
Ask HN: How to lead a stable, happy career as a bad interviewee? - mixtrola
Most of my acquaintances and friends have, in their careers, mostly staying in one place and focusing on their personal lives and families. How do I get into a stable career track like this? And not through these distractions of job searches and interviews. Their budgeting challenges are not related to being underemployed, and they seem to have their employment on auto-pilot. I&#x27;d be happy if I can put away the need to job hunt for the rest of my life.<p>The more time I spend looking for jobs and practicing interviews, the more I see them as a distraction, because I don&#x27;t see them paying off. A distraction from my progress in my finances, career and my life. I want to free myself from that so that I can focus on building my own life, get into a relationship and starting a family. Therefore I do not want to focus on getting better at interviewing anymore.<p>For context I am a self-taught SWE having done numerous jobs in a professional capacity (90% in web, 10% other). I am frequently required to look for work because the only offers I can get for now are low-ball temp contract jobs.<p>If I completely avoid applying for these temp contract jobs I would never be hired (since no full-time offers come around). That&#x27;s why I keep applying to them even though they&#x27;re not my best option, because I have no choice but to take the money.
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badatshipping
Your ability to solve leetcode problems fundamentally determines your job
prospects, just as being attractive/rich/famous fundamentally determines your
dating prospects. Whether or not this is a fact to be lamented, it's still a
fact. Trying to get a job without doing leetcode is like trying to get more
dates without being more attractive. Doing leetcode is _how you get a job._

Here's a formula for stable job prospects: walk into the interview, in 30
minutes solve the challenge that most candidates can't finish in an hour,
spend 15 minutes talking knowledgeably about your solution, then spend 15
minutes shooting the shit and building rapport with the interviewer. Your pass
rate will exceed 95%.

To consistently pull that off, you have to do leetcode.

~~~
mixtrola
>Your ability to solve leetcode problems fundamentally determines your job
prospects

For those companies that make you do leetcode problems.

For better or for worse, 95% of the places I apply to don't make you solve
problems about algorithms or data structures. It's mostly about concrete
knowledge in specific languages or frameworks.

~~~
badatshipping
I’m using the word leetcode loosely. The broader point is that doing well on
job interviews is how you get a job and thus a worthwhile skill to practice.
Leetcode is just what big SF tech cos ask in their interviews.

------
rossdavidh
The best way to get a job, without needing to do well at all on the interview,
is to have someone already on the inside who can say "they interview very
badly, but I've worked with them, and they are very good to work with". Doing
temp contract jobs sometimes (not always) leads to exactly this. Even if the
actual gig in question is not at such an organization, sometimes a person who
worked with you on that will later on be working at a place you want to work
at.

HOWEVER...while I sympathize with your distaste at interviewing, don't get too
attached to the idea of not having to interview in the future. The labor
market has, for almost half a century now, been moving in the direction of
more fluidity, not less. Some people find a spot that allows them to avoid
that trend, but don't count on it.

But, if that's what you're after, then doing as well as possible (including on
the "easy to work with" aspect) in the temp jobs you get now, is the best way
to compensate for being bad at interviewing.

~~~
orev
This is a great point. In all the temp jobs OP has had, how have they not
built up a good network of contacts? I suspect there is more to this situation
than just a distaste for interviewing — it sounds more like a distaste for
people.

The fact is that it’s not realistic to want to keep your head down and code.
You need to deal with the human side of things, or you’ll end up being and
feeling marginalized.

~~~
mixtrola
I'm pretty much set on wanting to apply a "set and forget" strategy to my
career. Being collaborative with others at the job really isn't an issue for
me, but I'm not into the whole thing about juggling professional
acquaintances. I prefer my career to be low-maintenance.

~~~
orev
But if you’re not getting the results you want, then you need to change your
approach. This often means realizing that you need to give more importance to
things that you currently think are not important. Making connections with
people at your temp jobs would be one of those things that, if you
prioritized, would help you get to your goal of a stable career. You can’t
keep doing the same thing and expect to get different results.

I’m not saying you need to stop coding and spend all your time shmoozing with
people, just have a conversation here and there, go out to lunch with people,
etc.

------
keerthiko
My solution to being a bad interviewer was to be a company cofounder -- an
option available to me due to the confluence of

\- having a reasonable network from college of entrepreneurial folks who
trusted in my abilities and wanted to start something new

\- confidence in working quite well with people (can be reasonably replaced
with a confidence in being driven and getting things done by yourself)

\- confidence in learning what i need to do get things done

\- low stress coefficient: i tend to work well under pressure

\- a good appetite for risk: i don't balk at the instability and existential
risks of building a company from the ground up.

Doesn't necessarily work for everyone, but I also think being a founder is not
often considered as an option when the interview/job landscape is looking
bleak (it was a last resort for me too, after struggling for too long trying
to get a cubicle somewhere).

------
mendeza
If you have trouble finding full time SWE roles after all your numerous jobs,
maybe you are lacking critical skills employees want to see, or don't have
personal projects that showcase technical depth.

Are you applying for junior dev roles? Maybe finding a career counselor of
some sort can help. Reach out to your friends and ask for their honest advice
of what they think you should do/add. Leverage your personal connections to
get your first first full time job!

Ultimately, you have to persevere and be scrappy to find your first job. IMO
the hardest part in your career is when you first enter the workforce. Always
try to stand out and market yourself on how you would be a huge asset to the
employer.

Last thought, if you are looking to join a great school/community of aspiring
junior engineers and web developers, apply to Lambda School. I recommended my
own brother and friends, and I have seen huge growth in their dev skills and
abilities. I hope this helps!

------
acconrad
Interviewing is a skill in of itself. Practice. Grind Leetcode, HackerRank,
and interviewing.io.

It's not the best answer because institutionally we are incentivizing the
wrong behavior. But unfortunately until we make that change your best bet is
to continue to practice, practice, practice until your skills at interviewing
are refined.

~~~
mixtrola
Practicing while job searching has become a distraction for me, from planning
out my career and my life and taking other actions that would bring actual
results. Continuing to practice interviewing when I make no discernible
progress would be a waste of time I would think.

The more time I spend applying to jobs and practicing, the more I see it as a
red herring- a mindless diversion. After 2 years straight of doing that stuff,
I'm clearly not cut out for most interviews. I have to seek alternatives to
financial stability.

It's better to use my time and energy finding a solution that does work for
me. It's fine, interviewing isn't for everyone. Tenacity may be a good trait
to have but it doesn't pay the bills :)

------
quickthrower2
Where are you located? Maybe open up the job search wider and be prepared to
move to a place where devs are desperately needed and your chances are better.

Also get your CV looked at by people who know what to look for. It might need
a spruce up. Make sure it sells you well.

Get a good cv, get to a good city and apply for every good job you can see.
You need a good system then of qualification, deciding which leads to
prioritise, bullshit detection, dealing with recruiters etc, so come up with
one and continually improve it. Use any waiting time to learn standard
interview answers both technical and behaviourial and coding puzzles.

In your situation you must be seen as super keen on every job regardless of
what you feel. Get offers. If they say is it ok that you work 60h a week the
answer is yes. You can reject them later but get offers. Really think of it as
a sales job to get the coding job.

~~~
mixtrola
Located in Chicago. On occasion I apply to companies in other cities, but I
have a preference to live in the Chicago area unless I can find an offer in
another major city.

~~~
quickthrower2
I am not from the US, but I imagine Chicago has more than enough opportunities
for software devs.

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drenvuk
A few blunt options:

1\. Ask your friends for referrals or to hire you.

2\. Go balls to the walls studying and cut your expenses then don't screw up.
probably not the one you want to do but crashing on a friend's couch and
studying does work.

3\. Get a government job. They take a long time but your employment is
definitely on auto after that.

~~~
noname120
2\. is a bad idea because this will remove your negotiation leverage and they
will end up low-balling you.

~~~
mixtrola
I already have poor leverage anyways, because over half of my jobs I
lose/finish before I could get another offer ready.

~~~
stephenbez
Why do you end up losing the jobs?

~~~
mixtrola
They're temp contract jobs. They "lose" themselves once the time is over.

~~~
world32
Sounds like this is your problem. The interviewing is more of a sympton rather
than a cause.

I'm not the US, but I find it hard to imagine it is much different in Chicago
to where I am in Northern England - companies are dying to find good
developers. Every company I've worked for, they always ask me "do you have any
developer friends that would work here?". So why aren't they asking you to
stay on as a perm employee once your contract is up? It sounds like you need
to work on getting better at your job and delivering value to the companies
that you work for.

If you don't make the football team - is it because you are bad at try-outs or
are you just bad at football itself? (Sorry, brutally honest.)

------
hnhg
You don't say where you are located, or why interviewing is a distraction.
Without these bits of information, it's hard to give you specific advice.

I'd say that avoiding interviewing entirely is unrealistic. You will always be
required to do an interview, even if you go through referrals.

I'd suggest reframing your CV to match the kind of job you want, and starting
from there. You'd be surprised how the same experience can be written in
vastly different ways.

From there, what helped me with interviewing is thinking of it as me trying to
help the interviewer get to a good answer, rather than me trying to impress
them. It suddenly became more natural and wasn't so challenging from then on.

~~~
mixtrola
I'm located in the Midwest, Chicago area. I find the job search grind a
distraction because I can't extract any quantifiable progress in my ability to
get offers. I've changed my resume multiple times, and got feedback from peers
from a few mock interviews.

Big takeaway from the mocks is that I come off as too junior or entry-level.
Applying to junior jobs with my 10 years experience will lead to sticker shock
for the employer so this is a tricky spot that I'm in. Even if that wasn't a
problem, they would think I'm slow as a turtle to work and learn.

A very overlooked topic is how brutal the software industry can be for a
person who has that prolonged junior phase. I fell into a 'perpetual temp
worker' career by accident, and a contractor cannot expand their role in a
company, esp. if they only work for 6-12 months at a time.

~~~
thiago_fm
You need to study more. You need time for yourself. That might sound rude, but
to be honest, that seem to be your issue. As you even mention, you want to get
a good job position. A lot of people also want to have a good position where
they can invest time on their family. It's actually the #1 adults want.

I suggest that to get out of this situation(which will possibly get worse over
time), you set aside AT LEAST 1 hour a day to dedicate yourself to study.

Also, try to find a company that does B2B, preferably not startup. They
usually involve VBA, Java and sometimes they can even have some "forward
looking" tech for you to work with. On B2B, everything is slower and sometimes
you mind find that you are actually pretty good in comparison to your peers.
So you can take care of you family.

You probably know places where you could improve to not sound Junior. A few of
them which most of the people I interview with doesn't grasp or can improve a
lot:

\- Learn some computer networking basics. Do you know where is HTTP in the
network stack? TCP/UDP?

\- Learn algorithms. Get a programming language you don't know, but would like
to work with, and there is a good B2B market. That solves the problem "BUT I
DON'T KNOW WHAT TO BUILD!11" problem, as you can just write algos and learn
data structures

\- Contribute with small and simple tasks on Github. That generally counts.

\- Work on a idea, make a low-running webapp. If you show this to people,
that'll make you stand out. Also use it as your playground, make it very well
tested on some places, so you can show your possible employers that you can
test well when you want/need, but can also be pragmatic for things you don't
mind.

Try to divide this hour into like 30min dedication to each Item you consider
important. Also, accept that not always you will solve a problem, or maybe it
could take you a few weeks to really get things going. Use the alarm clock on
your phone.

It's the same as going to the Gym.

------
danbrooks
You will get there. Keep interviewing and learn what companies look for in a
candidate. It's a bit of a numbers game to land a full time job and it can
take some perseverance.

------
bentona
> The more time I spend looking for jobs and practicing interviews, the more I
> see them as a distraction, because I don't see them paying off.

I'm wondering why this is. As a programmer, presumably you are good at
learning. Also, it's generally accepted that getting good at interviewing
provides a high return on investment. Are you confident that you've been
focused on the right aspects of interview skill improvement?

~~~
Fire-Dragon-DoL
I might be able to answer that. I have terrible memory, so it's hard to
remember in every detail, all steps for certain algorithms. My brain is great
at indexing (I remember where I can find a link to a given article explaining
that), and I'm good at offsetting my disability with bookmarks, tags and notes
on the books I read.

All this works great on the real job and sucks terribly for interviewing (and
school tests)!

------
readme
You need to build a network of people who will support you. The only way I
know to do that if you don't already have one is by doing outstanding work.
You need to squeeze some time out and do something great. It is harder to find
that time if you're taking care of a family, but a lot of people do it. Elon
Musk is a good example.

------
badpun
For reference, whiteboarding in Europe is rather uncommon and, if it is done,
it's more common for entry-level jobs. In my experience, the highest paying
jobs pretty much don't do it at all.

------
User23
If you come off in your interviews like you do in this post it’s no surprise.
All you’re doing is saying what you want and virtually nothing about what you
have to offer.

~~~
mixtrola
I never talk about what I wrote here to an interviewer. I do the opposite- I
convince myself that I don't even _need_ the job when I walk into the
interview. I tell them what I've brought to the past companies I worked for.

------
world32
> The more time I spend looking for jobs and practicing interviews

Maybe you should stop practicing interviews, and start practicing being better
at your job?

------
ori_b
Assemble a portfolio. Show people what you can do. And then network.

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seibelj
In one of the tightest markets for software devs (and labor in general) of all
time you can’t land a full time job? And you are refusing to date and get into
relationships because you can’t pass an interview?

1) Maybe software isn’t the right career for you, and 2) Don’t let being
unable to land a software development job prevent you from saving money and
getting a girlfriend / boyfriend.

There are many other careers out there.

~~~
shakkhar
I am not sure why this is downvoted - but I second this opinion.

> I want to free myself from that so that I can focus on building my own life,
> get into a relationship and starting a family.

Leetcoding is not preventing OP from doing any of that. This sounds like just
an excuse for not doing the hard work. It really sounds like OP doesn't enjoy
coding.

