked in to see who they ended up hiring.

I think that there is a lot of competition for high-salary positions. Try lowering your salary requirements. Possibly by a lot. There will be less competition for positions with less competitive pay.

You could also consider trying to find a niche and start building a product or service. Maybe for a bootstrapped startup in a related business so there is a little pay, but make it clear that you are building a tool to sell to everyone.

It gets worse at the end of the year (and fiscal year).

From a small sample size in the other direction, we have positions to fill and there have definitely been some candidates recently that have backed out mid-process to take another offer. Despite Meta and Twitter's troubles, the demand for software engineers doesn't seem to be at zero.

I have worked for myself for the last quarter century, but in an equally tough job environment (the late 1980s to early 1990s) I seldom applied to more than two or three jobs. I did this by carefully choosing companies that I would like, and that I felt I could contribute to.

Maybe if you had a username…

If you’re not opposed to contracting through bigger staffing firms, there is still plenty out there. But full time positions do seem to have slowed down from my anecdotal perspective.

I recently got a job this way. It’s not ideal but since I’m coming out of a bad spot mentally, it’s an absolute lifesaver.

This would help, what should I look for?

You aren't disqualified, hiring is tight right now.

The market has definitely shifted away from labor dominance recently. Ask yourself if your expectation still make sense in a different market reality.

I think the real issue is that there are practically an infinite set of unique circumstances (the time, the economic situation, the current company atmosphere, and dozens more variables) which all can impact hiring.

One very simple example which can result in a good candidate who got far through the process hitting a wall is that a key person in the company became overwhelmed with something unrelated. Suddenly they don't have the bandwidth (or have left the company perhaps), and the progress is now halted. That's just one little common example, but there are so many more. Unless you have an insider who can investigate, you just don't know. Wondering is futile, especially as many of us assume it was some failure of our own which caused the process to end.

In the last year I had several very promising applications which went through multiple phases, all seemingly very positive, which ended abruptly and shockingly (with a "Sorry").

From the other side, we have seen posts here on HN where the person says, "I applied to 100 jobs and this is what happened." If you take a shotgun approach, you absolutely will get something. There are many problems with this approach, especially if you are more senior and have opinions about things. For example, there may be some industries or companies which you would not work for regardless of the money. There are also some companies that you know would be horrible to work for, so you would skip those.

It is possible some of us filter out possible companies a bit too heavily, building our hopes on 1-3. And 1-3 is not a big enough set to reliably make it to the end.

My new strong feeling is that those of us with a little runway (as in 1-3 months, not "rich") should just find a personal passion project and build it. Then maybe the project makes money, or maybe it's just a showpiece to pass some of the dumber interview processes which want you to solve unrealistic CS300 level algorithm tests in a crappy web UI with a timer and audience.

But I totally relate about the feeling. Just one of several examples: There's a company that advertises jobs on HN at least once a month. They are hiring many people for this role. I went through two verbal interviews, two live coding test interviews, and finally an interview with the CTO (or at least the tech guy responsible for a big chunk of the devs in the company). Then I got a no. Either I offended the guy (which seemed difficult to do as he showed up to the interview apparently disinterested and unable/unwilling to ever look at me in the camera), or I failed earlier in the process and nobody stopped the show. But given how simple the programming challenges were and how I was able to suggest multiple solutions, I don't think it was that. So I was baffled. I have more stories not so different. You just _never_ know wtf is going on.

> There's a company that advertises jobs on HN at least once a month.

Flexport? I had the same experience.

An interesting thing I learned in the interview process was that the AI and automation that was supposedly powering the new efficient global shipping was actually 95% humans doing the normal human work, not some great technical system.

But to be fair, I also worked for an "AI" startup which was going to revolutionize a certain type of business payment processing system with AI, but in fact it was just another paypal or stripe.

Talk big, and maybe if you get enough funding and have enough time you can actually fulfill the promises you've made. If not, maybe you can at least get a nice exit. $$$.

Kinda nice to hear I wasn’t the only one with such an experience with Flexport.

Indeed, I also found it surprising that it wasn’t as automated as they hype it to be. Felt mostly like a glorified CRM, which I guess in the shipping industry of pen & paper is seen as a massive improvement.

Yup, I took an applied machine learning course which shed light that most vendors oversell what they call AI and ML processing. Perusing through the company structure provides some insight into how invested a company is within the AI operating space. You should be able to find some papers or people at the company that work in the AI/ML space.

  | My new strong feeling is that those of us with a little runway (as in 1-3 
  | months, not "rich") should just find a personal passion project and build it. 
  | Then maybe the project makes money, or maybe it's just a showpiece to pass some 
  | of the dumber interview processes which want you to solve unrealistic CS300 
  | level algorithm tests in a crappy web UI with a timer and audience.

This is the conclusion I came to as well. I started working on a cybersecurity threat hunting, analysis, website/blog. At a minimum I hope to give some insight and formal processing (albeit limited to my experience and exposure to threats) back to other interested practitioners or students. If the interview ends up being a wash the questions / context end up being good things to write up about. This also helps with the take-home or questionnaire type items as I can reference my github and ask for more context surrounding any questions. I.E. I see you are asking about xyz are you expecting a similar output to github/abc-project/results.

  | But I totally relate about the feeling...two verbal interviews, two live coding test interviews, and finally an 
  | interview with the CTO...Then I got a no.

Another consideration is you are just a candidate filling a required, "interviewed outside people" checkbox for what has already been deemed an inside hire. Or internal recruiters have to talk to "X" number of candidates for their status report this week. Which is why I usually don't "prepare" for an interview. If you read up every week and have a general following of your subject area I wouldn't see this as an issue. If I'm not regularly working within a subject area, isn't that obvious from my resume? This is also a good tell within the interview if its kinda BS when you are asked items that don't appear to be related. I usually follow up a bit on how that question relates to my experience or the job posting.

Lastly, It seems kinda obvious that if you aren't going to hire people to grow into the role then you attract people that already know everything about the role, which mostly then leads to the money hopping that some employers comment on. Why stay at my current company if I can do the same thing elsewhere for more.

A few tips I've picked up when interviewing (your experience may vary*):

  - When I see senior roles at a company I ask if its new or an existing position. You _might_ follow up with 
    asking if anyone internally has applied. This also gives you insight into wether they want you to share your 
    skills to train junior people. Thats worth more money so don't leave that on the table, esp. if you are 
    looking to continue more of a IC role.
  - Ask if the person interviewing you will be working with you, same department, related department, etc. This 
    can help shape how you answer or what clarifications to ask about.
  - Ask about tooling and day to day processes. Use the job posting as list to go through. I.e "The posting lists 
    threat modeling and reporting, what tooling do you currently use for that?" This can also be a good segue 
    into you expounding on a subject area. A lot of companies try to put up a good front by asking about 
    unrelated topics that they themselves don't use and/or you find out they are looking to expand into that 
    area.
  - Everyone is replaceable, no job is guaranteed. Any interview, especially VC funded startup, that has (5) or 
    more interviews is a waste of time and speaks to a highly inefficient company. If anyone wants to dispute 
    that they can provide the evidence collected and studied for their company or industry that shows 
    differently. Otherwise its just all random.

* This is all based on having the runway the OP posted above. If you really need the job you might just have to "play" the game.

I think this is the macro. People are freezing hiring

Good luck

are you saying that there's a bias against Java devs?

Most of FAANG uses Java, so I'm not sure where you think there are more higher paying JS/Python jobs...

I find a lot of "general" or "SDE" jobs as a fullstack python dev but I also see quite a few pretty good java positions pop up all the time. At least they look good to me. Maybe I'm out of the loop but I agree with you.

Java is paying preeetty good I dare add.

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