Being kicked out of the tech industry

10 pointsposted 7 hours ago
by birdculture
(jacky.wtf)

8 Comments

welcome_dragon

12 minutes ago

Sorry but this reads so much like whining and assuming everyone is out to get the writer.

I agree with the sentiment that the resume is a very weak resume but it's not clear if he's getting rejected outright or after an interview.

Listen I've been laid off several times. The thing that was different from the last time is the number of auto rejections I would get. How do I know they were auto rejections? Submit application ... One minute later: thank you for applying... Two minutes later: unfortunately you don't have the right requirements.

I could say it's because of the use of "AI" in the hiring process (don't even get me started on some of that BS, but it's laziness. Maybe just filtering off key words like has been done forever.

And referrals? In what universe is that "cheating"? Yes I've had cases where I've made it to the decision point - just me and another candidate. Guess what? The other candidate was a referral and got the gig instead of me. This used to be called "networking" but somehow it's "cheating"?

My advice to the writer is to update that resume to what people are looking for now: the impact of things you designed/created is important! It saved X hours per week etc are better understood than "I worked on a thing that did something".

And the question of "calling out companies" etc ... Yes, that can be a problem. If I'm looking at hiring two people and one has a public record of this moreso than, say, a public record of projects (I don't know if this is the case here, but I'll assume) and the other has a public record of projects, well guess which one I'm going to hire. The worst hires are the ones who are going to "cause problems". Not criticizing calling out companies but if I make it a point to criticize companies I work for, what is a company supposed to expect out of me?

The writer is the cause of and solution to his own problem but instead he's victimized and being "kicked out" of the industry.

andsoitis

7 hours ago

I don’t know about that resume: https://www.jacky.wtf/work/

Based on what I read there I wouldn’t even consider them for a role.

2legit2quit

6 hours ago

Agreed. They also portray things in a rather false manner.

> I think I'm giving up on being a "professional" software engineer. I've tried it for a decade. I've been laid off more than half of the times I've been in the game.

According to their own resume, their first stint as a software engineer was in 2019. Maybe my maths are just bad - but this doesn't even get close to a decade.

> But this feels more like being kicked out. Getting more than 5 rejections a day despite my past work is humiliating. Having to be told that "you're great but no" more than 6 times a day is demeaning. And having to hear that it'll take a year to find a job — how the fuck does society claim to be in a good place if folks have bills to pay during this time[2]?

They also don't seem to have any experience or any awareness of how bad it was in 2008, the dot-com bubble, etc. It's giving main character syndrome vibes.

> Did my bringing up of a book at a company get one of the executives too upset?

and

> Did me having a crisis in public become too embarrassing for another?

It's a lot of assumptive takes that the reader would know every aspect of their lives.

> It is solely a game of referral: it does not matter what you apply with because other people are cheating in the application process.

This has been a "thing" since forever. Companies even incentivize referrals.

> It's more if they like and trust you.

They completely miss the mark with the pivotal point here: Trust. If a company can't trust you, for whatever reasons, then - yes - you are liability in many forms. Again, this isn't something new or manufactured in the last decade.

> I think I get a little bored of seeing the same old business as usual when more than 30% of people are fucking going through for it for no reason outside of "you're not the match we're looking for". Well, what was it then!?

See: AI.

I wasted too many cycles on this -- but there's a whole lot of "it's not me, it's everyone else" in here. The market is especially tough, right now, and if you don't have a set of skills or experience[s] to make you stand-out from the 300+ people that are applying, what do you expect? It's tough for everyone, not just you...

welcome_dragon

6 minutes ago

Ok the "decade" thing can slide in my opinion. I've been doing this for 25+ years but my resume won't show that.

But. Based on my recent job search, getting eleven notifications per day means he must have been submitting hundreds of applications per day. Over the course of 4 months, I submitted for something like 120 positions. I'd be lucky to get one rejection a day (usually just no feedback ever).

And yeah the like and trust thing is paramount. You can be a John Carmack level engineer but if you're a jerk or not trustworthy then yeah it's going to be really hard to find a job.

Guestmodinfo

6 hours ago

Why what's problematic in the resume?

andsoitis

6 hours ago

1. Most items describe activity rather than impact.

2. The language contains too many errors for a senior candidate.

“agentic devlopment”, “MFP … initative”, “the Veteran Affairs” rather than “the Department of Veterans Affairs”, “I begun my career”, “kept me going and interesting in consulting”, “problems that’s been ailing them”, “tight knit” should usually be “tight-knit”, “on-going” should be “ongoing”, “around ~3x weekly” is redundant, “Deployed changes to help reduce noise of the maintaining of…” is difficult to understand, “Extended dynamic application placements from Glitch’s internal mappings…” is nearly unintelligible.

3. Generic positioning

4. The resume lacks prioritization, which as a hiring manager I will interpret as they'll struggle with prioritization in their work too.

I wish them all the best, but reaching for conspiracy (am I on a list?) when you haven't introspected and critically evaluated what you put out there, signals to me they will continue to struggle.