[HN Gopher] Career advice for people with bad luck
___________________________________________________________________
Career advice for people with bad luck
Author : Reedx
Score : 736 points
Date : 2020-04-23 19:38 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (chiefofstuff.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (chiefofstuff.substack.com)
| vmception wrote:
| Its been impossible for me to get a tech job in the last 6
| months, I stopped with the global COVID outbreak.
|
| In the past I used to have 1 month of unemployement max, from the
| time I reached out to the first recruiter (internal or third
| party), to actually starting a job.
|
| Now recruiters all tap me for Level 5's and Level 6's and reach
| out within 24 hours of my cold submission through their websites
| - after the disclaimers all say "expect 4-6 weeks for reply".
|
| At first I realized I needed to brush up on Leetcode, what people
| are actually looking for in System Design interviews, and even
| behavioral/leadership stuff. A few educational SaaS subscriptions
| later, I find it all really fascinating. Although when I see the
| answers to a lot of "hard" problems, I really question my
| abstract problem solving capabilities. But I know this is not
| what happens on the job, thats the kicker, but I have accepted
| that my full time job was getting good at the interview job.
|
| Later on, after I was solving the brain teasers in 5 minutes in
| the coderpad/in browser compiler, and asking "is there another
| part to the problem" and getting no, STILL to be rejected, I
| realized this was not the best use of my time.
|
| I have no idea what people are looking for, maybe I need to
| delete all my online profiles and pretend my resume has half of
| the experience (Founder, small acquisition, probably too public
| and nobody can say so. Maybe they expected a savant and my
| moderately above average interview performance wasn't good
| enough.. for me. Seems like a trap for founders.)
|
| I didn't want lower comp ranges and was at least getting
| interviewed by everyone imaginable... ? I was just about ready to
| lower my ask, until COVID hit and realized I can't get evicted,
| my health insurance won't get cancelled, my phone bill and my
| internet won't either. I don't even want to see what offers look
| like right now, and there are a ton of other priorities. Low key,
| I only needed time, but after how gamified leetcoding has become
| it started becoming a point of pride for me to get accepted. But
| I don't really need golden handcuffs, I would stay for the 1 year
| cliff, maybe. I don't think this was oozing through my fascade in
| interviews, of course I'm passionate about your flying scooter
| fintech platform :D (eye roll), but feel free to think thats why
| I was getting rejected.
|
| In my notes it wasn't all rejections. Some (VC backed, and also
| mid-size) companies said they cancelled the position after
| talking with me and realizing they needed a completely different
| role, or the hiring manager didn't really have as much autonomy
| over the role they thought and the company focused their efforts
| on another team. In others (Big Tech) they didn't even know I
| wasn't already in the company, and therefore I was at an inherent
| disadvantage and pulled harder from internal pool. (Other big
| tech does matchmaking after an offer).
|
| All I have are anecdotes. I had friend and founder referrals to
| their current startups, every "in" you could imagine, and still
| rejections. The silver lining? I did get exposed to Tech Lead,
| and his soap opera of a life is very engaging! The people you
| meet along the way, right?
| cocktailpeanuts wrote:
| Just loaded the website and it says "Not Found". Brutal...
|
| Does this mean people with bad luck should give up?
|
| https://imgur.com/a/s5AhAEZ
| 2sk21 wrote:
| Having worked for a dying tech startup at one point in the early
| 2000s - I spent time agonizing over the fact that if I quit, the
| company would become unviable - I was one of the key technical
| people and was the only person with a good understanding of our
| entire product. After much dithering, I did ultimately leave and
| the company did fold shortly thereafter. I did feel bad at the
| time but in retrospect, I have come to realize that it was
| inevitable and I should have left even sooner.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Yep. It's a really rough call. I really dislike getting into
| the key employee role, but it's happened a couple of times.
| larrik wrote:
| I feel like this situation calls for making you a partner. If
| you are SO valuable the company can't even _survive_ without
| you, then you ARE the company and should be treated as such.
| specitley wrote:
| I'm in this position now as the only developer in a
| successful company that has been operating in lean startup
| mode for years and every employee has become "irreplaceable"
| with no contingency plans. I brought partnership up with the
| owner and he wouldn't consider it. It's going to be rough For
| them when I leave and any "friendships" will definitely be
| erased.
| codingdave wrote:
| I sympathize with feeling like the company can't do the job
| without you. It is a tough place to be. But ultimately, unless
| you are an exec or owner, that is not your problem. Your job is
| not a marriage, it is an ongoing business transaction. If the
| leadership built a company so dependent on one person, yet
| failed to either make sure that person was stupendously happy
| and satisfied there, or at least have a backup plan for that
| person's bus factor, that is their own management mistake.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| "if I quit, the company would become unviable"
|
| I was in such a situation but after asking for more money I
| quickly realized that I wasn't important enough to be paid a
| little more.
| OliverJones wrote:
| Lots of great insight here into the weltanschauung of scrambling
| startups. This one especially: "It's the nature of boards that
| they ignore (externally) problems until their hand is forced."
|
| Translation: if the execs are doing a bad job, the board WILL NOT
| INTERVENE. Nobody on the board wants to take over for an inept
| manager. If you're waiting for them to do that ... don't wait any
| more.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| To the people questioning why it is about luck: I think it is
| because it is written from the perspective that you are at a
| bad/dying company or have a bad boss. A lot of this article seems
| to be about leaving that situation. If you had good luck, then
| you might have been hired onto a good company in the first place.
|
| I do think the article should point out that sometimes bad luck
| just happens and there's nothing that could have mitigated it. I
| work for a good company (top 20 IT best places to work) and I
| have had good managers (some bad too) and I have still been
| unlucky. I saw a coworker get promoted rapidly for filling the
| tech lead role for one year. When he left, I stepped up to fill
| that role for 1.5 years. I didn't get promoted or even the
| highest performance rating. My manager even told me they believed
| I deserved it but didn't have to power to make it happen.
| anonymous24 wrote:
| I'm considering myself as a back luck person. Graduated with CS
| major but has been stuck in a QA engineer position. So, after
| many failures to become dev, I decided to take a M.S degree to
| sharp my skills and my resume. But when i'm gonna graduate soon,
| the Covid-19 happens.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| > Your equity package is a lottery ticket with expected value of
| zero.
|
| While this is true, it's vastly more true for startups and
| privately owned companies vs publicly owned. Amazon's stock price
| might fluctuate but the chances of it being worthless are slim.
| foreigner wrote:
| But equity packages are typically stock _options_ , not stock.
| So they're only worth anything if the stock price goes way up.
| opportune wrote:
| Not for any big US tech company I've heard of! I think that
| is only for startups. FAANG (well, Netflix doesn't do equity
| comp normally), Microsoft, etc. it's all direct equity that
| vests over time.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| For publicly traded companies, many equity packages now
| include RSUs, or give you the option to choose between
| options and RSUs. Which are worth something so long as the
| stock has any value. Perhaps I am twisting the value of what
| equity package means.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| The concept of "bad luck" is reinforced by endless self-
| comparison with those who had extremely good luck.
|
| It's MUCH more valuable to compare yourself to those who are
| unlucky: the mentally disabled, those who died from COVID at age
| 29, those born/raised in North Korea. Compared to these people,
| we've all hit the fucking jackpot.
|
| Adjust your mindset and you'll notice you're luckier than you
| thought you were.
| hpoe wrote:
| "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of
| the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set
| of circumstances, to choose one's own way." -- Viktor E.
| Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
| JackRabbitSlim wrote:
| "But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was
| finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big
| Brother." -- George Orwell, 1984
| breischl wrote:
| Frankl was a holocaust concentration camp survivor. I don't
| think that's exactly what he was getting at.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Comparing yourself to people born in North Korea, _etc._ isn 't
| actionable though. In other words, so what, other people are
| more unlucky than me? I know that already.
| username90 wrote:
| Step 1: Get a well paying job at a big tech company. There is
| very little luck involved in this, just get really good at
| algorithms. No need for a famous school, specific degree etc. It
| requires intelligence, if you don't have that then you need luck.
|
| Step 2: Save more than two thirds of your take home salary, you
| can still live way better than the people sweeping the office
| floor.
|
| Step 3: You now have a ton of money saved up, take whatever risks
| you like or just retire early.
| fenwick67 wrote:
| So, 1 make money, 2 save it, 3 congrats you have lots of money.
| Thought-provoking.
| icedchai wrote:
| Yeah, step 2 sounds easy, but is actually the hardest. I know
| plenty of folks who had well paying jobs, but quickly blew it
| all on boats, multiple luxury cars, investing in their
| cousin's hot startup, etc.
| lucaspm98 wrote:
| Lifestyle creep is incredibly hard to resist when everyone
| around you is caught up in it. My compromise has been to
| allow myself reasonable splurging on a few hobbies that
| prioritize experiences over consumerism while keeping the
| rest of my life as minimalist as possible.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Sounds like Dinesh from SV :)
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Sounds horrible, poor guy.
| pyb wrote:
| I've heard of people who did this and went on to retire. OTOH I
| don't know of any engineer who left Big Tech to take advantage
| of their financial security to do something _highly impactful_.
| In other words, the "Google mafia" was a lot weaker than the
| "Paypal mafia".
|
| The problem is this : most creative engineers don't have the
| mindset to mindlessly study for algorithms interviews, only to
| then have to spend years in constrained engineering roles.
| username90 wrote:
| > most creative engineers don't have the mindset to
| mindlessly study for algorithms interviews, only to then have
| to spend years in constrained engineering roles.
|
| I agree with this, but then they can't really complain about
| luck when they had the option to fix it. It was a choice they
| made and now they have to live with it. It is fine to gamble,
| but then you shouldn't complain about the outcome if you
| lose.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Step 1: Get a well paying job at a big tech company. There
| is very little luck involved in this, just get really good at
| algorithms. _
|
| Let me stop you right there. Maybe that works in SV but in most
| of Europe(the world?) you aint getting in to any _well paying
| job at a big tech company_ without a degree from a prestigious
| university or previous experience at equally big and famous
| companies.
|
| Companies here don't have the FAANG resources to whiteboard
| everyone who bothers to apply and check their algorithm skills
| when all the future employee needs to do is work on some CRUD
| app so they initially select based on how impressive your
| resume is and run you through some coding test later to weed
| out the bullshitters.
|
| Although I live and work in a city with one of the top 300
| technical universities in the world where graduating means you
| have to study algorithms, advanced math, etc. almost no jobs
| here outside or research and academia require knowledge about
| algorithms. Companies just want an experienced node/python
| plumber ASAP.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I can second that sentiment in Canada as well - I'm not even
| aware of what the good paying jobs would even be - there's
| none with FAANG fame, and every job has a hard wall with a
| laundry list of 5+ years of experience with a dozen web
| technologies that you can only climb over with the
| appropriate connections.
| chrisandchips wrote:
| As a canadian, I disagree with how strict you're describing
| the issue to be. There are a fair amount of big and well
| established companies that are not going to penalize you
| for lacking the five years and connections. With that said,
| they're almost all in Toronto, but that's a different issue
| ..
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't want to get too regional, especially when
| it seems to be a single exception (possibly Vancouver as
| well?). As I understand it Toronto is almost like a
| different world, especially when compared to Western
| Canada, like using New York or Silicon Valley to describe
| all of America.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| Step 1: Move to SV.
|
| I'm sorry, I'm Australian and studied and worked in
| Australia. I spent 4 years in SV, and now founded a startup
| in Europe.
|
| Even after the Covid issue has played out, I'm convinced SV
| will still be where a passionate technologist can optimize
| their impact and lifetime earnings. There's just nothing that
| can compare to being surrounded by so many smart people who
| share your interests.
|
| I've heard stories about the dotcom crash, and how it was
| awesome because everyone who had no business being there
| left. You just had the geeks that wanted to build stuff for
| the sake of building stuff, and it turns out there was still
| plenty of money floating around after things got going again.
|
| Europe has laws which makes hiring people risky and
| expensive. And even if you do become a top earner, expect to
| pay 50% in taxes (+ 25% VAT). It's hard to fathom individual
| engineers would be able to save enough to have the sort of
| financial freedom to bankroll a company while still in their
| 20's.
|
| But don't worry, there are government grants for you! Just be
| prepared to spend 1/3rd of your time dealing with paperwork
| and hourly reporting of what you did on a day by day basis,
| all for 50k here, 40k there. I feel these grants are designed
| to be demoralizing and the startup equivalent of unemployment
| benefits. And then you realize that almost all R&D in Europe,
| from startups to multinationals, is subsidized by EU funding
| schemes and mountains of paperwork.
|
| Don't underestimate how good SV has it with the "I like you
| and your idea, here's $1m and come back next year and tell me
| if it worked".
|
| </rant>
| random_kris wrote:
| And then you realize that almost all R&D in Europe, from
| startups to multinationals, is subsidized by EU funding
| schemes and mountains of paperwork.
|
| Couldn't agree more with this point. Also atleast in my
| experience they are there so just few people can be
| employed without much real pressure to produce real
| results... As long as paperwork is completed the results
| don't matter much.
| bitL wrote:
| > expect to pay 50% in taxes (+ 25% VAT)
|
| Don't forget the tax prepayments that might be 1.33x of
| your previous taxes, i.e. you pay 100k in taxes for one
| year and for the next year you need to prepay 133k.
| distances wrote:
| In Europe? I've never heard of anything like this.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| In which country is that?
| bvandewalle wrote:
| Belgium would be a good candidate.
| the_af wrote:
| > _Step 1: Move to SV._
|
| What about...
|
| - I don't want to move to SV, I'm not that young anymore.
|
| - I don't want to move outside my country, or
|
| - specifically to the US and SV, which are not a
| particularly good place to live in anyway, or
|
| - even if I wanted it, entry to the US is stressful and not
| that easy, or
|
| - I have friends/family ties where I live, and those are
| important to me
|
| There's plenty of reasons why your step 1 is bad advice for
| a lot of people.
| michaelbrave wrote:
| Sounds like having priorities that go beyond making money
| or having career success. Nothing wrong with that, but it
| may be something to make peace with.
| the_af wrote:
| Yes, of course. To elaborate, _most_ people (outside the
| HN bubble) have these priorities, they are good
| priorities to have, and these people work in tech.
| Therefore, advice starting with "move to SV" applies
| only to an extremely _small_ subset of programmers
| worldwide, and as such, is not very helpful.
|
| If the career advice is "ditch everything in your life,
| become magically younger, live in a country you don't
| like, ditch friends and family, and generally live for
| work, and then _you 'll maybe succeed at having a tech
| job_", that's... less than useful. Maybe if you're young
| and starting.
| solidasparagus wrote:
| In a discussion about career advice, saying "move to
| where the most and best paying jobs are" is absolutely
| good advice. It may not work for everyone, but that
| advice applies to far more people than 'an extremely
| small subset'. It applies outside of tech too.
| strken wrote:
| Someone who is reading this conversation will benefit
| from being told that moving to the Bay Area, New York,
| Berlin, Sydney, Amsterdam etc. for a couple of years is
| possible. Maybe it's not you, and that's fine. In
| general, though, helpful advice is about choosing the
| right side of a trade-off, not a panacea.
| the_af wrote:
| It's more than "maybe it's not you": it's not _most
| people_ outside the HN bubble where SV is the mecca and
| everyone wants to join a US startup. Yes, there are
| trade-offs involved in every choice (except age, of
| course: that 's not a trade-off, you cannot choose to
| become younger and be picked for low-wage trainee job
| positions that are only offered to young people), but I
| don't get why we're so fixated in such specific trade-off
| options.
|
| In the spirit of the article, which warns about
| optimistic people arguing for unrealistic paths, I'm just
| warning that "move to SV" is not, _for most people_ ,
| reasonable advice.
|
| Now, you may argue that for people reading HN, there is a
| larger subset which do aspire and would benefit from
| moving to SV. I won't argue against that. But I thought
| the spirit of the article was _not_ about providing
| career advice for such a small subset of tech-minded
| people.
|
| To sum up, this proposition is _false_ for _most people_
| (and not just me): "everyone passionate about technology
| should, all else being equal, strive to move to Silicon
| Valley and work there, because that's the best place
| there is".
| vikramkr wrote:
| No pain no gain. If the US and SV opportunities aren't a
| type of gain that's compelling to you then of course you
| dont need to worry about it. But if they are, then you
| need to make your own luck by making those sacrifices.
| Things about family ties and wants and stress are all
| part of the work you put in to make your own luck.
|
| Being American is a pretty great gig, for all the stuff
| you keep hearing on the news. There's a reason silicon
| valley is silicon valley, New York is New York, and so
| on. Theres a lot of luck that comes from being here. My
| parents left behind their entire support network in india
| to set out on their own, navigated the complex
| immigration process (granted, easier 20-30 years ago than
| now), and made those sacrifices, and it more than paid
| off. And I got lucky by just getting to be born here.
| Things like "you dont want to move outside your country "
| are completely valid, and part of why american
| immigration works is because immigration is such a hard
| thing for people to do (leaving everything behind) that
| it self selects for the people willing to make those
| sacrifices.
|
| The one valid one you mention is the difficulty of
| immigrating. That can be a straight up barrier in the way
| of a motivated person that would be a useful addition to
| this country and should be removed. This is the country
| of immigrants. We should keep that part of our culture
| alive.
| the_af wrote:
| Understood, but if the first step of advice is "move to
| SV", that right there is unhelpful to the _majority_ of
| programmers. It cannot work as a piece of general advice,
| and for most people it 's also unattainable and/or
| undesirable.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Yeah definitely, its not good as a general bit of advice,
| but it could be helpful as a specific bit of advice to a
| motivated person down on their luck. If your luck is tied
| to geography, see if theres a way to move to somewhere
| with better luck. Whether it's a different city or a
| different country.
| dkersten wrote:
| > No pain no gain. If the US and SV opportunities aren't
| a type of gain that's compelling to you then of course
| you dont need to worry about it
|
| There are many reasons why this might be out if your
| control, beyond visa requirements. Maybe you have
| dependents your can't bring with you (sick or elderly
| family for example), or maybe your SO has a job that's
| hard to move. Or you have a family and can't afford the
| crazy SV rent for a place large enough.
| vikramkr wrote:
| I was replying to the bulk of the comments in the post
| above, which were along the lines of not wanting to go
| because of age/liking hometown etc, and specifically
| mentioned at the end that there are valid barriers to
| consider, including one in the original post about the
| complexity of immigration. There are true barriers in the
| way, my disagreement was with the ones listed above.
| dkersten wrote:
| Ok, that's fair enough. I don't disagree, I just think
| that it's often out of your control (which it sounds like
| you agree with too).
| vikramkr wrote:
| I do agree with that. If its out of your control, its out
| of your control. I see that as the difference between
| "want" (I dont want to leave) and "can't" (I cant leave).
| Living in a community of immigrant families and a city of
| immigrants here by NYC has colored that perspective for
| me since I'm surrounded by people that went through hell
| for a better life, including my own family. I personally
| am of course incredibly privileged that I get to just be
| born here and have the opportunities that come with being
| an American. But my own family has been uprooted 3 times
| within my own lifetime so far moving around the country
| to pursue better opportunities before winding up here,
| and that pales in comparison to what others have gone
| through. If you can't you can't, but if you don't want
| to, well, selection bias, but I'm surrounded by the
| people that did anyway.
| the_af wrote:
| I disagree with your disagreement about the barriers,
| namely:
|
| It is _false_ that the US is the ideal place to live in
| (or to temporarily migrate to if you 're in tech). It is
| _false_ that, all other things being equal, one should
| prefer to live in the US. The US is not the default place
| people should aspire to live in, not even people in tech.
| Even _within_ the US, SV is not the best place to live
| in. _Living_ in some place means much more than just
| _working_ in trendy tech companies.
|
| For a lot of us -- I'd say the vast majority, outside the
| HN bubble -- the US is not a particularly interesting
| place to live in, _even_ if there were no immigration
| barriers. Which there are, anyway.
| ativzzz wrote:
| The U.S. is absolutely not the ideal place to live in.
| However, it is the ideal place to aspire to if you want
| to make a lot of money without being born to an already
| wealthy family. (Wealth of course being relative, because
| you need some wealth to immigrate nowadays)
|
| Money, and opportunity for their children to earn money,
| is the reason so many people have immigrated to the U.S
| in the past century.
|
| Money isn't everything, but you can sure buy a lot of
| freedom with it. Of course, nothing in life is risk-free,
| and making money is no exception, and the U.S. is
| unforgiving when it comes to those who come here and
| fail.
| username90 wrote:
| > Let me stop you right there. Maybe that works in SV but in
| most of Europe(the world?) you aint getting in to any well
| paying job at a big tech company without a degree from a
| prestigious university or previous experience at equally big
| and famous companies.
|
| I did exactly that though, I joined Google in Europe a few
| years ago.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Google Europe in which city?
| username90 wrote:
| I moved to Zurich.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| How do you find life there?
|
| From some acquaintances who moved there to work in tech I
| heard integration/dating/making friends is very difficult
| as a foreigner especially if you come from
| $UNCOOL_COUNTRY and the real estate market is terrible,
| with cramped and expensive apartments in a poor state and
| buying is even more difficult if you're not a swiss
| citizen which is a difficult citizenship to get.
| philangist wrote:
| If this is the case Zurich sounds exactly like New York
| (other than the difficulty of buying property for non-
| citizens). Might just be the feeling of alienation that
| arises from living in a big city as an outsider.
| silexia wrote:
| Zurich is a city of 300,000 people or so, New York is a
| hundred times larger.
| muro wrote:
| Vast majority of people rent in Zurich. I lived in
| multiple countries (US, Australia, Europe - Germany,
| Austria and more) and apartments in Zurich are better
| maintained than anywhere else I've seen. You can find
| cramped, if that's what you want, but there is plenty
| large apartments - bigger than US or Australian
| apartments. E.g. looking at our corner of the city, there
| are 2 bedroom 85 - 120m2, 3 bedroom 120 - 160 m2 places.
| In Sydney, we had a 75m2 2BR with tiny bedrooms and it
| was a typical apartment there. If you want to live in a
| house, Zurich is the wrong place, you'll probably need to
| commute.
| Leherenn wrote:
| Language is a big issue with integration. It's not that
| people don't speak English or High German, it's just that
| to truly integrate you need to speak the local language.
|
| And learning a dialect without an accepted written form,
| and thus no textbook to speak of is not easy.
| gullywhumper wrote:
| Step 1 reminds me of one of my favorites from the Onion:
|
| According to a Gallup report published Tuesday, over 95 percent
| of the nation's grandfathers began their careers by walking
| straight into a place of business, saying "I'm the man for the
| job," and receiving a position right there on the spot.
|
| https://www.theonion.com/report-95-of-grandfathers-got-job-b...
| hysan wrote:
| > Step 1: Get a well paying job at a big tech company. There is
| very little luck involved in this, just get really good at
| algorithms. No need for a famous school, specific degree etc.
| It requires intelligence, if you don't have that then you need
| luck.
|
| Sorry but no. Like everyone else has pointed out, this is so
| far from the truth that I'm actually in awe that someone would
| write this.
|
| There is a _ton_ of luck involved with getting a job at a good
| tech company. First being something straight up mentioned in
| the article - knowing the right people. The chances of a
| regular hard working person getting past even the initial
| resume filter takes luck. It takes luck for a referral to find
| the right hiring manager's desk.
|
| Get past that and then depending on the company, there's always
| the chance that someone interviewing you is having a bad day or
| maybe the team "fit" isn't there.
|
| There are a ton of obstacles that come down to luck because it
| is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.
|
| Edit: Since many people are using anecdotal data and
| survivorship bias as proof that this is true, how about a
| counter point. I interviewed at a FAANG before and didn't get
| the job. Later on, I met someone who works at that company who
| was able to look me up. I had passed their bar. Not with flying
| colors but well enough that you would generally get an offer.
| Why didn't I? Because that specific team that interviewed me
| had a skillset need that I didn't have. But there's no way of
| knowing that prior because the job description doesn't point
| that out. It's just how their (and most companies') process
| works. So like I said, luck.
| muro wrote:
| > It takes luck for a referral to find the right hiring
| manager's desk.
|
| I only know about Google, but there is no such thing as a
| "hiring manager's desk". The hiring manager only gets info
| about a person once they passed interviews.
| hysan wrote:
| Ok, perhaps the titles are different per company, but the
| point still stands that the referral has to land on the
| desk of the right person in the right position. Doesn't
| change a thing about what I wrote.
| solidasparagus wrote:
| You got rejected twice - so keep applying. Getting into a big
| company is mostly a matter of perseverance from what I've
| seen.
| hysan wrote:
| Perseverance can help, but what you say doesn't discredit
| what I'm pointing out - that you just might not have Lady
| Luck on your side.
|
| Again, anecdotal data. I did keep trying at other big tech
| companies. I did get a good job where I was hoping to save
| money, build a career, etc. Exactly as OP planned. You know
| what happened? COVID-19 led to mass layoffs less than a
| year after I got hired. Now I'm back to square one. I've
| barely recovered the savings I spent moving, which as
| others have already pointed out, is a prerequisite to OP's
| advice. Sometimes luck simply isn't on your side. To say
| that all it takes is intelligence and hard work is simply
| not true.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Step 1: Get a well paying job at a big tech company._
|
| You mean, a _remote_ job in a place with low costs of living.
| Otherwise, this algorithm doesn 't work for people with
| families. I've been on the job market just before COVID-19 hit.
| The costs of living in tech hubs are absolutely ridiculous. If
| it's not housing, then it's something else. For instance, you
| could afford staying in London with a spouse on a tech salary
| (the other salary would go straight into savings). But _not
| with daycare_ , which quite literally costs more than housing.
| username90 wrote:
| Kids are not luck though, people have all the power to decide
| not to have kids until their finances are better.
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| Sounds good until you're both in your mid 30s and realizing
| that it's now or never.
| username90 wrote:
| I said how to do it without being lucky, not how to do it
| when you are no longer in your 20's.
| dkersten wrote:
| Potentially very unpopular opinion, but to add to this, I
| think it's irresponsible and unfair to the children if you
| choose to have have kids before your finances are in order.
| And selfish to put your desires above the wellbeing of the
| potential child's.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| We're talking in the thread about bad luck. It's entirely
| possible - and common - to have finances in order, decide
| to have children, and then experience sudden events
| causing financial hardships.
|
| Also, we're in a subthread of "saving lots o'moneys by
| working for big tech", so this applies also to people
| wanting to improve your situation. I personally didn't
| realize how bad the calculus of chasing after companies
| in tech hubs looks until I started doing costs-of-living
| calculations while evaluating job offers with relocation.
| I ended up doubling down on remote, because even a
| moderately shit tech job (even a in-office one where I
| live) would leave us with more savings on a single income
| than us relocating to a big tech hub and living on two
| incomes (one non-tech).
| esoterica wrote:
| > I personally didn't realize how bad the calculus of
| chasing after companies in tech hubs looks until I
| started doing costs-of-living calculations while
| evaluating job offers with relocation.
|
| Your mistake was waiting until mid-career to try to pivot
| to a higher paying job in a HCOL area, because then
| you'll be 10+ years behind your peers. If you start your
| career in a HCOL area it's not unfeasible to reach 400k+
| by your 30s, at which point you can afford a family even
| in San Francisco if you wanted one. It's also much easier
| to find a higher income spouse in a HCOL area, which
| helps the math too.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I've made plenty of mistakes in my career, though
| arguably, I've never been in this for the money. What you
| describe is probably near-optimal from financial point of
| view, but I can't imagine my younger self being capable
| of seriously considering such thought process.
| dkersten wrote:
| I didn't say I had anything against anybody who has kids
| and falls on hard times. I understand that makes my
| comment rather off topic in this thread. I do know a lot
| of people who definitely did not have their finances in
| order and decided to have children anyway. The children
| are the ones who suffer most in these cases! This is
| super irresponsible and selfish. Hell, I once knew a
| couple who literally said they might have a third child
| because it would be easier with the extra child support
| money...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Here I agree with you in principle - deciding to have a
| child while not being able to financially support it, and
| just hoping for the best, is extremely irresponsible and
| likely to permanently scar a new human being.
|
| That said, before judging a struggling family, there are
| also some other things to consider:
|
| - Pregnancies happen by accident. It's both easier and
| harder to conceive a child than people think. It can and
| does happen by accident even with multiple methods of
| birth control applied, and at the same time a couple can
| try to have a kid and not succeed for _years_ (or at
| all).
|
| - Your job can disappear suddenly and through no fault of
| your own. I had this situation in the past, where my
| coworkers and I didn't know that there was a hostile
| takeover of the company happening for almost a year
| before it run out of money and stopped paying us.
|
| - Random events (family problems, illness, or a pandemic
| shutting down the global economy) can suddenly break your
| finances while a child is underway.
|
| - People miscalculate.
|
| - The drive to procreate is, in general, one of the
| strongest forces in all living organisms, and thus very
| hard to control - especially with abstract considerations
| like numbers on the screen symbolizing your chances of
| survival.
|
| > _Hell, I once knew a couple who literally said they
| might have a third child because it would be easier with
| the extra child support money..._
|
| Can't speak about that particular couple, but in general,
| that's economic reality. I've seen such things too (hell,
| my wife and I sometimes joke that we should try for two
| or for four, because there's little difference between
| three and four kids, and having a fourth gives guaranteed
| retirement from the government). Sometimes benefits are
| set up this way on purpose, by countries that want to
| improve their population growth.
| dkersten wrote:
| I mean, I'm not going to campaign to put any actual
| restrictions or laws in place and I don't go around
| judging people or complaining or whatever. But I do think
| that people shouldn't have children unless they are able
| to take good care of them, and financial stability is
| part of that.
|
| I guess my complaint is that many time people don't think
| of consequences or plan for the future and then other
| people (their children in this case) are the ones to
| suffer.
| Balgair wrote:
| Through true, that's a bit of a coarse statement.
|
| Should children wreck your finances? A lot of countries are
| spending a lot of money to reverse that sentiment right
| now. Yes, they are currently expensive, but blaming people
| for having children isn't going to fix anything.
|
| What about health aspects? One should never overestimate
| their fertility. Rates of birth defects rise as humans age
| (not just women, men too). Complications at birth also
| rise. Older grandparents have less time to enjoy their
| progeny. Older parents have health issues that prevent them
| from spending as much time with new grandchildren.
|
| Each family chooses when it is right for them to add a new
| member. Finances play into that, of course, but they should
| not dominate the decision like they do today. Top Tier
| economies are seeing the results of this myopia.
|
| Many European countries are schilling out big bucks to bump
| their birthrates and help with these financial concerns.
| Places like Switerland have had their fertility rates under
| replacement since the 1970's. Data is a bit wonky, but it
| seems these policies have helped the problem from a
| continued backslide, though not ended it.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > A lot of countries are spending a lot of money to
| reverse that sentiment right now. Yes, they are currently
| expensive, but blaming people for having children isn't
| going to fix anything.
|
| I think it's more about why people blame the government
| or society for the economic ramifications of this choice.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Which people? Environmentalist maybe. But those worrying
| about failing retirement pension system or the amount of
| migrant labor probably do realize both are caused by low
| population growth in their country.
| Balgair wrote:
| > But those worrying about failing retirement pension
| system or the amount of migrant labor probably do realize
| both are caused by low population growth in their
| country.
|
| The more years that pass, the less I am certain that many
| people realize anything beyond their front bumper.
| opportune wrote:
| I think London is particularly bad regarding the cost of
| living:SWE pay in general. But even in SV, if you started as
| L5/E5 at Google or Facebook and had enough for 20% down you
| should be able to afford to buy a 3bed house with <1hr
| commute based on the cash flow from that single job.
| ghaff wrote:
| Do you seriously believe that anyone who is reasonably
| intelligent can just waltz into a high paying job at Apple or
| Google by sending them a resume? If so, I'd respectfully
| suggest that is... probably not the case. (Not that I have
| firsthand experience. I've never applied to nor been interested
| in those big tech firms.)
|
| ADDED: I'm sorry, but the people on this thread who are arguing
| that if you can't get a $200K+ job at Google, you're obviously
| not even trying have some serious blinders on.
| paulcole wrote:
| > Do you seriously believe that anyone who is reasonably
| intelligent can just waltz into a high paying job at Apple or
| Google by sending them a resume
|
| People who have waltzed into a high paying job at Apple or
| Google by sending them a resume believe _exactly_ this.
|
| It's one of the many problems with any sort of unsolicited
| financial/job seeking advice. Actually the problem with
| advice of any sort. It's almost 100% wrong.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm just very aware of how lucky I've been on a couple of
| different occasions (ADDED: Specifically from an employment
| perspective).
|
| During the dot-com bubble bursting, my company was having
| big layoffs and I landed a new job based on an informal
| lunch meeting with someone I knew that I had literally a
| couple of days after being laid off. (Some other leads I
| was investigating in parallel prior to getting an offer
| produced not so much as a nibble.)
|
| Then, probably only a month of so before that employer shut
| down (somewhat after but somewhat related to the 2008
| downturn), I contacted someone I knew at another company--
| which resulted in an offer and I'm still there.
|
| But none of that provides much in the way of insights for
| someone else beyond a generic "have a network that knows
| you do good work and is in a position to hire you."
| jimbokun wrote:
| > "have a network that knows you do good work and is in a
| position to hire you."
|
| Which is an extremely important insight.
| ghaff wrote:
| But it's not especially actionable. Except perhaps
| insofar as a reminder to not let yourself be locked in a
| company building and never interact with anyone outside
| those 4 walls.
|
| In my case, it basically boiled down to working a long
| time in the industry and having relationships with former
| co-workers, consultants who did work for us, and clients.
|
| ADDED: Having said that, a lot of people think their
| resumes are all they need to land whatever job they want.
| And maybe that's true in some cases. But other than my
| first job in the tech industry--which I got out of grad
| school--every other position has been basically through
| people I knew and my resume was essentially irrelevant.
| karamazov wrote:
| Yes. Any reasonably good programmer can get a job at a FANG
| company with three months of serious study; any reasonably
| intelligent person can become a good entry-level programmer
| with 1-2 years of serious study. The demand for engineers far
| outstrips supply.
| decafninja wrote:
| I've been studying for the past two years and have failed
| at multiple FAANGs, some twice. Failed at FB, NFLX, AMZN,
| in addition to MSFT and UBER.
|
| Then again, I'm not entry level (10 yoe), so I might be
| competing at a higher bar. However, I'd gladly join any of
| these companies as a junior engineer without hesitation.
|
| I've seen stories of, amongst others, someone who studied
| while in prison get into GOOG, someone who was a
| aesthetician get into NFLX, a cab driver who got into UBER,
| all as SWEs.
|
| I actually wish I wasn't a SWE so I could compete at the
| entry/junior level. I feel my 10yoe (SWE at investment
| bank), which gives me a TC only slightly higher than a
| FAANG junior SWE, is wasted.
| dkersten wrote:
| Why use stock ticker names instead of typing the company
| names out properly? It literally only takes a second or
| two longer and is much clearer to read.
| teddyh wrote:
| It's usually signalling. Specifically, it signals "I can
| afford to invest so much into stocks that I live and
| breathe stocks, and if you don't, then _I don't care
| about you_." It's a very conceited attitude.
|
| Of course, in this case specifically, it might be because
| they worked for 10 years in an investment bank, and might
| be used to always speaking about companies in terms of
| stocks.
| rapfaria wrote:
| But why would you want to join those companies as a
| junior engineer?
| decafninja wrote:
| - Because it would give me better career development than
| where I am now as a senior SWE.
|
| - TC trajectory would be significantly higher, even if it
| means taking a minor temporary paycut.
|
| - Intangibles, which might sound trivial, but stuff like
| working with smart coworkers, not having to dress up like
| a businessman to work, etc.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Better long terms salary growth
| nostrademons wrote:
| How much time are you spending specifically on interview
| question practice (HackerRank/Leetcode)?
|
| I've got close to 20 years of programming experience,
| including working at Google for several years and
| launching some very high-profile projects. I still fail
| interviews if I haven't studied for them. You could argue
| that it's a stupid system where they test 20-minute
| coding exercises with a trick answer, and you'd be right
| [1]. But it's a system that can be gamed, and can be
| gamed with relatively little time. Putting in a week
| full-time, or working a problem a day for 3 months, will
| put you way ahead of most of the rest of the competition.
|
| [1] But the interview bullshit serves another less-
| obvious purpose: it tests how much you actually want to
| work at the organization. It's relatively easy to
| bullshit enthusiasm in a calm chat with a hiring manager.
| It's pretty hard to do it when your brain is occupied by
| solving a hard problem and you're frustrated because you
| have 5 minutes left to solve a problem and there's still
| a sticky bug.
| decafninja wrote:
| At the start of the process, I began with comp sci/DS&A
| fundamentals - including books like Algorithm Design
| Manual, Intro to Algorithms, etc. Took a few months break
| to get married, then resumed, eventually starting to 100%
| grind leetcode problems. As my wife can amusingly attest
| - I no longer have any hobbies or other personal
| entertainment since we got married. Studying for
| interviews consumes all the free time I have that I don't
| spend with her.
|
| Add to that, since last year, my day job got a lot less
| demanding, so I am actually studying/leetcoding during
| the afternoon at work too.
|
| One wrench thrown into the loop is that I am a mainly a
| frontend engineer by trade, and it seems frontend
| interviews at FAANG and many other top tech companies are
| focusing less on leetcode/DS&A and more on JavaScript
| trivia problems. So that has been a context shift, and I
| am focusing more on getting as many JavaScript tricks and
| patterns into my repertoire now, and less on leetcode.
|
| Pretty much my #1 personal goal in life at the moment is
| to get into a FAANG, or at least similar caliber,
| company. No, it's not a life or death matter, but whereas
| someone else might be content to watch TV/Netflix, or
| play games, or go golfing, I'm spending that time
| leetcoding...
|
| What I feel torpedoes me during the interview is that I
| can get often get 90%+ of a solution, even if it's a
| problem I haven't seen before. But some edge case or bug
| in my code kills me, or I miss some trick or pattern that
| is the key to getting it right. In a less competitive
| company, this might mean passing the interview, but for a
| FAANG or similarly highly competitive company, I feel not
| getting 100% technical perfection means dead on arrival.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Sounds like you're doing a lot of the right stuff.
|
| I started as a frontend engineer at Google, 11+ years
| ago, and you're right that there's a lot of
| Javascript/DOM/HTML trivia to understand. Google was also
| one of the few companies that insisted you know vanilla
| JS cold and don't use frameworks in the interview. It's
| worth studying up on MDN to make sure you really know JS
| corner cases. You need to know the leetcode-style
| problems too - when I applied (and I think this is still
| true), it was 2 interviews for algorithms & data
| structures, 2 for frontend, and 1 system design.
|
| It also may not be the right time to apply, since many
| FAANGs are dramatically slowing down hiring. Your odds
| get much better in boom times than bust times.
| decafninja wrote:
| I actually just got my rejection from FB today. Purely
| JavaScript questions, no leetcode at all. If I were to
| rewind, I'd have focused more on purely JavaScript tricks
| and less on other parts of the frontend repertoire. i.e.
| the time I spent on CSS seems to have been a waste.
|
| Also got rejected from AMZN back in December. Made the
| mistake grinding leetcode during the weeks leading up to
| the interview, when it turned out to be purely JS trivia.
|
| The hardest part of interviewing as FEE seems to be the
| lack of sample JS interview problems available, versus
| say, leetcode. I feel I am pretty well versed in using JS
| and have pretty in-depth knowledge of the arcane workings
| of the language far beyond a typical developer (certainly
| more so than my coworkers), but just like how leetcode
| interviews cover cases you'll never encounter in day to
| day work, frontend JS interview problems seem to do the
| same.
|
| That said, I don't know how much JS knowledge a typical
| FEE at a FAANG or similar company has. But that's one big
| reason I want to get into one of these companies - I'm
| assuming, and hoping, the level of knowledge and
| enthusiasm (I hate to use the word passion) is much
| higher at SV tech companies than outside. Most of the
| places I've worked (banks, finance), the JS engineers can
| barely explain how async stuff works in JS.
| throwaway987978 wrote:
| Keep going. You only need to pass once. :)
|
| I'm kind of in the same boat. I failed all my interviews
| as well and I have about the same amount of experience as
| you. I agree that getting into these companies is easier
| as a junior engineer.
|
| You may want to look at an interview prep course like
| Outco.io or Interview Kickstart. I haven't attended one
| yet but will most likely do so once I'm ready to start
| interviewing again. I think the feedback they offer will
| be worth it rather than me constantly headscratching
| after failing another interview.
|
| (The fact that these courses exist just exemplifies the
| whole problem with software interviewing but I don't
| fault them for that)
| decafninja wrote:
| I've been in touch with the people at Interview
| Kickstart. They seem like nice people, but I'm pretty
| sure I know what my problem is - not doing the coding
| rounds with 100% perfect optimal solutions, when another
| competing candidate is doing so.
|
| For example, in my failed FB interview above, I quickly
| and successfully solved two problems in the phone screen
| - thus I passed. The first onsite (virtual) coding round
| I struggled on the first problem but got it with about 10
| minutes to spare. Main issue was that the optimal
| solution involved doing something in JavaScript that
| AFAIK typically considered bad practice. The second
| problem I waltzed through in 5 minutes. The second coding
| round I got the first problem, but there was an edge case
| bug I didn't catch, and fixing that took up the entire 45
| minutes so I didn't get to a second problem. I'm guessing
| that was a big negative signal.
|
| I know communication goes a long way, but considering how
| competitive these positions are at FAANG level companies,
| I'm sure there is someone else out there that
| communicates and vibes just as well as I do in addition
| to getting the 100% optimal solution quickly.
|
| The one thing I can see a service like IK offering me is
| networks and referrals, but not sure how much that would
| be worth, especially since they aren't exactly cheap.
| That said, I'd pay the tuition without hesitation if they
| could guarantee me a job (of any level) at a FAANG level
| company, but that's not the case :). Or at least a 100%
| refund if I fail to get into such a company after a
| period following the curriculum - but I feel that's
| easier promised than done even if they were to offer
| such.
|
| I have friends at some of these companies who have given
| me referrals, but ultimately all that does is give me
| higher odds of getting an interview, and in some cases, a
| chance to directly chat with the hiring manager prior to
| the interview. For whatever it's worth I've had managers
| express great enthusiasm about having someone like me on
| their team after a conversation, but then I get torpedoed
| for not being able to find the perfectly optimal
| solutions to some leetcode medium/hard.
| throwaway987978 wrote:
| Yeah I hear you. I've struggled with the exact same
| problem. The stress doesn't help and often times I've
| figured out the answer just 5 or 10 minutes after the
| interview was done. I know I got rejected from Amazon and
| then a week later I was doing practice interviews on
| interviewing.io and the guy who was mock interviewing me
| said that he works at Amazon and that I should apply. I
| had to tell him that I did apply and just got rejected
| from an onsite interview the week before.
|
| Yeah, referrals at these sized companies only help to get
| a recruiter to pay attention. It doesn't really help.
| I've even gotten interviews just by searching LinkedIn
| for ___ recruiter and messaging them directly.
|
| FWIW, I recently attended the Outco sales pitch and they
| do have a almost guaranteed payment option. Instead of
| paying up front you can pay nothing and then pay 10% of
| your first year's base salary. Obviously that would cost
| you more than if you had paid up front but that could be
| an option.
| diN0bot wrote:
| This is a particular kind of challenge that definitely
| occurs for more experienced engineers, however I also
| suspect you have a stronger foundation than you realize
| and could shine with some specific guidance.
|
| A buddy and I provide all kinds of practice interviews to
| help engineers get into FAANGs. We work on a success
| based payment model, and help substantially with
| negotiations, too.
|
| If you're interested send me a note with availability for
| a chat (email and website in profile). I would love to at
| least offer some advice for next time even you decide our
| coaching is not for you.
| hysan wrote:
| Same here. I've considered wiping my resume and leaving
| off my background intentionally just to get the chance to
| interview at the entry/junior level. Of course, those
| positions are now mostly exclusively reserved for those
| coming out of college. So unless you have the income and
| time to go get another CS degree, you still can't apply.
|
| This is all assuming you can get past the resume filter
| which is all luck unless you know someone with enough
| pull within the company already.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > Any reasonably good programmer can get a job at a FANG
| company with three months of serious study
|
| Do we seriously believe there are so many FAANG jobs
| available that "any reasonably good programmer" who wants
| one can have one, just for the price of a bit of "serious
| study"? I don't think so. Google et al may be big, but
| they're not _that_ big or growing that fast.
|
| A great deal of the demand for engineers does not come with
| anything like FAANG-level prospects.
| decafninja wrote:
| This.
|
| For every junior FAANG engineer, there are legions of
| senior or staff level equivalent engineers at companies
| outside of the Silicon Valley style tech/software sector
| who will retire with their TC topping out at maybe around
| what a lower-mid level engineer at a mid-top tech company
| would make.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is kind of depressing for me. I've failed interviews
| at Amazon, MS, Google and Netflix. I studied a bunch and
| managed to get 5/5 on all but one section of the TripleByte
| test.
| the_af wrote:
| Don't be depressed. It's false that any reasonably good
| programmer can get a job at those companies. There are
| plenty of reasons why you may not get a job at any of
| them (bad luck, peer competition, interview antipatterns
| (google Yegge on this), maybe algorithms aren't your
| strong suit, ageism, etc). Even worse, from initial
| rejections you can spiral down into anxiety that will
| hinder you in future interviews, and listen to this: you
| cannot tell a person not to get anxious at the prospect
| of rejection, either.
|
| People who say it's easy are arguing from an optimistic
| point of view specifically addressed as unhelpful at the
| start of the article.
| shahbaby wrote:
| Don't be. There's a lot of luck involved in the interview
| process and most people who had luck on their side won't
| understand this.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I'm over 50 and been working in the industry for >25
| years... what are my odds?
| decafninja wrote:
| Disclaimer: I don't work at a FAANG. However this is my
| observations from interviewing at FAANGs.
|
| Seems random to be honest. Some of my interviewers have
| been older people. Some of the people waiting with me at
| lobbies prior to interview have been older people. I'm 38
| FYI.
|
| Seems your ability to pass the leetcode problems is the
| most important factor, so long as you don't torpedo
| yourself with odd behavior during the non-technical
| portions.
|
| For more experienced candidates like yourself and I, I
| hear the system design round is also important. But your
| success in that is more difficult to gauge, whereas you
| kind of know whether you bombed an leetcode round or not.
|
| Depressing is that your multiple decades of experience
| might be absolutely worthless as far as passing leetcode
| rounds go. Your experience may or may not be useful for
| the system design round. It's useful if your experience
| with systems matches that with what the company is
| looking for. It's useless if not. I've noticed the
| systems at many non-tech enterprise companies don't
| exactly align with the systems at newer tech companies.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Thanks, useful :)
| username90 wrote:
| Yes I do believe that, other less prestigious companies
| didn't even respond since I had holes in my resume but Google
| did. Getting an interview there is not harder than any other
| place, often times it is easier.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
| username90 wrote:
| They interview everyone who does well in their
| programming competitions, it really doesn't require any
| luck at all.
| mettamage wrote:
| Alright, can you get me a phone screen? Sorry to ask the
| question so directly, but I have applied since 2014, and I
| can't get to the phone screen.
|
| I'd love to be a frontend engineer, UX engineer, creative
| engineer (I've seen this role at Google, it looks awesome) or a
| full-stack engineer.
|
| I have:
|
| A bachelor in information science (2012)
|
| A bachelor degree in psychology (2015)
|
| A master in game-design where I learned about Unity3D and C#
| (2016)
|
| A master in computer science where I learned about cache
| eviction in GPUs to perform rowhammer via a JavaScript
| advertizement (2018).
|
| I have done quite a few side projects (not willing to disclose
| here, email is in my profile). And I have some work experience
| as a coding bootcamp instructor (1 year, I trained 50 people to
| become junior web developers at companies like IBM, Capgemini
| and a top 5 Dutch bank) and a freelance web developer (6
| months) and a freelance iOS developer (also 6 months).
|
| I graduated in 2018 and after freelancing for a bit, I took a
| sabbatical in 2019 (setting up a bar in Thailand with family
| and friends). When I started looking for jobs in earnest in
| 2020, Covid started to hit.
|
| I'm practicing algorithms as we speak, I'll be ready in 2 weeks
| to a month from now. So far I'm facing no difficulties, this
| stuff is hard work but it's a lot easier than my security
| courses. Also, algorithms are actually quite fun. There are a
| few things there that I really want to learn such as a hyper
| attention to detail. I'm currently training the skill to write
| a program flawless without bugs from the get go, complete with
| the fastest time complexity immediately. I know I can get to
| this level because I'm noticing that for a lot of algorithms
| just by playing around one can see the best time complexity for
| it (I find optimizing for the right space complexity a bit
| harder).
|
| I hope you'll help me with this. If not, and I don't get to a
| phone screen, well that is my (and many people) their biggest
| issue. Passing algorithms is not the issue, getting a chance to
| be interviewed is. I'm a 100% sure I'd rock at the job, as I'm
| sure that many other people would who didn't get the chance for
| a phone screen.
|
| I'm from The Netherlands and would love to work in Zurich. I
| see you work in Zurich as well, I've been to Switzerland quite
| a few times, it's amazing.
|
| Google teams that I find interesting and want to know more
| about:
|
| - Google Doodles
|
| - Project zero (though I don't think I'd be able work there
| since people have a super big track record regarding the
| security work they do)
|
| - Google Creative Lab
|
| - Google Health
|
| - Google Stadia
|
| - Google Cloud Platform
|
| - Google Brand Studio (though I don't think I'd be able to work
| there since it's more about people who can shoot beautiful
| movies)
| mdorazio wrote:
| I really want to see more articles like this on HN. However, this
| is really "career advice for people at struggling companies." The
| luck part doesn't get discussed in the way I expected. To me, bad
| luck is things like:
|
| - You're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ex. you graduated
| in 2008-2010/now or your business sector got wiped out by COVID
|
| - Despite your best efforts at networking, you simply never meet
| that magical person who can strap a booster rocket to your
| career/company
|
| - You don't have a resilient financial and mental safety net in
| the form of good friends/family early in your career that enables
| you to take risks, or you got dealt a bad hand in the form of
| things like dependents or health issues and simply can't afford
| to take risks
|
| - Despite all your work, you get blindsided by things completely
| out of your control. Ex. a big company straight up rips off your
| product/service/side gig or an executive at your company guts
| your project/department
|
| - You don't have the magic paper credentials to get you through
| the doors at places you want to go because you didn't know you
| needed them earlier in life when they were practical to get
|
| These are the kinds of things I want to see tackled with real-
| world career advice since I think they apply to a lot of people.
| For every lucky executive or entrepreneur there are many who were
| unlucky.
| vsareto wrote:
| The bad luck is thinking a company is having a good luck and
| then realize it isn't. Running into people able to manipulate
| you is also bad luck.
|
| Companies are selling you during the interview. Sometimes good
| businesses hire bad people who are good at interviews
| (maliciously or not), sometimes bad businesses who are good at
| interviews hire good people (maliciously or not).
| RedBeetDeadpool wrote:
| Another huge aspect of "bad luck" is just meeting unusual
| numbers of bad people. By that I mean people who have an
| intention to harm you in some way or another instead just being
| the typical look out for oneself or even the more empathetic
| caring kind of person. You dont really choose the people you
| run into but there are absolutely skills you can learn in order
| to deal with them in healthy ways.
|
| A significant portion part of someone's career is based on
| politics and surprisingly little on skill.
| starpilot wrote:
| There was an article about "luck" a few years ago and how
| researchers really found "luck" was somewhat in our control.
| Graduating in a recession isn't, but being "blindsided" is -
| luck had a strong component of being attentive and aware to the
| world around them. This derived from a calm wellbeing. I used
| to know someone who always lamented her "bad luck." Stuff like
| car accidents, or getting physically injured. She was also the
| most profoundly depressed and anxious person I had ever met,
| like within minutes you could tell she was disturbed. You could
| tell her bad "luck" was her mode of being constant distracted,
| but there wasn't really any advice you could give other than
| "work on your mental state," which she already knew.
|
| Her original bad luck over which she had no control was an
| unhappy upbringing, which is truly unfortunate, but that's not
| the last word on life.
| designium wrote:
| Most opinions and suggestions are based on the "standard path
| of success". If we use beauty contest as an analogy of success,
| only one will be the winner and all losers. In case of North
| American perspective, success looks like this:
|
| - Have good academic credentials - Have good big corporation
| names on your resume - Have good connections - Have nice car -
| Have nice house - Have kids, partner, etc. - Travel a lot when
| retired
|
| If we based our life against that standard, then it is going to
| be easier to be depressed once a person's life deviates from
| it.
|
| The other extreme, suggested by some others here, is to accept
| and be content about "c'est la vie" concept - life will suck
| and get over it, and its variations. I think that is wrong
| because it reinforces the idea there is only one way to succeed
| and have a good life.
|
| My suggestion is simpler:
|
| - Cover your base: do you have a place to live? do you feel
| safe where you live? do you have good quality food that you
| like to eat? do you have a group of friends to hangout and rely
| on? do you have an income source that is relatively stable?
|
| - Then you can focus on whatever you want to do; free yourself
| from rigid standards and paths. You can even pursue the
| stereotypical success lifestyle knowing that even if you fail,
| you can recover fast and try again.
| mgolawala wrote:
| Well said. I was reading the responses, and seeing the
| implicit group consensus on what "success" looks like.
|
| The thing though is, your entire life outcome is based on
| luck. There is nothing you can really do to compensate for
| that, besides getting back up, brushing the dust of your
| knees, counting your blessings and keep going.
|
| List of things that are luck:
|
| 1) Where you were born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
| (think Afghanistan, North Korea, Venezuela, etc.)
|
| 2) Being born the wrong gender in the majority of the world
| by population (ie female).
|
| 3) Being born with the wrong sexual orientation in a huge
| chunk of the world.
|
| 4) Being born with a health condition (physical or mental),
| or with a learning disability. Even a mild one like ADHD or
| dyslexia.
|
| 5) Being born to the wrong set of parents. ie. belonging to
| the wrong community/religion/race... in the majority of the
| world.
|
| Honestly, even your mental capacity and grit are to a large
| extent (if not completely) luck. If developed via nurture,
| you didn't pick how you were nurtured. If nature, you didn't
| pick the genetic combination you were born with.
|
| So really, what is left? What percentage of your 'success'
| can you actually take credit for?
| achillesheels wrote:
| Luck presupposes different outcomes of what will be
| determined. How can a person have different outcomes from
| the origin of their conception?
|
| I encourage you to read my essay _On the Skill of Luck_ :
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XKPJ9ZY/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U
| _...
| _davebennett wrote:
| This is so true! I wish more people would recognize it
| quesera wrote:
| This is not bad luck. This is the normal state of life. It may
| be depressing (non-clinical), it might be disappointing, it
| might be discouraging, but it is 100% bog-standard _ordinary_.
|
| The feeling that you are suffering more than other people is
| the true harm caused.
|
| Your points:
|
| * Graduated at the wrong time: How many thousands of people
| graduated between 2008 and 2010? That is by definition
| ordinary. * Never met that magical person to makes your life
| magical: You said it yourself. Do you think most people meet
| magical people? * Resilient financial safety net: You've read
| the statistics, right? Most people don't have a month's income
| saved for difficult times. * Mental safety net/health issues:
| OK, there's some randomness here. But many people struggle with
| _some_ form of this. * Having dependents: Well, blended choice
| and randomness, to some extent. But controllable usually, if
| you mean offspring. Adult dependents (parents) are harder, but
| far less common. * Large company rips off /Some exec derails
| your project: Normal and ordinary. This is how things work.
| Disappointing, but don't let it be discouraging. That part is
| your choice.
|
| I think you're conflating "lack of unusual good luck" with "bad
| luck". They are not the same. Don't imagine that the lucky
| individuals for whom the stars aligned are in any way normal.
| They just get all the press.
| CM30 wrote:
| Yeah, I think it's definitely worth remembering that the
| people and organisations making millions/billions of dollars
| and 'changing the world' are in the news because it's rare.
| Most musicians don't reach number 1, most film stars and
| YouTubers don't become millionaires, most startups don't
| become the next Facebook and most games on Steam or app
| stores just get buried.
|
| A combination of press coverage and social media has
| basically convinced an increasingly large percentage of the
| population than the outliers are the norm.
| techpop10 wrote:
| The one big thing I see missing here is the ability to increase
| your luck by networking and personal branding. You absolutely
| have to build your personal network. More exposure, more
| potential opportunity. Plain and simple - no matter what field
| you are in.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| This is misinformation for people who are trying.
| techpop10 wrote:
| huh?
| specialist wrote:
| - Mentorship, and how to find it
|
| Reflecting on my career of failure, unfulfilled potential,
| compared to the biographies of "successful" people, what they
| all seem to have which I lacked was a mentor.
|
| That person who said "You can do this. I believe in you. Let's
| talk it thru."
|
| To counterbalance all the people who actively or passively tear
| you down.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| I've found that success in life is correlated with how closely
| you hit on actual "truths" in the world. For example, you join
| company X on a rocket ship. Your equity value skyrockets -
| those assets were actually undervalued relative to what someone
| would pay for them later.
|
| One of the hardest things in life is that we don't actually
| know the "truth", no one does. But what we can do is learn to
| spot ways we tell ourselves convenient lies - this is why
| Buffet + Munger did SO much work on studying human biases. If
| we had a perfect ability to spot every falsehood, we would be
| left with the bare truth.
|
| Given it's an imperfect system, "bad luck" can be simplified to
| "you keep missing the truth". And it's often not our fault -
| how the hell could anyone have known about COVID-19, and impact
| on their company, far enough in advance to actually move to
| safer waters prior? But it's worth examining why you made the
| decision to do X - were there any truths you missed, or lies
| you told yourself?
|
| Through that process, you can get better at spotting falsehoods
| or clarifying your values, so that even if you don't ever land
| on a rocket ship, you find a workplace you are happy at.
|
| For example, one of my early jobs was at a turd of a company. I
| knew BEFORE that it wasn't a great opportunity. But I was
| desperate to leave my current situation so I took it. Within a
| few weeks, I KNEW it was still a turd. But I didn't want to pay
| the relocation bonus back if I left so soon. So I stuck it out,
| ended up being there for a few years, and it mostly was wasted
| time. So now I turn down jobs where I feel like that going in.
| I need to feel great about the company's situation.
|
| But even that's not foolproof. I had another company where the
| company was doing GREAT. Fucking rocketship. Then literally
| within a few months of me joining, it went down the tubes and
| barely survived. So I also learned to be more wary of quickly
| growing, younger companies as well.
|
| Now I'm at a steadily growing larger company, that's managed
| well, and I love it.
|
| One last piece of advance - google "It works". It's a little
| book about writing a list of what you want and constantly
| looking at it. I did it during my last job search and literally
| got an (almost) dream job. Give it a try.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| can you link directly to the book? thanks.
| tome wrote:
| Perhaps it's this
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Works-Famous-Little-Makes-Dreams-
| eboo...
|
| It Works: The Famous Little Red Book That Makes Your Dreams
| Come True by RHJ
| RookyNumbas wrote:
| When I think of the very successful people I know, all have
| gone through life events that would absolutely flatten most
| people. The loss of a child, a partner committing suicide, 6
| businesses failing, 2 weeks in an induced comma.
|
| And yet a stranger looks at their accomplishments and thinks
| that they just didn't have bad luck.
| wondringaloud wrote:
| This is absolutely true. I've noticed most "unsuccessful"
| people go around with a view of "successful" people that they
| got lucky, never had to endure hardship, had something handed
| to them, and so on. It's a defeatist, whiny attitude.
|
| I've put "un/successful" in quotes because I'm referring to
| the common interpretation of success/failure being purely
| financial. There are many other ways to lead an
| "unsuccessful" but fulfilling life, and I'd argue the place
| to start is to accept the hand you've been dealt. And to work
| with it rather than rail against it.
| idclip wrote:
| I second this.
| DrNuke wrote:
| Not taking it personal helps, though... we cast our net daily
| and see what emerges?
| LarryDarrell wrote:
| I suspect it's because there isn't much advice to give.
|
| My answer, having checked a few of your boxes... Your lifetime
| wages are going to be lower than many of your peers. This is
| unlikely to change. Adjust your worldview accordingly. Don't
| assume any debt that relies on increasing future earnings to be
| comfortable.
|
| By all means, keep trying, but stay level headed. Success for
| most is not always right around the corner. Prior to SV eating
| the world, the only people that said that we all should be
| entrepreneurs really just wanted you in their Amway downline.
|
| Society doesn't like to show the magnitude failures out there,
| or worse, the getting-by'ers. There are a lot of self-conscious
| IT people in the midwest making $70k/year feeling like
| failures, when they are the winners of Kokomo, IN.
|
| Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. Look inward for
| contentment. Try therapy if your shitty childhood and shitty
| parents made inward a hard place to look.
| bpatel576 wrote:
| Lots of good points about living below your means. Also
| define what you want. I'd hate for someone to live a safe and
| secure life and minimize risk only to get shafted by the
| system in the end. Some risk is worth taking. Taking on debt
| in certain situations is worth it. You just need to get aware
| of life in the event of failure and take that into
| consideration.
| non-entity wrote:
| > There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest
| making $70k/year feeling like failures, when they are the
| winners of Kokomo, IN.
|
| Heh. Unrelated but I've been re-watching a lot of KOTH during
| quarantine and this line reminded me of a scene from the
| first season
|
| https://youtu.be/bQfyCg0i8sU?t=1m0s
| blululu wrote:
| >> Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car.
|
| As the proud owner of a 2004 Toyota Corolla and a 2011
| Philosophy Minor, this line made my day. Honestly it is just
| plain good advice.
| taurath wrote:
| How many miles does your Philosophy Minor have on it? I've
| heard they're not very reliable
| blululu wrote:
| In fairness it does break down constantly, but I can
| usually repair it on my own. I should mention that it
| handles well in difficult terrain, and it appreciates in
| value over time.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Philosophy will get through times of no money better than
| money will get you through times of no philosophy.
|
| " Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the
| world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." -- Rumi
| mywittyname wrote:
| Isn't philosophy kind of like CS minus the computers? I
| remember my sister talking about how much she hated her
| philosophy class and what she described was essentially
| discrete math-lite.
| Pamar wrote:
| This is interesting. Can you expand it a bit, please?
| achillesheels wrote:
| Possibly it is because philosophy is a lot like being
| bothered by a bug in your code, and you stress and strain
| to resolve it which provides growth in wisdom after the
| objective is completed.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Since they said "philosophy class," singular, I suspect
| they're referring to the unit on logic: modus ponens,
| modus tollens, valid vs sound arguments, etc.
| dvt wrote:
| Philosophy major here (I jokingly tout myself as a
| _trained philosopher_ ). Philosophy is a big field with
| different schools of thought. In the US/UK, the primary
| school is known as "analytic (philosophy)" which is
| focused on tight arguments, precise language, and clarity
| of thought (see Russell, Wittgenstein, Lewis, Godel).
| This is contrasted by European -- in particular, French
| -- "continental (philosophy)" which waxes more poetic
| (see Nietzsche, Sartre, Lacan, Derrida).
|
| The former deals quite a bit with logic (which was my
| area of focus in undergrad). Classes I took ranged from
| "baby logic" (predicate logic, first-order-logic), to
| second-order logic, to mathematical logic (mostly Peano
| arithmetic), to metalogic (learning how to prove things
| like Godel's incompleteness), to lambda calculus, to game
| theory. This was on top of ethics classes, history of
| philosophy, and other miscellaneous classes (took a very
| fun seminar by a Yale visiting professor -- I forget his
| name -- on the philosophy of food). Most of the graduate
| seminars I took were on philsophy of language and model
| theory.
|
| Just about every philosophy class had a pretty strong
| "logic" undercurrent.
| FabHK wrote:
| Just to clarify, and defend the old continent a bit:
| while it certainly originated German Idealism and its
| descendants all the way to post-structuralism and (gasp)
| "critical theory", today of course you can find
| proponents of both schools (the
| continental/hermeneutic/postmodern and the analytic) on
| all continents.
|
| And regarding the gp: most philosophy programs will have
| classes in informal and some even in formal logic, to
| Goedel's incompleteness theorems and way beyond.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Also, the less logical bit of analytic philosophy is all
| about breaking down and understanding other people's
| arguments. It's a very similar process to teasing out
| business requirements from stakeholders!
| mywittyname wrote:
| From what I remember, her class involved a lot of logical
| proofs using propositional logic, but in the form of word
| problems, not logical statements. I.e., if Bob is larger
| than Alice, then... instead of P -> Q. They also
| discussed probabilities, but I'm not sure to what degree.
|
| Those two topics are discussed in entry level CS courses
| as well. So I assumed that the fields might be semi-
| related if they require the same mathematical
| foundations.
| jimbokun wrote:
| This was my undergraduate degree, many years ago:
|
| https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/philosophy/undergraduate/log
| ic-...
| brudgers wrote:
| It varies by brand. Plato pretty much runs forever. Kant,
| even property maintained, will leave you scratching your
| head. People keep Aristotle running, but it's not pretty.
| For what you spend Hume is a bargain--you can even take
| it off road in the forest...assuming there are unfallen
| trees. For the DIYer, Wittgenstein will keep you busy but
| Russell is known to have a computational design flaw. I
| recommend a late model Singer if you can afford it
| because they're still making parts.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| I love my 2001 Corolla. It's got 164k miles on it (had
| about 140 when I bought it), and I hope to get another 100k
| out of it!
| celestialcheese wrote:
| Same here - except 220k. Still running great, but looking
| for a new-to-me car because i'm tired of driving it.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I feel like a used car underachiever right now, looking
| forward to 2025 when I get a back up camera and
| bluetooth.
| xcasperx wrote:
| You can always buy a new stereo and install it. If you
| buy it from Crutchfield, for like $19 extra, you can get
| it prewired/harnessed so you don't have to splice the
| wires. Pretty sweet deal.
|
| Also, some stereos come with a backup cam. This has to be
| spliced in though.
|
| HUGE NOTE: I bought a 4.5-star receiver on Crutchfield,
| but the receiver didn't have Sirius XM on it, so I
| basically don't have radio (unless I use an app on my
| phone to stream the radio). I don't listen to the radio
| often so it's not a huge deal for me, just something to
| be aware of.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| I have two cars. 03 VW Jetta TDI with 270k miles and an
| 09 Nissan Altima with 260k miles. Though I do get plenty
| of chances to try my hand at being a mechanic.
| KerryJones wrote:
| I don't think luck is as "random" of a factor as much as most
| people think it is. Checkout "Luck Factor" by Dr. Richard
| Wiseman.
|
| I do think there are a lot of things you can due to get
| probability more on your side:
|
| - Keep your eyes open for opportunities and look for the
| upside ("be optimistic" is the woo-woo version), but it's
| been proven in experiments that you'll catch things others
| won't
|
| - Only keep friends around you that actually support you.
| It's really hard to try to make life changes when people are
| constantly telling you you can't or shitting on your parade.
|
| - Start making analytical choices. Certain fields pay more
| than others. Certain businesses treat their employees better
| than others. A lower position at a better company will
| increase your probability of "bumping" into those people who
| might be life changing.
|
| - Learn about probability (Fooled by Randomness is a good
| start). If you constantly expose yourself to more chances of
| success, _odds are_, you'll start to find more of it.
| adamsea wrote:
| IMHO we are not only discussing luck but also our imperfect
| and fallible nature as people. All you say is excellent
| advice, but -- sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the
| bear gets you.
| FabHK wrote:
| > - Learn about probability (Fooled by Randomness is a good
| start). If you constantly expose yourself to more chances
| of success, _odds are_, you'll start to find more of it.
|
| A) You really want to identify gambles with positive
| expectation. If you constantly expose yourself to "more
| chances of success" with negative expectation (such as
| going to the casino for the chance of winning big), you'll
| end up ruined.
|
| B) Even if you can identify gambles with positive
| expectation, the more resources you have initially, the
| more you can afford to gamble. Thus, people initially
| deprived of luck might have less chance of catching up, let
| alone making it big.
| FabHK wrote:
| Counterpoint: Luck (broadly seen, including your genetic
| disposition and where you've been born - you might not call
| it luck, but it's certainly not something you've chosen or
| earned) plays a much bigger role than most people think it
| does.
|
| Source and book recommendation:
|
| Robert H. Frank: _Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the
| Myth of Meritocracy_
|
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167404/s
| u...
|
| > In recent years, social scientists have discovered that
| chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes
| than most people imagine. In Success and Luck, bestselling
| author and New York Times economics columnist Robert Frank
| explores the surprising implications of those findings to
| show why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in
| success--and why that hurts everyone, even the wealthy.
|
| Good summary in his article in The Atlantic:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/why-
| luc...
| protonimitate wrote:
| Great advice.
|
| I see a lot of people in tech with inflated ideas of what
| success means, and they're almost all tied strictly to
| salary/net worth.
|
| Yeah, having money is nice, but if that's all you base
| happiness/idea of success on, its going to be a bumpy road.
|
| >There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest
| making $70k/year feeling like failures
|
| I understand how this can point of view can develop, but one
| of the things I'm most grateful for in life is struggling
| through a slew of minimum-wage jobs out of college before
| transitioning into tech. That first bump to "tech salary"
| literally doubled my income over night and it was only 70k in
| a high COL east coast city. I learned how to live poor, and
| discovered I could still have a meaningful life while being
| broke.
|
| Although I still pursue career advancement, it's not just for
| money. And if it were to all disappear over night (which is
| the case for a lot of people right now), I'm comforted by the
| fact that I've already had it "that bad".
| PiersPlowman wrote:
| You gotta dig deep first if you want to build a skyscraper,
| as I always heard.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| > Yeah, having money is nice,
|
| As someone who was broke for many years and now is less
| broke (cash is flowing, there's money in my accounts, but
| I'm deeply in negative net worth due to student debt), I
| think you're understating the issue, vastly.
|
| Simply put, money is freedom. If you have it, you can do
| things people who don't have it can't. If you have enough
| of it, you can do just about anything. And, I'm not
| necessarily talking about luxuries, I'm talking about stuff
| like:
|
| * If you have enough money in the bank, an unexpected car
| repair is a hassle, rather than a disaster.
|
| * If you can afford to buy a home, then you don't have to
| worry about being evicted or not having a lease renewed.
|
| * If you have enough money, you can send your kids to a
| good school and get them off to the best possible start in
| life.
|
| * If you have an absurd amount of money, you don't need to
| worry about going bankrupt from getting sick.
|
| As I said, none of these things are luxuries, but, to reach
| "don't have to worry about medical bankruptcy" levels, or
| even "I get to own a home and nobody can tell me I can't
| paint my front door pink" levels takes a huge amount of
| money relative to the median income today.
|
| > I learned how to live poor, and discovered I could still
| have a meaningful life while being broke.
|
| That doesn't mean being broke is great, good, or even not
| all that bad. It just means you've gotten used to it.
| worik wrote:
| "* If you have an absurd amount of money, you don't need
| to worry about going bankrupt from getting sick."
|
| Or you live in a country with a socialised medical
| system.
| xenihn wrote:
| Money gives you the freedom to start over in one.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| I see you caught my implicit punch line. None of those
| things above the level of "unexpected car breakdown"
| really ought to be things people in the country with the
| largest economy in the world ought to be worrying about.
| We need to do something about that, whether it's a move
| toward social democracy, or even full on socialism. But,
| there's such a "fuck you, got mine" attitude among our
| political class that we're never going to see it in my
| lifetime, I'm sure. If it hasn't happened in the face of
| a global pandemic shutting everything down, I doubt the
| elite are going to get the message that workers are the
| ones that create everything of value in the economy, so
| we should try to elevate the lot of the average worker,
| rather than keeping him so stressed, sick, and insecure.
| brabel wrote:
| > If you have enough money, you can send your kids to a
| good school and get them off to the best possible start
| in life.
|
| > If you have an absurd amount of money, you don't need
| to worry about going bankrupt from getting sick.
|
| I don't know where you're from, but most rich countries,
| and even some poorer ones, have free, quality education
| for all, and health care tends to be nearly free... if
| you get sick, the government will support you for as long
| as needed. If you're from a very poor country, sorry
| about that... maybe you should consider migrating to a
| better country, if you have skills that are in demand,
| that's pretty easy nowadays!
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Take a guess which rich country I'm from. Hint: look
| who's #1 in global GDP.
| brabel wrote:
| I was being sarcastic :) of course I know in which
| country people usually have the concerns you mentioned...
| being #1 in GDP means nothing to the majority of
| Americans who don't get to have the peace of mind to not
| worry about even the most basic human necessities.
| saruken wrote:
| This is all-around great advice. I heard some similar things
| on Ricky Gervais' show After Life, and I wrote them down:
|
| > It's worth sticking around to maybe make my little corner
| of the world a slightly better place.
|
| > Happiness is amazing. It's so amazing, it doesn't matter if
| it's yours.
|
| > You may not like living much, but you can make the world a
| better place. So don't give up, because then they've won. And
| they grow in numbers.
| chosenbreed37 wrote:
| > Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. Look inward
| for contentment. Try therapy if your shitty childhood and
| shitty parents made inward a hard place to look.
|
| I'd recommend the following:
|
| 1. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
|
| 2. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson
|
| 3. Letters from a self made merchant - John Graham
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson
|
| yikes
| worik wrote:
| Well some people need to be told.
|
| In. Simple. Ideas.
| miguelmota wrote:
| I've read 12 Rules for Life and disliked that Peterson uses
| a lot of Disney movie and bible references to support his
| claims. He makes some good points every once in a while but
| the book is unnecessarily verbose. I recommend reading the
| cliff notes to understand 90% of the book.
| FabHK wrote:
| He uses Disney quotes to support his contention that
| there are profound, yet universal archetypes and myths
| that pop up everywhere - even in Disney movies.
| wwweston wrote:
| > 2. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson
|
| A note on this, since mentioning Peterson tends to spark
| controversy: I think I think the people who get the best
| out of Peterson _don 't_ treat him as a guru issuing rules
| written in stone tablets (in spite of the implication of
| the book title) but as a provoker of attention/reflection.
| This is probably generally true of anyone, but especially
| worth considering here.
|
| I also tend to recommend his university course lectures
| over his public-directed material; I'm not sure why it
| seems more moderated, but I'd guess that professional
| accountability and contextual habits developed before fame
| have something to do with it.
| friendlybus wrote:
| He was always like that. His work with the UN and legal
| work had rough edges. The fame has made him bigger not
| different.
|
| His lectures go more in depth and are not trying to hit a
| peak of condensed information. As much as Peterson likes
| nietschze, he can't write like nietschze, with highly
| condensed sentences. Peterson has always been better in
| the long form.
| rhizome wrote:
| > _but as a provoker of attention /reflection._
|
| Smart business choice, this is how you capitalize on
| ambiguity. Sarcasm as a business model.
| friendlybus wrote:
| Is that your model? Because Peterson is cited and
| sourced.
| akurzon wrote:
| > I also tend to recommend his university course lectures
| over his public-directed material; I'm not sure why it
| seems more moderated, but I'd guess that professional
| accountability and contextual habits developed before
| fame have something to do with it.
|
| I've noticed the same thing. I think he's gotten into bad
| habits commenting on subjects outside of his area of
| expertise, but I did enjoy his YouTube lectures for the
| reasons you mentioned
| adamsea wrote:
| Dunno about Jordan Peterson. Some of his advice may be OK
| but he's also profoundly weird / not very self-reflective
| .... only eats meat? Meat cures all?
|
| IMHO the Socratic Dialogues, as basically the foundational
| text of all Western Philosophy, and being pretty friendly
| and approachable, are the right place to begin. Helps you
| figure out how to figure it out for yourself. You can make
| your own calls from there.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > Meat cures all?
|
| When did he say that?
| [deleted]
| rhizome wrote:
| Come on, all you have to do is google "jordan peterson
| meat" and you get pages and pages of when-he-said-thats.
| friendlybus wrote:
| He went on an elimination diet because his family has
| some nasty immune problems. It's mundane, I don't get the
| controversy.
| ska wrote:
| Without opinion on the particular value of this list, I'll
| advise that if you are exploring philosophy (even of the
| pop kind), especially if this is new for you, you'll
| probably get the best results out of reading contradicting
| and contrasting results.
|
| Be it foundational or just currently popular, following up
| a work by reading it's most talented detractors can
| multiply it's value to you. Learning about an entirely
| different philosophical approach will often be more useful
| to you than reading another book on similar ideas.
|
| Oh, and really good popularizors are rare. Usually the
| original sources are far better - but by nature much less
| accessible. So you have a trade off to make.
| hckr_news wrote:
| After my working life had induced anxiety, panic attacks,
| and a host of other issues which really started to rear
| their ugly head I've become a much more religious person.
| On top of the professional help I've sought out for these
| issues, it has also helped a lot in my case when you
| internalize deep that work/money/material success really
| doesn't matter in the grand scheme and there's a greater
| goal to work towards.
| whitebread wrote:
| What is this greater goal you speak of?
| edraferi wrote:
| In my experience, religions are happy to hand out pre-
| baked sets of objectives. Live a life like X. Stay away
| from Y. Put your money in Z. If you have trouble deciding
| what direction you want to go, religion can point you
| somewhere and surround you with a community that will
| encourage you to keep moving that way.
|
| For some people, that's really valuable. You see this
| especially with people who's prior independent experience
| didn't work out very well. Maybe they grew up in an
| abusive home and want instructions on breaking the cycle
| and raising their family better. Maybe there was criminal
| behavior, substance abuse, relationship or career
| stagnation. For many people, a pre-packaged world view
| from Religion X can be a big step up from their prior
| experience, ESPECIALLY when it comes with a supportive
| community.
|
| The problem, of course, is two fold.
|
| First, life isn't one-size-fits-all. Eventually the pre-
| packaged beliefs will be sub-optimal for your personal
| situation. The better religious communities are flexible
| enough to accommodate this. The uglier ones lock you down
| or cut you out.
|
| Second, the pre-packaged beliefs usually assert their own
| universal and exclusive validity. Even if the one you
| pick happens to be correct about this, it encourages
| toxic behaviors that will isolate you from non-community
| members. And of course the claim is preposterous on its
| face; The interchangeability of religions undercuts their
| claims to universal truth.
|
| So, to summarize: Religion is a reasonable place to get a
| default world view and community, especially if you're
| existing beliefs/community aren't serving you well. Long
| term they are suboptimal because they don't adapt to your
| personal circumstances very well.
| kaitai wrote:
| I've actually taken an essentially opposite view,
| interestingly enough. As a younger person I read widely,
| rebelled in a very thoughtful way against my religion (in
| my opinion! haha!), took things very seriously, tried to
| really understand both atheism and other religions, etc.
| I think all of that was important. Through life
| experiences I've come to appreciate, strangely, the
| rituals of religion and the not-making-sense-ness of it.
| So I find it useful to consider the pre-baked objectives
| as a sort of rough draft I can push against, but more
| importantly, I've discarded the world view and taken the
| concrete. For Christianity, that's bread, wine, the
| holidays, the rhythm, the community, the directive to
| support charities generously. The concrete actions do
| something on a primordial level, as they're what my
| ancestors have done for oh about eight generations.
|
| The actual pre-packaged beliefs? Meh. I'm less interested
| than I ever was in arguing the particulars of Paul with
| anyone. So, to summarize, for me religion is a reasonable
| place to get a default set of rituals and perhaps
| community, and long term that's the useful part because
| the rituals can continue even as my beliefs and
| circumstances change.
|
| This may also be worth thinking about with respect to
| healthy eating, exercise, etc. Don't get sucked into a
| cult, but if signing up for (now-virtual) CrossFit or
| Pilates classes, or following Starting Strength, gets you
| doing something, it's a concrete physical ritual that can
| stay with you even as you change :)
| askdfjng wrote:
| JBP's 12 Rules for Life is dangerous advice
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtwP6AbbAUc
| DanielLihaciu wrote:
| I would be the devil's advocate and disagree with you.
| There are more dangerous self help books like The Secret
| who took the Bible quote about praying and it will come
| true out of context, and many other THE 4-HOUR WORKWEEK,
| LAW OF ATTRACTION....
| nexus2045 wrote:
| Nah you're just on the wrong side of the internet, and
| formed an opinion based on a misguided recommendation
| algorithm.
| danbolt wrote:
| If we're doing YouTube critique of JP, it should at least
| include ContraPoints' bath scene. Otherwise it kind feels
| a bit toothless.
| Reedx wrote:
| To dismiss as dangerous is silly. Here are the 12 rules.
|
| Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back
|
| Rule 2: Treat yourself like you would someone you are
| responsible for helping
|
| Rule 3: Make friends with people who want the best for
| you
|
| Rule 4: Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not
| with who someone else is today
|
| Rule 5: Do not let your children do anything that makes
| you dislike them
|
| Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you
| criticise the world
|
| Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
|
| Rule 8: Tell the truth - or, at least, don't lie
|
| Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might
| know something you don't
|
| Rule 10: Be precise in your speech
|
| Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skate-
| boarding
|
| Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street
|
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01
| /jo...
| taurath wrote:
| Its interesting how wildly different in scope they are,
| as if its designed more to keep your attention than have
| meaningful advice.
|
| 1-4 are "respect yourself".
|
| 5 is.... I think legitimate bad advice as worded, but I'm
| sure as expounded it makes more sense. Maybe its designed
| as a hook (the "wtf" that drives views).
|
| 6-8 are general advice you'd find anywhere
|
| 9-11 are how to effectively deal with other people
| without saying the word "empathy"
|
| 12 is kinda spurious
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Rule 12 caveat 1: If it lets you.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Rule 12 caveat 2: And wash or disinfect your hands
| immediately afterwards, because Lord only knows what that
| cat is carrying on its fur.
| worik wrote:
| Yep.
|
| How I caught ring worm
|
| Cats are filthy creatures
| lovich wrote:
| Most of these seem fine to good, but number 5 is kind of
| just removing agency from children entirely. Its the same
| mindset of people who kick their kids out for being gay
| xupybd wrote:
| Possibly but this is more to counter letting your kids go
| wild such that as they grow up you don't like to around
| them. By ining them how to behave well you equip them
| will the tools to interact in society.
|
| Of course if you are a horrible person you might dislike
| them for their good behaviours. But if you're a horrible
| person chances are you'll mess up your kids with or
| without that rule.
| rhizome wrote:
| I don't think people "let" their kids go wild so much as
| run out of parenting skills. That's what makes the idea
| irrational: use your parenting skills to make up for your
| lack of parenting skills. All you have to do is decide to
| do so!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| This may be one of those cases where thinking about
| something explicitly is already half of the way to
| success.
| friendlybus wrote:
| That's the same process we use at work everyday. When
| people run out of programming skill they get better by
| study and practice. All you have to do is to decide to.
| friendlybus wrote:
| It really isn't the same mindset as intolerance. Why
| would it remove agency? Do you dislike children?
|
| It's about setting a boundary where it is most
| productive, children who are not socialised by the age of
| four hit problems in later life. Parents and kids who go
| to war help no one.
| danbolt wrote:
| I think it comes from that the rule is titled "Do not let
| your children do anything that...". The language states
| to restrict the child's agency if you disagree with it.
|
| I was fortunate enough to grow up with good parents, but
| there were times where they were misguided and myself
| disobeying them helped us both in the long run.
| friendlybus wrote:
| Language policing one line without the backing context is
| missing the point.
|
| Those times you disobeyed were also met with decades of
| limiting your agency. Not letting you cover yourself in
| peanut butter or fight with other kids, or mistreat pets,
| or spend infinite money.
|
| Jp sees resentment and pride as the ultimate source for
| being a rapscallion or monster, putting responsibility on
| the parent to keep their child in the 'liked' category is
| a very elegant way to keep a kid from destroying your
| house but also make a parent confront/channel any
| resentment or excessive pride into productive directions.
| triceratops wrote:
| Rule 6 taken together with the maxim "Nobody's perfect"
| means a world where nobody can criticize anything, ever.
| Doesn't sound ideal to me.
|
| Rule 10 is self-contradictory, since it doesn't specify
| what "precise in your speech" means.
|
| Rule 11 is oddly-specific (why just skateboarding and not
| any other risky activity?), and reads like it's thrown in
| there to look "cool" ("how do you do fellow kids?" meme).
|
| Rule 12 is vapid fluff. It's also potentially dangerous,
| since a unknown stray cat may carry rabies, or be fearful
| of humans and claw you up bad.
| koverda wrote:
| I think you may be judging a book by the cover here. I'd
| imagine that those 12 rules are metaphors, and expounded
| upon.
| msla wrote:
| > Rule 2: Treat yourself like you would someone you are
| responsible for helping
|
| I've never seen someone turn the Golden Rule inward like
| this. I like it.
|
| > Rule 5: Do not let your children do anything that makes
| you dislike them
|
| Other people will do what they do. The only thing you
| have control over is your own reaction. Most adults
| understand this.
|
| > Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you
| criticise the world
|
| Nobody's house is in perfect order. Internalizing the _tu
| quoque_ fallacy of relevance is not good philosophy.
|
| > Rule 8: Tell the truth - or, at least, don't lie
|
| I'd mention the "Jew in the attic" thought experiment,
| but there's probably some way to successfully hide the
| Jew without telling a "lie" if you're clever enough about
| defining what a "lie" is and what precise statements you
| make.
|
| > Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skate-
| boarding
|
| Unless this conflicts with Rule 5, I suppose.
|
| (I don't have any issue with the statements I didn't
| respond to.)
| loughnane wrote:
| On par w/ Meditations I'd also add Self-Reliance, an essay
| by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
| worik wrote:
| "Don't assume any debt that relies on increasing future
| earnings to be comfortable."
|
| There is some good advice, for everybody!
| steve76 wrote:
| I found this helpful when I'm in a rut:
|
| Recommit to doing everything right, with a focus on the little
| things. Not just work or life. Daily routine and small chores.
| If you loose focus, acknowledge it and move on.
|
| Focus on what's most important. Don't do anything else until
| what's most important is done. This helps stop overworking,
| scrubbing every bit of the kitchen when you should be getting
| clients or spending time with family.
|
| Once your confidence builds up, take a real look at the top
| businesses.
|
| Rich and famous?
|
| Or just the public face of a lot of other people's hard work.
|
| That's good! You have to be happy for other people's success.
| It's a luxury.
|
| A really good credit card makes up a lot of business today. One
| good client pays the bills. Everything else likely gets a no.
| Getting a look even if it ends in a no is quite an
| accomplishment.
|
| It's a fight at the top. A bad one. Some people want to do
| horrible things. Our side convinces people to pursue peace and
| knowledge. Sometimes you're just not ready.
|
| There's someone here talking about a 6 month gap in their
| resume. The job interview is not a court of law. Just say:
|
| "I had my own clients." > "oh yeah? How that go?" "Good! I made
| more money with them." > "Huh. So why you quit?" "I sold it. I
| sold the business."
|
| Don't sell yourself short. Don't cheerlead either. Hindsight
| always makes you feel bad. Decide, and stick to the script no
| matter what. Admitting to mistakes and relating to people are
| for the ones at the top of the food chain. They might as well
| be in a different universe.
|
| Also, there's the killer cold outbreak. If you're willing to
| work, I think they'll take you. A lot of people well off are
| not going to risk it. They'll go back home and take care of
| their family.
| sifar wrote:
| Read Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius.
|
| There are some things that are in your control, while others
| that are not. Concentrate on the former. How can you improve
| your skills, learn new ones.
|
| Lower your expenses, stay healthy, avoid debt.
|
| It might take longer, because of all the dead ends you have
| encountered, but eventually you'll get there. But more
| importantly, don't let those things make you bitter.
| friendlybus wrote:
| Some things are outside your control, luck by definition is
| outside your control.
|
| - Your business sector will come back post COVID.
|
| - You can't control other people
|
| - Control who is dependent on you, and fix your health best you
| can.
|
| - You can mitigate macro level risks. These techniques come at
| a cost.
|
| - You can get magic paper at the wrong age, but it costs. Or
| find other ways in.
|
| Frankly this discussion about luck is incredibly weak. You
| didn't get everything you wanted, some things you can control
| and others you can't. Appealing to luck might encourage some
| people to plaster over your mistakes and inability to eat loss
| with money and submission.
|
| There is no advice to give because you have framed the
| conversation around what your heart wants and thrown any
| rational decision making possible into submission to luck.
|
| You aren't a victim of luck, it is by definition something
| nobody ever escapes and is a subset of randomness. An easy out
| for the unhappy. You are still ultimately responsible for your
| life, even the bits you can't control. You make your own luck.
| shortlived wrote:
| >> You don't have a resilient financial and mental safety net
| in the form of good friends/family early in your career that
| enables you to take risks, or you got dealt a bad hand in the
| form of things like dependents or health issues and simply
| can't afford to take risks
|
| +1
| Arete314159 wrote:
| I can speak to one of your points! I got dealt a bad hand in
| terms of health issues. However, a few years before I developed
| my health issues, I happened to have a long talk with a guy who
| had advanced MS. He told me that after his diagnosis, he tried
| to sock away as much money as possible and go for higher-paying
| jobs, as he knew that one day he'd become fully disabled and
| have to live on disability. Also, disability is pegged to your
| latest or average salary, so that's important to consider!
|
| (SS is an average, LTD is your most recent)
|
| During my 10 years of illness leading up to my eventual
| disability, I tried (with varying success) to do the following
| things:
|
| - Looked for jobs with slightly under full-time work loads to
| allow me time to rest (found only one for 2 years, but the
| extra rest helped me slow down disease progression a lot)
|
| - Looked for jobs with full benefit packages, including Short
| Term / Long Term Disability. If the job didn't offer it I
| signed up on my own
|
| - Maxed out HSA every year
|
| - Reduced my fixed costs as much as possible to prepare for
| living on a fixed income; moved to a LCOL area
|
| - Moved to a climate that was better for my health
|
| - Didn't have kids because I knew I wouldn't be healthy enough
| to bear them / raise them :-(
|
| - Researched how long term disability / social security
| disability worked (this site is really good:
| https://howtogeton.wordpress.com/social-security-disability/ )
|
| - Tried to do excellent work so my employers would still like
| me even with all my sick days
| edraferi wrote:
| Very cool! Congratulations on your exceptionally clear-eyed
| approach to a major life challenge!
|
| I'm sure this sounds sarcastic, but I'm genuinely impressed.
| It takes a lot of mental discipline to examine long term
| trends, make a correct projection, identify an appropriate
| course of action and then implement it even when its
| disruptive to your personal life.
|
| I hope it worked well for you, and that you are living your
| best life despite your health challenges.
| Arete314159 wrote:
| Thanks! Yes, it is especially challenging because my health
| problems are in the unfortunate category: extremely
| disabling + poorly understood. So until I found specialists
| I got a lot of "Well _everyone_ gets 'tired' sometimes"
| gaslighting from medical professionals.
|
| In other words I had to prepare for total disability being
| in my future, while also being told that nothing was wrong
| with me in my present by some doctors (not all,
| fortunately).
|
| So psychologically the greatest part of the challenge was
| to prepare for an extreme event (disability) while being
| told that nothing was wrong. I just had to listen to my
| body and hear when it told me I wasn't going to be able to
| work full time until retirement age, and then plan
| accordingly.
|
| So far, mostly due to the grace of God, I have turned out
| all right, thank you for your kind words. Getting approved
| for disability was brutal but I did eventually get
| approved.
|
| Side note: Unfortunately / fortunately, dealing with
| medical gaslighting for all these years helped my BS
| detector spot the issues in the "just the flu" narrative
| this year way ahead of the curve, and prepare
| appropriately. Sadly.
| [deleted]
| syshum wrote:
| >>> You don't have a resilient financial and mental safety net
| in the form of good friends/family early in your career that
| enables you to take risks
|
| I did not takes risks per say, but I was lucky to have this in
| a limited sense during a period of bad luck (aka the recession
| of 2007) that really helped me pivot to a better place where
| today during the COVID Crisis I am providing that support to
| some of my family....
| mcguire wrote:
| - You have a habit of picking interesting work over jobs that
| will "strap a booster rocket to your career".
|
| - You do everything right and, like most people, it still
| doesn't work.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Well, I definitely hit at least 3 of these things.
|
| #1 (good luck landing a decent job in 2009) #2 (turns out no
| one cares about you when you're unemployed) #5 (not Ivy League
| and mediocre GPA)
|
| Safety net was decent, so I was able to at least look for a job
| for some time.
|
| #4 doesn't really apply.
| [deleted]
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >- You're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ex. you
| graduated in 2008-2010/now or your business sector got wiped
| out by COVID
|
| I feel bad for the higher class pizza restaurant that opened
| down the street from our house at the end of January after a
| long time of renovating the building.
|
| Even though their pizza isn't really as good as the fancy pizza
| place at the mall (it's a mall in a rich area) down by the
| nearby harbor, which will upset me if it goes out of business
| because I could take my kids there or visitors and they were
| made happy by the quality of the pizza.
|
| But this place down the street from me, that is textbook bad
| luck.
| bad_luck_tw wrote:
| Something similar happened to me during this outbreak.
|
| Got my CS degree from a no-name university in a third world
| country a few years back, got a job in one of those software
| sweatshops getting paid peanuts, moved to a new one an year
| later where I worked my ass off to learn things and generally
| be a good developer, but here too I was paid a pittance,
| mostly due to my education and previous job. I hated working
| here by the end and wanted to leave.
|
| Somehow I got an interview from a company in [COUNTRY] who
| were willing to sponsor my visa along with good pay. I
| studied hard for it (coming home from work at 10pm, preparing
| for interview until the late wee hours of the night) and
| cleared the interviews. Finally something good had happened
| to me, but just before I was scheduled to move for the new
| job, this outbreak just fucked everything over.
|
| The company still hasn't rescinded the offer, but I don't
| really have any high hopes, everyday I wake up in the morning
| expecting a rejection mail from them in my mailbox. Whats
| worse is that I had left my previous job since the joining of
| the new one was so close before all this happened, so here I
| am sitting jobless leeching on my family till god know when.
|
| Sorry for the rant, I just wanted to get this out.
|
| Edit: Any reason why this comment is dead?
| tlear wrote:
| Hiring is still going on in most of North America. Hedge
| your bets look at other companies and interview.
| Preparation for one interview is preparation for lots of
| them
| bad_luck_tw wrote:
| Unfortunately US work visa for people from my country is
| not so easy. Though I've been applying at companies in
| EU, the visa process is much simpler.
| tlear wrote:
| Take a look at Japan as well, really easy to get in to
| work but money is not as good as NA. I don't really know
| EU market
| mettamage wrote:
| I'm a Dutchie, and I can't speak about the EU market as a
| whole, but as any European that travels around a bit, I
| have the following ranking in terms of lifestyle/pay:
|
| 1. Switzerland (90k or higher + mountains if you're
| willing to drive a bit)
|
| 2. Luxembourg (I just remember you get paid quite a bit)
|
| 3. Berlin (alright pay, low living costs, amazing city)
|
| 4. England + Scandinavia + The Netherlands (didn't look
| into Scandinavia enough but in most cases they're on par
| or a bit better than The Netherlands)
|
| Englang is on #4, because while the pay is better,
| society seems to be more screwed. University is more
| expensive, the welfare system sucks more (compared to
| most of the other countries in this list, Scandinavia
| being Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland).
|
| Take this with a grain of salt, do your own research of
| course.
|
| Countries that I wouldn't want to go to:
|
| 1. Eastern Europe
|
| 2. Southern Europe
|
| The pay is too low.
|
| The thing is: higher pay is always better, even when
| living costs are always, let's say 50% in any country.
| The more money you safe, the more you can utilize it for
| geo-arbitraging strategies later on in life.
| benibela wrote:
| The best thing would be to move to a country with low
| living costs and work remotely for a company from a high
| living costs country.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > Countries that I wouldn't want to go to:
|
| > 1. Eastern Europe
|
| 3-4k EUR net (after taxes) is pretty normal salary for
| senior enterprise dev in big cities in Poland. That's
| perhaps a bit less than in say Berlin (although I'm not
| too sure of that, given high taxes in Germany), but the
| costs of living are so much lower.
| mettamage wrote:
| Fair point! Thanks for pointing it out. My knowledge on
| Eastern Europe is pretty bad.
| why_only_15 wrote:
| The issue with geo-arbitraging is that when you work
| somewhere for an extended period of time, you put
| resources into your life there. Retiring by leaving your
| home and friends etc. doesn't seem nearly as sweet.
| mettamage wrote:
| Fair point, I'd still argue it's better to send money
| back home, if one comes from a 3rd world country.
| ido wrote:
| You create a new home and make new friends (and
| eventually family if you moved somewhere single & got
| married along the way). I think you really underestimate
| how much easier life is in some places compared to
| others, even outside the extremes.
| oblio wrote:
| I can't speak for the rest of the countries in the
| region, but in Romania if you work in IT for a decent
| company you pay 0 income tax if you graduated from a
| local CS department and only a 10% flat rate otherwise.
|
| A senior position at a good company in Bucharest will
| mean at least 3000 Euros net per month which means that
| you'll live like a king, since rent for a great apartment
| will be something like 500-600 Euros.
|
| The downside is lower development you notice regarding
| infrastructure, education levels, pollution, etc.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| comment looks fine to me?
| dkersten wrote:
| It can be brought back to life if people vouch for it, so
| I assume that's what happened.
| bad_luck_tw wrote:
| It was dead for about 10 minutes after I posted it, I
| think it tripped up some spam/troll filter for new
| accounts. It's fine now though, but I can't edit the
| original comment and remove the last line.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Yes, new accounts tend to have their comments appear as
| dead until they are vouched for. For constructive posts
| this usually happens quickly.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| In wich country did you decide to move? Some have more
| troubles than others during this period depending on
| sector.
|
| For example, most companies in Germany/Europe working in
| the automotive sector froze hiring since nobody is buying
| cars anymore.
| dakna wrote:
| You probably already know that, but sometimes it helps to
| hear it again:
|
| The world is a competitive place, and a lot of success
| factors are outside of your control. (timing, pre-existing
| resources, sheer luck)
|
| What you can control is exactly what you are already doing:
| Work really hard and make the best of what you have. Come
| up with a good long term plan and execute it. Do life
| decisions that help with that plan.
|
| This will make you more successful than your relative peer
| group and over time wash you into an upper percentile
| compared to others dealing with the same factors.
|
| Keep up the good work! It's a long game.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Many people think that if they work really hard it will
| pay off. But its the other other way, first you discover
| that something pays off, then you can start to work hard
| to get even better. So it should really say work smart.
| libria wrote:
| So, why is this encouraging and helpful message being
| downvoted into gray? I can only assume some salty
| graduates are lashing out.
|
| Don't do that to yourself, i.e. living bitter and angry.
| Engage with those you disagree with by conversing.
| Correct them or be corrected and learn.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I got to say I have given up worrying about why people
| are downvoting what I say, I do have a suspicion that I
| have a couple people who when they see my name
| automatically downvote - oh it's that guy again -
| although I don't think they search me out to downvote
| either.
|
| on edit: at any rate I upvoted it as you're right, seems
| an encouraging nice message.
| mettamage wrote:
| Disclaimer: I don't know much about 3rd world countries
| other than my recent trip to Africa and talking to some
| locals there. In short I've learned: access to healthcare
| is completely and utterly fucked (this is why maximum age
| seems to be 40 in the villages that I went to), getting
| food is a struggle but doable if you know what you're
| doing (you just plant stuff somewhere and hope it doesn't
| get robbed), you'll have a mud house somewhere, you'll be
| living close with your family, you'll be relying a lot on
| your community and your community relies on you.
|
| My point of this entire comment is to say: be a bit
| careful with your words when you're from a 1st world
| country and the person you comment to lives in an
| entirely different context.
|
| --- My actual comment ---
|
| You seem to be based in the USA. This person is from a
| 3rd world country. Your advice looks like its written for
| an American, not someone who lives in a 3rd world
| country.
|
| For example, I can imagine that a lot of people don't
| think that the world is a competitive place but a
| criminal one. Why? Because there are a lot of mercantile
| practices going on. Your passport matters. There is no
| meritocracy in this world, only passports.
|
| Make the best of what you have in some cases can be
| translated to: try to fucking survive and I'm sorry that
| your relative passed away from malaria and that we had no
| money for medicine, and even if we did have money the
| infrastructure would be too broken to bring it fast
| enough. Sadly enough, that happens quite often.
| Technically, that's still the same as "make the best of
| what you have". But I can imagine that it can be
| perceived quite negatively, as some might see that
| there's some implied sarcasm there.
|
| > This will make you more successful than your relative
| peer group
|
| So instead of having an average age of 50, you'll get to
| be 60? More successful for sure. Yet, I can feel the
| unfairness to 1st worlders who get to be 80.
|
| > It's a long game.
|
| I don't think everyone perceives life to be a game. I
| know I do at times. But I also happen to know family
| members that almost die from hunger (rare thing to happen
| in The Netherlands but it does). I am sure that to them
| in those moments life is not a game. Because of that, I
| also believe that enough people who suffer from poverty
| or are threatened by it don't perceive life to be a game.
|
| ---------
|
| In closing: I think your comment was actually well meant.
| But since I see that you were downvoted I decided to take
| the time to explain how your comment seems to be missing
| the mark to me personally. I assume that other people
| have a similar enough interpretation of it.
|
| FYI I didn't downvote, as I think your comment was well
| meant.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I have a similar story. There was a fancy pizza place about
| to open next to a park few minutes from my home. They were
| intensively renovating a pretty building. I was really
| waiting to see them open - I like pizzas, and this is a small
| town, so we don't have much of choice in them. COVID-19
| lockdowns came just as they were readying to open. They had a
| market, they had a great location - but they also had really
| bad luck.
| crystalmeph wrote:
| Tangenting a bit. It saddens me to no end that this happens
| just after the unemployment rate for African Americans hit
| record lows. I'm not a SJW by any means, but it's so
| frustrating to see a whole class of historically mistreated
| people get punched in the gut the minute they start to get a
| good toehold.
| tathougies wrote:
| Seriously! and the lowest poverty rates ever recorded. It
| is so sad. Just want everyone to get a break.
| Reedx wrote:
| Ouch. Bad luck combined with an already risky venture...
|
| > Even though their pizza isn't really as good as the fancy
| pizza place at the mall
|
| They opened the "not best pizza option" and "nTH restaurant
| option".
|
| Opening a restaurant is a good example of what to avoid if
| you want to be resilient in the face of bad luck. It's a
| fragile and brutal business even in the best of times.
| mark-r wrote:
| Opening a restaurant is difficult even for professionals. I
| had a neighbor who was managing one of the more successful
| restaurants at the Mall of America, who decided he wanted
| to do his own thing. He bought a restaurant in the downtown
| of our small suburb and spent months renovating it. I don't
| think it was open more than 3 months before he threw in the
| towel and declared personal bankruptcy.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| For people with bad luck or from people with bad luck? It is
| often inspiring to hear from folks who haven't been on the
| success rocket doing just fine and having a great life.
|
| The subtext here though is always "scoring" your success. There
| is the zen koan about one mans bad luck is another mans
| opportunity. But it really seems that the message is more
| "don't measure your own success unrealistically or you will
| always see yourself as having 'bad luck' when, in fact, you
| have a great life."
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Depending on the interpretation, I've had between 3 and 5 out
| of these 5 things happen to me. I could have used the advice
| you're asking for about 10-15 years ago.
| bob33212 wrote:
| To paraphrase you are asking what should people who are not
| achieving their goals do?
|
| I have read that the meaning of life is love and freedom and
| doing what you enjoy. What that means is different for
| everyone, but you have to ask yourself what that means to you.
| If that means have millions of dollars in just a few years,
| great. Read "think and grow rich" to see who you need to
| become. Otherwise don't waste you time following what others
| think success looks like.
| znpy wrote:
| Regarding retainment offers and somebody commenting on the fact
| that he asked for changes instead of money for retainment:
|
| I recently took note of this beautiful quote by Bryan Cantrill:
| if you can't make the right thing happen then it's time to leave.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Retention offers: yeah. I've been given retention offers twice,
| and the second time round I explicitly said "I don't want money,
| I want you to change the way this team and product is managed,
| like the previous times we discussed this, but that's not going
| to happen, is it?"
|
| I ended up getting much more money, less responsibility, a nicer
| less open plan office, and a less dysfunctional process.
|
| Risk: yes, sometimes you just have to go full Light Brigade and
| charge the guns. Generally the worst possible consequence is you
| lose your job and everyone forgets it, but be aware that
| sometimes the consequences are worse and your chances of landing
| on your feet depend on your privilege level. You have no right to
| judge people who don't do this.
| collyw wrote:
| > a nicer less open plan office,
|
| Impressive.
| pjc50 wrote:
| To be clear, this wasn't the retention offer, this was the
| new job! And it's still technically open, but nicely spaced
| with sound-absorbing partitions. The dysfunctional place had
| a pingpong table within earshot.
| chrisabrams wrote:
| This was not clear :O Would be good to clarify in your
| original post.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Edit window now closed, but yes. My point was that a
| counteroffer can only ever change a very small set of
| things, so they're very rarely worth bothering with.
| cabbagehatch wrote:
| https://youtu.be/N8wQtWi7sJk It all starts with this video
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| > It's also okay to take risks. Staying at a company that's
| slowly dying has its costs too. Stick around too long and you'll
| lose your belief that you can build, that change is possible. Try
| not to learn the wrong habits.
|
| I love this. I recently decided to move towards quitting at a job
| that is slowly dying and find something else to do. My mood
| immediately lightened, even though nothing except my mental
| direction has changed. I don't want to let cynicism seep into me;
| I want to find something I'm excited about.
| meddlepal wrote:
| +1 on this. I bailed out of a startup I was an early engineer
| at and worked at for close to four years awhile back and
| immediately my depression and frustration cleared up.
| mettamage wrote:
| Finally, a post that isn't all hunky dory. I'm at the bottom
| quartile at the moment, so I'm happy to take any reasonable
| advice that doesn't sound like: study algorithms and get into
| Google.
|
| Ok, I studied algorithms, got rejected at the paper round. Now
| what? The tough part isn't passing the interview, it's getting a
| chance in the first place.
|
| This advice is better. Some points that really stood out to me
| and that I'll take to heart:
|
| > But if you have an amazing manager at a shit company you'll
| still have a shit time.
|
| > "Take any role, at any pay, on a rocketship and everything will
| work out" is only sort of true.
|
| With that said, a lot of the advice is quite US-centric. Not many
| Dutch startups would offer stock options as far as I know, for
| example.
| whycombagator wrote:
| > Ok, I studied algorithms, got rejected at the paper round.
| Now what?
|
| If you actually studied then play the odds? I.e apply to the
| dozens of other large tech companies that pay handsomely.
| Unless there's only Google in the Netherlands (assuming that's
| where you are based on the Dutch reference) or you already
| applied to dozens and got rejected at the paper round by all of
| them
| mettamage wrote:
| Other than HFT firms, tech companies here don't pay
| handsomely, so you need to look for other European countries.
| I've tried Google and Facebook for years (not in NL they
| aren't that big here and want specialized people, not
| graduates).
|
| You're right, I only tried Optiver 18 months ago. I should
| try all the others. I'm not too interested in HFT but the
| technical challenge sounds fun.
| opportune wrote:
| What about Google in Munich?
| roolah wrote:
| > Ok, I studied algorithms, got rejected at the paper round.
| Now what? The tough part isn't passing the interview, it's
| getting a chance in the first place.
|
| This resonates. I'm a senior engineer with CS master from top
| university, 10yoe with leadership skills that prepared the past
| 4 months and solved over 200 coding challenges. I contacted 18
| companies (starting 3 months ago), some of them referrals, some
| of them from company recruiters reaching out to me (Facebook,
| Google).
|
| I passed the Google onsite and made it to the FB onsite. I
| passed all the stages for another company with a "did
| fantastic" rating but then got denied onsite for unknown
| reasons.
|
| That means I got through one single paper round from 18
| outreachs and it's very frustrating since the ratio is much
| worse than when I applied 4 years ago with much less experience
| and requiring a H1B sponsorship. I have so much fire in me to
| work on consumer products (which my current job doesn't allow)
| it makes me explode.
| coldpie wrote:
| IMO, forget the big companies and startups. There's plenty of
| opportunities at smaller, established companies, which are, in
| my opinion, often better places to work anyway.
| mettamage wrote:
| How would I be able to reach a similar conclusion if I don't
| have any experience of working at a big company? I'm open to
| learning more about this idea.
| okt wrote:
| my 2 cents: there is rarely a shortcut available and is hardly
| a 6 months course work designed to get into google or the alike
| unless you have a friend or family member who guides you
| through the whole process and points you to the right
| direction, not least giving hope and motivation.
|
| you have to develop a sustainable long term learning habit to
| hone your skills without being getting burned out and without
| hoping a dramatic success in the short term.
|
| To get noticed or get an interview you have to identify people
| there and somehow get them forward your CV and/or build some
| proof of your skills in form of personal projects which many
| others like you dont have. Chances you are, you will get
| atleast an interview somewhere at big tech, if not at google.
| mettamage wrote:
| > some proof of your skills in form of personal projects
| which many others like you dont have.
|
| I have quite a bit of personal projects, actually.
| cabbagehatch wrote:
| https://youtu.be/N8wQtWi7sJk It all starts with this video...
| jerzyt wrote:
| It maybe too cynical, but I'm fond of the saying that I'm loyal
| to the company as longs as the paycheck doesn't bounce.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| I think you're not cynical enough. You should definitely keep
| an eye out for a bigger paycheck elsewhere. Your company
| wouldn't hesitate to cut you loose if they thought it would
| make or save them a dollar in the long run.
| betageek wrote:
| This is one of the most useful posts ever to grace the front
| page.
| ptero wrote:
| Most of it is reasonable, if already often quoted advice. But I
| did not see what does it have to do with the title: "for people
| with bad luck"
| Kye wrote:
| People with good luck are probably not looking for career
| advice.
| ptero wrote:
| I am not so sure of this. IME folks who do well are, on
| average, much more willing to hear external advice. They do
| not take it as direction (and, on disagreement would rarely
| try to convince the speaker that (s)he is wrong), but they
| would actually listen and try to understand the point, then
| make their own decision on whether they should act on it.
|
| Also, (not bad_luck) != good_luck. I think most people would
| consider themselves average_luck.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Somehow that page 404'd on me and just showed "Not Found". I
| nearly closed it thinking I had read what I had come to read...
| XD
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > The company is not your family. Some of the people in the
| company are your friends in the current context. It's like your
| dorm in college. Hopefully some of them will still be your
| friends after. But don't stay because you're comfortable.
|
| This one hit hard. It's amazing how many of the close work
| friends I had over the years were only close because of the
| shitty circumstances we endured together. Once that was gone, we
| actually had very few things in common.
|
| Not that I don't have any former colleagues I'm close with, but
| the ratio of kept/lost has to be in the 1/10 range or lower.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| It is amazing what circumstance can do for bonding, though. I
| still keep in occasional touch with a handful of people I've
| worked with, but the exception is the group from a company that
| spectacularly imploded: A couple of years after most of us left
| or were let go, we still talk all the time.
| omniscient_oce wrote:
| You may like the Japanese phrase Yi Qi Yi Hui (ichi-go-
| ichi-e). To me it means that you should cherish each
| relationship and encounter, regardless of whether you know it
| will last a long time or not. You may never get the chance to
| experience that particular relationship again. I actually
| learnt this word firsthand from a man that it applies to, an
| middle-aged Japanese guy who was volunteering with kids near
| where I live. We got along well, laughed and ate, but he went
| back home and I will never see him again. But that doesn't
| diminish the worthiness of experiencing of getting to know him
| and enjoying time together, because all things have their
| place. I'm writing this as much for me as for you or anyone
| else here. Good night
| kevsim wrote:
| That's a lovely concept. Thanks for sharing!
| vmception wrote:
| I do like that! I have been telling people that I'm content
| with relationships existing in chapters. Not everyone needs
| to be a follow on social media. Lets praise the utility and
| companionship of the time it was applicable. And maybe there
| is a cameo appearance in another chapter.
| kotrunga wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| This is philosophical gold!
| disqard wrote:
| I'm saving this one. It's "be present, here and now", applied
| to relationships/acquaintances.
| maemilius wrote:
| My mom has a similar saying: "People enter your life for a
| reason, a season, or a lifetime." The idea is the same: you
| should cherish the relationships you have - while you have
| them - and let them go when they're over.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Been working 3 months at my first job and this realization hit
| me. I enjoy spending time with my coworkers but is it all in
| vain?
| gilbetron wrote:
| The vast majority of all friends you meet tend to fade away.
| It isn't that you aren't friends anymore, it is that life has
| pulled you in different directions. It may help to realize
| that if you were put back in a work/school/whatever
| situation, you'd almost certainly enjoy each other again.
| yetihehe wrote:
| No, not in vain. If you enjoy it, it's for enjoyment. Just
| don't think they are your close friends. They are working
| with you and are nice to you because it's more enjoyable for
| everyone involved. Be nice to them too, but just don't expect
| big favors.
| werber wrote:
| Do things outside work! You can make friends on the job, it
| makes the days so much better. If you believe the workplace
| is a big contest for who's best, it probably will be. But, in
| my experience, if you treat every new job like you would have
| starting a new school year, you can make real friendships.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's not in vain. The opinions of your coworkers can greatly
| influence your ratings. Even if your output is stellar, the
| only way to get promoted is to have people like you.
| sct202 wrote:
| First job friends are my closest work friends, especially
| since most of us relocated for work. It's kind of closer to
| friends you made in college, because it's a transition period
| to bond over.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| No, it's not in vain. But in order to build a relationship
| that's permanent, it needs a strong anchoring in non-work
| things. If everything is just about work, then once that
| shared experience is gone the relationship will be too.
|
| Flip side, you don't have to be besties with your colleagues.
| Enjoying time with them while you're colleagues is an end
| upon itself. You'll statistically have about a dozen jobs in
| your life, which'll bring in close to 100 colleagues into
| your life. Chances are you can't and won't remain friends
| with all of them, and that's ok too.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| If you want to be pragmatic with these relationships - these
| are now connections. If you're in your early career and so
| are they, the odds of you all staying at this job are very
| low. Even if the friendships don't last, this is the start of
| a network that can possibly help get you in the next door
| when you're looking for a change.
| neltnerb wrote:
| No, but you have to put in a lot of extra effort to be
| friends with them outside the context of work or else the
| context disappearing will give you no established excuse to
| hang out.
|
| It's not impossible to do, I know plenty of people who make
| real friends at work. But it takes intent to make it work
| like any human relationship, invite them to dinner, go to
| movies, play video games, etc. Go overboard to get over the
| activation barrier but be selective because you can't do that
| with two dozen people at once.
| collyw wrote:
| Nah. Two jobs ago had wonderful people and we still regularly
| meet up for drinks (despite the company being a load for
| shite to work for).
|
| Next job was a lot more family people and we rarely went for
| drinks together. I am not really in touch with them any more
| (perfectly nice people but the bonding never happened).
| neltnerb wrote:
| Of course, the family people probably were friends with
| each other.
| collyw wrote:
| Everyone at family company was friendly at lunch, it's
| just the we didn't socialize after work at all (well a
| couple of times). The younger company regularly went
| drinking together.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Actually, let me put it this way. If you are relying on
| your employer to provide opportunities to make friends,
| you're shifting responsibility for maintaining
| relationships from yourself to your employer.
|
| I don't think that's a good idea. When people elsewhere
| on this thread have commented that back in the day
| people's main opportunity to make friends was at work,
| they didn't mean that _work gives them opportunities
| actively_ but rather that it gave them personally the
| opportunity to personally create a relationship with a
| coworker.
|
| Agreed? There's a huge difference between the
| relationship you create by inviting a work friend over to
| your home for dinner and video games (or going to a bar
| even) and the relationship created by the "team" going to
| a "team building activity" together. Don't rely on work
| to provide the context to make a friend, but it's fine to
| rely on work to provide an opportunity to make a friend.
|
| Within reason and assuming good actors, etc. I probably
| wouldn't share every detail of my personal life with
| work-friends and certainly older generations did not. I
| suspect the two are related; you have to be more guarded
| with work friends because social vulnerability can be
| very risky in a work environment. My mother didn't talk
| about her disability with work-friends much, only the
| work-friends she'd invite over for dinner. I share about
| my condition much more because I want and expect even
| "just" work-friends to understand and accept my
| limitations. The story I hear is that it didn't use to be
| at all safe to be vulnerable like that with colleagues.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Are you sure the ones with kids weren't doing playdates
| and things? I feel like there's often a gulf between
| people with and without kids.
|
| Of course they didn't go drinking, they had to get home
| to take care of kids. Or, like me, they don't drink. They
| might still invite over other families to go hiking or
| camping or maybe even know other parents from school.
|
| Not saying that was necessarily happening, but now that
| many more of my friends have kids (I don't) I see them do
| this all the time. They can't really hang out without a
| way to distract their kids. Board game nights are much
| more likely to connect than drinking.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > It's amazing how many of the close work friends I had over
| the years were only close because of the shitty circumstances
| we endured together.
|
| Isn't that how most people form friends normally though?
| Through a shared experience? Especially a tough or formative
| one? Friends you meet at school, in your first year at uni, in
| bootcamp, on a sports team, these are how most people meet
| their life-long friends.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Yes, but I think there's a lot of variation in what people
| want out of work-friends.
|
| My parents are super social to the point of inviting over
| colleagues for dinner regularly, but I think they're also so
| social (and worked for nonprofits that are more like family)
| that they simply have so many options that the ones they pick
| are much closer work-friends that often last decades.
|
| Other people really do just want to go home and do their own
| thing. As long as no one is rude, there's room for both.
|
| I find that after spending that many hours with work friends
| I rarely want to spend extra time with them when I could
| spend that time connecting with existing friends I haven't
| seen in a while who I'm already very close to. Balance.
|
| I've rarely had a work friend turn into a real friend though,
| but I'm also totally happy with that. I need breaks from
| people and don't want to get sucked into the work as life
| mindset. I'd rather meet new people at... pick a hobby.
| Dancing, singing, karate, whatever. That's how I make new
| friends, through hobbies rather than work because work
| friends dominating my social life feels incredibly
| unbalanced.
| syshum wrote:
| as an introvert I am one to just " want to go home and do
| their own thing.", I have rarely kept in touch with former
| co-workers, sometimes I regret that but I was not born with
| a drive to be social.
|
| One draw back of that is my professional network is limited
| as well, in times of economic decline a robust professional
| network is often the key between employment and not
| neltnerb wrote:
| I agree. If you want a possible compromise solution,
| consider sending cards to ex-coworkers on birthdays or
| holidays. It's pretty easy if you use an online service
| to print and mail them and boy would that make an
| impression that you value their long term acquaintance.
| My aunt runs an engineering firm and does this with so
| many people, I remember driving with her to deliver
| birthday flowers and stuff.
|
| That's all professional relationship building though, I
| truly don't think those people are ones she'd invite to a
| movie or over for dinner. Maintaining professional
| relationships does take constant low key attention
| though, if they only hear from you when you need
| something it's not a good look.
| gerland wrote:
| It's a bit like that with every friend that you make. Most
| people lose contact with firends they made in school. Even
| family ties seems to be not that strong after all. It's all a
| matter of context.
|
| That being said, what do you actully expect when spending time
| with work peers? It's supposed to be just relax after work. If
| it does not "spark joy" then just don't do it. If it does, then
| do not expect any other value. Friendship is not about how much
| you can get from others.
| lexcom wrote:
| This one is hard. Once you leave the company that's it; you'll
| probably never hear from them again. Can they still be
| considered friends if you're on their contacts list, but you
| haven't spoken/messaged them in years?
| Kaze404 wrote:
| It doesn't have to be a bad thing. Thinking of how close I
| became to someone for no reason other than empathy makes me
| feel pretty good.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I'm sure there's reasons other than empathy that you might
| benefit from becoming close with your colleagues.
| kradroy wrote:
| My view is: "You can be 'friendly' with coworkers without being
| 'friends'." My test for friendship is: "Would I call this
| person to bail me out of jail?" The answer to that question
| from me has always excluded all my coworkers and managers,
| despite them being nice and helpful people.
|
| I've also worked at a family company. They may claim you're
| "family" too, but that's just marketing hype. The truth is the
| family members will always be better compensated than you for
| doing far less. And when tough times come, you will take a hit
| before any family member.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I retain an average of less than two friends from each previous
| job - that's how many people with values that I share I can
| find in any given company.
| chesterarthur wrote:
| You have to share values with someone to be their friend?
| Insanity wrote:
| To form a long-lasting friendship, you need at least some
| common ground to touch on.
| werber wrote:
| That's the great thing about co-worker friends. I don't
| have tech friends from my "real" life, but I have a ton
| of random friends from old jobs I talk to and (in what
| seems like a different life, before COVID-19) get
| together with regularly. What started as joking about
| agile processes is now planning weird trips and brunches.
| chesterarthur wrote:
| Shared interest and mutual respect is different than
| shared values
| Kye wrote:
| Some values are incompatible with mutual respect.
| phaemon wrote:
| Yes. That's why none of my friends are neo-nazis, for
| example.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I need to share _any_ subset o values.
|
| Otherwise there's no space for dialogue. I believe this is
| the norm.
| meddlepal wrote:
| Are people using values to mean interests? I need to
| share some interests: sports, beer, model building,
| architecture etc...
|
| Values though? I can't see that being the norm unless
| your shared interest is politics, religion, or social
| order/dynamics.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| Not really. It's hard to get along with people if I know
| that they're opposite me on some very important political
| axis, or they think I'm going to their version of Hell.
|
| I know I'm more sensitive about this than most people.
| I'm also generally not good at making friends. But it's a
| fact.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I don't. I literally mean values.
|
| I have people with shared interests added as "friends" on
| facebook, but my actual friends are those with whom I
| have some common ground - even if it's something as
| abstract as the shared belief that nothing is ever "100%
| done" or that politics is just a game of appearances and
| one shouldn't get too invested emotionally in them.
| [deleted]
| blumomo wrote:
| aren't you valuing tennis as a sport if you like to talk
| about it with colleagues? I'd say that interests and
| values go a long way together.
| mLuby wrote:
| In the US at least, "values" has come to mean ethical
| positions, like those brands and politicians claim. For
| example, "treating all life as sacred" or "helping the
| neediest" or "maintaining our traditions." A person might
| say that politicians and brands "share my values."
|
| Different from interests, hobbies, or shared experiences
| that provide the basis for most friendships.
| imdsm wrote:
| That missing ) is bothering me
| personaenon wrote:
| Anyone know/have a work from home Solaris SA gig?
|
| My end of IT is DEAD!!!
|
| Yes, I know Solaris is dead, but RHEL doesn't have much atm
| either.....
| CSMastermind wrote:
| > Your equity package is a lottery ticket with expected value of
| zero.
|
| That's good advice no matter where you're going.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Good stock market advice too. It doesn't matter what your
| account says your balance is. It only matters what you get when
| you sell it.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Considering the expected value of your publicly traded stocks
| at 0 is not good advice. If you actually believe that, then
| it would make sense to trade all of your holdings for a
| dollar.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think you ignored the last sentence of my previous
| comment :)
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I didn't ignore it. It's just in conflict with your first
| sentence. I'm not sure if you're talking about EV in
| technical terms, or a more lose "count on it way", but
| neither makes sense to discount to 0. Like if you're 50
| and have a million dollars in stocks for retirement, you
| should put an expected value of 0 on that? Seems silly to
| me.
| throw4failure wrote:
| This seems like a good thread in which to try to solicit some
| advice, since it's at least tangentially related.
|
| I was terminated from my last job. In my opinion it was due to my
| chronic and major depression that I have since been seeking
| extensive treatment (medication, several months rent in therapy)
| for. I say "in my opinion" because I really can't rule out that
| I'm just a lazy, crappy developer who is trying to use mental
| health as an excuse.
|
| Either way, I've been unemployed for over half a year and am now
| trying to re-enter the job market. Obviously the gap is a bit of
| a red flag that I've been candid about to potential employers, in
| the sense that I speak about a medical issue, not the specifics.
|
| If I could go back in time, I would have quit from my last job
| before being fired, but honestly I was beyond caring about
| anything, period, so the consequences of taking the career L
| barely phased me. There was no upside to being fired, I just
| didn't care.
|
| Now, I wish I had cared, because it's an elephant in the room I
| don't really know how to address. Do I tackle it proactively by
| outright telling everyone I was canned? Do I wait until they call
| up my former employer to verify my work history?
|
| If anyone else has been in a remotely similar situation I would
| greatly appreciate any tips or feedback. Please just refrain from
| telling me I messed up - I definitely know I did.
| rsanek wrote:
| Just wanted to chime in and say, 6 months is actually not a big
| deal at all. Listening to people who say it is will only serve
| to add stress to your job search. I took a year and a half off
| to travel when I was 26 and nobody cared. You can explain it in
| any way you want to but I certainly wouldn't mention getting
| fired or specifics about your personal medical history. Good
| luck.
| ghaff wrote:
| I would think nothing of someone taking 6 months off. The
| only reason I've never done it myself on my own volition is
| that a good opportunity has never presented itself. Aside
| from one time I was laid off, I've had a job offer in hand
| before leaving an employer. And that one time I didn't, I got
| a quick job offer in the middle of the dot-com blowup so it
| certainly wasn't a good time to travel the world.
| caymanjim wrote:
| Never admit that you were fired. Your prior employer isn't
| going to tell anyone, if they know what's good for them. Small,
| inexperienced companies with no lawyers might, but no real
| business is going to risk a lawsuit by saying anything bad
| about you whatsoever. They'll confirm that you worked there and
| that's about it.
|
| Six months is not a big deal. You've been told all your life
| that gaps in your resume are a problem, and some people here
| will tell you that they ask about it, but they're all just
| following a rote pattern. You don't want to work anywhere that
| actually cares about this. Most people couldn't care less. You
| can always leave the months off your resume if you're really
| worried about it.
|
| Do not under any circumstances tell people that you were
| unemployed or lost your job due to depression or mental health.
| I'm not going to sugar coat this for you. Never admit this
| during an interview. It's a bad idea to mention anything health
| related. It's also none of their business, unless you require
| an accommodation that needs to be addressed before you're
| hired.
|
| Companies rarely check references. They might check your
| employment history, and they might ask for references to check
| your professional qualifications, but hardly anyone speaks to
| references. Don't put any on your resume. If someplace cares,
| they'll ask. Hopefully you have some ex-coworker willing to say
| a few nice things about you. If not, you might want to say you
| haven't stayed in touch with anyone from that particular job.
| If you can't summon any professional references at all, that
| may slow down your job search, but really, people don't usually
| check. Don't lie; just don't stress about it that much.
|
| Lying is never a good idea, but you shouldn't be offering up
| negative information about yourself. Forget about what's fair,
| legal, politically or morally correct: there's a stigma around
| mental health issues and you don't want to bring them up with a
| potential employer.
|
| You'll be fine going forward, although now isn't a great time
| to be looking for a job, so it might take longer.
| throw4failure wrote:
| Thanks for the reply and for offering a unique perspective :)
|
| > Your prior employer isn't going to tell anyone, if they
| know what's good for them. Small, inexperienced companies
| with no lawyers might, but no real business is going to risk
| a lawsuit by saying anything bad about you whatsoever.
| They'll confirm that you worked there and that's about it.
|
| This is an interesting point. I had been under the impression
| that even companies with fairly restrictive HR policies could
| safely disclose whether or not a former employee was
| terminated. After some fresh googling it seems I might have
| been incorrect and that now employers increasingly might just
| admit you existed :)
|
| > Do not under any circumstances tell people that you were
| unemployed or lost your job due to depression or mental
| health. I'm not going to sugar coat this for you. Never admit
| this during an interview. It's a bad idea to mention anything
| health related. It's also none of their business, unless you
| require an accommodation that needs to be addressed before
| you're hired.
|
| Sadly, I think you're very much correct re: mental health. I
| almost wish I could be more candid, but everyone (here and
| elsewhere) seems to agree that's just a terrible idea.
|
| > It's a bad idea to mention anything health related.
|
| I have, however, mentioned health / medical issues in some of
| my early conversations. I definitely understand how that
| could make potential employers nervous, so in some future
| interviews I may try to omit mentioning health at all.
|
| > You'll be fine going forward, although now isn't a great
| time to be looking for a job, so it might take longer.
|
| Thank you :)
| [deleted]
| mywittyname wrote:
| > but hardly anyone speaks to references.
|
| I'd be surprised if this were universal. I've been the
| reference for several people and had references checked for
| every job that I've had.
|
| I can totally understand why a company wouldn't check
| references (bias, mainly), but HR is full of a lot of cargo
| cult superstitions.
| caymanjim wrote:
| I'm probably biased here due to the length of my career; at
| this point, my resume is extensive and speaks for itself.
| References may be more important if you've got less
| experience.
| Sodman wrote:
| I think that's kind of the point of references though,
| right? Your resume speaks for itself, but _you_ wrote
| your resume. It 's a good sanity check for a potential
| employer to quickly verify that it's actually accurate.
|
| People exaggerate on their resumes all the time. Maybe
| the 2 interns they supervised materializes as them
| managing a team of 4. Maybe the project on which their
| boss did the brunt of the work on becomes a project they
| architected and lead. It's easy enough to make all of
| this sound true in an interview, so it's totally logical
| for an interviewer to want to fact check and keep the
| interviewees honest.
| exolymph wrote:
| > I think that's kind of the point of references though,
| right? Your resume speaks for itself, but you wrote your
| resume. It's a good sanity check for a potential employer
| to quickly verify that it's actually accurate.
|
| This is 100% true. However, people are lazy and skimp on
| due diligence. Just because something is a good practice
| doesn't mean it's always done :P
| imprettycool wrote:
| I am in a similar position as you. I have a medical issue and I
| was fired in August 2018. Differences being:
|
| - I intentionally got myself fired so I could get an extra $25k
| in salary/severance/unemployment.
|
| - It was my first job out of college.
|
| - I have positive references I can give. (my manager sucked,
| other people were cool)
|
| - Medical issue is physical and not mental. (herniated disc /
| sciatica).
|
| Here is my advice:
|
| - Practice interviewing at a bunch of no-name companies you
| don't care about. I practiced at a dozen or so startups, got
| rejected by half of them and learned the red flags. Now I'm at
| the onsite stage at Google / Facebook, both asked about
| previous employment history, which I talked about, and
| everything worked out ok because I practiced.
|
| - DO NOT MENTION, OR INSINUATE, YOU WERE FIRED. And don't lie.
| If you imply that you were fired, nobody will give you a
| chance. This sounds like a death sentence, but thankfully
| interviewers don't probe into it too much if you tell the right
| story in the right way. Find a good narrative and build on it
| like you would an essay. Practice this. Over and over and over
| and over again. It's hard to get right, but once you do, it
| becomes a non-issue.
|
| - I try to avoid saying negative stuff about my last job. It's
| about 50/50, some hiring managers see it as a red flag and
| others sympathize. It's best to come up with and practice a few
| neutral stories to tell them
|
| - Nobody cares about a 6-month employment gap. I know plenty of
| people that take more than a year off. If anyone asks just say
| you were focusing on your health, family, hobbies, whatever.
|
| - See as many practitioners as you possibly can about your
| medical issue. Good ones are hard to find. It took me 20 tries
| (and $5k down the toilet) before I found someone who could
| treat me.
|
| - I should have put this behind me way sooner. Moving to a
| different city helped me a ton. I'd recommend getting an Airbnb
| in Lake Tahoe or Hawaii if you can afford it.
|
| Good luck.
| throw4failure wrote:
| Thanks :) - you are, in fact, pretty cool
|
| > DO NOT MENTION, OR INSINUATE, YOU WERE FIRED. And don't
| lie.
|
| It's unfortunate that openness is punished so harshly, but I
| get it. You're not the first person to caution strongly
| against letting anyone learn about the termination, so I'll
| try to move forward accordingly :)
|
| > I try to avoid saying negative stuff about my last job
|
| Definitely agree. It's one of those things that's more likely
| to harm than to help.
|
| > herniated disc / sciatica
|
| my sincere sympathies. I herniated some (cervical) discs a
| few years back, it's an _extremely_ frustrating condition. In
| my case it 's gotten better with time to the point I can do
| almost everything I could before, but I don't see myself
| getting back into MMA or other full contact sports.
| imprettycool wrote:
| No problem, hopefully we can get out of this rut! :D
|
| Yeah I only have a sample size of two, but I insinuated I
| was fired at both, and neither wanted to move forward.
| Perhaps I should have been blunt about it instead of
| hinting at it. Or maybe it was unrelated. Hard to tell.
| There might be a way to talk about it tactfully. For me,
| it's just easier to not mention it, since it can open a can
| of worms to talk about negative stuff, cuz I kind of hated
| my manager and that was what ultimately pushed me to get
| myself fired.
|
| Regarding hernated disc, yeah it's pretty manageable for me
| now. I actually found a really good massage therapist that
| is helping me recover. Unfortunately there's a bit of a
| hiccup with this Coronavirus thing but it's not the
| borderline life-ruining thing it used to be
| kulig wrote:
| Godamn I hate capitalism. Homey has major depression and has to
| worry about whether a 6 month gap will prevent him from making
| a living. Shits fucked up.
| spotsandstripes wrote:
| I was in a really similar situation a couple years ago. I was
| having mental health problems two years into my first job out
| of college. Around the same time my manager quit and a new
| manager started, and the new manager only knew me while I was
| struggling so we didn't have a great relationship. He told me
| to take a leave of absence, and before the three months were up
| he sent me an email saying that my job had been terminated due
| to my company's abandonment policy.
|
| I had a looong gap on my resume when I finally felt well enough
| to start interviewing again. I tried the honest approach and
| mentioned that I left for medical reasons, and I never made it
| past the initial phone call with a recruiter. I finally lied
| and came up with a believable cover story (that I left to work
| on some startup ideas and did some freelance work) and then I
| was able to get a job. Keep your lies _small_ , and obviously
| don't claim you were an employee somewhere that you weren't.
|
| I was paranoid, so when the company I was interviewing with
| told me they were going to do the background check, I went
| ahead and called my old companies HR to see what they would say
| to the new company. All they had listed was my start and end
| date, not the reason I was terminated or anything. My new
| company outsourced the background check to a different company,
| where I had to fill out a form listing everywhere I was
| employed. I only lied on my resume and I didn't lie on the
| portion where I had to fill out forms for the job application
| and the background check. I was never caught in this lie and my
| new team is happy with my work.
|
| It sucks that we have to do this, but when interviewing
| companies will take literally anything as a reason to reject
| you, even if you can do well on the technical portion of the
| interview.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| > He told me to take a leave of absence, and before the three
| months were up he sent me an email saying that my job had
| been terminated due to my company's abandonment policy.
|
| I don't understand here. Unless the new manager was just
| being shitty, being on a leave of absence would generally not
| be considered job abandonment.
|
| In any case, good job on gaming a shitty system. When will
| people realize that some of the things employers take as
| "deal brakers" have literally zero correlation to actual job
| performance?
| [deleted]
| NPMaxwell wrote:
| I'm sorry we have switched on resumes from reporting years to
| reporting years and months. It used to be that even 20 months
| off could just disappear.
|
| When you're ready, drop this Hacker News name. Switch to
| something like makingChances.
|
| Sounds like restarting may be helpful -- not expecting to
| continue from where you were -- getting a contracting agency to
| pitch you and going from there. Once you're in a job, most
| people don't care about earlier gaps, except that managers who
| don't know how to collect people who can do the work get
| fixated on superstitions.
|
| To restate what you're probably already hearing from your
| therapist: everyone can become depressed. It's something you
| learn. Some people are more clever at picking it up than
| others, but everyone can learn it. Depression is episodic. It
| goes away and comes back. A common recovery is for the gaps
| between episodes to get larger and the episodes get smaller.
| Depression grants three super powers. 1) You can see
| probabilities and how much control you and others have. People
| without depression cannot. 2) You are ready to serve, even at
| the risk of your life. This is something that doesn't apply to
| most of modern life, but does come up now and then. Think of
| Oscar Schindler. 3) While in an episode, you can be confident
| that you will not enjoy things. So if you're trying to resist a
| bowl of ice cream, you have help: you won't enjoy it.
|
| Your negative thoughts and feelings are a natural part of
| mammalian neural systems, like kicking when you're tapped under
| the knee and being able to see dim lights easier if you look a
| little away. Those thoughts and the feeling of dread are not
| necessary or helpful (in almost every situation). You do not
| have to respect them. In fact, when they appear, you can
| disrespect them. They are just an evolutionary glitch that
| served primitive communities, but were never in the best
| interests of the people getting them.
| jacobian wrote:
| You're right to be concerned - it is a red flag. It's something
| I'd ask about if I were interviewing you. However, it's _not_ a
| dealbreaker: I've hired people who've been fired, with longer
| gaps than yours. You can recover from this.
|
| When you get asked about this, your interviewer is going to be
| looking for a few things:
|
| - are you honest about what happened self-reflective about the
| causes, and take ownership of the parts that were under your
| control?
|
| - what have you learned from the experience that might help
| prevent something similar from happening again?
|
| Definitely don't shy away from it, or claim that you quit.
| Getting fired isn't a dealbreaker, but dishonesty is.
|
| So, if someone asks you "why you'd leave Company X?" (which, if
| they're a good interviewer, they will), you'll want to be able
| to say something like:
|
| "Actually, I was fired. I had some medical issues that I let
| get out of control, and my work suffered. I've got the medical
| stuff sorted now, and I've learned how to take better care so
| that my work should stay consistent in the future."
|
| I obviously don't know the specifics of your situation, so
| that's fairly vague; it's better if you can share specific work
| strategies that you've since learned, i.e. around managing your
| priorities/task lists or whatever. You don't need to -- and
| shouldn't -- go into specifics about the medical side, but you
| certainly can talk about things you've learned to keep yourself
| engaged and focused at work.
|
| Good luck!
| throw4failure wrote:
| Thank you kindly for the extensive answer.
|
| > You don't need to -- and shouldn't -- go into specifics
| about the medical side, but you certainly can talk about
| things you've learned to keep yourself engaged and focused at
| work.
|
| This is very helpful. You touched on something I've been
| conflicted about, namely how to navigate being open about my
| situation _without_ being open about the specifics of my
| medical condition (I 'm not averse to it, but from my
| research online it's my understanding that sharing the nitty
| gritty details doesn't help either party partly due to
| potential legal issues).
|
| > I've hired people who've been fired, with longer gaps than
| yours. You can recover from this.
|
| This is very reassuring to hear :)
|
| I'm expecting more than a few negative responses from
| employers, just like I would in good times, but my mind has
| also been drifting to worst case scenarios where literally
| nobody is willing to hire me for development again, so it's
| good to hear that there's still hope :)
| roland35 wrote:
| Good luck with your search! I am not a hiring manager but
| in my experience being involved I would agree that a gap
| isn't a deal breaker at all. In fact as long as you are
| upfront and show that you've improved from it that could be
| a positive too!
|
| One important thing for me is to be aware of what you don't
| have to share to interviewers! Try to answer questions
| fully and honestly but don't be afraid to keep your medical
| specifics private
| harimau777 wrote:
| Its fairly likely that your previous employer has a policy that
| your previous employer will just confirm that you worked there.
| In that case, it shouldn't be too much of an issue.
|
| There are services which you can pay to call up a previous
| employer pretending to be a new employer doing a
| background/reference check on you. They will then report back
| on what they say.
|
| In the case that they do say something negative, one option
| would be to hire a lawyer to send them a cease and desist
| letter. My understanding is it's fairly affordable to do and
| it's usually enough to get them to stop.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| You don't really need to hire a service to do a fake
| reference check and report back. Just find a trusted friend,
| or, if the company is large enough, you can probably do it
| yourself.
| Loughla wrote:
| This is not meant to be hateful, but what an awfully long and
| needlessly complicated process just to prove that you didn't
| learn anything from being fired.
|
| Having hired hundreds of people over my career, being fired
| is not an automatic exclusion, but we would be 100% looking
| for growth in the person sitting across the table from us.
| Your process shows no growth.
| harimau777 wrote:
| I'm not sure that I follow. If a previous employer is
| telling callers things that are keeping you from getting a
| new job, then I'm not sure what that has to do with
| personal growth. Especially if you were fired unjustly.
| hu3 wrote:
| Been there. Hold tight, things get better. What worked for me:
|
| - Tell the interviewer you needed some time off and that you're
| fine now.
|
| - Don't mention depression.
|
| - Don't trash-talk past jobs regardless of merit.
|
| Remember, life is not fair. Don't overexpose yourself if you
| don't need to.
| vharuck wrote:
| That's a tough one. I've never been an interviewer but have
| lost a couple short-term jobs because of depression. I also
| think it's the right way to avoid talking about the details.
| It's a medical condition.
|
| You might be able to say "I put off seeking medical attention
| for too long, and it got in the way of doing my job. That was a
| wake-up call, so I've focused on getting better since then."
|
| Was that the first resume-relevant job you lost because of
| depression? If so, you can also mention that now you're aware
| of your medical condition, you're proactively managing it.
|
| If you have been fired from multiple resume-relevant jobs, then
| don't use the "I learned and won't repeat it" part. In a
| perfect world, the interviewer should know. Not because you're
| an immoral worker, but because it's a risk you and your
| employer would share.
|
| Finally, you "messed up" in the way that a dropped glass hits
| the floor: no point shaming the glass. Be proud of seeking
| treatment, but remember there was also luck in that decision.
| Our ideas of choice and responsibility are more complicated
| than usual when psychological disorders get mixed in.
| throw4failure wrote:
| Thanks for the answer :)
|
| > If you have been fired from multiple resume-relevant jobs,
| then don't use the "I learned and won't repeat it" part. In a
| perfect world, the interviewer should know. Not because
| you're an immoral worker, but because it's a risk you and
| your employer would share.
|
| Thankfully, although I think I've had depression for several
| years, I've left all other employers on good terms. For some
| reason things just spiraled heavily this last year, but long
| story short I don't have a pattern of termination.
|
| > Finally, you "messed up" in the way that a dropped glass
| hits the floor: no point shaming the glass. Be proud of
| seeking treatment, but remember there was also luck in that
| decision. Our ideas of choice and responsibility are more
| complicated than usual when psychological disorders get mixed
| in.
|
| There definitely was. If it hadn't been for my family and
| friends I would have avoided treatment much longer than I
| did, in addition to probably getting deep into substances.
| We're all products of circumstance and luck to varying
| degrees, and I've - all things considered - been very, very
| lucky.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Everyone looks at resumes differently. A resume that's perfect
| for one person screening resumes won't pass someone else.
|
| In my case, if I see a gap on a resume I just assume that
| someone took time off to raise a young child, had some savings
| and traveled, ect. I wouldn't even ask about the gap, but if it
| did come up, even a vague "I just needed a break" would be
| fine. The whole point, if I were to ask, is just to make sure
| you can partition your personal life from your professional
| life. (I don't expect you to be perfect. I'm not perfect
| either.)
|
| Now, hindsight is 20/20, but you could dedicate some free time
| to an open-source project, a "business," ect. Just enough to
| put something on your resume to fill the gap. When I worked
| with someone else at starting a business, my partner spent a
| lot of time (and money) going to a therapist. I had no problem
| with it.
| MrPatan wrote:
| Why would I see the parent comment grey? I surely hope there is
| some rule I don't understand here about new accounts, because
| otherwise it means somebody had nothing better to do than to be
| mean to someone depressed and asking for help.
|
| Maybe that's the advice for you, if you're feeling down go have
| a look around for somebody who has it worse than you and push
| them further down! Nice work, everybody.
| Kye wrote:
| It wasn't gray when I got to it. This is part of why the
| guidelines discourage complaining about downvotes. It's often
| temporary. Someone was probably just having a bad day.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| I could be wrong but I thought comments of a certain length
| were greyed a bit to discourage lengthy comments?
| chadash wrote:
| I interview people regularly and if I see someone with
| technical talent, then I'll proceed. Chances are I'm not
| looking up your references until I'm pretty sure I want to hire
| you, so up until that point, it's on you to impress me with
| your technical knowledge.
|
| Brush up on the fundamentals. Maybe read cracking the coding
| interview. And if possible, spend some time working on an open
| source project, preferably an existing one, not your own (it
| shows you can collaborate, which is a useful skill if I'm gonna
| hire you).
| throw4failure wrote:
| I appreciate the feedback, thank you. In particular,
| reminding me to contribute to a larger open source project
| which is something I haven't done since leaving my last job.
| chadash wrote:
| I think a lot of people take open-source to mean "oh, I'll
| make a project that does something cool in my own time and
| throw it up on github and everyone can see the code."
|
| And sometimes this works. If you are (to take an extreme
| example) Linus Torvald and your open source project in
| Linux, then holy cow, I'm gonna hire you right away. But
| most people don't have the combination of talent, luck and
| perseverance that are required to get wide adoption of an
| open source project. So in 99% of cases, what you are left
| with is a library or small project that you threw up on a
| git-hub that maybe has a few stars and that almost no one
| uses.
|
| Furthermore, as a hiring decision maker, I really don't
| have much time to actually read your code. Got a project
| with 3 stars on github? That's great, but I'm really pretty
| busy writing new features and maintaining my code and I
| don't have time to read through your code unless I'm pretty
| certain I'm going to hire you, so I look for proxies.
| Number of stars is one of them. If 1000 people use your
| product, it probably says something about the quality of
| your code or the difficulty of the problem you solved, or
| at least your ability to solve a problem in a way that
| people find useful (yes, yes... I know it doesn't guarantee
| any of these are true, it's just a proxy, but in the
| initial stage of interviews, proxies are useful).
|
| The issue is that most people are never going to write a
| project from scratch that gets 1000 stars. However, if you
| have substantial work in a project that you didn't start,
| that's also a great proxy. This means that you collaborate
| with others and not only that, but the people you
| collaborate with think you are good enough that they are
| willing to merge in your code. That's a good proxy.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| More than that: there are just a handful of open-source
| projects that went anywhere at all. Among an enormous
| slushpile of perhaps-worthy but ignored projects.
|
| As a filter for useful, sharable code, open-source is an
| almost total failure?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Good to know you leave references until the end. I will not
| be able to get a reference if I leave. My company's policy
| does not allow employees to be a reference for anyone who is
| leaving.
| throw4failure wrote:
| This isn't uncommon, and as I understand it follows
| directly from the typical HR policy of only confirming the
| essentials, such as title, dates of employment and reason
| for leaving. Companies care more about possible litigation
| than they do about helping you with your next job.
|
| However, in my experience it's haphazardly enforced. If
| you're on good terms with a colleague or manager, it's my
| understanding (IANAL) that they can still provide an
| informal or personal reference. In practice, for most
| prospective employers this is just as good as a formal
| reference (since most companies these days have the
| aforementioned policy anyways).
| giantg2 wrote:
| I've only really heard about this policy at some of the
| larger companies more recently. I didn't know it is
| becoming a common thing.
|
| I guess it's just another sign of corporate hypocrisy -
| please provide references when applying, but we will not
| allow you a reference when leaving.
| tfigment wrote:
| My company requires 3 references. Hiring manager does
| calls those just before offer is made and there is
| intent. I don't like calling references unnecessarily.
| There is a form which mostly is about how candidate
| interacted with co-workers and management and general
| effectiveness at job. Medical stuff does not come up
| generally. Personal references do not work well here in
| general for technical hires unless it's an intern and
| they worked together on school project or something.
| throw4failure wrote:
| My guess would be that many of the references you call do
| in fact work for companies with a no-reference policy.
| This has at least been the case at all of my employers
| (large and small places alike, some household names),
| save a 5 person startup.
|
| In my experience, although near-ubiquitous a no-reference
| policy mostly seems to mean "if anyone calls the company
| line or shows up on prem, we redirect them to HR who then
| tells them nothing". It doesn't mean they go out of their
| way to stop individual employees from giving positive
| references on their own time (to wit I've never seen any
| employer actually make any effort whatsoever to
| disseminate their no-reference policy to employees, it's
| just a CYA measure they adopt if communication happens
| through channels they're directly accountable for)
| pmiller2 wrote:
| If CTCI is your idea of "brushing up on fundamentals," you're
| doing it wrong.
| microcolonel wrote:
| > _Obviously the gap is a bit of a red flag that I 've been
| candid about to potential employers_
|
| Well, I would address this by actually improving your
| situation: start reading the code from open source projects in
| your sort of headspace, and set some goal that requires you to
| do work visible to the public. If you're unemployed, you should
| have plenty of time to do that.
|
| I get that clinical issues will get in the way of that, but I'm
| also sure that if you're getting help, you should have some
| strategies to set aside some time every day. It is absolutely
| worth it.
|
| > _Do I tackle it proactively by outright telling everyone I
| was canned?_
|
| Maybe not that way, but if you have some good evidence you did
| soul searching and made a daily effort to sharpen your skills
| and understand how you got yourself into this mess, then
| that'll go a long way with a decent employer.
| ubu7737 wrote:
| My mood disorder has made my whole career a rocky journey. I'm
| 43 now, and doing well in my current role.
|
| Managing your depression will always be part of the trip. Don't
| listen to the voice(s) that say you are a
| failure/loser/underperformer, just do your best. Say it to
| yourself whenever you need to: "I'm doing my best, and that's
| how it will always be."
|
| Strangely, when I know that I'm doing my best despite
| everything, I feel calm.
| YesThatTom2 wrote:
| I'm sure that's good advice for SOME people but I just read about
| this bitcoin startup that...
| yingw787 wrote:
| I've been reading the Incerto series by Nassim Taleb and he talks
| quite frequently about nonlinearities and their outsize impact.
|
| He mentions how a friend of his saw how during the Gulf War,
| everybody had planned for the war to increase the price of oil.
| So his friend bet against everybody else. Turns out, everybody
| was stockpiling oil due to the war, and given how short it was,
| there was an oil glut afterwards. His friend turned $300,000 into
| $18M.
|
| It's difficult to work for a FAANG and become _wealthy_ , as in
| move between socioeconomic classes. You have to play politics and
| become fragile in your building of human relationships, which can
| fall apart much more quickly than your competence as a software
| engineer (barring a brain aneurysm or a TBI, where you have much
| more pressing problems).
|
| If you bet that the stock market would absolutely tank by end of
| March, and acted on that impulse financially, you would be
| wealthy today. Renaissance Technologies rose 39% and is having
| one of their best years ever. It's not secret, exclusive
| knowledge. I started taking health precautions two weeks before
| the crash. I didn't act financially, because I honestly didn't
| think of it, and because I don't like the principle of shorting
| the market and betting against my country and my people.
|
| My takeaway isn't go on wallstreetbets and attempt to yolo my way
| through life. My takeaway is people who bet on linearities are
| much more similar than you think. $300K, $70K, does it really
| matter? In the grand scheme of things, you're still a peon either
| way. You're a middle class guy, with little influence on Capitol
| Hill and less access to PPE and ventilators, high taxes, one
| primary income stream, and still trade time for money instead of
| building capital and having money work for you.
|
| So if you feel down, keep a good head on your shoulders, don't
| despair, and consume as much information as you can on a regular
| basis. If you want to, look for ways to benefit from
| nonlinearities. And if you do make it, be a humanist and don't
| forget to give back to the people who raised you and taught you
| and care for you.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > It's difficult to work for a FAANG and become wealthy, as in
| move between socioeconomic classes
|
| You're goal should not necessarily be to move up a social-
| economic class, but to at least provide your children with more
| opportunity than you had. Inter-generational wealth
| accumulation is very important.
|
| Most _people_ don 't go rags to riches, it's typically
| _families_ that do so over multiple generations. With poor
| people focusing on educating their children, who become
| professionals, who then have kids with the opportunity to make
| it big. If you look at Bill Gates, he 's the son of a judge.
| Zuckerberg is the son of a dentist. One of the Google founders
| is the son of a college professor. Even our president came from
| a wealthy family.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Graduated with my BA in 2009 and definitely dealt with bad luck.
| Now, I work at a good company and have a good job (for now), but
| they are clearly making moves to shift the jobs to Texas. I'm
| just finishing my MBA and finding it really hard to find a job.
| Everyone wants you to have 5-8 years of experience doing exactly
| what they're hiring for and don't seem willing to train if you
| have 60-80% of the qualifications. Really sucks because trying to
| shift from one finance discipline (treasury/tax/FP&A/Corp
| Finance) doesn't seem like companies are willing to consider.
| non-entity wrote:
| > Everyone wants you to have 5-8 years of experience doing
| exactly what they're hiring for and don't seem willing to train
| if you have 60-80% of the qualifications.
|
| This is a big worry for me. I'm leaning towards switching to a
| loosely related disciple in a few years, but with programming
| domains. However, when I research jobs in domains in looking
| at, a vast majority explicitly want at least a couple years in
| that exact domain, but most want upwards of 5 years.
| hmart wrote:
| I live in a 3rd world country, worked the last 20 years as
| systems administrator. Recently lost my job and while looking for
| a new remote job I have been touched by the hard reality: The
| world changed and I was full of self leniency, years using the
| same bash scripts, the same tricks day to day. Did lot of things
| maintenance, networking, security,databases, mail servers, anti
| spam. I consider myself capable of put a SMB connected and
| working. My job didn't demanded me new skills an I was self
| indulgent, happy to have enough money for the day. Some recent
| job interviews showed me a depressing reality : I did the least,
| I know the minimum, never upgrade my knowledge, just relied on
| Google search. I didn't know about CI, CD, containerization,
| DevOps in general. I have a B.S in Systems Engineering (Some sort
| of CS , without the 'science' part) enjoyed math and code in
| college, done tens of websites in WordPress, Joomla and some
| Drupal, I'm capable of code in Php, some bash, some ruby, some
| python. I'm in my mid forties a kid 4 years old and cannot afford
| to stay worried, I have to do something to land a remote job, I
| want to thrive and motivated enough to learn, but time is ticking
| would like to hear some advice.
| hattori wrote:
| It seems you nailed exactly what is the problem and what needs
| to be done or learned. You have more or less ideal background
| to jump into these tools, it's just matter of spending some
| time and considering your experience it will take less than for
| most of people. You'll be ok.
| hmart wrote:
| Thanks!
| karimdxy wrote:
| Since you like coding and apparently you happen to enjoy
| building websites why not transition to web dev? The barrier to
| entry is relatively low. Give freecodecamp
| (https://freecodecamp.org) a shot and let me know if you ever
| need help!
| hmart wrote:
| Thank you!
| [deleted]
| efficax wrote:
| The point made in here about how your company is not your family
| cannot be emphasized enough. Corporate culture, and especially
| tech startup culture, likes to make you believe that we're all
| family and best friends and love each other.
|
| That attitude stays up right until the day they lay you off
| without warning.
|
| It's great to work with great people that you enjoy being around,
| and we should treat each other all with human dignity and
| respect, and with a bit of fun. But your boss is not, and never
| will be, your friend.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| But I think there can also be too much negativity around "the
| company is not a family". At this point, with 3 major crashes
| in the past 20 years, I feel like only bad companies say the
| company is a family.
|
| Good companies say, and act like, the company is a team. People
| can work hard together, they can be friends, but they are clear
| that the reason for the team is to accomplish a goal, and if
| the structure of the team needs to be changed to accomplish
| that goal, people will be cut. This team mentality can provide
| true clarity of purpose, and can eliminate any sense of
| bitterness if things don't work out. When people are cut from a
| high caliber sports team they may be immensely disappointed,
| but if treated fairly they understand it.
|
| The family mentality almost _always_ results in bitterness,
| because what kind of family kicks out their members when things
| get slightly tough?
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Exactly. If a company says "we're a family," then, either
| they are (a family business), or they're lying. I always say
| "you don't fire your brother," when people say something like
| this.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Your boss can absolutely be your friend. You should be a good
| friend back and recognize you have two relationships, and if
| they are a good person with integrity they won't make
| professional actions on the basis of personal relationships.
|
| That's just basic professionalism. I've been friendly with many
| of my bosses during and after the term of employment I've
| worked for them. I would never, ever have expected any
| favoritism on then basis of that friendship from them,
| including laying me off if necessary and distributing raises
| and promotions purely based on merit with no regards to our
| friendship. Any expectations otherwise, to me, would mean I was
| being the bad friend.
|
| I'd have the exact same expectations of family if I worked for
| them.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| There's a bit difference between having a "friendly"
| relationship and being a friend.
| ubu7737 wrote:
| A beloved co-worker and the best engineer on my team suddenly
| had to leave 2 months ago because his H1B renewal was denied.
| He asked the company HR for help and they sent him home
| immediately. Tears in his eyes he left us on a Thursday, and we
| didn't know what to say or how to feel.
|
| This is just how it goes. No matter how much we wanted him to
| stay, there was nothing to be done about it at our level.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > But your boss is not, and never will be, your friend.
|
| I agree with the sentiment. I am still friends with people that
| were my direct reports many years ago. But, when I was their
| manager, I treat them fairly like any other employee. That they
| were my friends meant that we will hang after work hours. But,
| as I manager I could not be their friends in work hours.
| Favoritism will have been extremely unfair for the rest of
| employees, that still were very good people.
|
| I also have friends that have been my managers. And, in the job
| I expected to be treated equally than the rest of employees. I
| guess that we are still friends because we think in a similar
| way about justice and work ethics.
|
| With teammates has been different. I have been part of awesome
| teams that we have been friends while working together to later
| on drift apart as our interests outside the job does not match
| (quite usually people with children that have limited time to
| hang out).
|
| The opposite of that are managers that "feel betrayed" when you
| leave a company that has been mistreating you, or tell you that
| they expect loyalty to the company that is not reciprocal. They
| are the "paterfamilias" of a dysfunctional and abusive family.
| There is nothing worse that a manager that expects to be
| treated as a friend, with loyalty and sacrifice but sees you as
| just a number.
| dudul wrote:
| Overall really good post, but I'm curious about the "Politics
| emerge when the players believe the game is zero sum".
|
| What are the arguments that it's _not_ a zero sum game? In
| theory, sure it 's not. Everybody works to increase revenue and
| profits, ergo everybody benefits, but in reality?
| conformist wrote:
| This seems to be good advice for anyone with not-top-quartile
| luck, not only bad luck.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Perhaps it's simply good advice, and the people you see as
| being "lucky" already know it (if only intuitively).
| undebuggable wrote:
| _- good luck!_
|
| _- don 't need it, never had it!_
| kursus wrote:
| > The company is not your family.
|
| Yes, and it's also not your friend. That's an easy mistake to
| make. You owe your company nothing more than work and loyalty.
| Reimersholme wrote:
| "Politics emerge when the players believe the game is zero sum.
| In a recession, the players are more likely to believe the game
| is zero sum."
|
| I'd put emphasis on this, but with the difference that in a
| recession, it's a negative sum game and not zero sum, which
| explains why there will definitely be politics.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| My advice is to do a startup as early in your career as possible.
| Then you'll feel failure and the emptiness as it hits the skids.
| It's a life lesson in a few months because startups that fail
| usually tip over the cliff real fast.
| [deleted]
| rwmj wrote:
| In my experience the worst start ups _don 't_ hit the skids
| fast. They kind of keep bumping along, often for years. Neither
| growing much, nor dying, nor making much money, nor losing
| enough to go out of business. I even co-founded one of these a
| few years ago. If you're in one of these my advice is to
| recognise it and quit.
| Kye wrote:
| Those kinds of startups should have been lifestyle
| businesses, but someone convinced the founder it was unicorn
| or nothing.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Even worse: they succeed wildly, to the extent they never
| need funding again after a series C, buy out the VC's, and
| stay private. This is roughly what I'm expecting from one of
| the startups I worked at. I already know they'll never need
| to take another dime in funding, so I'm just waiting for them
| to tell me how my shares are going to become worthless.
| lukejduncan wrote:
| "luck is the residue of design"
| hachibu wrote:
| > Every time I've outsourced my thinking for a job change (n=2)
|
| I love the n = 2 aside. I really like OP's sense of humor.
| rb808 wrote:
| A lot of talk here that colleagues aren't friends.
|
| What is wrong with you people? If you like your colleagues you
| can invite them to do stuff after you or they leave. They
| probably haven't invited you because they never got around to it
| either.
|
| Most of the older generation people met through work is the only
| way to make friends.
|
| No wonder loneliness is so rampant now.
| alufers wrote:
| Yeah, I really feel sad when I see those articles and comments
| telling you not to share anything that you don't want your boss
| to know with your colleagues, or even better ignore them
| completely and automatically treat as deadly competition. If
| you cannot trust anybody and have difficulties with assessing
| if someone won't turn his back on you, it may be a problem with
| your social skills, not with other people.
|
| This kind of thinking encourages situations where the employer
| may have total control over his employees, like with Amazon.
| SolaceQuantum wrote:
| There are definitely personal details that are dangerous for
| you to talk about with your co workers. It is still legal to
| fire someone for being gay or trans in a significant minority
| of states. There are two Supreme Court cases right now purely
| because of workplace bigotry.
|
| I also don't know how safe it would be to disclose having a
| disability or chronic condition in the workplace.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| It may make you sad, but do you think "don't share anything
| with your colleagues you wouldn't want your boss to know" is
| bad advice? Treating people like "deadly competition," is
| probably not optimal, but being wary of what you say
| certainly is. I can tell you the Slack Police at my work
| think so, too.
| maxlamb wrote:
| I think it's more nuanced than that. If you hang out with them
| outside of work on a regular basis, then maybe they are genuine
| friends and that's great. The problem discussed is a different
| situation: You get along great with your colleagues, however
| you never spend time with them outside of work. Then let's say
| that getting along well with them nudges you to stay at the
| company longer even though your company/position is not a good
| fit for you and you should be looking for better career
| opportunities. You finally decide to leave the company 2 years
| later, then you realize that these colleagues weren't really
| friends after all and you should have started looking for
| better opportunities way earlier.
| analyst74 wrote:
| That is a great point, I've always found the true test for
| friendship is after I left the environment made us close.
|
| This applies not just work friends, but college friends,
| activity friends and church friends.
|
| Not everyone wanted to stay in touch, and I don't want to
| stay in touch with everyone. The few occasions where the
| desire to stay in touch is mutual, I cherish those
| connections for as long as they last, hopefully for a
| lifetime.
| Theodores wrote:
| There is a difference between being friendly and being friends.
|
| A friend can be someone you have not spoken to in decades but
| they will help you in a time of need and pick up with you as if
| it was yesterday.
|
| In a workplace you may adore your colleagues and spend more
| than forty hours a week in their company but are you being
| friendly or are you friends? There is a difference. It is not
| often that a workplace friendship arrangement becomes a true
| friendship.
|
| In previous times people were not hypermobile. People did not
| travel on vast commutes just for a highly specialised job. They
| could get work on their side of town. They could also sell up
| and move that bit easier for that job out of town.
|
| In a workplace you are not going to become best of friends with
| someone who lives a 3-4 hour journey away from you as you know
| from the off that it is a long distance relationship. The drink
| after work will be as far as it goes.
|
| Of course there will be exceptions.
|
| I am not sure that the older generation have that many close
| friends anyway, plus there was the stay at home mum phenomenon
| back then and whilst 'daddy went to work' the true friendships
| were made by the kids, bringing their respective parents
| together. Kids don't get chopped and changed like how jobs do
| so there is more scope for friendships being made through them.
| growlist wrote:
| There's a kind of snobby attitude at play here sometimes I
| think, as in: 'of course I wouldn't socialise with my
| colleagues outside work! They are nowhere near as interesting
| as me and my super-awesome, quirky and unique bunch of mates,
| I'm just slumming it for the money'.
| draw_down wrote:
| Well, sometimes it happens that the people you work with
| really are duller than those in other parts of tour life.
| Jobs are jobs.
| collyw wrote:
| Depends a lot on your workplace. If its a younger workforce it
| usually easy to make friends and people do things together.
| Once people start having children it seems to change quite a
| lot.
| varjag wrote:
| Yeah once you push 30 your next cohort of friends going to be
| that bingo gang in your retirement home.
| microcolonel wrote:
| It's a luxury concept: the idea that people can rely on having
| a social group outside of their employer and maybe their
| employer's vendors and customers.
|
| Also, don't talk to people about how their parents met; they'll
| be in shock that they overcame the fear that they'd become
| awkward or unprofessional if things broke off.
| the_af wrote:
| In my case it's not snobbery like someone else insinuated. I
| don't consider myself "better" than my coworkers -- just not
| close to them.
|
| I tend to make few friends. Of those, I made most of my closest
| friends at school and the Uni, I'm still in touch with them,
| and we keep our friendships going through good and bad times.
| It's an age thing, I suppose. If I were still in my 20s I'd
| probably make friends at work, too.
|
| I tend to occasionally keep in touch with former coworkers, but
| I'm an introvert, I tend not to enjoy "afterhours" activities,
| and eventually all these new bonds tend to fade.
| kamaal wrote:
| Unacknowledged fact. Due to Stack Ranking and modern day
| Machivellian work culture, colleagues are competitors.
|
| Most relationships end up the same way. If there is some kind
| of comparative ranking/selection, even if it is just fame or
| some recognition. Even sibling rivalry roots in this.
| werber wrote:
| I've had such a different experience than you. I feel that
| being friends with co-workers has always been more about
| mutual aid than competition.
| k__ wrote:
| Probably depends on the job.
|
| We devs always got along well, even the idiots were kind of
| included.
|
| But I had the impression, things were different sales or
| the management team.
| werber wrote:
| I don't know, I tend to cross over into whatever part of
| the business if someone seems cool and just ask them to
| grab lunch or a drink. One of my closest friends is a
| management person I worked for and asked to grab drinks
| with when she quit. She's 20 years my senior and now we
| take girls trips and know each others family and friends.
| I think it's all about putting yourself out there and
| occasionally sitting through a painfully awkward lunch.
| hu3 wrote:
| I and some work friends made the mistake of disclosing our
| salary between us. Me being the one that earns more.
|
| Our friendship and even work relationship was never the same
| again.
|
| I would never tell how much I earn if I had the choice to go
| back. I do believe they should know. But it hurts our work
| relationship on a daily basis.
| sct202 wrote:
| I had that happen too but the difference was trivial like a
| couple hundred but still bothered one of the people. I
| think the only way to share now is just post on glassdoors.
| hu3 wrote:
| Yes, even minimal differences bother people.
| [deleted]
| haskellandchill wrote:
| diversify income, I'm learning tattoo and working food service
| jobs because I'm too high variance in programming. I can be
| really good but I also go bust a lot :)
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