Thanks for this. I've been dabbling with code for ~20 years, have the diploma and the t-shirt, but I lack the mentorship. I feel like it would be even more helpful in this time as I attempt to pivot from my general-IT career with dev as one tool into solely development. So, anyways, thanks for sharing additional resources.
I've (mostly quietly) enjoyed the "vibe" of HN for well over a decade now. It's certainly a major contribution to maintaining enjoyment in the crazy world of tech. Thank you for your contributions to this community which remains so special to an entire industry.
Hard to say - but giving without the expectation of return can certainly lead to future gain. I highly respect the company that did schedule a feedback session and it certainly made them one that I will continue to watch for opportunities rather than just a position opening that popped up on a stream of jobs that I happened to find.
I'd be willing to bet they at least think there is some metric being improved there. Possibly assuming it might garner more interest as a desirable workplace during an staffer's market.
That makes sense. I guess I was only considering what my own response would be to receiving feedback. I think I'll just change my approach to just trying to articulate genuine appreciation for the opportunity to interview in the first place, and see if that sparks any love my way.
Thank you for the valuable feedback, and positive nudge. I am trying to get creative in how I introduce myself to organizations to make a good first impression without coming off as "creepy," i.e. trying to connect or send a message with hiring managers on LI for example.
I will tell you unless you have a really specialized skillset that I’m looking for (full stack developer is not specialized), if I reply at all to unsolicited message, I’m just going to tell you to go through the standard ATS funnel.
Of course if we worked together before and you impressed me, I’ll go through the standard internal referral process.
I say average as I'm at about 60 for the past 60 days. Some days 0, some days 15. As an attempt to increase my success rate I have limited most of my applications to specifically target my most comfortable stack as well as focusing on orgs physically close to me that are seeking to fill hybrid positions. I check daily, but the supply of positions that meet that criteria go through waves.
I certainly do apply for remote-only positions as well if I match the requirements really well, but everything in the intermediate to mid-level range is getting 800-1,000 apps per week.
If you are blindly applying for jobs via ATS, one a day is not nearly enough especially applying for remote roles.
When I was looking for jobs both in 2023 and again last year, my backup plan was working as a plain old C#/Javascript/Python backend developer with AWS experience. I was only looking for remote roles since now my wife and I live in a tourist heavy. But not software developer heavy metropolitan area.
I made it a habit of applying for at least 20 jobs a day while spending the rest of the time doing interview prep.
This is all while actually going through the interview process (and ultimately getting offers) for my more targeted opportunities based on my network, recruiters reaching out to me and my reaching out to companies where I had very specialized niche experience with AWS as well as more broad based AWS experience.
I never had to trigger my plan C. That was sucking it up and being willing to relocate to one of a few cities on my own dime and work in an office or hybrid.
Yes I realize Plan C isn’t as easily done for most people. We are just in a situation where we can easily and relatively cheaply relocate anywhere and rent and keep our condo where we live now.
But you have to get out of your “most comfortable stack” mentality. If you have other stacks that you have experience with, tailor a different resume to those and extend your search criteria.
There are also companies that don’t care about what technologies you know as long as you can pass a coding interview.
It’s time to “grind leetCode”. I’ve never had to do that myself. But it is reality today
I have been trying this approach to some extent, but with a non-existent network it has essentially boiled down to using LinkedIn Premium features to guess who within the org might be close to the area the position is for. Thank you for the well wishes.
Are there examples of these types of actions in other circles outside of the .NET ecosystem? I knew about the FluentAssertions ordeal, but the Moq thing was news to me. I guess I've just missed it all.
node-ipc is a recent example from the Node ecosystem. The author released an update with some code that made a request to a geolocation webservice to decide whether to wipe the local filesystem.
Where do I stand on the war? I stand with Ukraine.
Where do I stand on software supply chain issues? I stand with not fucking around with the software supply chain.
