Poll of the Day > I hate software dev job seeking process

(+) Yeah! (+)

I have been doing like 5 interviews a week for the past month. while working full time and studying leetcode on the side, working on upskilling projects and preparing for interviews. get me out of this industry I'm so tired I want to stop this

What are you applying for and where?
I have rarely, if ever said no after interviewing someone for a developer role and do not use leetcode or any trick coding questions in my interview process as I generally disagree with the use of trick questions in an interview. Fit is way more important to me than your ability to write recursive fibonacci from memory.

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tech companies in Canada. Trying to get into web backend, which I don't have a lot of professional experience in. it does seem like coding questions are pretty much unavoidable, in interviews and also they will give you online hackerrank/codility assessments. I've done a lot of them even for small-medium sized companies.

Oh yes you are definitely getting into a highly competitive environment. I would not touch webdev with a 10 foot pole.

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what sector are you in? I work in unity dev right now but I'm feeling it's a dead end compare to web.

I hate software dev job

Same, I only like the money

The job seeking process does suck a ton too though, yeah. It's just rounds and rounds of interviews. I hate having to try to pretend like I'm enthused about fintech or real estate software or whatever too.

If you feel bad about coding exercises, don't, I think I'm a good coder but those always trip me up. In the real world you don't do stupid string sorting algorithms or whatever, it's basically trivia rather than a real skill evaluation. I know that doesn't help you get a job though. It's tough for me too but I just hope to get one that doesn't do hackerrank bullshit, they are out there

acesxhigh posted...

what sector are you in? I work in unity dev right now but I'm feeling it's a dead end compare to web.

I work in high performance computing.

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Judgmenl posted...

I work in high performance computing.

How's that? I'm sure it's a grass is greener thing, but that sounds like it would be more my speed than working in web dev. I feel like web dev is 90% of the time just making these boring APIs and JS frontends now, with an overly hip culture and a bunch of boot camp grads.

High performance computing makes me think it could also swing too hard the other way though, like a bunch of older devs who think they always know best in a more conservative corporate culture

That is exactly why I do not like webdev. I find there to be no challenge with it.
CoorsLight posted...

like a bunch of older devs who think they always know best in a more conservative corporate culture

Yes and no. It's just filled with people who think they always know best, or at least that's my experience. Conservative corporate culture? No. I don't necessarily agree with that. All 3 places I've worked? Probably not as liberal as SV, but then again Massachusetts is liberal in a totally different way than California.

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Just to be clear I didn't mean politically per se but more stuff like dress codes or being super strict about hours and shit, outdated processes, etc

I think it depends on the company. I find that companies that try to drown interviewees in code projects and exercises usually are trying to make themselves seem more interesting then they actually are. I would rather have a 1-2 hour interview with someone, maybe ask them some simple programming questions just to make sure they know their stuff, and spend most of the time evaluating them as a team member. As long as you are willing to learn and can show you are halfway competent, then that is good enough for me. I don't need you to show me a program that can evaluate all prime numbers in log n time (actually a question someone asked me in an Interview).

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Yeah I don't get why companies can't just give you questions about coding instead of some algorithm exercise. I would think that it would be pretty easy to figure out if someone doesn't know what they're talking about. Coding tests might eliminate some great people

CoorsLight posted...
I feel like web dev is 90% of the time just making these boring APIs and JS frontends now, with an overly hip culture and a bunch of boot camp grads.

As a boot camper who works web....ouch. The truth hurts.

Well I definitely would be lying if I said there wasn't jealousy that I spent all this time and money in college, and now I'm making the same/less than people who took the "easy" way. I guess it just feels like it cheapens my work, and I like to feel like I'm smart. But this also isn't what I went to college to do, I just ended up there. Part of me wishes I was doing something bigger that puts more of my intellect to use but part of me enjoys the low pressure.

I find a lot of boot camps are inconstant, and it's really important to those interested in them to find a reputable one, that also doesn't have super predatory payment options. Despite what the sector says about needing degrees, it is significantly harder to find a job without one, and bootcamps give you certs, not degrees. You are screwed if the place you apply for hasn't heard of your camp.

Also, the boot camps probably wouldn't exist if the sector knew how to actually grow and create it's own talent. Everyone wants Sr. Unicorns.

Kind of resent you calling it the "easy" way if I'm being honest. Spending a fraction of the money, and a fraction of the time sounds like the "smart" way, despite it's shortcomings compared to a degree. Then again, I know boot camps are a fairly recent occurrence, so they may not have been available when you were in school.

They may have been around but if they were, they definitely weren't well-known/popular. But like I said I didn't go to school to be a software engineer anyway so I'm not sure I would have taken the option anyway. I'm just bitter that after all that hope in college I've been stuck in jobs that make miserable. But I very well might just be miserable anywhere because working is a strange and unnatural human concept.

I think that's a major benefit to going to college as well. You have much more course options and can explore other fields. For the most part boot camps are limited to web development and data science.

Plus having taken a year of college, that included CS courses. I can say the pacing and environment is different. Granted I didn't graduate from college, but getting a lower score on an assignment or a test was much less of a bigger deal than in the boot camp. If you got less than a perfect score on more than 5 assignments during the 14 weeks (and there was at least one everyday), you wouldn't pass the course, and you were out your money. All while also having to participate in job searching activities, which was pretty much another course in itself. They also teach how to interview, make a resume, make a LinkedIn. Also, stuff like you had to go to a local meetup to network, which also took time when you are trying to get you assignments done.

That sucks you don't seem to find any joy in your job though. I'm sure at this point you have worked for multiple companies, but maybe there is a company that better fits you somewhere?

I keep looking for "stepping stone" jobs that might get me closer to where I want to be because I don't think I have the skills to make that leap directly. But that's always been hard. From the jump it literally took me about six years (of on and off searching) to get from my first "real" job to my second. That's not good. When I finally got the second one, I figured okay, maybe a year of experience here can get me to the next one, now going on almost two and a half years and I find searching as hard as ever. I can't keep having shit that I see as a stepping stone be three or four years, I'm getting too old and can't try to hold on to my sanity that long.

CoorsLight posted...

Yeah I don't get why companies can't just give you questions about coding instead of some algorithm exercise. I would think that it would be pretty easy to figure out if someone doesn't know what they're talking about. Coding tests might eliminate some great people

I perform very poorly with algorithm heavy questions as they usually require already knowing the answer.
Yet I am designing a highly scalable orchestration solution right now. It can't just be a black and white interview like that.

IronBornCorps posted...

I find a lot of boot camps are inconstant, and it's really important to those interested in them to find a reputable one, that also doesn't have super predatory payment options. Despite what the sector says about needing degrees, it is significantly harder to find a job without one, and bootcamps give you certs, not degrees. You are screwed if the place you apply for hasn't heard of your camp.

Boot camps only teach what is needed to get a job in the fields they try and prepare you for. Think of it like a technical school. They don't teach you a basis in Computer Science that would make you successful in every area of the industry. Think of them as pump and dumps. It's a lot harder to hire these types of people because they carry substantial risk, probably more risk than fresh grads with 0 experience.

(Sorry I am very busy with work today, literally started writing this 30 minutes ago and finished it right now. I want to address more but I can't right now).

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Judgmenl posted...

Boot camps only teach what is needed to get a job in the fields they try and prepare you for. Think of it like a technical school. They don't teach you a basis in Computer Science that would make you successful in every area of the industry. Think of them as pump and dumps. It's a lot harder to hire these types of people because they carry substantial risk, probably more risk than fresh grads with 0 experience.

Actually my experience has been quite different. A lot of employers have said to me they would rather have a boot camper with some real world experience over a fresh grad, even if that experience isn't related to tech. Boot campers tend to be a little older (late 20's early 30's) and have a different mindset than someone who is just graduating.

Have you ever worked with a boot camper? While it's a little light on CS theory, they do teach a lot. I could get many different jobs in the field including but not limited to QA, Full-Stack, BA, DBA, Support roles, and UX.

Self accountability is the name of the game for boot campers. It's our job to learn the gaps from our program, and to continue learning. They aren't made to create Sr. lvl talent, but should qualify for just about any entry level job in the industry. At least my camp, which I mentioned camps are not all created equal.

IronBornCorps posted...

I'll admit I had several classmates who only took the course to make tech money, not because they had any passion for tech.

I think this is part of what I feel too but I dunno maybe it's a bit gatekeeper-y. I don't feel necessarily like I "earned" my way with college and others didn't, because you rarely end up using any of what you learn, and some of it is plainly fat from the beginning (like having to take chemistry).

Anecdotally, I've found boot camp grads to be weaker devs but it's hard to say cause you don't know the full extent of someone's experience, it's not apples to apples. Of course a CS grad with five years of industry experience will be almost always better than a boot camper with two years but sometimes that's all you have to go off in comparing.

IronBornCorps posted...

Have you ever worked with a boot camper? While it's a little light on CS theory, they do teach a lot. I could get many different jobs in the field including but not limited to QA, Full-Stack, BA, DBA, Support roles, and UX.

No, because I stay lightyears away from anything related to webdev. Only web developers I have worked with have a CS background.

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I have to say, I have been using docker for years without any issues, but the moment I look at k8s I am absolutely terrified.

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yeah kubernetes is pretty crazy.

CoorsLight posted...

From the jump it literally took me about six years (of on and off searching) to get from my first "real" job to my second. That's not good. When I finally got the second one, I figured okay, maybe a year of experience here can get me to the next one, now going on almost two and a half years and I find searching as hard as ever. I can't keep having shit that I see as a stepping stone be three or four years, I'm getting too old and can't try to hold on to my sanity that long.

same here. my first real job, not where I want to be working, so I think maybe next job I will get to "choose" my employer for real. nope it's already devolved into the same desperate process of interviewing at 15 companies and ending up at whichever one is the first to offer me a job.

CoorsLight posted...

It's tough for me too but I just hope to get one that doesn't do hackerrank bullshit, they are out there

honestly even worse for the ones who ask me about language quirks and shit like that.