This has been a great experience and I feel like I've grown and finally got a chance to apply my experience working at a number of startups (especially since I joined after being laid off by a crypto startup around 8 months ago).
However since I've been backstopping and attempting to interview I'm starting to wonder if I've black balled myself by moving around a bit and not having a solid career at one company for more than three years?
Basically I had around a year at Amazon followed by 2.4 years at a strong growth stage startup where I owned a few of my own projects. After that I jumped for a huge pay raise but unfortunately the role I jumped to wasn't advertised accurately and turned out to be a toxic environment. After that I took a solid opportunity to work as a technical product manager for a year at a quickly growing crypto project with real utility (I know.. I know..) and largely had a great experience until they ran out of money.
I've managed all of four interviews that have gone all the way to the final round - only for me to be passed over. After probably a few hundred applications (mostly SWE but some product) I've only received first interviews from maybe ten?
I have to wonder if I sound stupid to these people or if my resume has black balled me as a hiring risk?
What scares me the most is I largely don't know how to fix this. Yes, I'm willing to own the fact that I may have fucked my reputation within the first five years of being an SWE. I'm at a point where if I cant even get a basic SWE role I might just work at a Fedex store to pay rent - starting to lose sight of the point of wasting more time with this.
Curious if anyone here has advice for someone who's had to sort of reboot their reputation to attract better jobs slightly later into their career?
Thanks, hope everyone is well.
I think you're being a little paranoid. It's the market right now; everywhere is laying off or looking for ways to reduce headcount. This just isn't a good time. Despite that:
> After probably a few hundred applications (mostly SWE but some product) I've only received first interviews from maybe ten?
This has been my experience since internet applications became a thing. There's no incentive to curate active job postings by the people who post them, so many of these are duds.
> I've managed all of four interviews that have gone all the way to the final round - only for me to be passed over.
Nothing about you really stands out as problematic, but in my own opinion your heavy startup/crypto background makes you seem like someone only interested in money/getting rich quickly.
You might be a great candidate, but I'd fully expect you to check out if a better offer even looked in your direction. Given a choice between you and a more-conservative candidate, I'd pick them.
You're not fucked and there's nothing for you to change. It's a game of impressions. Just keep trying until you make the right one. That's difficult right now given economic conditions.
> I'm at a point where if I cant even get a basic SWE role I might just work at a Fedex store to pay rent
That'll be counterproductive.
If you get desperate, go find some office job through a temp agency. Downplay all your credentials and forget the crypto stuff. Avoid call center work, take literally anything else in an office, apply your skills to automating some nonsense, and you can possibly negotiate your way into something better. (Or not, but if you need to wait the economy out it's steadier work than retail if you need full-time hours.)
> You might be a great candidate, but I'd fully expect you to check out if a better offer even looked in your direction. Given a choice between you and a more-conservative candidate, I'd pick them.
Something about this seems... off to me. Yes, many of us are in tech because it's our passion. But I can almost guarantee that at least most of us work for companies _for money_, because _we need money_. And when people talk about money, in general, they're wanting _more of it._ How out of touch with reality do we think people that hire staff are? Even more than that, how do we gauge what a more conservative candidate looks like? I don't exactly put in my resume or cover letters (when I bother to write one) "I like money." But I can tell you that I very much do. Actually, nothing quite makes you start liking money the same way that growing up poor does.
Anyway, this rant wasn't necessarily focused towards you, so much as that line of reasoning, which I've seen before. In particular, "I'd fully expect you to check out if a better offer even looked in your direction." If we're discussing similar (or better) workplace culture and benefits, an offer for more money will usually do this. There aren't too many engineers in tech that are providing a company value out of the kindness of their hearts, they want a pay check, the bigger the better.
I don't think it's wrong to have a preference for employees like me when hiring. Churn has a cost and employees with a history of churn inflict that cost more often.
I don't disagree, but I'm just being practical. The hiring process sucks. I appreciate not being made to do it more often than necessary.
Further, reqs are not guaranteed. Suppose I have an open req now and hire you. You ditch us three months later. Now there's a risk that I'll have to renegotiate for that req-- and may not get it again if another team makes a better pitch. Or, you shake me down for more money than we agreed to retain you-- your loyalty is clearly for sale; even paying you again doesn't guarantee your commitment, and it makes me look like a goddamn idiot when you leave anyway shortly after that. Not worth the risk!
I'd rather give the spot to someone who'll stick around for a minimal level of commitment, stick to the negotiated terms and won't waste my time with drama. I'm hiring you to make less work for myself. If your insatiable pursuit of money is going to create more work for me, our interests do not align from the start.
Then there's the fact that some people have a perception that those in crypto/startups value promises of future money very highly. You wouldn't hire someone that you think will leave for a bit of equity the next time a hype wave hits tech.
I wouldn't say that necessarily but I do hate Crypto (to me, its all a get rich quick scam) and anyone who predominantly chose to work in that field will not get my attention. Having said that, one of my best employees loved crypto so there is that.
I do wonder a bit whether OP is a little too wishy washy around position in interviews (e.g. coming off as not being sure whether he/she wants to be an engineer vs. product manager). the post even comes off that way a little
One crypto position probably wouldn’t raise eyebrows like having Mindgeek on your resume wouldn’t, but having multiple crypto roles probably would imo. Not that OP has indicated they have multiple crypto roles unless I’m parsing their post incorrectly.
And as to why, it’s an industry full of scams and a lot of wishful thinking that I wouldn’t think would help actually build out a stable business. You might have worked at only the “good ones” but given how modern hiring works with regards to hundreds of applications, I probably wouldn’t spend the effort to check the quality of those firms.
He ought to search and replace crypto with fintech startup in his resume.
I have no evidence for the following outlook, but I'm depending on it: if you're educated, if you're skilled, if you're a motivated learner, and if you have a good attitude, then you're not unhireable. Rather, you're in a rather enviable, privileged position relative to society at large.
Maybe you won't find your dream job immediately, but my guess is you'll be fine in the big picture.
1. The fact that you made it in-house and to final rounds means your resume was "fine" for those roles. The resume is what gets you the first phone screen, from then on they are interested enough.
2. Interviewing is a numbers game and the market is harder right now. There are likely a ton of people applying to the same roles so even an "average" candidate is going to get bounced a lot. These rejects don't mean you're terrible.
3. At the same time, the flip of #2 is that you need your resume to stand out. And frankly, the mindset matters here because it comes out in your words. If I had to put a headline on you, it would be something like "versatile developer with a product mindset, experienced from FAANG to multiple startups." That's the positive spin I can put on what I read from you above. But your actual post drips with self-... doubt? A bit of loathing maybe? So I wouldn't be surprised if you're massively under-selling yourself in your resume and interviews.
4. For your crypto jobs if you want to down-play it, then focus those blurbs on the tech stack and your vague contribution (eg "launched initial MVP to X thousands of customers for $Y revenue" without dwelling on what the product actually did.)
I hope these are helpful. Have someone with a lot of hiring experience review your LinkedIn and resume with a critical eye and listen to their feedback.
Just keep sending out your resume. You survived Amazon interview and actually worked there so you should be hirable.
I'm having a pretty bad time landing interviews. I'm not trying too hard yet, but it's pretty disheartening to get rejected for jobs with a listing that matches exactly what I was doing at my previous job.
"Thanks for applying but we've moved on to other candidates!" on a job similar to what I just spent 6 years doing really makes me feel like an imposter. Is everyone else applying to this job an ex-FAANG SWE but me?
I'm sure it's mostly due to the super competitive market (I haven't looked for a job in 10 years). But I also realize I have no big names on my resume. And as big as the bitcoin casino might be, it doesn't seem to have helped me. I fear that maybe it's just not seen as a particularly legitimate job, and might even seem sketchy or corny.
Sometimes I wonder if the gig is up and I should just work at Costco for the season. I've only applied to 15 carefully selected jobs though. I would not be in a good mental state if I applied to 100+ like you have, jeez. I should start trying harder if that's what it's gonna take.
Maybe we should set up a Discord for some group support.
I totally agree on the Discord support group as I'm in the same position as op and yourself.
If there is one thing I would suggest is polishing your interviewing skills and technicak skills. After that keep building to stay sharp. The market is not going to recover in a few weeks so having a plan for what you're going to do before now and when yu land a new gig.
Assuming you were in an engineering role there and not stacking crates in the warehouse, no, you're not unhireable.
All you have to do is pass an interview. Now by far the greatest challenge to attaining software employment is surviving resume death in order to make it to an interview. This has taught me a few things about hiring this year:
* Get out of software. Ideally this means get into management but can also mean sliding into something else laterally like project management.
* Or, be happy being a permanent beginner with elevated titles to compensate for years of service with no innovation, initiative, or real technical growth because all you do is chase trends and use tools.
* If you want to stand out don’t be awesome. Things like superior competence are great for becoming an entrepreneur but not for employment. Just be smart enough and experienced enough to talk through an interview. If you do want to stand out AND be employable then have something other developers don’t have like a security clearance and/or professional certifications.
1. I'm not convinced that 20 upvotes on a hacker news thread is indicative of trends in the industry at large
2. As an amateur pilot who just got their PPL, it's also a rather unsubstantiated take.
Most pilots do not understand how their planes work at a fundamental level (it's an entirely separate discipline known as aeronautics). They understand how to operate the plane, how to respond to real world situations, etc. but one could just as easily claim that's essentially analogous to a software engineer understanding how to perform basic debugging on frameworks such as React, Angular, etc.
Unhireable is literally not getting any interviews. I have a friend with no degree, self taught and changed jobs four times in five years. Got laid off in march and hasn't had a single interview since then. That's what that looks like.
I stay away from companies that have super complex hiring practices. It's like they want someone, but they have to be perfect (whatever that happens to mean at the time). In the dating world, most of those people end up single.
We do a 30 minute initial screen call with one of our guys, then a team call for about an hour if it's going well, 30 minutes if it's not. We then get together and talk about the candidate, strengths, weaknesses, yae or nae. We'll interview for about a month or two then decide. If it's someone we really like we might jump on it early.
If you are just interviewing with pure SV tech companies, maybe venture out into other industries.
The guy interviewing was way too nice to the point it was weird and the whole interview was him asking about my "best traits" and breaking them down to "get to know me".
I was linked to this post because I just posted something similar (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38168753).
If you end up having to scrap the other startup, want to help me solve this crisis? I know I'm not alone here. I've heard it from others.
To be frank, these new startups claiming to be solving the engineer hiring problem and all these recruitment agencies aren't designed to solve the problem for you or I... They're designed to get as many hires as possible at our expense. They're quantity, not quality.
Maybe we can come up with something together. :-)
I basically trust recruiters less than realtors at this point...
BUT I am going to ask as a rhetorical question, why isn't your startup making money? I can tell you why mine isn't, I made a product only one customer wants. Which isn't really a product. Maybe a pivot or two...
Is returning to Amazon an option? They seem to be hiring at least to some extent right now.
That sounds odd to me. The whole premise of crypto is that you dont need traditional money issued by oppressive goverments.
