Just Lost Job - Coping/Job Hunting Advice Needed

Thank you for phrasing it better than I did.

It seems a bit odd that doing what you’re paid to do is something that you should do in your spare time too. If you interview for a sales job is it expected that in your spare time you’re selling stuff for personal profit? I would fear burnout or the spare time stuff becoming the focal point of an employee’s passion.

This coding-outside-work questions are brewing up a work-life tempest that is obscuring a key piece of the programmer hiring puzzle.

Speaking as someone who has hired probably a couple hundred people over the years, and certainly interviewed more than 1000 people for gaming/tech jobs, let me bold two key facts for the discussion.

The first is that the common interview cycle, with the candidate talking to 3-6 people in 30 minute sessions, is an absolutely terrible way of figuring out if someone can actually fit in with the team and get the job done. It is also, to paraphrase Churchill, the best we have collectively been able to come up with. For a coder, you throw in 1-2 mandatory white board sessions, which proves that the candidate can hold a marker and write in neat little rows. Being able to verbally tell me how to reverse a linked list is pointless other than making sure you actually talked to someone about coding at some point. The standard interview process is nearly useless for software engineers. Period.

The second is that a bad programming hire is the second worst bad hire you can make (behind a bad manager, but those are much easier to spot). You can usually weed out the absolute losers pretty quickly, like when they host a for-pay porn server off their work machine overnights (true story!). The real problem is that it is impossible to tell actual skill level of a coder until it is far too late. You need 6-9 months of work at minimum to discover, say, that the UI system is making 60 draw calls a frame for some reason, or your vaunted AI system just fills the hex map with units who don’t actually pathfind en masse. I’m not even talking about the absolute truism that a great engineer is worth 10X a good one-- I’m just saying that barely mediocre ones can utterly sandbag a project, and that’s even with good engineering leadership at the team level, which is far from a given. So there is additional serious pressure to discover coding mediocrity during the already terribly flawed interview process.

So, while I recognize and completely understand the work-life balance alarms that have been set off by these questions, I am explaining the atmosphere in which they are asked. A candidate who spends some of her personal time coding, on anything, has a better chance of being someone who enjoys coding for the sake of coding, which has a better chance of making her a better coder, period. So for Mark’s example above, if I’m interviewing a sales guy, and I see a membership to Toastmasters, I know that he values and is pretty good at public speaking.

Kevin, you make a very good point. Like I said before, hiring someone after a couple of interviews is like getting married after a couple of dates. Even if you have experienced people doing the interviewing, check all references, do your homework, etc. It’s the same in my field where we’re hiring chemists and engineers.

I tell my managers, I would much rather make the mistake of hiring someone really bad than hiring someone mediocre. Someone really bad: fairly straightforward to get rid of them. Someone mediocre: They aren’t bad enough to make the case to terminate them, but they end up taking so much time and effort to help them get the job done properly, and they take up the space where you could have a good person. The problem, of course, is that it is usually - not always - easier to avoid hiring a really bad candidate. It’s the mediocre ones that scare the hiring managers.

I can pretty quickly determine whether a person has the technical chops for the job. The part I really try to figure out during the interview process is how proactive and how motivated a candidate is. That’s not as simple as learning how technically proficient they are.

Of course the real problem is clowns like me know that this kind of question has gotten popular in technical interviews. So we have pat answers rehearsed for how much we love to download linux distros and set up our home lab and play around with new technologies.

I’m sympathetic to the plight of finding good technical people, I have to interview them too, but I find cliched stock questions to be pretty horrible so I avoid them. I’ll maybe throw in one or two just to see how prepped a person is with their pat answers, but that’s only because I’m hiring consultants and not developers so I need to test candidates for how well they communicate and present.

I’ve always been good at interviewing, perhaps because I’ve been a hiring manager for over 30 years; I’ve never had an interview, since I got out of grad school, where I didn’t get an offer. That said, I had one interview (and I got the offer and took the job, although 3 years later I left; TOTALLY dysfunctional company, so taking a job after a couple of interviews is also like getting married after a couple of dates.)

But they are interviewing for someone to take over their technical operations, I get a ton of questions (panel interview) on technical items, management in a variety of challenging situations (including some they were struggling with,) etc.

Then I get this senior VP who looks up, when it is his turn, and asks “What is your favorite book of all time?” Then “Why?” Then “what’s the most popular book that you have read that you hated, and why?”

This was followed by “Give me your 3 best decisions, ever, and your 3 worst.”

“What’s something you always thought, when you were younger, that you would love to do and would do once you became an adult, that you’ve never done.”

An entire set of very interesting questions, but nothing I’d prepared for. OTOH, it was my favorite part of the interview. ;)

I hate those kind of questions. I understand the reason for 1 or 2 of them, but I had several interviews with the same company, all 3 hours or so, FILLED with those silly questions. Seriously, I would have been tempted to answer the 3 best and worst decisions like this:

Best:

  1. Crack cocaine
  2. Heroin
  3. Meth

Worst:

  1. Meth
  2. Heroin
  3. Crack cocaine

It’s a huge part of being a successful lawyer. And just general client development, which is a lot less fun than it might sound. Not applicable if you just work in an office or corporate law department (although can’t hurt even then), but mandatory and very time consuming for anyone whose practice has an entrepreneurial component (bringing in business). I am amazed at how much time some lawyers spend teaching, public speaking, etc. - just never felt that sort of passion for it and preferred to have ancillary, unrelated, commercial pursuits. But yeah, hiring someone who is passionate about the gig is always a preference.

I agree that too many is too much. By definition I suppose. ;) But I completely understand why they are asked. Over 30 years of hiring, and I’ve seen a lot of cases where a person was hired because they met all the technical requirements, and that was what the interview was focused on.

Then they show up at work, and the actual PERSON is someone who just isn’t effective/doesn’t fit in/is just plain weird for some reason. Now, I tell my Sales VP and others that R&D people are weird, and that’s a good thing. But (and this kind of goes to some of the earlier discussion) people need to be able to work with other people in most cases, and to be effective with other people. Not popular or everyone’s friend but at least able to interact with other people. And I’ve seen some hires who are so one dimensional, or who are just socially crippled, or who have no clue why they are pissing everyone else off around them, or are just the most negative person you’ve ever met.

So a few questions to get a feel for the person is actually not a bad idea. Not figuring that piece out somehow - and that is FAR more challenging than whether they are technically capable.

The reality is if you don’t enjoy anything about your work then even a 40 hour week feels like slavery, as with a reasonable commute and normal household chores you’re only likely to have a few hours daily to otherwise enjoy. Working 60+ hours a week in a vocation that you’re passionate about, with people who you respect and appreciate, feels a lot less arduous than a 40 hour work week in a job that’s just drudgery.

What Desslock said.

We spend most of our waking hours at work. The ideal to select a job that somehow gives you the most of what makes your quality of life the best relative to all other options. Obviously, money if part of what is required for that, but I can attest the job I’m in now pays less than I can make (and have made) elsewhere, yet it is the best job of my career. I never dread going to work. The job that paid me a fortune, had a limo pick me up at the house and take me to the airport and bring me back. that had a ridiculously high 401K match and bonuses, is the one that, for my last couple of years, made me so sick to my stomach thinking about going in every morning that I would sometimes literally throw up. I lost 3 years of my life in that job, so miserable I couldn’t enjoy any part of my life.

Yet, lest anyone think I don’t understand “the real world” - when crap was going on and I was in danger of losing my job there due to the CEO needing to fire some high level people to cover his ass to the board, I fought to keep my job. It is hard, even with a job that sucks so bad it makes you literally sick, to go through a job change. Scary stuff. Stepping into the unknown.

But whether it is a job opportunity within our current company or a job change, we owe it to the “us” that will look back on our lives to try to find a job that is the best, of the options we have, for our overall quality of life. It IS where we spend most of our life.

Edit:

Actually, y’all don’t need all of my personal negativity, so let’s just go with: that may all sound nice and good, but I think it comes from a place of relative comfort. If you’re struggling to keep basic needs covered or have an extraordinary situation to deal with, the thought of “working for pleasure–and a little less!” or even just bouncing around to find “the right fit” sure sounds like a bad idea.

No, I get it. That’s why I said, in spite of my deep beliefs that your job effects your quality of life far more than most things, I still tried to cling to a job that literally made me throw up in the morning before going in to work, due to the pressure, backstabbing, etc. It was killing me. My beard actually started turning gray while I was at that job. The absolute “right” thing to do was to immediately try to find another one and quit; I’m actually lucky I didn’t have a heart attack or breakdown.

And yeah, when I lost my job in February 2009, while the entire world was crumbling from an economic point of view and every company was firing to stay alive and NO ONE was hiring, period, and we’d lost just about everything in two previous job losses in the last 5 years, and had no real separation (oh, and 3 kids in college) - yeah, that was not a time where I was sitting back and saying, oh, that looks like it may be a place that has a rare opening, but I’d rather not work there because of so and so. I lost 35 pounds from stress and lack of appetite. (I was EXTREMELY lucky to find the best job of my life in this time, but that’s another story.)

So yeah, I get it. I’ve been desperate, I’ve faced potentially having to drain what was left in my devastated 401K in the middle of the recession, in my 50s, because I had no income and no realistic chance at finding a job for at least a year or however long it would take for the recession to weaken and companies to start hiring again.

But - that’s why I said “of the options you have available.” I took the job that made me sick and almost killed me because it paid a TON of money. I turned down a job at a more laid back company that probably paid 2/3 of what it paid, with much lower bonuses, 401K match, etc. I went after the money, which was amazing. And I lost 3 years of my life as a result of that choice.

For sure - I just posted what I said to highlight that “number of hours worked or expected” isn’t the necessarily determinative on what is the best job for you - it’s just one factor, which can be almost irrelevant if you’re doing something you’re passionate about, while a job that seems to give you a lot more free time can actually be soul destroying and feel like far more of an encumbrance preventing you from doing what enjoy doing.

Obviously working on a job that you would enjoy doing for free is the ideal, but it’s something few people ever get to do, since we generally have to make compromises to get by and survive. I really wish I’d pursued the jobs I wanted while growing up, and instead I got locked into a path that I felt difficult to get off. When I finally did jump off it, I had far more freedom but eventually realized the importance of doing more substantive work for my own well-being. With fewer responsibilities and less professional ambition I actually ended up withdrawing from life and just giving into indulgences - I’ve tried semi-retirement a couple of times, once just because I thought it was a goal worth achieving and once again for health reasons, and ultimately realized that I get more satisfaction out of applying myself to challenging work than less purposeful pursuits.

I believe this. My problem is that I cannot think of other jobs that pay even 1/3 of what I make in this job. It is all I’m trained to do, and it is such a huge step down that I see no real way off the merry-go-round.

EDIT: I know I need to be careful, because I know in the modern economy (or perhaps any economy) there is a bit of a “cry me a river” quality to complaining that you just make so much money, that any other job you could do would just be a huge step down. But it does suck to literally dread going into work each day, but to also dread going to another job where you might make 1/3 (or less) as much only to find out you really don’t like it that much better.

You can always go sideways. One option is to pick a single aspect of your job that you enjoy, and look for jobs focused on that. Another option is to move outside of being a doer and become a strategist, architect, or sales pro in that discipline. I’ve done all that, and while I haven’t necessarily increased my satisfaction, I’ve increased my salary and autonomy considerably.

Needs some advice from the hive mind.

I have a company that’s looking for someone with my specific skill set. I haven’t even interviewed yet, but I know the hiring manager, we’ve done an informal and think it would be a good fit. The issue is that the company is small and the recruiter wrote to tell me what to expect with salary and … it’s pretty low.

What can you do in a situation like this?

I’ve been out of work for approaching a year now and really need to get some positive cash flow and secure some benefits. I’m actually getting a few pings from different companies, but I’ve had stuff fall through in the past and know how quickly that can happen, so it feels … imprudent to just walk away from this based on a low ball from the recruiter this early in the game.

Is it a dick move to ask for an interview knowing that the job pays too little?

If I do ask to move forward, what is the appropriate way to do that? I suppose just express all the excitement I have for the job, the culture, the tech ect? What do I say about the low ball offer?

I mean, I know what I want to say (ha!), but what is the appropriate way to say it?

It’s not a dick move at all to interview and learn more, unless there is essentially no chance you’ll accept it - an interview helps everyone make a more informed decision.

But I would also make it clear from the outset with the hiring manager that the salary is a little lower than you expected, and you’re wondering if there is any flexibility on it - more often than not, that will be a constructive way to open negotiations on the point then or after the interview if it goes well for everyone. If they aren’t budging and it’s really too low for you to be happy, see if they are open to an increase after a probationary period of a few months (make sure that’s written into your agreement if accepted). But those sort of things are normal to negotiate and won’t annoy anyone. You should definitely not be silent on the point.

Thank you Desslock! I slept on this and came to the same conclusion as what you wrote above. I appreciate your input on how to present it.

I agree with this. The trick is to let them know that it appears the compensation is going to be a negative, but (assuming it’s true) you are willing to be flexible to a point because you really like the company, the job, etc.

That is actually an issue we often face with our company. We compete with huge multi-billion dollar companies for our recruits, and they pay a lot more than we do. Even more so, when an experienced hire from one of those companies gets fed up with the corporate BS at the company and would like to come work for a company like us, but their salary is a real challenge. If they are good enough, we try to work with them (though we can almost never match what they were making at the big company.) In one case, the challenge was they would come in higher than 3 other chemists who were proven contributors (who would be at the same level as this person) and we felt that would not be fair to our existing employees; I talked with my boss (the CEO/owner) and we agreed that was probably an indicator we need to give our 3 current employees an immediate significant bump in salary, and we did. So win-win for everyone. :)

But obviously you first need to prove to them that you are the kind of person who they REALLY want, and who will be worth the extra money (and as I noted above, often the issue they face is how that higher salary compares to existing employees.)