- You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative.

- You talk about applying to Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Palantir, and other companies known to be very competitive, yet the only real job experience you list in your post is low level customer support. Nothing wrong with aiming high, but you need to also be applying to jobs that are a logical next step in your career. It's extraordinarily difficult to jump from customer support to FAANG engineer, so have a backup plan.

- You spoofed e-mails to manipulate executives into meetings. This kind of thing sounds clever in movies or from anecdotes in the 90s or 2000s, but in this era everyone is on high alert for phishing attacks and security breaches. Read the room, and don't commit computer fraud during your application process. Big companies have systems in place to catch these things and you'll get blocked in short order.

- No mention of your network. Do you have any contacts or friends or acquaintances anywhere in the industry? Even people you knew briefly from school? People who you worked with in the past who moved up? Reach out and ask if they have any advice for your job search. Going forward, make a point to stay on good terms with the people around you. You can help each other as your careers progress.

It was nice to be reminded that sometimes the Internet doesn't suck. Thanks for taking the time to write that reply.

> You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM ...

Approach small startups, they judge much less. In fact a very early stage project (3-4 people) might be very happy to hire you because you seem very smart. The salary might be bad but will give you valuable in-depth job experience that will help you further down the road.

Also about the executive thing: I wouldn't approach executives because they usually hardly know what the company is doing. (They are there to talk with investors, external stakeholders...) Only exception small places. (< 30 ppl)

If I was you I would focus on a technology you like, maybe RoR or Python/Django and develop a small test project. If you feel confident enough even publish it on Github, but that's not a must. Just the muscle memory is good enough and that you can talk about it during interview. (Should be something mundane, like a Todo list or a news article search) And then just look for early stage startups and write them. Or perhaps NGOs, they are also much more open.

Once you've stayed at one relevant job for a year or two you can "double-down" on that and apply somewhere else for more... Most places don't care if you are ultra smart but rather that the usual tasks get done in an acceptable way. From past experience that's what managers are complimenting.

I'll add that OP — Your biggest issue seems to be extremely high intelligence, paired with a lack of empathy and social functioning, which created a self-expectation of massive grandiosity. But you keep failing to deliver on it because you can't get your highly powered brain on the streets, leading in self-pity and depression. Not good, but salvageable.

How do I know? My life story reads basically like yours into my late twenties — multiple college dropout, extremely high ambitions, always failed.

The only difference is that I started that low level support job in a company small enough that somebody saw my talent and got me on the path to second level tech support and then engineering as I continued automating my job away.

Had to chuckle as I pissed off quite a lot of people higher up in that job early on myself, but fortunately had a few people reflecting me instead of firing me, which made me understand how I made other people look and feel by my actions.

The good news: Empathy is a learneable skill. Aim far lower in a smaller, young and growing (!) company with good potential — but especially with a great boss. Then work hard, SHUT UP your smartass mouth for a year and work your way up while learning what's holding you back with the help of a good coach/therapist. When you apply with the company, read everything you can about what they do and make it about them.

Stop trying to impress. For that year, just focus on staying super humble and in the background, learning how value is created for that company and then go on creating that value even if nobody asked you to. Just for a year. Up your ante slowly and only when you feel you have established personal trust and leverage.

Empathy a skill where intelligence won't support you but be in your way because of your natural tendency of you showing it off. That makes people feel dumb, and nobody likes to feel like that. Also, some actions like you skipping line management will make them feel they can't rely on you on top. You'll keep failing if people keep hating working with you.

Your goal is to find a great manager first and make them look great. And then talk about that. Be the solution guy, not the problem guy. Be the one who goes the extra mile to bring a small win home, not the one who makes the snarkiest comment.

You'll never be a "normal" person, but that's ok. Having a sharp profile comes with its own set of (dis)advantages. You can be high functioning if you surround yourself with capable people who know how to work with your weaknesses in order to leverage your strenghts.

Your job is finding them, as you'll fail alone.

I think you're also perhaps projecting a bit. You stopped (very) short of giving the OP a diagnosis of ASD ("high functioning"). Again, that's way, way too much to read into 1590 characters (not counting spaces) on an HN post.

Personally I think there's no way to answer OP with anything approaching good advice when going only by what they have posted. I understand that everyone will want to try anyway, but sometimes the best asnwer is to say "I don't know".

______________

[1] Funny aside. Suppose Alice has "extremely high intelligence" (EHI). Her EHI will make her aware of two facts: a) everyone seems to think they have EHI, or at least intelligence above the mean; b) only a tiny minority of those people can be right. The obvious corrolary is that Alice herself must be of average intelligence and only feel like she has EHI because that's a common cognitive bias of people with average intelligence. Therefore Alice will assume she has average intelligence and discount evidence to the contrary. In other words, people who have EHI will very rarely believe they have EHI, let alone say they do.

The alternative, I guess, is that everyone correctly realizes they can't understand the full context of OP's position, and no one gives OP any advice and they continue down the road they're currently on. Just my view :)

By contrast, people who have not learned to put so much value on their being "above average" don't have as much trouble pushing further into that painful territory because to them, everything is pain anyway.

That way I've seen people with little talent go further than, or at least catch up to others who have it in abdundance, through discipline and work. My formative experience in that respect is from a different life when I was studying for a modern drums degree.

For example, perhaps people are telling you you're smart because they like your er other assets. Or because they feel obliged to because you're their boss. Or because they know your parents. etc etc.

Bottom line, there's confounding factors that can throw the calculation way off.

I learned at all early age the only thing appearing like the smartest guy in the room was good for was paining a target on your back. I also learned how to emulate empathy, it's not perfect, but it makes up for the natural broken/missing wiring in my head.

Also early in my career I talked my way out of several jobs, You might have the best ideas in the world, but if powers that be don't want to hear them, don't belabor the matter, give your suggestions and move on.

I started out too in customer support, 20 years later I'm making an engineers salary, with an engineering title, which isn't too bad for a drop out.

The best advice on jobs I have, take a bad shitty job that's good for your resume, work there till you have the book experience to work someplace else, rinse and repeat,

I do genuinely care about people, I just cannot for the life of me understand why things upset others.

Failing to do it, makes me less employable, and less successful socially.

Around 25, i was really disgusted by computer and IT Job, even tryed to recycle into soft medecine.

At this exact time, the best things in my life occured: My (first) girl friend cheated on me after 2 years of love story. It forces me to consider that maybe im not always right. I had a wonderfull journey into psychology, pick up artist technics, self-improvement, and started to practice Systema (Russian Martial Art) where indeed i learn empathy. Im mean, i didnt learn it, i was over sensitive and over empathic. I was the too good to be happy, and my angry burst were just expression of my frustration accumulated by peoples abusing me.

Instability was coming from that. Quitting was an easy solution, escaping stupidity and predator instead of facing them was my main strategy.

With training and helps from great peoples, i improved my social skills. I learn how to say NO. Around 31, i was desperate with my job interview, my professionnal experience was expressing instability and induced fear to potential recruiters.

I had to makeup my resume. And i got the opportunity to work as a lvl3 support team. This was the way i came back into business. With my improved self, i spend 3 years (the first time i worked that long in a position) taking care of big problem in a critical application.

This was an honey moon, first time ever peoples were thanking me for saving their ass and cleaning their shit (we talk hundreds of million in electronic payment industry). Im still friend with this specific manager who was able to see potential in me, 12 years after.

I started a consulting company. Im 42, married, father of three. Im happy.

Just remember: Humans are not computer.

They often work in IT jobs, and for all their lives have heard how smart they were because of stereotypes around computers, science and nerds. Knowing how to use command line tools and put together a computer does not often equal extremely high intelligence.

How does „extremely high intelligence“ lead to multiple college dropouts? For the OP it was a lack of money to pay US study fees. I doubt that several other points you mention (like „don’t be the one who makes the snarkiest comment“) are comparable to OPs experience.

Also, being the solution guy/girl is good advice.

Once you have that experience you know what to look for in your career. Keep in touch with the good managers and colleagues, as that network is worth gold.

I suspect people call it intelligence when they see themselves in the behaviour. Since we all think we're above average https://priceonomics.com/why-do-we-all-think-were-above-aver...

Things like this are very important. Job hopping is a giant red flag for lots of companies.

Nobody wants to hire an employee whose replacement they have to hire under an year.

I noticed that after a year or 2 I get bored because things become a bit too routine. After the third job I decided to just become a midlancer (in a few years want to go full freelance) so I can hop whenever I hit that wall.

Most hires will take a year to get productive (where they produce more value for the company than they cost).

I would never hire someone if I expected them to leave in a few months (except an intern).

There are exceptions. An experienced consultant may be hired only for short, specific projects. But if you're struggling to get hired, you don't fall in that category.

Anyway, I was productive within a week at my current company. Have you heard of companies trying to reduce the time to impact (or git commit) of an employee, some are proud that their employees commit go into production on their first day. If it takes one year to make back the money it costs to pay them, that sounds like we should improve that process or get more value from developers, rather than expect people to stay for longer to earn back their cost.

This is clearly a tough topic for some people on HN. I would recommend you just do some interviews (this is not treason), and see what offers you get (this is fair, you might get a nice increase). Then you'll realize its not a big deal for companies (especially the one thats making the hire), it might be bigger in your head and in your existing company.

I never fully understood this. In pretty much any company I worked, if by the end of the month you weren't productive (almost fully independent) you would get the boot. Do companies really expect for new employees to take a year to be consistently productive? In startup land, that is like 2-3 product launches, how the hell companies find the money for this?

I am not talking about someone not doing anything useful -- that should come quickly. But it may take several months or a year for them to start creating more value than their salary+benefits+other costs. And as long as the new hire shows progress to this I am perfectly OK if the process takes a year. My 2c.

I would encourage you to rethink this idea.

Devs are in the lucky position that you can obtain some aspects of 'real job experience' outside of a job. Create a project, or contribute to open source project in an area that interests you - it will hone your skills and give something concrete on your resume.

[edit] And make the projects very directed to the jobs you want to get, if security interests you try some hacker bounties - even documenting how you looked for exploits in a blog may be of use.

A guy got hired at Google once because he spoofed an email from Larry to Sergey using an unknown DKIM hack he discovered. The OP said numbers so I'm assuming he spoofed caller id. That's kind of like stealing the silverware as far as hacks go. So it doesn't surprise me that would come across poorly.

When I was a hiring manager, I specifically designed an interview process that procured me candidates that were great devs that didn't do well in leetcode style interviews, and as a result was able to hire a much better team than I should have been able to at my budget level. We did this, by doing no-brainer things like, actually reading the resumes.

But good hiring practices are hard to scale. Reading a resume or a person is difficult to teach. But a minimally competent leetcode style interview session can be run with some success by most engineers, so it scales. Which means it worked great for some quickly growing tech companies with large amounts of cash and little need to filter questionable resume lists (usually because their name brands guaranteed high level quality applicants). This then became a fad as every company copied the name brand engineering company without wondering if their hiring process had the same constraints as name-brand co, and is now what the industry thinks is 'the one true way.;

It might be a deciding factor if you get an interview at all, which team you are interviewing with and for which level. Those decisions are made by recruiters, not interviewers or hiring committees.

There are many tricks you can use to get an interview. However nothing abut OPs past shows that he can actually be a productive programmer.

>Dev job at IBM

No details what he did or for how long. I've been in teams with fresh juniors who are amazing. They bring in new knowledge and new perspectives and over all crush the job. Then I've seen juniors who "work" on something for weeks and weeks and when we start for them to demo how far they are we find out that they haven't been able to produce anything working.

>QA at EA

While with normal software I'd say this requires at least scripting skills with games I don't know if that is necessarily true and again probably not a good skill set for getting hired as dev in FAANG

>Cybersecurity team at college

I immediately assume this is some kind of CTF team, which might teach you to use some tools, but again I've seen people in college just "pass through" without really learning anything

If the job OP could do and do well was Amazon help desk then he should aim somewhere between FAANG dev and that position and probably erring on the side of the help desk. The new job will teach them more and in a year or two they can apply for a higher position.

If this is the case the gap in skill required to pass a FAANG interview may be too great to overcome in a reasonable timeframe.

Hustle culture pushes the unqualified person changing their life by taking a big risk. But most of the "success" examples are people moving into high turnover, metric driven, entry level positions such as investment advisors performing cold calls, entry level b2b sales etc.

Aced all questions, except the one that ALL of their inverviewers asked, that was how I had shown leadership solving a problem in a team situation in my past jobs.

See, in all my past jobs, I never been in a large team.

Didn't pass the interview, they have a policy to not tell you why but I can guess why...

They just wanted you to have shown some modicum amount of leadership skill. For a normal position, this doesn't mean that you have to act like a CEO. A simple case where you took the lead to solve some issue and maybe guided a colleague or even a customer would have sufficed.

To me that raises a flag on how you may not have a good grasp on what really happened in your interview. You don't ace questions in the onsite interview at Amazon. You are there to provide data for the interviewers to decide if you're a valid candidate. If you were rejected then the data your interviewers collected on you led them to that decision.

Source: I know a few people who went as far as onsite interviews at Amazon. Some got in, others didn't. None of the guys who were left out were cut because of their hard skills.

Or for that matter, what kind of job he's looking for and what his skills are other than QA @ EA (was he writing automation, or doing gameplay testing?), an 18 year old developer (intern?) at IBM, and customer service at Amazon. And maybe that's part of the problem -- hiring managers don't know what he wants to do. (which is easier to get away with at a small company since you'll do a bit of everything, but larger companies are generally looking for someone to fill a specific role)

If he's consistently getting first interviews but not getting past that, then maybe his resume sounds better than his actual skill level.

I second other comments elsewhere in the threads here to get a candid friend to help with interview practice.

From the other side of the fence, if a candidate has an atypical resume, the best course of action will be to interview to check their level.

You can't ignore the possibility of them being good autodidacts, but it will also lead to a very quick rejection if they're below those high expectations. It creates a cycle of quick interviews at prestigious places and quick rejections.

Once you have an interview, presumably its something that they learned from it that gets you rejected.

Viz. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google.

I had to look it up (I'm not from around here).

The past doesn't matter. Building skills could be enough

What part of my comment do you dislike?

To be fair, I don't expect everyone on HN to appreciate my perspective. The tech world seems to be majority snowflake, or pretend snowflake (go along to get along, in that case).

I'm not a politically correct type of person-- I tell people what I actually think and prefer brutal honesty to sugar coated messaging.

The master said "You're too young, you need to start with more modest projects."

"But master" said the boy "you first composed a symphony when you were half my age!"

"Yes, but I didn't ask anyone how."

---

What I mean by this is that "hustling" is something of a unique, rare, or hacking like thing. You can't ask people how to do it, because if they could tell you then everyone would do it and it wouldn't work. I don't mean that like people are keeping a secret, but more like hustling means going through a dynamic and unexpected route and it's not something people can easily reduce to instructions.

We need to stop idolizing hustling. Getting shit done without pretending it's a gambler's game will get you far.

I like to say. At a job you get compensated three ways. Money, experience, and contacts. There are more ways but those are the top three.

Coding-camps?

Also bootcamp is very overhyped. There's some great people that come out of them, but I think mainly the hype is the fact that college is overrated (this is a cliche opinion I know) so bootcamps are there to try to exploit some of the delta that the myopic focus on college degrees creates. But many boot camps are super myopic in their own ways.

Right on. I'm self taught before bootcamps were a thing. I learned by doing by launching a bunch of startup prototypes. Then I ran out of money so I started interviewing, went 1 for 1 and got a good 6 figure Rails job at a big corporation (skipping junior level), all with less than 1 year experience.

Many people getting into coding I talk to think this path is too hard and that a bootcamp somehow looks good on a resume and is therefore safe.

The same arguments can be made for startup accelerators. You really don't need one if you're a hustler who can build businesses. Thus they also attract some percentage of people who want a "safe" approach for their resume.

I wouldn't describe it as a hack or hustle though. It's basically learn the skills required, demonstrate your knowledge, then interview and get a matching job.

Honestly, just a guess, you're probably giving off bad interpersonal vibes/people don't really like talking to you. Half of interviewing is just being very personable/being able to talk comfortably with other people. Generally in this space (this space meaning those interested in tech/startups/etc) sometimes people struggle in this area but really shine in tech. I would encourage you to spend some time reflecting on your interpersonal skills.

Some other red-ish flags from your post - you kinda seem like you might struggle just doing exactly what you're asked to do. Bringing up how frequently you quit things for various reasons or finding issues and bringing them up with your superiors' superiors, spoofing numbers to get in touch with very very senior people. Lots of lower-tiered jobs literally just need people to show up and do what they're asked. A part of getting a "first" or "entry level" job is accepting you're there mostly to learn, not to teach/move outside of your lane. The fact that you would even bring up Bill Landreth seems like you might not necessarily see yourself how the rest of the world sees you.

I'm not trying to offend you - I really hope you can line something up soon. I apologize if this feedback seems cold - I think reflecting on things like this can be hard because you have to face things about yourself you may disagree with or not realize. Unfortunately interviewing is such a biased game, you kind of have to play your opponent (meaning, be the person they want, not the person you are).

Happy to chat through any of this stuff if you have questions. Wish you all the best.

Yes, this is what stood out for me. OP sounds malcontented, and habitually dissatisfied with his role, and makes antisocial decisions (like spoofing numbers - which is not just dishonest but shows contempt for the target) that show poor judgement. He compounds the poor judgement by bragging about the previous poor judgement.

The antisocial stuff is implicit in what he doesn't mention: from his descriptions, his workplaces are hollow boxes with some juicy targets (execs) in them and nothing else. Where are the people? There aren't any because at some level they don't exist for the OP. This is, of course, a hallmark trait of narcissism.

The good news (great news, really), is that NPD is one of the most treatable of personality disorders if the person decides they want treatment. The reason? The narcissist is confident in their ability, and confidence helps when you want to shape your own behavior.

The caveat to all this being that free advice is worth what you paid for it, even less if given by a stranger on the internet. But, FWIW, it's my honest take. If it ends up being accurate (if you look up the disorder) and you get help, I'd love to know if this post help you. (See, I'm a little NPD too! ;)

And OP seems very concerned about medical insurance, which might suggest something bigger behind the curtains. Young folks often think they're invincible, and medical insurance is last in their list of worries.

(BTW I agree I'm reading a lot into his post, Sherlock Holmes style, but without confirmation one way or the other, its hard to say if I'm on target. In any event, I do not believe that the OP would share your umbrage, given his post.)

But the primary false thing I want to address is the tacit assertion that "Telling someone they have NPD traits is a personal attack." I understand that assumption because, sadly, accusation of personality disorder has become a common style of personal attack. It's very similar, actually, to the classic status of "homosexuality" - once a pejoritive, now mostly just a fact. And I'm not sure if you noticed, but HN has a LOT of psychology-related content. As a group people here seem to show a lot of admirable compassion and empathy for each other's vulnerabilities. I think it's a remarkable feature of the place, and I hope you can take my words in that context. NPD is quite common in the world, in our field, and its entirely posssible to be a good person who struggles with NPD.

Your protective instinct speaks well of you! But you may need to reassess whether or not I actually attacked the OP, given his request and the context of my response.

...if they don't want to change. That is a true statement. But, if they do want to change, it's relatively straight-forward.

BTW the thing you can control is not your actions, or even your reactions, but rather your attention. The best thing a narcissist can do is learn to see themselves in others. Modulo the risk of projection (that is, ascribing too much commonality to the other), it's a nice judo move to turn a dark quality into a light one.

Reason that I mentioned that I mentioned Bill Landreth was that I think that I'm kinda like him. I got in to programming, RE, VR, soldering etc. when I was very young. Like 8 years old. I knew some folks that Wired articles were written about etc. I hanged out with a Head of Research guy at IBM who told me himself that I know some stuff that he doesn't know, and have told me that I'm smart. Which sounds cringy now that I type this. But I'm not delusional lol. I was the second person at 18 years old to be hired full-time at IBM in a certain program.. The first guy works at Armonk. I can send proof, screenshots of interview emails with DKIM etc. if anyone would like to verify my claims. Trust but verify as former president Reagan liked to quote.

In another post you brought up your longest stint being 2 months, and that you dropped out of college your freshman year. To be blunt, I don't think the achievements you list really count if you didn't actually complete them. There's a lot of "I worked with", "I got accepted to", "I got hired by" in your posts, but pretty much all of those things are followed by quitting almost immediately. When you're competing in a market with college grads and people with lots of previous experience, having gotten accepted to and then dropping out of a good school buys you much?

With an abusive childhood, homeschooling, no college, OP has a long road to travel. That all needs to be addressed, and finding a supportive environment will make that much easier. A career is based on achievement, however, beginning with simply doing the work and staying employed.

It's tough all around I think. It seems like OP might've observed signaling in the past that suggested that "appearing to be a good candidate" and "being a good candidate" are identical, and in actuality are usually not. It's tough because of nepotism, sometimes appearing to be a good candidate is good enough, but for most people you actually have to be at least close to as good a candidate as you appear to be. Meaning, if you include that you went to X university, you actually have to have worked through a substantial amount of that university's curriculum. Same with any internship/program/whatever - there's almost no value in having just been invited to attend.

Many jobs do not require much intelligence. Even those that do, usually its just one component of the skills required.

I definitely quit my first job because of that. My second job was better, but there wasn't all that much to learn, so I quit relatively soon. Now I'm on my third job, and there definitely hasn't been a lot of intellectual stimulation these days. Last time for something (that I was actually assigned and didn't just decide to do) was maybe late last year? The job itself pays well though and has some other perks.

I doubt there are many jobs that are interesting 100% of time. Better try to accept that.

Also most of my recommendations were rejected on my first job (large company), but most or even all were incorporated at my second job (startup).

@OP Did you mostly apply at well-known companies? Maybe go for a startup instead. Maybe you'll even be able to start a new department and not run out of stuff to do to keep yourself interested.

That's reading too far IMO. I see no mention of a degree at a reputable college. I see experience in support/QA, that has no relevance to the work of a developer (and it didn't go well apparently).

I don't expect that sort of profile to be invited to job interviews. The job market is brutal.

Meaning, if they're making it to an interview, they might be failing at a personality/conversational portion, and if they're not, it's probably because their resume/achievements do not get them to the next interview phase.

You’ve started a great dialog with yourself. Congrats, and keep it going.

This is a red flag right here. You put this in a list of evidence you’re capable and not delusional? You were near semi-notable people.

A lot of your accomplishments read that way. You were near something cool. You dropped out of a good school. You got a (self described as) low paying job at 18 at IBM. Someone really accomplished there complimented you once. You knew people who had things written about them. You were in a program someone who works at armonk was in. Someone else fixed something quickly after you flagged it. None of this is about you, it’s all about other people.

The very fact that these are what you’re listing as positives (or at least as things relevant to you) is a red flag. Do you have any “I accomplished/completed...” accomplishments? You say you’ve been doing VR since you were 8, have you finished anything worth mentioning in all that time?

I agree with another commenter that your ego and expectations could be a problem. If you got one of the jobs you quit before, would you still quit it?

Bill Landreth was homeless in Santa Monica in 2016[1]. Plenty of smart people have ended up the same way.

I think you might be making the mistake of thinking that being smart matters. It doesn't matter very much - if the outcome is "success" (whatever that means) then generally speaking having people like you is a better predictor than being smart.

Do people like you? If not then fix that. Read "How to win friends and influence people" and follow the advice.

[1] https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-untold-story-of-the-teen...

Focus on smaller companies that need help solving actual business problems with automation. Offer to do a project for $20 an hour. Get a job doing straight up IT stuff until you earn their trust, and then show them what you can do software wise. There is a lot of room for competent IT people, but you need to be way more realistic about who is going to hire you.

Honestly, I don't know why anyone wants to work for Google anyways. I took a developer course from one of their former employees, and it was a fucking joke. His ego trip was so ridiculous he said the words "no good Javascript developer uses four space indentions. Have you ever seen one??" And I was thinking, yes, in the library you had us review last week.

Lots of imposters and jackasses out there. Do honest work for smaller companies. It can lead to a lot more opportunity.

< Proceeds to give advice on HN >

This part doesn't really seem worthwhile to post.

> Focus on smaller companies that need help solving actual business problems with automation. Offer to do a project for $20 an hour. Get a job doing straight up IT stuff until you earn their trust, and then show them what you can do software wise. There is a lot of room for competent IT people, but you need to be way more realistic about who is going to hire you.

Excellent advice.

I restrict my social media time to a couple of hours a week. If you want to be successful, hustle on LinkedIn. HackerNews is a procrastination hole for people who want to talk about developing software instead of actually doing it.

LinkedIn is basically facebook. I would argue that anything Facebook-esque is a fundamental waste of time. Misinformation spewing influencer spam.

Also, I'm still curious on how many recruiters have contacted you through Facebook and viewed your resume, as compared to LinkedIn.

Do you think influencers go on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram because they aren't getting paid? They just like it?

> Also, I'm still curious on how many recruiters have contacted you through Facebook and viewed your resume, as compared to LinkedIn.

To compare, the answer is 0 to both. I haven't been on Facebook since probably 2013, and I only had a LI at all because we were required to make one in college, which I logged into for the second time ever to deactivate also probably around 2013.

I am, which is why I totally ignore LinkedIn :)

> Why are you so interested in chiming in on products you haven't used in 8 years?

I didn't realize I wasn't allowed to post verifiable information about products unless I also participated.

Your comments seem to be increasingly condescending and short. You're welcome to take that behavior to LI, but I will not continue participating in this discussion. Have a great day.

Thirding this. Smaller companies are easier to get into and actually more satisfying to work for (YMMV). Another responder also said basically "keep your head down and learn for the first year" which is great advice too.

Through hard work and some dumb luck, I've also interacted with other Fortune 10/50 corporations at the VP level. I wasn't impressed with them either. So it's not just an anti-Google thing.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/google-used-d...

If you can't get hired at a place there is a gig economy of sorts with lots of sites where you can bid yourself on projects. Start with small easy stuff and use those projects to build a portfolio.

I about a year that portfolio should be enough to get you in the door (for entry level developer roles) of most companies even if you have never worked as a programmer yet.

For applications and interviews for the people hiring it is all about perception and reducing risk. When hiring managers/assistants go through the piles of applications they throw away any with red flags, or at best put them in the maybe pile. If a lot of non-red flag applications they discard the maybes as well.

Don't have red flags, or at least camouflage them as best you can on the CV, don't lie though.

In the interviews don't raise red flags either. Some of your original post and comments are potential red flags to me. Practice interviews over and over again, and have ready made answers to all awkward possible questions. No excuses though, make them a good thing for some reason.

I suck at the first interview I do every time I go through the finding-a-new-job/contract process. But by the 2nd, perhaps 3rd, I have remembered the fine art of interviewing, and regurgitate the same practised answers over and over again, and mostly get offered the jobs. Practice.

Don't have gaps on your CV. I have gaps on my CV, but you can't really spot them. E.g. I removed mentioning months to just state the calendar years I was at companies. Sometimes there was a 6 months gaps but you can't tell. I also took a long time off to help when the kids were young. On my CV I just list the smaller projects I was working on at the time instead, even if that was just 10 hours a week. It is all about perception for the person skim-reading your CV.

Ps. in an interview don't say "I did move to Austin when I received a lump sum of money, and hanged with some people". Reword that to something career positive. E.g. took a gap year, worked on startup ideas, taking mentoring lessons, or at best don't mention it. I know when you are young it is a normal thing to do, just it looks or sounds terrible in a hiring process. Again don't have gaps.

Also never again mention that other people say you are smart, know some smart people etc. It is irrelevant, and mostly off putting. Nice for your own self-esteem but not for anyone else. Instead show examples of things you delivered.

Remember you are not the only person applying for that role. Make them want you, as a non-risk option. You also need to seem keen on the company but also make them aware you have other options and are not desperate even if not true...

(I'd hope it would be close to 0, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was much higher.)

It's also virtually always social skill related... if you weren't up to the task technically, you wouldn't have been asked to interview. The in person interview is normally to decide "do I want to see this person 40+ hours a week for the next 5 years" rather than "can they do the job."

Lots of exceptions obviously but mostly true across the board.

There are a lot of flaws in the way interviews are done in our industry that make it more subjective than it should be, but I still wouldn't consider the latter set of problems to be social skill related.

That's why we have discussions like this: https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/.

If validating their technical qualifications is not the point of the interview, are you really only interviewing candidates to see if people like their social skills? That sounds legally shady for most cases, and honestly for extreme cases where there's a valid concern that IS the kind of thing I'd expect to be filtered out by an introductory call with a manager or something.

The phone screen should cover lots of technical areas with deep follow up questions and examples.

I work in a specific niche (not coding) and can tell you that I bat .1000 on technical fit... cultural fit cannot be assessed until you meet the person and they meet the team, or at a minimum, hiring manager.

Otherwise we miss interviewing people who can do the job, and in my experience, some of the most interesting people; but this means, one may sometimes be interviewing people that cannot do the job.

Since these are human-mediated processes, there is no accurate single-stage filter, and anyone claiming to operate an unbiased hiring process is either a fool or a liar. A hiring funnel (and really, any decision process) that recognises the inevitability of biases, and is phased accordingly, leads to more optimal outcomes.

I'm not saying no human should be involved. I'm saying an excellent human should screen candidates in a phone (or Teams or Zoom or whatever) interview before they are invited to sit across from you at your desk or in a conference room.

If you find yourself sitting across from someone who cannot technically do the job, your step one has failed (and should never fail).

If you don't hire someone because their in-person interview didn't go well, it is social skill (or cultural fit) related.

If that's not the case, reference step one to see that you have an error in who you are inviting for in-person interviews (or your phone screener should not be the person phone screening).

"If you find yourself sitting across from someone who cannot technically do the job, your step one has failed (and should never fail)."

The suggestion that any screening test must be infallible is simply nonsense, since simultaneous perfect specificity and sensitivity is impossible, and contradicts numerous findings in decision-theoretic research, and I therefore simply and absolutely disagree. All processes fail, and in particular, because individual process steps fail; it merely remains to determine whether you're biased for showing interesting people the door, or inviting them in to take a closer look. This is also the essence of a screening test in, say, medicine, that are necessarily biased to be sensitive over specific, since a false rejection of a patient may be health threatening; more specific (and generally more expensive) testing follows. Or perhaps in sales, where a lead attracts ever more attention as it moves through the qualification funnel.

As I say, these are general consequences of decision theory, a branch of mathematics to which hiring has no magical exemption.

Ergo, anyone claiming their screening is infallible is either a fool or a liar. Sadly, many recruiters are both, which partially explains why so many HR departments are essentially a mediocrity police that create barriers to accessing the entire talent pool. These are not to be trusted (and must, therefore, be bypassed at the earliest opportunity) when in comes to building teams of heterogeneous and interesting people with complementary skills and diverse perspectives, which is to say, any high-performance team, or at least every high-performing team I've been privileged to encounter in the last forty years.

Incidentally, my experience at AWS was the opposite. The talent acquisition team there, at least that assisting my own business unit, was very much on the ball when it came to pulling in candidates from left-field.

When we meet after an interview round "meh" is a much more common collective reaction than "run away now."

And in my experience, if you fail the technical portion of an interview, most companies will tell you. Meaning, if you ask and they don't bring up technical skills, it's probably not the technical skills.

When I was young I interviewed at Microsoft and was rejected. I asked the recruiter for feedback. She talked me through some of the feedback from the interviewers and gave me advice for the future. It was really helpful.

I like that one. I've done interviews where the answer should be at most a summary sentence, and 2-3 supporting points. I know the candidate knows the answer, it's a warmup question! Then what do I get? Word salad. A gigantic run-on sentence where the candidate talks and talks and talks and this, and that, and also, and furthermore... lasting 5 minutes or until I politely interrupt with, "OK let's move on to the next question."

It is better to keep quiet about negative feedback in the lawsuit-heavy culture we inhabit.

I recently saw a junior CV that said "I can lead and I can follow" in personal skills... meanwhile his CV was full of spelling mistakes and his biggest project was setting up a website for some realestate agency.

The number one thing I would want to see in a junior hire is effort and attention to detail, on the extreemes I prefer working with someone who's less talented but reliable and paying attention over someone who's technically capable but unfocused and all over the place.

Well, indeed.

Great point. I interviewed at Bridgewater and they gave a good post mortem on why I didnt get the job. It is something that I now ask for after every interview process that matters to me.

Doesn't always work but has changed my approach in a positive way. For me it takes 12 - 15 attempts to get a job. I am an (old)Infra/Cloud Engineer coming from a sysadmin background and need to constantly improve programming skills.

Asking for post-rejection feedback with humility and in the spirit of self improvement has led to me making connections and leaving interviews with the feeling of an open door for future attempts.

Your applying to those companies with 0 experience or college degree is unrealistic. The entry level is extremely competitive and you have nothing to make you interesting to hire. They get thousands of applications for those jobs.

You are still young, plenty of time to learn, but I recommend taking a step back and rethink your strategy. There are plenty of companies that do not get thousands of applications for jobs.

Let me put it bluntly: you are not qualified to be a software engineer. There is no reason anyone would currently hire you, unless you are personable and fun to talk to.

You show immaturity in the way you handled the flaw in the system you described. Calling your boss's boss because you think you are right is childish.

Additionally, you do not understand how to get a software job, you do not have realistic expectations for what kind of jobs you are qualified to acquire.

A few years ago my brother, who is in his thirties, was stuck in a dead end job he hated. So he took some classes in 3D modeling. He worked hard, built out his portfolio, networked, and eventually landed a job at a world famous video game studio making AAA games at an interesting role that builds his skills.

What he did not do was blindly apply to jobs he was not qualified to do with zero training

- "i" should be "I"

- "You are still young, plenty..." should be "You are still young, with plenty..."

- "would currently hire you," shouldn't have a comma

- "entry level", "dead end", and "world famous" should all be hyphenated

- "AAA games at an..." should be "AAA games in an..."

etc...

That's not what he said. He suggested that someone who doesn't write well probably didn't attend college.

Maybe you're right but this is how I read it.

Alice's writing is not strong -> Alice did not attend college.

therefore

Bob's writing is strong -> Bob did attend college.

On the other hand, what the other user deducted was:

* If you attend college -> You probably end up writing properly

* OP doesn't write properly -> He probably didn't attend college

Which is a proper logical deduction rule called modus tollens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens

Comfort and expertise reading, writing, and verbally communicating in English are some of the most important skills that distinguish excellent software engineers I have worked with and hired.

In many cases, those skills are even more important than technical/coding expertise--it's easier to teach and learn technicals when one's student is a fluent communicator, but a programming genius who routinely fails to explain their decisions or creations is a liability.

Somewhat ironically (or perhaps regrettably for the US education system), most of the engineers I have worked with or hired who were the most impressive written/spoken readers/communicators were people whose first language was not english, and many of the folks who struggled were native speakers/writers.

Edits: grammar, ironically.

Going back to college seems like a good idea as a general direction.

Correctly so

> Your applying to those companies with 0 experience or college degree is unrealistic.

The clause "applying to..." is possessed by "your".

> You're applying to those companies with 0 experience or college degree, which is unrealistic.

</pedantry>

Edit: also looking back, GP used your correctly, so wut?

I don't know. I think he has pretty decent writing. Kinda reminds me of William Gibson. It may be stylistically unusual, but it's definitely better than the median SWE. At least in terms of clearly conveying his thoughts.

This coupled with being a dropout. quitting job after job, and basically phising executives for attention makes this candidate a high risk hire and is not worth the time.

Poster: You will need to extend your hard skills and demonstrate why a group should take the risk of your background on. It may be brutally honest, but the world is tough.

It's hard to judge their writing without seeing their resume and/or cover letter

E.g. the previous jobs at the 3 big companies. Why did OP stop working there? Who ended the contract and why? If OP quit themselves, we lack any reason to understand why and whether this was a good idea in hindsight.

Similar situation with the spoofing thing: this is an incredibly daring thing to do. A very self reflective person might ask themselves question like: "Maybe that was a mistake? How did the other side perceive this?" — especially after a rejection.

With OP I get two vibes:

1. The issues that lead to them not getting the job they deserve are external. For OP it is out of the question that their behaviour/path they took in the world could have to do with how they are judged. From what I read there is no really rational ground for this confidence.

2. Instead of asking how to change the perception the other side has of them, OP seems to be more interested in the question how they can exploit their way into the position they think they deserve, without putting the leg work and trustbuilding into it.

Technically and stylistically the writing is okay, it just seems to be written from the perspective of someone who didn't follow through on reflecting their own position in the job market and their own flaws when it comes to human interaction.

My advise is to find a smaller company in a "boring field" (think local schools, manufacturing and retail not google/apple) and try to get the most entry level job that's still gives hands on programming / sysadmin experience. Many small help desks let juniors have small side projects improving something specific for example.

It's too curt and while that's alright for a casual i.e., HN audience, if that's how one communicates in other contexts there will be miscommunication.

Hey snakedoctor! You're probably not a sociopathic, autistic, illiterate narcissist like everyone here is telling you. For one, your writing is just fine, and beyond that any of your bad decisions can simply be explained by youth and (understandable) desperation.

I would suggest staying away from HN for life advice. People here might have some money but, aside from that, they are mostly low-intelligence failures.