It’s finally come to a close. I found a job through a referral via family member. I have to move somewhere I really don’t want to move, and may not even be able to hold done the job for long, but screw it.
I’m just hoping I can find a way out of the industry before it’s too late.
> companies seem much more picky (“you were great but we want someone with more tenure in <specific variant of field>”)
This was my exact experience. I’ve been out of work for a year and I’m more jaded than ever.
I finally got a job through what I assume was nepotism. It was the worst interview I’ve done lately, awkward, because I didn’t have any experience in the particular tech stack, but I got the offer.
What pissed me off were companies ghosting after doing the full set of rounds onsite. At one point, I was interviewing for a position a third party recruiter contacted me about. It wasn’t great, but it would pay the bill and I was desperate. It seemed like a decent fit given my last experience too. I got all the way to the final round which I had to travel hours for. At the end of the internet, one of the people even said “I imagine you’ll be hearing from us soon”. But they just ghosted me. Hell they ghosted the recruiter, who a couple weeks later was calling me asking if I had heard anything because they weren’t talking to him. If a company ghosts after an initial round or two, ok, whatever, but if I go the full distance and you don’t have the respect to even give me a yes or no, fuck you.
I think it’s not even about low stress, but low barrier to entry. There are plenty of things I’d rather be doing than software development (in fact I never planned on going into this field professionally), but I just can’t.
I’m also not surprised by the “The number of candidates applying with claimed ML/AI experience who haven’t done anything more than follow online tutorials is wild”. Just go look at any Ask HN thread about “how do I get into ML/AI”. This is pretty typical advice. Hell it’s pretty typical advice given to people asking how to get into any domain. Now sure we’ll how it works outside of bog standard web development though.
While you can find a some of the big names in specific genres on bandcamp, it’s always struck me as more of a place for underground and tiny artists. The genre breakdown categories tend to be pretty good, and you can find some interesting stuff that’s not easily found elsewhere. Sometimes I’d just go into a specific genre and start listening to anything that caught my eye. I usually found it much better than streaming platforms, that just continuously recommend the same stuff I’ve heard time and time again, but just didn’t have in a playlist. I do have a problem with their mobile app though: It doesn’t allow you to change the sort method, so you end up seeing a lot of stuff you’ve already seen before.
To be honest, I don’t use it as much as I used to. Nowadays, I’ve mostly found YouTube channels that upload and curate various rare and underground content for specific genres and that’s how I do most of my new (and new old) music discovery.
Yeah that sounds similar to what my sleep schedule has been since I’ve been out of work. Prior to that I was doing mostly 12a-8a, but I was working remotely so it was easier.
I do enjoy the night, it’s cooler and calmer, sadly there’s just not much that can get done. I remember years ago working a night job, where I would often work very long hours, but I would get accusations of being lazy from people who just saw me as sleeping all day.
I have this pattern of getting really tired in the early afternoon, and then by night time, I would be fully awake. I couldn’t just sleep when I was tired because then I won’t sleep at night, and it just become this terrible cycle. I can’t stay awake at night because things need to be done during the day.
It’s been better recently, but some years ago, I would come home from work just completely exhausted and pass out immediately. I would only sleep for a few hours, but then wouldn’t get tired again until 4-5am at which point I often would just power through it because I’d have to get ready and go to work in a couple hours anyway. It peaked a few years ago when I completely wrecked my sleep and didn’t sleep for a few days straight. I remember waking up, thinking about something I believe was just utter nonsense, and a second later being unable to recall what I was even thinking about. I ended up getting my sleep schedule back by cycling some light stimulants during the day and crappy sleep aids at night until I was back to a normal schedule, but that probably wasn’t very healthy itself.
I’m very close to giving up. I am now on unemployment and living with a friend m. Luckily my lease ran up earlier this year so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
In the last month, I’ve had:
- A call with a recruiter for a company I applied to. The position seemed like a very good fit given my past experience and what they were looking for. Got an email a week later saying they’d gone with someone else.
- A call with a third party recruiter. Went well initially, but the higher ups didn’t like that I’d been out of work for so long.
- A job offer, but with so much bureaucracy and red tape I don’t even have a start date yet. And there’s a good chance I won’t be able to hold down the job for very long anyway. I suspect this offer was somewhat of a nepo hire anyway. I was referred by a family member, and despite having an awkward interview, and admittedly not having much experience with their tech stack, I got an offer. I will have to move though to an area that doesn’t appeal to me and ruins all my medium and long term plans.
- Various ATS rejections. Including getting rejected from a company I worked for pre Covid, which I had no issues getting in via cold app some years ago.
Long term I need to get out of software, but there doesn’t seem to be a good path to something else.
I’ve done it twice. The first time was when I was 18 or 19 trying to get my first job in the industry. I put in a ton of applications, and while it felt tedious, it only took around three months at the end of the day.
The second time was this time. I’ve probably put at least 100 applications in over the past year, and it’s been very hit or miss on whether I get interviews. I don’t bother researching and applying for the few jobs in interested in, because I’m usually not qualified for them. Most of my recent job applications have been exclusively ones that looks like they’re relevant compared to my resume, and some that are different from the work I’ve done in the past, but utilize tangential skills.
I applied to company using workday recently. The job was a referral and the JD made it explicitly clear I didn’t need a degree. Yet it was a required field.
And of course, it wasn’t a free form text field that would allow me to just enter N/A or my high school. It was a drop-down/search box that had a predefined list of colleges and universities. I ended up just entering some college I attended for two months before dropping out.
Retail applications have gotten lazy recently. I put one in, and they wanted a recorded interview. No one on the other side, I was expected to just awkwardly record myself answering some questions and send it in.
Some years ago I remember applying to a job at a well known US bank. It got to a series of checklist questions, one of which asked if I had a degree, I checked no, and it kicked me out before I could even finish the application.
Honestly, I wish more applications were like that. Just let me know sooner rather than later what your filters are.
I try to keep my resume to one page, it’s just old advice I love heard since I was a kid. I’m not sure if it’s still good advice though, I’ve seen suggestions that it’s a hold over from before online ATS systems were common.
I also try to keep the formatting simple in hopes that the parser has an easier time. I had a previous resume that had a slightly more complex layout that I thing compiled down to tables, but recently I’ve been using one with a simpler linear/hierarchical format.
I’ve also removed some stuff I used to have on there, such as contributions to open source projects. No one I’ve ever talked to has cared about that stuff, even when the market was easier, but I suspect that’s partly because the OSS stuff I’ve done is in a different domain from my professional career.
Right now, most rejections I get at the ATS stage don’t come till 2-3 weeks after the application.
I’m not sure how accurate it is, but I started to play with jobscan to test my resume against ATS scanning. It was getting knocked for not having uselessly vague keywords like “business solutions” in the resume when they were in the job app, or not listing every single data format I’ve worked with. So now, I’ve just started keyword dumping my resume with everything in a job listing even though it feels stupid.
I doubt it matters much though. Even when I get passed the initial resume screen these days, it’s usually followed up with a “we’ve decided to pursue someone else” from the recruiter/hiring manager/etc. before I can even get to an interview. And that’s for jobs where my resume seems a perfect fit.
Is there a good book or something to understand postwar Japan, I’ve read bits and pieces on the ”economic miracle”, lost decade(s), the trade wars, the demographic crisis etc, but is there a good resource that compiles and connects it all?
I used it a while back to simulate something in the HP 1000 series.
Funny enough, I actually had a machine from that family, along with a variety of other more obscure and niche retro computers and other equipment, sadly I lost all of it, but the reality was it was just costing me a ton of money to get them working again.
Enterprise software in a large non tech business. Being above average won’t really help you there as the bureaucracy will choke and discard your skills, but you can get away with being average and have a pretty chill job.
I’m just hoping I can find a way out of the industry before it’s too late.