> You can't ask people who aren't close directly why they aren't close, but maybe family members / non-work friends.
Yes! I've done exactly this, and the result is always the same: They can't believe that I'm having problems in this area. "I can't understand how ANYONE could dislike you!" is what my dad said.
I've been wracking my brain for years over this, and I'm still not any closer to understanding what the problem is.
I've had my resume looked at and tweaked over and over. I never send a cover letter without having someone else proofread and offer suggestions. I've lived and worked in many tech-hub places, including San Francisco for 6 years.
I just don't know... I think it's got to be socially related, but I have a hard time examining that aspect because I'm autistic. But I always make a concerted effort not to offend people, to make sure everyone gets their say and can contribute. People even say I'm a really nice guy, so then I'm left wondering what exactly "it" is that's tanking me...
It always happens the same way:
- I get a job and everyone is super friendly. Some inevitable technical hiccups getting set up for the first month, but no big deal.
- Everything goes swimmingly for the next 6 months to a year. People seem happy with me, performance reviews are fine, 1-on-1 with the boss is fine. I even make a point of asking if they're unhappy with anything about me, and they say "no, everything's fine".
Then one day things go bad (or maybe they've been bad and I didn't see). People start being rude to me, start shutting me out of conversations, start being extra harsh or petty in code reviews etc. In some cases they start name-calling. No higher-ups step in so I try to avoid the people doing this and not antagonize them.
Eventually my boss brings me in for the "it's not working out" talk. They can never give me a solid reason why, and often they resort to roundabout firing methods because it's technically illegal otherwise. There's never a warning, never a list of things to improve upon. I spend most of my days at a company wondering when I'll get "the call". The worst one happened on Dec 23rd.
So yeah... Probably nothing that anyone on HN could help with, because the feedback mechanism I'm subjected to is so vague. But it's frustrating nonetheless, and even today I have constant stress spikes whenever my boss asks to talk to me for a minute about something, wondering if this is it.
Yes, when I'm looking for work I turn on the looking-for-work thing on linkedin. I'll get 1 maybe 2 generic pings over the next few months for "fullstack dev" (which I'm not - I do server-side or low level software), but that's about it.
> Meanwhile someone like me...I'm literally turning away interviews.
How do you manage that? I've been a software developer for over 20 years now, and every time I lose my job it's a SLOG to find another one, with anywhere from a few months to a year in between. I can't even remember the last time a recruiter contacted me (perhaps 5-6 times in my entire career).
It's not like my technical skills are lacking. I've worked professionally with most popular languages and technologies, have dozens of popular open source projects under my belt, many of which you're probably even using at work in some fashion. I've even been called a "miracle worker" a few times for the projects I've saved from ruin, or terrible processes I've optimized.
I'm friendly with everyone, not badmouthing, staying out of politics, treating everyone professionally and expecting the same.
But then whenever there are layoffs or there's an opportunity to push someone out, I'm in the first wave to go (they never say why). I've even been fired for "not stepping up enough." And then I spend another few months slinging resumes all over, spending my days doing coding challenges in the hopes of getting an interview. Then another year of employment and the cycle starts all over again. I have to constantly prove myself again and again, as if I were fresh out of college or something.
Yes! I've done exactly this, and the result is always the same: They can't believe that I'm having problems in this area. "I can't understand how ANYONE could dislike you!" is what my dad said.
Fuck... now this is making me sad.