The older I get, the worse I find the experience. I've had so many poor experiences with recruiters over the years, I think I'm becoming allergic.
It's getting harder to pierce through the BS layers with all that new meat on the market, and to make the matter worse, recruiters are even less skilled than they ever were and are often offshored now. It's insane today.
When I'm on the hiring side, we can't find candidates, and on the other side I can't get through to the right people.
My advice is put out feelers with anyone you've had a good relationship with in the past, often via your old networks and ex-colleague, you'll jump in front of the queue and avoid the pre-screening nonsense. They know what to expect from you and they would prefer to have a familiar face they can rely on in their internal struggles.
That's how I've landed my last 2 jobs without an interview.
The flip-side is always to be helpful to other colleagues. At some point, everyone needs a hand - be that guy - that lends it freely. They'll always look out for you in the future if you look out for them in the present. Become a knowledge source in the company and industry. Soak in as much as you can, become a reference, expose yourself to everyone's job to some degree, providing it isn't a dead zone of silos and the people feel right (not cagey). HTH.
That works for startups, but most larger companies still won't hire you without an interview, your old collegaues can only refer you to hiring.
Very often that's where I screw up. I code computers, not goddamn CoderPads. I run my shit to know if it works, not pretend I'm an interpreter and go through line by line. I cut and paste boilerplate and edit it, not write the boilerplate.
Some dude in an interview at a very well known AI company was staring at me on a video call and grilling me about the max value of a loss function whose formula was written in an image, and I didn't have a whiteboard to do the math on. TF do I care? I usually minimize losses, not maximize them.
Tech folks often complain about the interview experience but a big part of that experience is created by tech folks. Stuff like what you went through is really to blame in tech culture imo
Yeah exactly. I mean really, I have 15+ years of experience and they're grilling me on a correct implementation of quicksort and are going to fail me for an implementation that doesn't terminate when I had nothing to test it on?
I WILL stumble because it's not the kind of thing I do. That's the kind of thing a fresh college grad would have memorized and can vomit it to you, maybe without even understanding it. Maybe I'll code you a basic WebRTC conference call app, or train a simple image classifier, or outline an architecture of a massive system for you?
I'd be wary of almost any startup that hired without any form of interviewing whatsoever. The big difference is that you walk into the interview as a default-yes rather than a default-no, ie: they're on the lookout for any red flags that would cause them to have serious reservations but if no flags pop up, you're assumed in.
At big companies, there's more of a formal process but the key is get the attention of the hiring manager and make sure that hiring manager has enough juice to quietly backchannel to whatever process to treat this as a default-yes conversation. A good sign of how effective your manager is at a Bigcorp is how well they know how to work their internal system to get the right people onto their team.
So true about the last part! Over my last 8 years, I've learnt that to grow in the company and have a good position, you need to be a rock for at least 1 core area the company works in. Like you said, "become a knowledge source, a reference"
This was what I ideally wanted to do. In practive, when I'm laid off every 3-4 years (right around the time I start to feel like I'm becoming a knowledge source), the layoff hammer comes down.
Maybe it'd be a bit faster now with 9YOE, but In some ways I also feel like I'm "3 YOE 3 times over".
Will agree on the connections side of things. My team recently hired a new engineer, having received of thousands of applicants, including many through the corporate referral program. The only people who made it past recruiter screening were those whose referrers messaged the hiring manager directly. With recruiters getting blasted with unqualified applicants (mostly migrants with only a cert to their name) and AI applications, it's hard to get any legit applications some daylight to be reviewed.
Age discrimination is real... I'm 35 and I could feel it kicking in big time. It's particularly obvious in my case because my resume is excellent. I don't say that to brag. Speaking to recruiters and prospective employers is cringe because, for most of them, I'm the best developer they'll meet this year but they can't hire me because of my age, race and sexual orientation. Can you guess them?
I think also in my case, my libertarian views on social media and cryptocurrency background have hindered me.
My last employer was basically mainstream establishment finance but they still hired me anyway because of my skills and also maybe because the founder was a Christian... But I could feel my crypto libertarian background made them tense.
One time (before that job), I interviewed for a position for a major tech company and I cheekily marked my race as 'Ethnic Caribbean' which is partly true since my ancestors have been in the Caribbean for over 500 years... You'd think 500 years is native enough? Apparently not if you look white. First interview, they dangled a MASSIVE offer. They gave me tech tests, I passed them all with flying colours. They set up a meeting with the head of engineering... A formality, they said... Guess what? The fucker never showed up. He sent his sidekick to pretend to be giving me a fair shot. I could see that the guy I spoke with was used to the switcheroo.
I can read the mainland whiteboi like a book... With his shifty, guilty, wandering eyes. Always taking advantage from afar. Hands soft as cotton but fanged as a snake.
He spoke down to me as if I was a typical whiteboi like him who never got his hands dirty. Oh my friend, I plough the dirt with my bare hands.
My number one issue is that people can't afford my experience. I often have to dumb down my resume to look like a cog in a machine. Once they hire me, I end up getting 15-50% raises because they don't want me to leave.
It sounds like you're having a hard time, but I'm not sure you're assessing your situation accurately.
Thirty-five is not when age discrimination kicks in. Age-wise it is the sweet spot. People have had enough time to master their craft, and enough experience to hit the ground running without requiring too much management.
I'd suggest asking people who know you and who have worked with you for their honest assessment of working with you.
> I'm the best developer they'll meet this year but they can't hire me because of my age, race and sexual orientation. Can you guess them?
I already know that I wouldn’t want to work with you - not due to your characteristics. I suspect that I share them - but because you come across as such a whiny ass.
> I think also in my case, my libertarian views on social media and cryptocurrency background have hindered me.
The problem with being the best developer I meet this year is twofold.
Firstly, it's unlikely that your definition of 'best" and my definition of "best" co-incide. Being a developer encompasses a wide range of skills, technical skills like writing code, writing helpful documentation, interacting with colleagues, architecting for the future, fixing other peoples bugs and more. Unless your priority order is the same as mine, knowing you're good at one thing can get a hindrance.
But leaving that aside, being very good at something (and more importantly knowing it) seldom makes for a good team mate. It comes with an attitude that is less likely to conform with what we do here, less likely to admit when you're wrong, less likely to adapt when we have priorities other than yours.
I'll also point out that your additude to non-developer topics should be one of privacy. I don't really want to know your political views, or your views on crypto, or your brushes with race, ethnicity and so on. If you vered into any of those topics in an interview I'd be alarmed. Even if asked your answers in those areas should be non-committal. And if I did ask about something like crypto (I dont) I'd be looking for a measured answer that showed you can understand both sides of an argument, that you can admit when a position is controversial, that while there are positives there are also negatives and so on.
I say this not to negate you, but perhaps to help you grow in your interviewing skills. It's just fine to be white, libertarian, into crypto, 35 years old, whatever. But interviewing is about getting to know someone, and TMI can be, well, too much.
I get where you're coming from, I really do, and you may be a great developer, but unfortunately you may not be a great employee just yet. And ultimately they're hiring an employee first, a developer second.
In reality, almost nobody wants to work with intelligent people. Most highly intelligent people don't want to have to compete with other people who may be more intelligent than themselves. Not everyone gets to play the game of 'meritocracy.' You have to be a good actor first and foremost.
Especially as you get closer to the big money, the theatrics, double-dealing, sabotage, and dirty games. etc... increase by a huge factor. It's very hard to find a company of intelligent people. I've worked for maybe 15 companies in my career and out of thousands of people, I met maybe 3 intelligent people. Intelligent people aren't interested in helping out the like-minded. They'd rather surround themselves with 100 idiots they can easily manipulate. They don't need another intelligent person around them.
To be honest, the fact you've worked for 15 companies, and you're only 35 would be a red flag to us. (Assuming that's employment not consulting.)
People change jobs for 2 reasons. They leave, or were kicked out. Doing that 15 times in (say) 20 years is not a good look regardless of which camp you fall into.
I'll be honest, we wouldn't hire that. We're looking for 10 years plus, and your track record suggests we're not a good fit for you.
As you are a good developer, and smart to boot, you may find that starting your in gig is your route to long-term satisfaction. I say that as someone who works a lot with self-employed developers (most of them self employed because they'd be terrible employees) and indeed because I'm self-employed (again because I'd be a terrible employee).
I will caution though that being self employed means you take the blame for all your mistakes (and the success or fail every month I'd revealed by the paycheck or lack thereof.)
Sorry that I've got to break it to you, but these people aren't particularly intelligent. They're just narcissistic and likely convince themselves to be a lot better at manipulation then they're.
More often then not, the "manipulated" person just went along with it because they just cba to deal with people that're convinced of their own superiority. They're tiresome to interact with and most people just don't care to bother. There was even a term for it a decade ago, they were called "madonnas" I believe. It was back when "brogrammers" thought of themselves as rockstars
As the old quote goes:
You can't reason a person out of a perspective they haven't reasoned themselves into. And as such, most people just let them live in their fantasy world while moving on with their life
That's not really the typical age where age discrimination sets in. In fact 35 is very much a sweet spot where people would respect your experience but you still look young enough to be hanging out with people in their mid 20s.
If you really think it's an issue don't state your graduation year on your resume.
> my libertarian views on social media and cryptocurrency background have hindered me
Most big tech recruiters don't go around searching your social media, it's a liability and they don't have the time for that. Startup founders might, that's another story.
If you're really worried about it, just delete it, temporarily hide it, or make that stuff private so only your friends can see it.
I couldn't guess anything other than what you revealed, mind sharing? Also, what are your actual views on crypto that you think stops you from a tech role?
Unfortunately my Twitter account uses parts of my real name. I didn't try to hide it enough. Over time, they must have discovered it. I didn't foresee that society would turn into a censorship totalitarian hellhole when I created the account years before. I'm not controversial or hateful at all. Just Rand Paul level common sense but some people see it as improper.
It's getting harder to pierce through the BS layers with all that new meat on the market, and to make the matter worse, recruiters are even less skilled than they ever were and are often offshored now. It's insane today.
When I'm on the hiring side, we can't find candidates, and on the other side I can't get through to the right people.
My advice is put out feelers with anyone you've had a good relationship with in the past, often via your old networks and ex-colleague, you'll jump in front of the queue and avoid the pre-screening nonsense. They know what to expect from you and they would prefer to have a familiar face they can rely on in their internal struggles.
That's how I've landed my last 2 jobs without an interview.
The flip-side is always to be helpful to other colleagues. At some point, everyone needs a hand - be that guy - that lends it freely. They'll always look out for you in the future if you look out for them in the present. Become a knowledge source in the company and industry. Soak in as much as you can, become a reference, expose yourself to everyone's job to some degree, providing it isn't a dead zone of silos and the people feel right (not cagey). HTH.