I did one of these threads several months ago, when the site was new, and thought now was a good time to do another.
Message me if you
- Want to try installing Linux for the first time
- Want to try Linux but don't want to install it
- Have some Linux-related problem you want another pair of eyeballs on
- Want to learn a programming language
- Want to build a computer
- Want tutoring in any of the above
- Need help with any old technical problem
(also play Arma with me)
you got any advice on how to pretend to give a shit when you're looking for a job?
smile and nod, laugh at dumb jokes
being an easy person to be around is way more valuable than 5 years of experience with "backend technologies"
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heh yeah, I think I used to be able to do that pretty well, but then I transitioned and boom, I get fewer responses from applications than I used to get as cold-emails.
That's always the fucking thing, isn't it, doesn't matter how good you are at whatever fucking technical thing, or how great of a person you are to work with if some 27 year old bay area white guy "doesn't feel like you'd be a good fit" for some unshared reason he's never bothered to interrogate, and you never fucking know because they're not required to tell you why you didn't get a response, and if they told you they aren't required to be honest, and if they were they wouldn't even be conscious of it anyway. So you just feel gaslit by every fucking company because "You're skills aren't really in-line with the requirements of this role" is not fucking true and you know it.
Be white, be cis, be het, get lucky, I guess.
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Yeah, that whole part of it just makes me want to like get myself involved in screening/hiring processes for a big ol company somehow just so I can do the exact opposite but based on the recent tweet thread from the google diversity director that doesn't seem like their highest priority.....
lmao not really. "Good" jobs won't give a shit if you give a shit, it'll be a professional arrangement. But it's a crapshoot as to whether you're going to get one of those, or even get to the interview stage.
I've noped out early in the application process because I decided I'd have to be mostly brainworm in order to work there.
Depending on the place, a completely different person will be deciding whether to pass you on to the interview process than the people actually interviewing you. I.e. screened by HR/recruitment, and interviewed by potential coworkers. Focus on keywords with HR, in your cover letter, resume, and then with fellow engineers you can mostly be chill and actually talk about technology. HR/recruitment will be looking to check off all the boxes for knowing each and every little technology they use, so try and tune that stuff to the listing, but be honest when talking to fellow engineers, as they can draw a distinction between "knowing Javascript" (made a webpage in college) and knowing Javascript.
You probably know all that though, and I can't really offer too much to help. It just sucks.
Oh, and if a company wants you to performatively care about the thing they're making, you can usually pivot into being excited about the technologies used to make it, which can be more sincere.
Since you don't give a shit about their shitty Twitter clone, instead say you're really fascinated by the challenges of maintaining such a large, distributed set of services, and you'd love the chance to work with a company pushing the boundaries of scale. Or whatever.
Yeah, that's basically as close as I can ever get to the HR people's platonic ideal of a worker. It does help being legitimately interested in how literally anything gets done but that only ever works with the engineers, for the HR people I just feel like they can hear that I'm lying when I say I'm a self starter or how I looooove being part of a 24/7 on call rotation.
You can often reframe it in terms of what value you were able to provide during your previous positions, which is what HR wants to hear anyway.
Instead of saying "I love being on call 24/7!" say "Via all-hours alterting and rapid incident response, I was able to solve production-critical issues within thirty minutes or less, allowing us to maintain a xx% uptime". You may have hated doing it but it gets you in the door so...
wtf this is no help. why couldn't you just fix capitalism for me? giving you 1 star on the customer satisfaction survey 😤