If you hunt for a dev job watch this

Been getting rejected for Linux related jobs all over for the last few months. Yesterday I emailed a company yet again because fuck it.

Got a call today from their recruiter! Genuinely nice guy and he's going to call me back tomorrow! Let's hope this finally goes well 😄

I seriously just got invited to a second interview 😂

*me searching for jobs*
*types in 'junior backend developer'*

First result:
Junior Frontend Developer.

*big facepalm*

Yeah I understand that it might just be some kinda algorithm that filters on words or whatever but the irony was real!

Wrote my friend Sam a letter when I was still working in support. I think it still holds up today.

---

Dear Sam,

I understand that you will join us in our overseas office. Congratulations on landing that job. It’s good steady work. I’ve been doing it for the last ten years.

Your still young so maybe I can give you some little wisdom that will help you in your working years to come.

Let me begin by shedding some light on phone calls.

I try. I really do try Sam. But it is getting so hard for me to hold back the rage that builds up during certain phone calls. Especially the ‘Sorry, I just don’t know anything about computers! -giggle-’ ones.

Those are the times that I have no access to what they see. I’ve no team-viewer, can not take over that screen in any other way. And why-oh-why can I not take over that terminal session dear Sam? It’s because the caller can not double-click an icon or find a terminal session number.

And what is the reason for this? Because they ‘just don’t know anything about computers! -giggle-’. This is a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. Beware of these callers Sam.

There is nothing so nerve-wrecking then finding yourself at the mercy of people describing Internet Explorer (do not even get me started) as ‘the big ‘E’, if they use Chrome for their webmail then they most likely will say ‘Mail’ if they mean Chrome. There is no logic Sam. That is just the way these people work.

They will suck all enjoyment out of your work. They will make you want to hunt them down in dark office hallways and show them your tears Sam. Because cry you will.

Sure, I understand that not everyone can be tech savvy. Why, if everyone would be, where would that leave us? No. I love the technologically challenged. They put the fiber in my internet. They make me LOL for real. After the initial anger subsides anyway.

But just below that well-willing folk, on the other side of that border… there they dwell: Management.

Nice cars, suits and iphones Sam. First thing a new manager will require is a brand spanking new business-card. It will hold his/her new title. Then an iphone or overpriced android model will follow suit.

Then they will barge into your office, holding it like it’s the next best thing since sliced bread.

Any manager will automatically assume that you will drop anything you are doing at the present moment to acknowledge the presence of greatness. Failing to do so will result in awkward yet fulfilling situations. I recommend that you do not take your hands of the keyboard and give only the slightest of nods after 5 minutes of complete silence and glaring.

Well… you feel the glare. You do not glare yourself. You do not break eye-contact with the monitor. It does not even matter if you are typing for real or not. I once clicked away happily for 5 minutes. I just typed ‘he is still there’ over and over again. Do not break down Sam. This moment will decide your relationship with this individual.

After the nod there will be a flood of words aimed in your general direction. You can disregard anything that is said. It boils down to ‘can not operate device’.

You then take the device from this person and put it next to you on your desk. You’ll ask the name of this simpleton, write it down on a sticky-note, slap that on the phone. Then you’ll write a random date in the not so near future on another sticky and hand that to the bewildered person in front of you.

It will usually utter some incoherent words about ‘needing, time or but’ (I find that ‘but’is a word they like. They tend to use it three or four times consecutive before you usher them through the door).

Now you’ve won Sam. Well… not really. But it will feel good, I can guarantee that.

This must do for now. A new suit is glaring at me for the last five minutes.

Felt good to do something productive with this time.

Take care,

Baltasar

P.s. I just noticed that there is some foam around his mouth. So if you encounter this, don’t worry: it seems to be perfectly normal.

I am not a smart man.
Usually when I abandon project, I abandon it hard. Delete every trace of this failure, it never happened.

Well my friend doesn't, and two weeks ago he applied for a job as a game dev, and in resume he showed all of his work. Even the ones so barely functional that I wouldn't feel comfortable showing to my most compassionate friend. Somehow, he got it.

So for the past two weeks I've done nothing other than painstakingly recreating most of my projects in order to apply for the position before it fills.

Save your projects kids, no matter how crap they are. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

I'm hiring and I'm fucking done with recruiters buttering up skills etc and sending me BS candidates.

Interview earlier today...
CV: MySql skill level 10 (out of 10)
Reality: Can't write a simple JOIN!

Yesterday...
CV: PHP 6+ years exp, self proclaimed ninja/jedi/oracle.
Reality:
[Me]: Write me a function to map an array to x.
[Ninja]: What's an array?

I've come to the conclusion that the type of dev I want on my team is highly unlikely to be looking for work much less using some piece of shit shady agent to find work so I need to hunt him / her down personally and can use the phenomenally large recruiters fee as a hiring bonus / incentive.

Only problem now is finding quality full stack devs in the area (Johannesburg, South Africa).

I'm thinking of posting a 'challenge' job add to filter out good candidates - some kind of code challenge to be solved that gives them my contact info. Any one have any creative ideas I could try?

Hey fellow selfish Millenials who want to be paid for their valuable work, how's the job hunting going?

I'm a few days into hunting for some interesting part time work and I'm already encountering some real gems... Pinnacle of irony with this one.

Anyone got some horrific tales to share? This is a safe space for your anguish to finally be released, I promise.

How I've got my previous job?
Imagine you are in a wild techno club. Dark aisles, A dj from berlin behind the turntables blasting out hard beats, couples kissing on extasy pills.

And there was a friend I've didn't meet in ages. "how do you do?" she asks. "ah... you know i'm on a job hunt for a year i feel misrable". "really? my dad is looking for somebody, send him your resNZNZNZ!" "WHAT? can't hear you!" "Send him your resume!" "Ahhh! okay great!"

So on 24. december 5pm, snow outside, i've sat on wooden table in the kitchen of her father discussing the conditions for the job. It was the start of a crazy time. Dining with millionaires on their Castles. Shaking hands with top businesses leaders. Going to China and having dinner with the 500 richest chinese at once. Wild!

so my advice for you nerds, don't stay in your comfort zone behind the screen on weekends. Vistit a techno club sometimes. You may find a pretty girl/boy with a CEO as a father.

Sounds about fucking right!!!

After several months on the job hunt with some discouraging rejections, I finally got an offer! Thank you all for inspiring me to keep learning and to stay humble. I've been stuck in a role where I feel overworked and unappreciated, with no room to grow. Excited for this next challenge and new beginnings! 😊

Google is getting smarter with their recruiters, if those recruiters are even people at all. I have this recruiter message me once a month and her messages are so targeted and specific.. like.. she ACTUALLY read my profile. She writes a lengthy message that includes my previous company's name, work experience, and even the projects I have on Github (as in specific questions, not just the name of the repository or some shit that can easily be scraped). She mentions events specific to the area where I live in, etc.

SUSPICIOUS.

She's doing these things that I've been planning to do. Maybe a web crawler and a game of adlib to make people think you actually read about them and cared one bit when in reality, you're just a bot who have access to public information. You just bind them all together and fill in the blanks and then send it away.

Maybe you have a few message templates and use a bit of code to shuffle some words a little bit, make them less perfect and more human. Throw in a few "unintentional" mistakes to make it look more casual, add some warmth to your cold, metallic, robot heart. With all these, you get more variety on the messages you send. Maybe apply some machine learning or some shit, have it listen/read from different people, and give it an illusion of a personality.

But what's this? She did not send the message on an "o'clock" time. It wasn't 12:00 AM at all, or 7:00 PM, or 4:00 PM. The follow-up email was sent on 12:20 AM. Was all the messages queued and the job runs at 12:00 AM but she's sent it to so many that it reached me 20 minutes later? Nah. Or maybe this is intentional, some low-key "I'm not a bot, I don't operate at exactly 12:00 AM. I don't have a cron, I have a heart." But if I were to make one, I would send it at times like 9:34 AM, a little less suspicious. I want to see if there's a pattern on what time she sends these things but I only see the date on the previous messages now because I didn't care enough to read it before.

Also, this is LinkedIn, they give scrapers a hard time but then again, this is Google and they have the money to pay for abuse. Now I want to check our time difference. What time did she actually send this and was it really rainy in Ireland that time OR ARE YOU LYING TO ME, CLAUDIA? I thought you cared about me? Was it all a fucking lie? Do you know me at all? Or was it all just a clever game to get into my pants?

Now I want to make a new account that has almost the same details to see if she messages that one but I don't want to go back to the asylum, I know how deep it goes. I either hunt down this bot or make a counter-bot to cross-check all the shit she and other recruiters are telling me.

Or maybe this is exactly what they want to happen.. For me to lose my mind and post in a forum where I would "unintentionally" spread the word and they can attract/trap more people.

Fuck it, early onset dementia.

I have seen it. They say it doesn't exist; just a story we tell our children so that their innocence does not lead them down into a nightmarish adulthood from which there is no salvation. But the evil lives. So vile that were you to look inside its soul, all you would find is a terrible desperation for suffering. To cause it. To revel in it. To bathe in the tears of those it considers less than human and feed off the emotional detritus.

It was 2009. The financial crisis. I was one of the lucky, having found refuge in a large company right before the jobs dried up. General IT: system administration, documentation, project management, telephony, software training, second level help desk. No software development, but with a two-year-old at home and Ph.D.s lining up outside the local Olive Garden whenever a help wanted sign was posted, I grabbed the health insurance and entered into darkness.

The Thing did not need to hunt it's prey. A manager title with 21 reports brought it new opportunities for fresh meat by the hour. But I was special. I resisted. I needed to know my place.

My first mistake was incomprehension. I did not understand the Thing's lust to be right at all costs. I was reviewing some documentation it had brought forth from its bowels. I mentioned that two spaces were being used between sentences. That proportional type made that unnecessary. It insisted, I was wrong. It insisted that Microsoft itself, the purveyor of all good technical writing, required two spaces. I opened the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications that it demanded its staff use and showed it that the spec was one space. It was livid. I was a problem.

From that point on my work life became exponentially more wretched. I was given three Outlook calendars to maintain: one with my schedule, one with the team's schedule and one with the Thing's schedule. Every time I had an appointment, I was to triple schedule it. If I was going to be away from my desk for more than 15 minutes triple schedule. Triple schedule my lunch, vacations, phone conferences.

Whenever it held a meeting, I and a colleague would be taken off mission critical IT projects to set tables with name tents and to serve as greeters as attendees arrived.

I was called into its crypt to be told never to say anything in a meeting unless I told the Thing beforehand what I was going to say. Naive, I mentioned that I often don't know what I will say as it is often in reply to someone else. Of course the response was that I should not say anything.

I would get emails 10-20 times a day asking about a single project. I would regularly complete work that was needed to be completed ASAP, only to have the Thing rake me over the coals for not completing it a week later. And upon resending the emails proving I notified it of the work being competed, disparaged at length a second time for not sending repeated notifications of the competed work.

I would have to sit in two-hour meetings to watch it type. Literally watch it try to create cogent thoughts. In silence.

I received horrendous annual reviews. At one, it created a development plan that stated a colleague would begin giving me lessons on the proper ways to socially interact with personnel. I pointed out to HR that this violated privacy concerns and would make the business liable in many areas, not least of which would be placing a help desk person in the role of defining proper business practice. HR made the Thing remove this from my review. She started planning to remove me.

I had given a short technical training to a group of personnel months earlier. Called into its tomb I was informed that feedback surveys on my talk were disturbing. One person stated that they did not think I was funny. Another wrote that I made an offensive statement. That person did not say what the offensive statement was. Just that I had said something he or she didn't like.

The Thing interviewed the training attendees. Gathered facts. Held three inquest-like meetings where multiple directors peppered me with questions trying to get me to confess to my offensiveness. In the end the request to fire me was brought to the man who ran the business at the time. The statement on high: "Humor is a subjective thing. Please tell This to be sensitive to that."

The Thing had failed, but would no doubt redouble its efforts. I had to find a new job. I sent hundreds of resumes. Talked to dozens of recruiters. But there were no jobs. And I had a family. And the wolf was at the door.

So I didn't say a word to the creature. For six months. Silence. At one group meeting it shrieked at me "what are you smirking at? If you've got something to say then say it!" I just shrugged. For my salvation was revealed. The Thing could not stand to be ignored. And at the end of my penance I was transferred to another group: Software Development.

I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.

Update: On second job offer

There are multiple red flags detected early on. I guess I will reconsider the position.

1. They said there will be 5 rounds with no case study

2. They said they have the budget approved for the salary range I am looking for

3. Promised me for Senior Product role and are offering me for Product role all of a sudden

3. Schedule 4 rounds instead of 5

4. Finalised and proceeded for offer in just 2 rounds

5. Start salary negotiation saying they don't have enough budget for the range I am looking for

6. I read their Glassdoor and it is pathetic

7. Came back today saying I will have to do a case study and only then they will decide whether to hire me or not and previous selection confirmation was miscommunication (WTF!!!!)

TL;DR: HRs are assholes when it comes to salary and low ball you and fuck such company with toxic processes and no clear mentality.

!rant
Applied for 4~5 internships yesterday, got an answer today for the most interesting one saying that the position is still open, that they are interested by my profile and that they want to meet. That really made my day 👌

FUCK THE RECRUITERS WHO ASK US TO MAKE AN ENTIRE PROJECT AS A CODE TEST.

Oh you need to scrape this website and then store the data in some DB. Apply sentimental analysis on the data set. On the UI, the user should be able to search the fields that were scraped from the website. Upon clicking it should consume a REST API which you have to create as well. Oh and also deploy it somewhere... Oh I almost forgot, make the UI look good. If you could submit it in one week, we will move towards further rounds if we find you fit enough.

YOU KNOW WHAT, FUCK YOU!

I can apply to 10 others companies in one week and get hired in half the effort than making this whole project for you which you are going to use it on your website YOU SADIST MOTHERFUCK

I CURSE YOUR COMPANY WITH THE ETERNITY OF JS CALLBACK HELL 😡😤😣

I just resigned. Feels good. Now I just need to kick my job hunt into high gear.

HOLY FUCK!!!!!!! SECOND OFFER!!!!!

Had to delete the previous rant to make this one. Turns out that the tech head was hiring manager and was super impressed.

<Previous Rant>
My day started with an interview at 9.

The tech head goes on a long 15 minute monologue of how great their company is (which actually is as they are solving a good problem), even before I had my coffee.

Damn!!

It was a good interview session and I enjoyed it, nonetheless.

The day seems to be looking good. Hopefully 2 more rounds to go. Let's see how things evolve..
</Previous Rant>

That feel when you’re asked to share work you’re proud of and you’re not proud of anything.

Or rather, you are... but they’re programs written in C/C++ and you’re interviewing for a mostly frontend gig in React.

When you have over 10 years experience... and nothing to show for it due to closures, redesigns and private work.

It’s not making my job hunt any easier.

Interview question:

"What are your three most favorite design patterns?"

Me: "Huh? They're tools in a toolbox. If I want to drive in nails I use a hammer or a nail gun. Do I need to cuddle with them? I don't pick favorites and I don't try to solve everything with just a bunch of patterns. And I've work with a bunch, right now I'm drawing a blank though as this question highly confuses me and would like to do a Google search listing a few names as the only one that's comming to my mind right now are the factory and builder pattern. And no, not necessarily favorites."

I have made up my mind.

Fuck current employer. They took 7 years to value me that too when I resigned and not because of my hard work and efforts.

And they are still low balling me. If I stay back, I'll not get any pay raise for next 2/3 years since current one according to them is crazy high.

Moreover, there's zero learning and I need to future proof myself and build my tool box.

If I walk out, I'll be getting a decent raise not per standards though. But I'll learn and the said domain will open up horizons for me.

And I'll continue hunting and if I find anything better in another 6 months, I'll quit and move on.

I MUST grab the opportunity in front of me for greater good. Staying back will do no good except for giving me less stressful life but with lesser benefits and growth.

Time to risk it.

Time to say goodbye to current org.

This absolute dog shit of a company from Milan reached out to me.

They sent me 3 emails explaining their interview process and assignments.

3 FUCKING EMAILS TO DO THAT. WOW!!

Their process is as below:

1. 2 assesment/tasks to screen you and avoid human bias while judging you

2. Screening round with take home assignment task

3. 3/5 interview rounds with problem solving tasks

Cool. I get 2 tasks for screening and I start out with that.

First is 30 questions aptitude with time frame of 36 minutes.

WTF!!! It takes nearly 30 seconds to read those 3 liners questions and their 4 options of 2 lines each. Dafaq am I suppose to solve in remaining 30 seconds.

I barely made it to 75% of the questions.

I start the next task which has 8 more problems with total time of 5.5 hours.

WHAT? YOU WANT ME TO SPEND 5+ HOURS SOLVING MORE PROBLEMS JUST TO SCREEN MYSELF?

FUCK OFF.

I immediately chicken out and write an email to the HR with my feedback that they can go and fuck themselves in arse with a carrot dipped in hot chocolate.

I fucking hate companies who ask more than an hour for any kind of assignment in the name of judgement/fair evaluation and then go on with 5 rounds of interviews only to make a person work on excel and pay them peanuts.

Fuck such companies as they deserve to go extinct like Dinosaurs.

>Be me
>Loose job just before Covid started its crap
>About to get new job
>"We'll be in contact after the lock down"
>Fuuuuuuu.jpeg
>Months later, country starts open up little
>Starting to look more proactively again
>Company from before "no positions atm"
>Really liked that place, so Fuuuuuuu.jpeg again
>Talking to recruiter, they have something in mind
> Need assessment. Understandable
>They send a separate assessment for every single language on my CV and the cake thief thing
>NotImpressedMikalya.jpeg

Applying for jobs

Apply for anything that looks like I have any kind of shot

Get reply from one company

"Hi. What is your salary expectation?"

"x"

Nothing for 6 days

Reach out again "Hi. I'm guessing you've gone with someone else as I've heard nothing back"

"No your salary expectation was a bit high"

"Okay well, what are you offering"

"47% of X as this is a junior position"

Like...
Firstly, X is what I was making at my last job
Secondly, you can see how much experience I have. You know I'm gonna be asking for 2-3 year money not intern money.
Thirdly, all they had to do after my first email was reply with "That's bit much, here's what we can offer, are you still interested?"

So yea, in general, I hate the salary expectation question. I don't want to sell myself short but I'm also currently in the take what I get position. So if you ask me, I'm gonna tell you what I was last making. I think that was a reasonable number and I know everyone has been hit by the pandemic so I'm not asking for more.

Just advertise jobs with a damn salary range.

You know which jobs do have a salary range? The senior positions. You know who does know how to negotiate? Seniors

Oh man. I have been waiting for this one. Gather round lil' chil'rens it's story time.

So. I was looking for a new project because my old one was wrapping up and that's what my company does. So I was offered some simulation type stuff. I was like "sure why not, I want to make a computer pretend it isn't a computer no more." Side note I should not be a psychiatrist.

So, prior to coming on to this job I felt stifled by my old job's process. This job was a smaller team so I thought the process would be a little smoother. But it turned out they had NO process. Like they had a bug tracking system and they held the meeting to add things to the system, but that was just fucking lip service to a process.

First of all, they used the local disk on the test box as their version control. and had no real scheme as to how they organized it. We had a CM tool but gods forbid they ever fucking use it. I would be handed problem reports and interface change requests, write a bug to track it, go into the code and about 75% of the time or more it had already been worked. However, there was no record of it being worked and I would have to fucking hunt that shit down in a terribly shitty baseline (standardize your gods damned indentation for fuck's sake) and half the time only found out it was done because when I finally located the piece of code that needed changing, the work was already done.

Then, on top of all that, they ask me what time I want to come in. I said 10am, they said okay. One day I roll in at 10 and my boss is mad. Because I missed a meeting. That was at 9. That I wasn't told about. He says I can keep coming in at 10am though (I asked and volunteered to help get him up to speed on the things I was working he said it wasn't necessary) so I did, but every time I missed a 9am meeting he would get pissed. I'm like PICK ONE!!! They move the meeting to 9:30am (which is not 10am).

This shit starts affecting my health negatively. Stress is apt to do that. It triggered an anxiety relapse that pushed me back in to therapy for the first time in 7 years. On top of that the air quality in the office is so bad that I am getting back to back sinus infections and I get put on heavy antibiotics that tear up my stomach along with the stress and new meds tearing up my stomach. So one day as I am laid out in pain, I call out sick. Two days in a row. (Such a heinous crime right.) Well I missed a test event, that I wasn't even the primary or secondary on.

So fast forward to the most pissed off I have ever been. I get called in to a meeting with my boss's boss. As it turns out, my coworkers are not satisfied by the work that I'm doing (funny because I thought I was doing pretty good given that my only direction was fix the interface change reports and problem reports. And there was no priority assigned to any of them).

And rather than tell me any of this, they go behind my back to the boss and boss's boss. They tell me I need to communicate (which I did) and ask for help when I need it (I never did). That I missed an important event (that I played no part in and gods forbid I be sick) and that it seemed like I didn't want to be there (I didn't but who WANTS to work a corporate job).

They put me on a performance improvement plan and I jumped to another project. I am much happier now. Old coworkers won't even say hi, not even those I was friendly with, but fuck them anyway.

So my wife got laid off from her job aaaaaaand that puts me back again in the hunt for freelance bs to cover up her income until she finds something decent........dis is gon suck bad man.....

Technical phone screens be like, "we see you have years of OOP experience, but can you tell us about the differences between an interface and an abstract class?"

Yes. Yes I can. Can you tell me why you're asking such basic questions? Is this something people actually don't know this late in the game?

What a day!!!

We all raised a concern to our management that we are spending more time on calls and that is affecting our productivity.

My manager comes up with a nice idea of No Call Fridays. Which means we avoid all calls and focus on work.

A call free day. A FUCKING CALL FREE DAY AFTER AGES. Damnnnnn!!! I felt so relaxed and disconnected.

Though I didn't have any deliverables, but if I had, I could have gotten shit done. It truly worked.

So since I had nothing to work on, I played music all day and spent a day without job hunt activity.

Nice and sunny day, calm environment, music playing, and I picked a side project to work on. I re-did the design for my portfolio website (which was pending).

Felt so good. It felt I already am into weekend and then I realised I have 2 more days to enjoy.

Wow!! With such a culture, I would be more productive and wouldn't even need burnout breaks.

Okay so what's next?

Another side project of mine which is about curation of some kind of content. I am active in some professional community and little known for my Monkey acts and the curation side project.

I am getting all kinds of emails, connection requests and messages on LinkedIn from people appreciating my work, seeking help, or wanting to associate themselves with my gig someway (community collab).

The said project is being sent to random people on random platforms and that means people know me. I don't even know what's happening.

For the records, the only identifiable place is LinkedIn and anonymous everywhere else (even in career related communities which directly impacts my career).

While this is a good sign for career progress, I am more paranoid than ever.

So now I have decided to cut down internet presence and go full anonymous mode.

(Will disable LinkedIn once my job search is settled).

Patching host on computer and mobile, and uBlock Origin on browsers.

And more importantly, masking the identity and linking to simple anonymous email as a form of communication.

I'd appreciate any more ideas you have to live a more private life on internet where I continue building Products for fun and learning.

And in between all this, @scout wants a treat because she thinks I am famous. Ugh.. whatever.. 🙄

Image context: A friend gets this message from a random number asking about my work. Lol.

I had a job interview today. Things got a bit awkward when the guy doing the interview (a head of tech) brings into the interview one of their midweight devs and I became the interviewer rather than the interviewee.

Woke up and checked emails...

First email from some random HR from some random company...

Hey, Floyd!

I hope you are having a good day. We regret to inform you that you are not selected for the interview.. blah blah...

----------------------------------------------------------------------

WTF!!!! You ask me how my day is and proceed to ruin it?

This was savage. lol

Got a job offer... Long story...

Now I need guidance...

I am being paid X at current employer.
Pros:
- Stability
- Trust and culture
- Product knowledge and rapport with peers
- Live at home so no extra expenses

Cons:
- B2B (which is affecting career trajectory)

I got an offer of 123% from new employer
Pros:
- B2C Payments domain (long term benefits in career)

Cons:
- Okay-ish hike (I would still be underpaid per various levels)
- Different city so adding expenses will bring me to near about current salary
- New place so have to build the trust
- Glassdoor says culture could be toxic

Now my paint points:
1. Immediate need for salary growth
2. Long term career I can build myself
3. Need a salary runway until I can score a decent brand/job with good work/domain

Now my manager said they are giving me a promotion with a salary hike as per my employer brand. So this hike range would be 100% of X to 400% of X.

My question:
1. Shall I go for retention at current employer getting a counter offer from them and build myself a runway?

2. Shall I take a leap of faith for long term compromising my immediate need of salary and take up the new job?

Doing the first will make me spoof the new offer letter a bit to bargain well with my employer, else they would not give me a decent raise.

Doing the second for long term, my past experience says long term strategy didn't work as I applied it and I am facing the heat now.

What should be my approach in this Pandemic situation considering my current employer is bigger brand than my next and there is a probation of 6 months (which is quite scary in current times).

P.S.: Meanwhile all this happens, I am talking to other great companies too.

Well, I suppose there's no rules against talking about a non-tech company situation.

Before I made it into my career as a developer, I wrote code as a self-learned hobby programmer. I had a job though, which was selling chips. No, not ICs... potato chips. Funny enough, I made a killing doing it.

Anyway, this isn't about me. It's about the guy who quit shortly after I showed up. You see, we all had company trucks and most of us parked them at the warehouse and commuted in our own vehicles. We'd load the trucks up with product and lock them up in the yard for the next day.

It used to be that there was an option to take the truck home, but after this gentleman, that was reserved for special instances.

That would be due to the fact that the guy played "hide the chip truck" and called up to quit his job, forcing my former boss to hunt around an entire city to find the damn thing.

I've found it isn't so different in software, except when people quit, it's more like "hide the actual deployed branch you didn't commit".

Fuck you to the hunt and peck "tech lead" who did his utmost to stop me from getting promoted by trashing on my reputation behind my back.

That was really the last straw for me at that job. I quit to work on my own projects.

I will never work in big tech again.

when I graduated my dad would 'help' me in my job hunt by cutting out postings from the New York Times for "Lead Software Engineer" positions at Microsoft, Google etc despite the fact that I really was just trying to get a junior level position...

Good morning everyone!

Pending tasks during start of the week:

- 3 interview assignments
- Acknowledging a job offer
- 2 screenings lined up (Germany and UK)
- Office work which I have been slacking off since 2 weeks
- Resume updation to give it to my manager for internal promotion/hike
- Personal tasks to complete

Spent entire weekend on assignments with little to no me time or enterprise of any kind.

So I log into work in the morning and BAM!!!!

Power's out. Entire city and suburbs are shut. Cities in proximity of 350KM are impacted too.

A major grid failure. Everyone switched to mobile and hence networks are choking too.

And I somehow knew that there would be a grid failure and city is blackout even before I got the news. Nothing beats my intuition.

I have shit ton to do but technically I am free right now.

Saving my phone battery for dark times. In case I don't see y'all.. good afternoon, good evening and good night

Hello winter depression. I showed up at work at 3pm. I should write a concept for restructuring our IT department. But I'm surrounded by people who have the misconception that design is just making things pretty. And they laugh at the idea to conduct user interviews to improve the situation. It's expected that I finish this until two weeks. Because thats when my contract ends. Job hunt starts again. I lost my motivation for everything. Let me be 😕

Getting my first dev position. 3 months of boot camp being told I'd find a job locally in no time, only to find out the true cost; 8 months (after program completion), 100+ applications, 5 interviews, two call backs, and a lot of emotional nights questioning my decision to switch careers.

Feels good to have the first year of work under my belt. Unfortunately I'm back in the hunt.

Onwards and upwards!

20 minutes late to test work
was sent home

I don't know how you freelancers and contractors do it.

Getting really tired of this job hunt thing. So tiring 😒

suddenly remember have to pay rent. but it's holiday.
is there any job hunt site that pays $200 for 2 days web dev work? 😂

Five interviews and challenges later and I’m told they won’t be going further with me.
Over month of my life. Finally thought this was the one. But oh well. Depression.

I officially quit being a dev.

It’s been rad y’all.

I would literally rather find a new job than have to build software that accommodates IE/Edge

That is all.

Job hunt update:

Promotion with good pay raise (market correction).

After analysing a lot of parameters, market conditions, learnings, short and long term priorities, I have decided to stay back with my employer.

Though the offer in hand is much more, I am buying myself a runway period of 6 months to 1 year to score a decent gig in Europe which should not be that difficult looking at the current progress.

Excited for my next month's salary and work my ass off to polish my skills.

Time to relax until year end and enjoy life.

Dumb HRs schedule a screening video call to ask you questions which can be dine via simple form or even email.

Why the fuck book my 45 minutes slot for 10 minutes discussion where you show up 5 minutes late?

And then they make you wait for 2 weeks only to revert by an automated email that your profile did not match.

You fucking moron!!! I filled up stupid form and shared my resume with cover. What the fuck did you do with that??

I just got out of working 10 hour days and alternating Saturdays at work for the head honchos to say "Yeah, you guys have a month before you're all laid off. We're giving your job to the group that helped you during the busy season."

So guess what I get to do: job hunt!

Except no one in my area is hiring Linux System Administrators and my wife doesn't wanna move.

Fucking hell!!!!! So much to put out... multiple topics..

1. I had something to complete and for the sake for good beetle bug, I cannot figure out what that is and have the shitty constant feeling of 'something is pending and needs to be done'. This happens soo often and is just very annoying. While I have bigger tasks pending for later, I aim to finish smaller ones but cannot remember. I need to start writing everything down now.

God damn fuck what is it?

2. I watched The Social Dilemma. Fucking cringe fest. Made by a friend of those companies, Netflix is doing the exact same thing with the film as that is shown it in. What a shitty irony.
A propaganda movie revolving around politics, conspiracy theory (how ironic again), and the very great united states of murica. Wasted my 1.34 hours and it was soooo stupid on sooo many levels. I don't even feel like discussing it here.

3. I am sooo irritated right now due to SAD. I am starting to dislike my dark themes. I need a lamp and it is not available in my country. Someone feed me sunlight.. just cannot wait for month end to pop in some supps. Await it more eagerly than pay cheque, these winters. And let's not talk about the symptoms like headaches and how it causes anxiety. Do I need to cut down my coffee? Because I don't really want to cut the only decent thing I have left to consume.

4. This weather. Autumn. I fucking love this time of the year. End of September to Year end. It makes me nostalgically sad but it's soooo comfy and cosy for soul. But SAD ruins the fun and lack of proper celebrations of Indian fests and Halloween.

5. It's been approx 3/4 weeks I started using MS Edge, the interface is neat but I am seeing some drop in internet speed and when I access Chrome again, the fact that Chrome too faces internet speed drop is weird. Feels like I should move back to Chrome because only thing is better here is the interface and spotlight images. The image/video rendering sucks (or is it just me?). Chrome also provides bookmark synching. Not sure what would work out in few weeks.

6. Lastly and most importantly, the patterns. The fucking patterns everywhere. An event happens and then it happens again and then again. Patterns exist everywhere and my brain is real champ at identifying patterns but why the fuck do patterns exists!!!!! Fucking WHY???

Whatever it be, the "history repeats itself" patterns are making fractals and annoying the shit out of me.

The good thing is, talked to this friend of mine and she is really nice. Like we talk a lot (whenever we do) and since I am on job hunt, she came up with some kickass resources and ideas and links and much more just to help me out.

She is a sweetheart and for that matter, most of my friends are actually going forth and helping me in multiple ways to get a job. I mean I am just amazed by the fact that help poured in from all side without even asking.

I absolutely love such people who go extra mile to be in your life without you even asking.

I am surrounded by some good gems that warms my heart.

I've been on the job hunt for a developer job for about two months now.

Last Monday I finally got my first response. Later that they a recruiter from a local telecom reached out saying they needed software engineers and wanted to meet.

Tonight is my first interview. Wish me luck. Feeling pretty great right now

I am confused about whether recruiter is polite or rude..

Why can’t IE just die?!

I was sent home for almost 3 months due to the pandemic, when I came back on monday there was a major issue with page load speed on IE and some potential customer, had a test account and told us that the platform is taking forever too load and then came the hunt to fix what is asap, it was a very important customer that still uses IE

This happens last week, the only developer on the job last week, was 3 days trying to figure this out, no dice! then I come back on monday, then Im being reboarded and keep up to date what has been going on while away, then I am given that damn task on Wednesday and I’ve been tearing out my hair trying to fix this all week.

But today!

I fixed it!

The solution: npm update <package-name>

Great way to start up at work again *clap*

I think I fucked up as usual made a decision in hurry.

I have always been impatient and records show that little patience would have achieved me a lot.

But guess... I failed myself once again...

I am in deeper shit this time. The stakes are high and cost of damage is higher.

Fucking bashed both HRs with whom I was being polite and they came wagging their tails to make sure I join and don't drop off....

Fucking escalate via emails and see this retards shit out of fear.

And while I complete another take home assignment, I am enjoying my Friday evening with some good radio.

I've finished the knowledge tests at the local DevJobCon and I got the following question on the easy part of the Java session:

Which of the following is NOT a Java IDE:
a) Eclipse
b) Netbeans
c) IntelliJ IDEA
d) Notepad++

😆

I just don't get it.

Been looking for a new job for 2+ years and have failed at every opportunity. Numerous white board interviews, code challenges, hours upon hours wasted. Just can't seem to make the next move. I believe I have my soft skills down because I am able talk and do meetups just fine but either I'm too junior or something else is going on.

What started all of this was my latest rejection that I thought I had in the bag. Sailed through all their questions, did a live code thing, all of that being for 3+ hours. As it's called a final interview with them. Not to mention they're a startup, figured their standards might even be a bit lower than normal since they're needing people. Yet, still got rejected.

This sort of stuff, I'm seriously considering just leaving tech in general and probably just go do a outside job. With supposedly everything going for me like working in a hot job market, in a growing tech town, experience, and doing extra coding on my own time to beef up my portfolio. Doesn't matter. Still continious rejection. Lol in fact how I even got my current job was through completely unconventional means and based on that, I think it's done me more harm than good, which is why I'm trying to leave my current job and go into a place where I can be a better developer.

As of now, back to the grind of trying to find something.

When it comes to job hunt, i feel so bad.
Specially when i apply through angels.co

Like wait a second before you reject my CV or my application just talk to me.

Take a look on my projects, my will to do, my interest.

Damn i feel so desperate sometimes i feel like they are not real job vacancies just someone messing around.

So long story short, the place was working at hired me when what they actually needed was another business analyst, so I sit around with no work to do way too often.

I start looking for another job because I can sense that my contract won't be renewed.

So, the rant part

Why are all the job websites so useless?

I get emails saying stuff like "Your profile matched for senior full stack developer at XYZ Ltd"

I have 18 months of experience, I have put this information accurately on my profiles on these job sites,. Yet they still recommend that stuff.

It gets better though... Every once in a while, there's one that I might have a shot at, not to mention these ads all look the same.

So get an email, I look at the job ad, which looks exactly the same as tonnes of others, hit the apply button, get message "You have already applied for this job" Yea? Then why tf is it being emailed to me?

3 things clubbed in one.

1. In talks with a company which you all use everts for your survival. When I get through, I'll be able to directly build a product for you all. Damn! So excited. I hope everything goes well.

2. I had a realisation that domain matters a lot in Product (my role). Just like tech stack or language matters for a dev. What I was doing is applying for cross domain and getting sad on failures.

It was like a React dev applying for a devOps role. Holy fuck!!! I have been doing this all wrong and now that I have clarity, I need to be real smooth on domain level and I am sure things would be easier.

Guess the next switch keeps me in Fitech that too B2C Payments. Now that opens horizons for me for my future jumps.

I'll post the 3rd one later.

Have you ever declined a job offer?

I had an interview a couple weeks ago, got an offer, but I had to decline because the salary was too low.
It would have been my first full time job (after several internships).

I'm not completely sure if I made the right choice. The team was really small, and it felt like I would have had to handle too much other than the responsibilities of my role.

And I have another interview tomorrow. I hope it goes well.

Meanwhile, I'm working as a developer consultant for a client. I'm learning a lot doing that, so that's going well. :)

I apply to a company. Their system loses my resume, so they contact me to submit it again saying they like what they see in my application (had to write code for them and include info that's also on my resume). I send my resume. Less than 8 hours later the fuckers email me to say I'm no longer being considered.

I understand that its very inefficient to call every applicant back or to give valid feed back as to why they were not chosen but I find it hard to believe that I was not chosen for an entry-level programing position when I have knowledge in everything they sought.
😧

I knew this was coming. A boring.. dull.. shitty week..

Didn't sleep well last night and was drowsy, non-productive, sore all day.

I am getting decent interview calls but unable to get past screening and even when I do, I am facing difficulty to clear interviews.

But situation is much better and I feel like I'll be closing some deal soon. Though nothing in pipeline immediately.

And I am soooo done with long repetitive and boring interview processes. Same shit, different companies.

And all these companies give home assignments which I absolutely hate doing. I FUCKING HATE YOUR CROWD SOURCING IDEA MECHANISM IN THE NAME OF JUDGING TALENT.

And then when you reach the last stage, you are either ghosted or not a great culture fit.

Well fuck off. The calls are decent but I see no hope as of now.

Let's see how this crappy week turns out when the start is already ugly.

And did I mention office politics?

I love the job hunt, just thinking about ending my life everyday now. Maybe I'm just a bad programmer - or just completely dumb.

Anyone have any advice on getting front end developer jobs?

TLDR; WINE+me=system binaries gone. (HOWTHEFUCKDIDIDOTHAT) Kernel panic. Core program files gone. I'll never have it fixed right. Will backup, then install fedora tomorrow.

I really like games and I'm sure there are many of you who can relate. Imagine my perpetual pain, being on the job hunt, no money, and only my Linux laptop for games. (It's only Linux because of a stupid accident and a missing windows installation disk, partly explained in a previous rant). My stack of games my dad and I have played over the years, going back to populous and before, looked light enough for my laptop to run them smoothly. I wanted to see if I could get one to work. My eyes settled on simcity 4 and Sid Meier's railroad tycoon, 13 and 10 years old, respectively. Simcity didn't work as many times as I tried following online instructions. Disk 1 went fine. Disk 2 showed up as Disk 1. Didn't think much of it, so long as the computer could read the contents. I downloaded playonlinux as that could apparently do the complex stuff for me. Didn't work. I gave up with it after an hour and a half.

Next was railroads. Put the disk in aaaand it says SimCity disk 1 is in the tray. Fuck right off, thank you very much. Eject, put back, reject, eject, fiddle in wineconfig, eject, more of this, and voilà it read as railroads :) Ran autoplay.exe with wine, followed instructions, installed it, and it worked! Chose single player, then the map and setting, pressed play, and all the models of the buildings and track were floating in the air over a green plane, the UI is weird and the map doesn't represent anything but trains. All the fkin land is gone, laying track is gonna be a ballache.

I quit it and decided bedtime.
Ctrl+alt+t
sudo shutdown -h now
shutdown not found.
sudo reboot
reboot not found
Que?
Nope, I don't like this.
Force choked my laptop by the power button. Turned it on again.
Lines of text appear.
Saw a phrase I've only ever seen on Mr Robot.
Kernel panic.
Nooooo thanks, not today, this is fiction.
I turned it off and on. Same thing. I read the logs and some init files couldn't be found. I got the memory stick I used to install mint in the first place and booted from that. I checked the difference between my stick's bin and sbin and the laptop's, and it was indeed missing binaries. Fuck knows what else has happened, I only wanted to play games but now I don't know what is or isn't in my computer. How can I trust what's on it now?
I go downstairs and tell my dad. He says something about rpm, but this is Linux so it won't work. I learn that binaries can be copied over, so maybe I can fix it.
Go upstairs again, decide not to fix it. Fedora is light, has a good rep for security, and is even more difficult to get games on, which is my vice. There are more reasons, but the overriding one is that I'm spooked by the fact that something I did went into and removed system binaries, maybe even altered others, so I want something I'm less likely to do that with. Also my fellow cs students used to hate on it but my dad uses and recommended it so I want to try it.

Also, seriously, fuck wine/PlayOnLinux/my inability to follow instructions(?)/whatever demons haunt me. Take your pick, at least one if not more is to blame and I can't tell which, but it's prooooobably the third one.

It's going to be 16 hours before I touch my laptop again, comments before I backup then install fedora are welcome, especially if they persuade me to do differently.

P.S thanks for reading this mind dump of a post, I'm writing while it's fresh but I'm tired AF.

couldn't sleep, should I go or try to reschedule the job interview?

them recruiters.. they keep grinding my gears to the maximum extent..

why do you message me that you have a position. to fill asking where we can have a chat and never reach back... you initiated the conversation in first place...

I replied within the hour, good god..

planning to start a intentional, systematic job hunt... any tips?

// please help!!

I fucking for this day for sooooo long.

I was so overload and lost that I couldn't enjoy the moment or live it.

My conversation with my manager was sooo lame and I could have done better.

What a disappointment I am.

Is anyone else having a hard time finding another job after working as a full stack developer for a few years?

Technical interview to solve a fairly simple problem. I proved that I am an idiot.

Really don't want to work for a company that doesn't test new hires well and hires idiots. Ironic :D

I’m always tired all the time. Depression and what not but today I am TIRED

Had an interview that requires vanilla javascript but I suck at algos even tho I was getting it done till time ran out. We gelled tho so I hope they see potential and move to next round.

But the good news is. I had a follow up interview based on a challenge. It’s the second I’ve ever had and I did well this time.
So much so that they’re booking another interview for tomorrow.
So I’m done with the technical portions of the process.
This is the first time I’ve gotten this far and I’m so happy. I’m hoping really that this is the one cause I doubt I have the energy and will power to keep going though the processes.

I’m so excited. It’s as if all my work is slowly showing and I’m getting closer and closer

Wish me luck guys. Hopefully I ace it as I come across well In General Chats.

This is my last application. If it doesn’t work I think I’m done with dev life and job hunt.

Fingers crossed I’ve found the one

Starting the process of applying for developer jobs without any computing qualifications (I'm self taught) and I'm convinced that I'll not hear from anyone 😣 any tips from Dev rant to help me find that first job?

So I’m panicking a lil bit.

I applied to a bunch of summer co ops from like feb 20-25. I haven’t heard anything from any of them yet - not all of the postings have been closed but my first choice posting closed feb 22...

I know it hasn’t been all that long but I’m pretty used to getting responses (non dev jobs) within like a week and I’m scared that I won’t get ANY responses.

Most people started applying for co ops in December, and I know I procrastinated a lot, it’s just unlike regular jobs where u keep applying till u get something, it seems like co op applications shut down by now, 3 months before the summer term.

Did I screw myself over? Is it too late? I’ve never applied to co ops before and I just REALLY don’t want to spend another summer bagging groceries...

Fuck you Spring and your stupid cryptic, useless, no relevant information error messages.

"Oh I am crashing violently because some of my internal component cannot automagically talk to another my internal component" says spring.

Well shit, why do I let you manage your own dependencies if I still need to hunt down what garbage transitive dependency you bring in 5 time.

YOU HAD ONE JOB!!!

Finally I have something decent for my résumé.
I was going through some LaTeX hell before someone started a cv tools discussion. It was good to learn that json cv is a thing. But it was too late for me. LaTeX posed a challenge and I was bored. It became personal.
After a lot of kicking around and landing on XeLaTeX, I finally have a decent layout. I had to compromise a tiny bit but that's on me for having little content.
(I wanted a graphic résumé but I'll need to do more to sufficiently fill a page. Besides I'd need to design icons and shit for it.)

Now it's done and my job hunt can start!

I don't know if this is an appropriate question to ask companies you're interviewing with but at this point I don't fucking care. I work for a private multimillion dollar company that specializes in IT.... but goes dumpster diving for the pcs they provide to there employees and even worse the developers that produce the software that makes them millions. I spend 30-40% of my week waiting on this piece of shit computer to do anything from startup to load the most demanding ide out there visual studios to compile the applications.

I'm currently on the job hunt and I fucking refuse to work for another IT company that can't splurge a little bit in providing adequate equipment for the job.... fucking ... refuse.

Incoming rant.

I have 4 years professional experience at a small shop working on a web application for property and liability insurance. The application is ASP.NET with C# as the code-behind. I have a BCS and will finish my MSIS fall 2017. I have no idea why I have the degrees. I know that when I enrolled, it seemed like they would be a nice addition to an otherwise empty resume. I was lucky enough to land my first and only development job during my sophomore year of my undergraduate program. Is this enough experience to land a new job?

I feel like I'm learning nothing at my current job. The specs that come in seem very vague to me. When asked for clarification, there is often push back, and I don't know whether that's because I don't have enough experience to parse what the client means in the two sentence spec I got or if it's because the client does not actually know what they want.

I hate my current job. My productivity is low because I spend more time trying to figure out what the client wants and analyzing an 8 year old system that has 0 documentation. I know some of you will just say, "Suck it up" at this point, but I really want another job. The only thing I like about this job is that it's 100% remote. It also pays $60k a year, so a replacement should be at least that salary.

Most postings I see require professional experience of 5 years or more, and knowledge of other frameworks. I can work on getting knowledge of the other frameworks, but will have no professional experience with them. I don't live in an area with a lot of software development jobs, and the ones I see are for non-IT organizations that want 1 person to run a distributed system from 10 or more locations. A hospital system out here wants to pay $30k a year for a guy to be both software developer for new tools as well as the helpdesk and IT support guy that's on-call for four locations in the county. I made more than that before I got into the development industry, for less work, and would rather leave than settle for something like that.

I've thought about moving to somewhere near San Francisco or San Jose, but I have my daughter to think about. I have joint custody of her, and would have to give that up in order to move out of the county.

I like programming and using it to solve problems. I like designing architectures and how all the components will interface. I like designing and normalizing databases. I like taking part in coding competitions for employers that are well-known (Amazon, Facebook, Uber, Twitch, etc.), even though I often just place middle of the pack. When that happens, I feel like I'm an imposter in this industry.

I think I have the most fun just working on small projects for personal use. My latest is an assistant calculator for the game Transport Fever to figure out cargo throughputs per annum based on the in-game timing information. Past projects have also been small. Ones I could use in a portfolio are a sudoku solver desktop application, PC/Web game in Unity that is a 3D FPS remake of Duck Hunt that allows open world exploration but locks the camera's viewpoint for shooting events, and a building assistant for Rome II: Total War that maps out all the bonuses/perks of user-specified building combinations in provinces so users can record their long term building plans without using all their turns to see the final results.

I seem to be an unproductive, average developer who dabbles in projects here and there.

This is what I want from other Ranters. Just say something. I don't care if it is, "Suck it up and get better." It could be your tips for finding and securing a new position. It could even be empathy, if such a thing exists on the Internet. Whatever you want, just say something that will help get me thinking of what the next steps in my career should be.

Joining a job to build rich single page applications deployed in the cloud, then watching it slowly turn into porting shitty legacy code to slightly less shitty .NET Core code and hooking it to an existing WebForms application...

Time to start the hunt again!

Being jobless for a long time is frustrating, but when you're now in a situation where you really need a job within the month, life has become a horror story. My anxiety is off the charts. I can't even focus on learning and improving my skills. I don't have any savings to be able to afford more time.

And now my manager came up with a hack (by working with HRs) to bypass org policies to give me solid raise and a promotion.

He has been trying this for past 2 months to get all the approvals and he doesn't even know I cracked 2 jobs.

I am still awaiting offer letters from both but then not sure what should I pick once everything materialises!!

Well too early to plan or celebrate. Awaiting things to happen.

I really don't get how every, single, mobile developer, position practically requires you to be a top developer on the Google PlayStore. Because if you're not you're "too junior".

It's like none of these companies understand that just because I don't already know your tech in and out and don't have 1mill+ downloads on my apps doesn't mean I can't rise to the challenge.

Been on the hunt for 2 years now, and have been put through the interview loop more than I can count with me never getting past the first round interview.

So... Anyone living near Coventry, UK hiring?

XD

a little later for wk131 but:

To build a completely open platform for everything we have right now... operating systems, manufacturing etc...

The basic idea being serving a line of products under the platform's branding with an algorithm to control which open source implementation of the underlying architecture is most stable/efficient and keep switching them out. This is incredibly ambitious.

A reward based system to power this based on contributions. Example: if the open platform oled manufacturing industry uses a manufacturing process you came up with ... You get paid until well another person's process is better and it gets switched out.

Ideal modularity tbh.

Switching out parts of apps .For example : if the most efficient map algorithm is created by X it will be used. Payments split up as better forked implementations appear.

It's a thriving fun environment. Fuck job stability. Humans weren't meant to live like that. Hunt an animal today or you won't get food tomorrow.

On the plus side this will close the intellectual gap in the current generation.

Has anyone ever try hired.com? Is supposed to be a website where the employer comes to you

Can we boycott Taleo? One account on each fucking company.

Hi ranters,

I'm a full stack developer with 2 years experience and worked on a React Native and Flutter. I quit my last job 4 months ago. Trying to find remote jobs/ jobs in Europe with intention of relocation.

I still didn't found a job offer, received many rejection emails.

Any of you got any tips for me? 😣😔