Ask HN: How did you find your current job? - onuralp
======
davidscolgan
I'm a freelancer. Literally every job I've gotten has come from "luck". The
trick has been increasing my "luck surface area" by putting myself out there.

How I got each of my current clients:

Person in my college class gets a job and two years later contacts the
computer science department at my college and asks if they "know any
freelancers." I had made it known to my professors that I was going into
freelancing and they connected us. Client for 3+ years.

Joined a coworking space and chatted with a guy. Mentioned I do freelance
work. Built rapport. 3 weeks later I'm siting in the coworking space and he
comes up to me and says "I am getting a full time job and can't keep this
client. Do you want them?" Client for 3+ years.

I was a teacher's assistant at a college class about software engineering.
Made friends with a student. 3 years later his friend was graduating and
interested in freelance. The first student connected us. I offered to meet for
coffee with the younger student, told him everything I know about freelancing.
3 months later he contacts me and says "I decided not to freelance, but this
client wants a site, do you want them?" Primary client for the first half of
2018.

I discovered a podcast I enjoyed by a thought leader in the consulting space
about how to find a niche. I sent him an email saying "Hey I liked your
podcast. My niche is Django development." Later another person who does Django
work contacts this thought leader, he shows this person my website. This
person joins my mailing list. I see that person has joined and so sent him an
email saying hello what up. We connect over the fact that we both do Django. 3
months later he says "my primary client needs more help with a Django site."
This is how I got my current primary client.

This doesn't really work as a short term strategy but the quality of clients
compared to say Upwork is night and day. Provide value, make connections, get
lucky.

~~~
muzani
I don't really call it luck anymore. It's a lot easier to get clients than a
full time job. You just have to invest in leads and it pays off about 2-3
years later.

I find it a lot of fun, something like hunting or foraging. There's no
guarantee of putting food on the table, and yet you go out there and it's out
there. There's also a kind of primal thrill in it, as opposed to full time
jobs.

------
latchkey
Moved to Saigon from the Bay Area about 2 years ago. Was unemployed at the
time (I mostly do tech consulting) and sitting in the newly opened cafe in my
apartment building. A guy sits down next to me and is reading a book about
bitcoin. He just moved into the building a couple days before. We start
talking and he tells me he is mining, invites me to come help install the next
shipment arriving that weekend. I go with him to the data center located about
an hour outside Saigon, which turns out to be in a super secure Vietnamese
military telco building and install 150 new machines. Had a blast doing the
install and I got a job offer to become CTO to help run the operation. 8
months later, the whole operation moves to Canada and I'm out of a job again
(long story). Telling the story to a friend of mine, he offers me a job
working for another large crypto company that he recently joined, to do an
even larger mining operation. So here I am... working on that now.

Needless to say, I'm a huge believer in serendipity.

~~~
ubercow13
What was the visa situation wrt moving to Saigon without a job, and then
finding work in Vietnam?

~~~
latchkey
The visa stuff for US is quite easy. Just a few forms and some money.

------
Ftuuky
I graduated in anthropology. In the last year of the course was doing Erasmus
in Brno, Czech Republic with a friend and we both noticed that a forensic
software tool used by all forensic anthropologists for biological profiling
was really bad. I mean, so bad it was almost divination. Because it's
difficult to find a job in anthropology, we decided to create a startup and
develop a new better tool. So we learned R, aggregated a lot of human skeletal
data (it was so hard because there's a "GDPR for human anatomical data") and
even published papers on it. It was a success except that nobody bought it. I
mean nobody, they all used our papers and online code to do their own thing.
In retrospective we were both idiots with no business sense. So of course it
failed hard and had to find a job somewhere else. From there on it was always
on LinkedIn: I worked for an environmental consulting company until they fired
me and other colleagues because they couldn't pay us; then moved to a Japanese
zaibatsu where I lost my mind wrangling spreadsheets for the quarterly
reports. It was a lot of work and since this was a nearshoring job the pay was
very very low. So I kept my LinkedIn profile as "actively looking for
opportunities" and a recruiter for an investment bank contacted me about a
position in banking operations. I went to the interview and left in the middle
of it since that job consisted in copying and pasting stuff in Excel all day
long. A week later she called me back, apologized for wasting my time (!?) and
offered a position as project management officer for a team that implements
some machine learning stuff and bots across the whole company. No experience
in PM at all and with a basic understanding of Python and R so impostor
syndrome kicked in really hard but after 6 months here I am, doing just fine.
I want this to be my last job, I'm learning more statistics and python so that
I can make my own forecasts and trading bots.

------
avelis
Coworker approached me during lunch and pitched me the startup he was about to
co-found. He told me I am the most talented but the most undervalued engineer
there. He shows me the slide deck and says: “Help me build this. We will get
the funding. And the job is yours.” That was 4 yrs ago and I am glad I said
yes. To be honest, this was burning the candle at both ends. I slept on the
floor of the cowork space conference room to make this happen.

~~~
abcdcba
How is the company doing?

------
throwaway3314
Throwaway for obvious reasons.

I was set to go into academia. I spent my entire grad school without any tech
internships, and did research every summer. Months before my graduation, my
ex-wife wanted a divorce, and one reason (out of many) was not seeing a future
together as I will be in remote places(where most universities are), and she
want to be in a big city.

Trying to save my marriage, I declined my postdoc offers and start to look for
jobs in the industry in the big cities. It was difficult, as I haven't
programmed for years. I applied to every major tech companies and financial
companies. I asked for referrals from my friends. I got no responses from most
of the companies. The only two responded was a company I worked for before
entering grad school, and a company that was trying to double their
engineering team. It was very demoralizing.

It was surely the darkest days of my life. I questioned my self-worth. Feeling
that I am not someone to be desired both personally and professionally.

My advisor, who was really kind and understanding and I'm forever grateful to,
used his connection to get me interviews I'm sure I could not possibly gotten
if I applied directly. In fact, I can't even apply directly, because some of
the positions were not advertised. Finally, one of the places gave me an
offer, and that is what I took, and I have been working there since.

~~~
eaandkw
Being in the military I have moved a lot. Like thirteen times in twenty years.
Some of the best places I have been were places that I originally did not want
to go to. I'm happy everything worked out but it seems like a missed
opportunity for the both of you to learn and grow.

~~~
Finch2192
I want to move 13 times in 20 years. What jobs in the military let me do that?

------
remoteorbust
Easy: recruiter asked me if I wanted to work remote. I said writing go and
working remote and getting paid bay area comp sounds good.

But of course becoming the person that recruiter reached out to involved
several years of study, betting on a brand new language, taking a risk on a
startup with no money and a few other things.

~~~
mailshanx
Could you share what company is this? Are you hiring?

------
roebk
I attended a local hackathon. I spent around 3/4 hours creating a real-time
collaborative music maker (it was super basic, but pretty cool).

Unbeknownst to myself, whilst I was demoing my app my boss to be was watching
and my simple music maker and was rather impressed. 18 months later when a
suitable role opened up he reached out to me on LinkedIn and asked me in for a
chat. A month later I started.

~~~
pandler
This has happened to me before too. The owner of a company I ended up working
for found me at a hackathon. Apparently he frequents hackathons to keep tabs
on the local talent of our somewhat out-of-the-way city. (To note, he also
actively participates in those hackathons, so he’s not just some vulture
looking for prey). When I called him up a few months later to ask if he was
looking for devs, he hired me on the spot.

In his mind there was no need to interview me further, since we had already
collaborated and he had seen me work and problem solve in an environment
that’s much more natural than, say, whiteboarding in an interview.

------
vjeux
Wrote a blog post that got featured on HN. Someone from Facebook reached out
and after a series of interviews I got in.

~~~
sadamznintern
If I could pass a Facebook interview I could finally be happy. I envy you.

~~~
xaranke
As someone who works at Amazon and has been rejected by Facebook, don't hinge
your happiness on something as random as an interview decision.

There's a lot more to life, and you deserve to be happy regardless of whatever
else happens.

~~~
sadamznintern
I failed a FB loop a few weeks ago despite studying really fucking hard and
doing pretty damn well on the questions I got.

I’m afraid I’ll be stuck at Amazon, which nobody is actually impressed by, if
I’m lucky and not PIPed out.

~~~
dang
You've posted about this numerous times before. The first, extensive
discussion may have had some intellectual curiosity, but at this point it's
becoming repetitive and tedious. Please don't keep bringing it up.

Edit: actually, I've banned this account because repeating this turns out to
be all it's been doing. Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed here, and when
you repeat something as much as this one has, it's indistinguishable from
trolling (which is why some users have been wondering if it's a troll
account). Please don't use HN this way again.

~~~
therealdrag0
Thank you.

------
rootusrootus
Friend of mine moved on to the company I'm at now (he has since left) and when
they were looking for a senior developer he gave them my contact info. I'm in
the market right now and the most likely opportunity thus far is through
another buddy of mine.

I've never gone through the front door at any company, for that matter, in the
25 years I've been working. The first job I ever got was because the teacher
of a college class I was taking owned a small ISP and needed a sysadmin, and
he liked how I was doing in his class. Everything since then has been through
someone I know personally.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I am almost the exact opposite to you - so my question is how much time do you
spend keeping in touch with people you used to work with or met - either in
deliberate "networking" or simply because you are a sociable person who you
know, has friends :-)

~~~
rootusrootus
About once every second or third week I go out to 'beer:30' with a small
(5-10) group of people that I've worked with in the past, so I don't spend too
much time networking. Aside from that I'm too busy with my family.

Probably the most successful strategy I've employed in my career is to
remember that even though I'm reasonably good at what I do, how I get along
with coworkers and management is more important. A lot more important, in
fact. Turns out there are plenty of people that are competent _enough_ , so
when someone is looking for a new team member, they gravitate towards people
that can play nice with others.

------
flashgordon
Last startup I joined died. A tip - when a founder tells you they raised
money, make sure they have actually "received" the money and that the fund
they raised from hasn't gone insolvent :)

Luckily an ex colleague referred me and it has been an amazing journey at
LinkedIn. BTW We are hiring!

~~~
gradyj
Hey, I'm actually looking for a new grad/entry level role currently. Do you
know if you guys are looking for those types of roles at the moment?

~~~
flashgordon
Hey mate. Depends on the track. For apps this is usually harder but for non
apps tracks (eg mobile, infra, tools) the chances are higher.

~~~
gradyj
Ah I gotcha. My email is on my profile, I'd love to chat quickly if you have
some time this week.

------
dejv
I had a product management job and was thinking about getting back to
programming fulltime. One day I went on job site and there was ad that reads
"Looking for programmer" no body, nothing. I replied just for fun, went for
interview and took it as a freelance gig which let me quit my previous job,
work on my own various projects and travel the world for couple of years.

It was ERP programming for construction company that bought assets of software
company which went out of business. 11 years later, I am still working with
this customer for couple of hours each month and I can still lean on it and
make it pays all of the bills for my 4 person familly. It basically works as a
basic income for me.

~~~
itwy
"couple of hours each month" ... "make it pays all of the bills for my 4
person familly". So you are charging $250/hr and living in Zimbabwe?

~~~
jypepin
if he's been consulting with the same company for 11 years, he must have a
very deep knowledge of how everything works and be very productive. I wouldn't
be surprised that he just has a retainer kind of deal with this company for
maintenance, which could be a few 000s a month and for him only take a couple
hours, but would be a lot of trouble for the client to find someone else.

~~~
dejv
Thats exactly the case

------
lioeters
About five years ago, I released a tiny open-source project (my first one) of
about 10 lines. I kept building on it, for personal use and for the fun of it.
Eventually it got to be quite full-featured and attracted a sizeable user
base.

Since then, all my client work comes from businesses that use it. So, by sheer
luck I'd found some kind of product-market fit, with no marketing. It's an on-
going story though, I'd like to develop it more as a business in itself, with
other related products.

\---

This is a fascinating thread, by the way. It's been a learning experience just
to read everyone's stories.

~~~
jypepin
mind sharing the project? :)

~~~
lioeters
Too shy to go into specifics, but it's a DSL for non-technical people to
integrate dynamic data/queries into HTML.

------
joeax
A recruiter who I worked with in the past called me. This is why I tell
recruiters who will listen to maintain relationships and not approach each
match-hire as a one-and-done proposition. I can't count the times that a
recruiter ghosts me after I turn them down.

~~~
duxup
As someone looking for work, the super enthusiastic recruiter who gets all
excited, sometimes I even meet them at their office and......ghosted..... is a
super frustrating thing. (I keep wondering if someone committed a terrible
crime in my name and nobody is telling me.)

There was some article floating around LinkedIn about how frustrating it is
for recruiters when someone ghosts them... that had to be some sort of troll
right?

~~~
joeax
It works both ways I suppose. Regardless it's a bit unprofessional from either
side.

~~~
duxup
Indeed.

Heck I have respect for places that send out just an AUTOMATED "Hey man we're
not picking you but best of luck and keep an eye out for other jobs on our
site." email at this point.

It's that bad...

------
buzer
inurl:careers Helsinki devops

Also tried couple of the variations (inurl:jobs, Espoo, sre, Linux). This
helped to find companies which didn't post their jobs on the usual job boards
(mostly startups at the time).

~~~
zeusk
also site:greenhouse.io et al

------
jypepin
I went to DevBootcamp in Q4 2012. We had a job fair at the end of the program
and got a job at Exec (YC 2012) from it.

A year later Exec got acquired and I started looking for another job. My
roommate had failed an interview with Uber a few months earlier and gave me
the recruiter's email. I sent an email, interviewed and got the job.

I've just started my own design/engineering studio with my fiancée - most of
our clients have been our network so far. Either people we've directly worked
with, or a referral from them.

So I think for me, it has always been about the network. That should be a
pretty good news for anyone, because my network has never been very large
(except maybe now that I cumulate experience both in YC companies and Uber).

~~~
Improvotter
What do you say to the recruiter when you got his email from someone else?

~~~
jypepin
I said something in the lines of "Hi, <roommate name> gave me your email" then
2 lines about what I'm looking for and 2 lines about my previous/relevant
experience.

Recruiters are always very eager to talk to any lead, so nothing crazy has to
get into this email except "I'm an engineer and I want to talk to you"

------
smilesnd
Got a recruiter she was the worse (dropped her after she committed some
criminal acts and repeatedly lied to her clients) would have me in a senior
position if she could when I had zero experience. Took first job that made me
a offer. Left when my contract was up, but meet a handful of good guys. Every
job after that has been refers from guys I meet contracting at places, but I
never found a place worth staying at. I have learn to separate the
bullshitters and people with genuine interest in tech. Group messages, joke
emails, epic lunches, and understanding someones true ability has gotten me
more work then any recruiting agency has ever been able to.

------
JustMatthew
For _my day job_ , I took a bit of a windy road before finding it. First I
decided to study in Korea the summer after my first year of university, and
ended up never leaving. I studied Korean in a university language center for a
year before transferring to a Korean university where I happened upon a summer
internship at my eventual future employer (Engineering & Construction) on the
exclusive student job/intern message board. After finishing that internship I
received an offer that I accepted during my last semester before graduation.
And that was that.

For _my nights and weekends gig_ at Cent
([https://beta.cent.co](https://beta.cent.co)) I had to make it. I first
focused on becoming a super-user back in October of 2017. After that, I
submitted a few un-returned emails to the founders and wrote over 50 blog
posts on the project before finally receiving a follow up email asking if I
wanted to chat with the two person founding team. We had an amazing first call
which led to a second one where I presented a plan of what I could do for the
project in terms of their social media and communications strategies. After
that the team asked for my ideal conditions before making an offer to join the
team which I happily accepted.

~~~
justwalt
How many hours do you work in an average week?

~~~
JustMatthew
Tbh I'm never not working these days, but to get specific I'm in the office
(or traveling) for my day job Monday~Fridat from about 7~7. My work with Cent
is done in my free waking hours 7 days a week, but it's kind of unfair to call
that work since it doesn't feel like it.

This may seem like a lot (at least it kind of felt like a lot as I was writing
it), but I am well rested, excercise every evening with my wife, read a lot,
meet friends, blog daily, feel like I can do more and am just having a great
time being alive.

------
austincheney
I kept getting calls from recruiters. After 3 recruiters called me about the
same position at this super large company I gave the interview a shot.

As a senior JavaScript developer with open source projects and military
leadership experience I don't really have to look for jobs. I put my resume up
on places like Monster or another job site. It takes about 2 two weeks for the
resume to be populated to various other places and the flood of calls start
coming in. The recruiters seem to indicate the placement bonus for somebody
with my experience is huge so they are willing to move mountains at lightning
speed for me, but really I just think they are working fast to prevent my
access to other recruiters.

The total turn around time from resume update to sitting in the new office
employed is about 4-5 weeks including interviews, 2 week notice, criminal
background check and so forth. The good thing about that timeline is that you
can escape employment, really quickly, that isn't going well with minimal
financial risk. The bad thing is that if you move too fast you aren't shopping
around and can miss out on something that better fits your interests.

In my case I needed to move as fast as possible. I believed I was facing a
discrimination issue at the prior employer, even though the company was a
great place to work and really took all appropriate steps to mitigate
discrimination, and I thought my job was in peril. Instead of challenging the
issue and waiting for an investigation I started looking for another job. The
group that hired me is bigger than Google and has the best time off and
benefits I have ever seen. They got back to me the same day I interviewed and
ended up offering me a really high rate of compensation. These were also
desirable perks and they were moving fast to bring me in.

I know the grass is always greener on the other side. One thing to always
consider is the bigger the company the longer the time frame between project
start and project publication. Larger organizations have more regulation to
comply with, established services and architecture to wrestle with, and many
more constituents to please. If you want greater benefits and financial
security be prepared to work with a greater diversity of experience levels at
a much slower average pace. If you want to move fast and live dangerously you
generally have to look for employment with a less established organization.

~~~
lylecubed
> military leadership experience

Do you have a security clearance?

~~~
austincheney
The only time this has come up for me is when I was consultant from a design
agency to a major airline. The airline required I achieve a FAA security
clearance before I could enter their office. Normally the process takes about
2 weeks to complete, but for me it was completed in little more than an hour.

------
NateEag
I was headhunted away from a long-running contract by a recruiter I'd been in
touch with on and off for years. She pitched me the position, I thought
"...that does sound like me," I interviewed, and got an offer.

My two favorite gigs so far I got that way (current one and a stint at
MapQuest back when it was in Lancaster, PA).

Having a reasonably active GitHub profile helped, too, and has gotten me cold-
contacts from people recruiting for Apple and Facebook (didn't pursue either
of those because I value living near friends and family more than working for
a BigCo [and have never liked Facebook since the first time I heard about
it]).

I guess my recommendations would be to network and to build up a portfolio of
work anyone can see. Networking gets your name in front of a lot more people
than you realize, and if you have a portfolio it makes more of an impression
it goes a long way towards making people want to contact you.

I'd also add to take the time to be polite even to recruiters who haven't done
their research. Talking nicely to them as long as they're not just spamming
form letters has been a policy of mine for years just on the grounds that
they're people too and should be treated kindly.

That policy directly got me the referral to MapQuest - when I explained what
kind of work I actually was interested in, the recruiter who'd ignored my
skillset passed me along to a contact of hers who was looking for devs like
me.

The resulting gig, while maybe not amazing by Silicon Valley standards,
remains one of the best ones I've had here in central PA.

(Of course, then upper management cut the entire Lancaster office, the
majority of their technical staff, but that's another story...)

------
systematical
A job site, I applied. It was posted by a third-party recruiter. Pretty much
how I've found all my jobs. I'm not very good at networking or the good-ol boy
network. I find them through job boards.

~~~
anoncoward111
This has been my experience too, though I apply for lower tier jobs so I don't
interact with 3rd parties, rather just in house.

It takes maybe 20 bad interviews to get one good offer in my experience.

~~~
systematical
I'm pretty selectively with the interviews I go on. My success rate for
interviews is like 50% cause of all the vetting I do before hand. I've been on
3 interviews in the last 7 years and have had 2 jobs over the period.

------
drakonka
I moved from Australia to Sweden a bit under six years ago because I wanted to
work in games again and Australia didn't have much of a game dev industry at
the time. From there it was pretty normal/boring: applied for a job through
the company's website listings, got a call about a week later to set up an
interview, came in for the interview, royally messed up surprise test during
the interview. The interview went ok otherwise and I asked to take the test
sheets home with me to review. After getting home I realized how simple this
thing is and I was just too nervous to see it in the moment. Wrote another
email to the in-house recruiter with my solution to the test, requesting that
they pass it on to the interviewers. Thankfully they did and I got an offer
about a week later. Overall from moving to applying to signing a contract took
a bit under two months.

------
redleggedfrog
My last four jobs where meeting someone who was an owner of a software company
and the topic of what I did for a living came up. Further conversation led to
informal interviews. Later I was asked if I wanted to join the company.

So I guess the lesson is, you're always in a job interview, even when you
don't know it.

------
pen2l
Friend referred me to his boss.

I know for sure I couldn't have gotten in if it was through normal
interviewing channels, I always bomb interview questions in the most
phenomenal ways.

------
AceJohnny2
I had gotten (expectedly) laid off. Following a friend's recommendation (and
pressure), I asked an acquaintance for a referral at his (large, famous)
company that I was wary of.

At that point, I had about 10yrs experience in my career, embedded software.

I still had to target specific postings from their job board for my
acquaintance's referral. I found some that matched what I was looking for, got
to through the interview process for a couple postings. I was impressed by and
hit it off well with the manager of one team, and got hired. That was a few
years ago.

I'm really glad I was pressured to apply at this company that I would have
otherwise avoided, this is my favorite job in my career so far.

------
a-saleh
Hm, I guess I should mention last two jobs, because I am just two months in
with my current job.

Previous: Started as an intern during first year of my 2-year masters. Went to
their recruiter during their open-house. Told me there would be an entrance
exam on some date, if I am interested. I was, did well enough on the exam,
then started in the QA part of the organization, later upgraded to full time
epmloyment, and spent 6 years in the company :)

Current: a friend of mine was complainig over beer that they are looking for
more senior QA people. I joked that I might actually send them my CV. In the
end I did, and they gave a me good enough offer. So I switched companies.

------
chuhnk
I started an open source project, quit my job and coded alone in my apartment
until it became useful enough to be sponsored by a large enterprise.

[https://micro.mu](https://micro.mu)

------
donkeyd
Was approached by a recruiter for an interesting position. They sent me the
job description and I had a sort of pre-selection interview. Then another
recruiter was supposed to call me for another interview, but after making two
or three appointments, they never called.

After doing a Google search for the job description, I found the actual
company that the recruiter contacted me about. I waited a couple of weeks and
then directly approached the owner of the company. I got an invitation for the
next week, had two interviews on the same evening and got an offer the next
day.

------
devbot9
I got my current job after getting accepted to Indeed Prime, where my current
employer reached out to me for an interview.

I uploaded my resume, and after getting in (every potential candidate has to
be accepted) I got free advice over the phone from one of their career coaches
on what resume and profile changes to make in order to attract more employers.
Soon after that they started reaching out to me for interviews. There is a
culture in the service of being respectful of your time as a candidate, so if
the recruiter knows they don't offer every single thing you specified wanting
in your profile they'll get that out of the way in the first phone call. They
almost always discussed salary and remote benefits on the first call so I knew
if their offer was in line with my expectations.

I signed up in February and was contacted by 9 employers, interviewed with 7,
and accepted an offer with 1 in March.

Full Disclaimer: if you want to check out the service via my referral link,
I'd get a commission the first time an employer reaches out to you, and if you
accept a job through the service. Also, if you accept an offer through Prime,
you get to pick a free gift from Indeed. (I chose a PS4, which I'll start
using when The Last of Us 2 comes out).

Ref link:
[https://prime.indeed.com/refer/c-Wrs9hjR](https://prime.indeed.com/refer/c-Wrs9hjR)

Non Ref Link: [https://www.indeed.com/prime](https://www.indeed.com/prime)

------
ctrl_freak
I work at a large, well-known Silicon Valley company. I interned at the
company while I was in college, but decided to work elsewhere after I
graduated. After a few years, one of their recruiters reached out to me via
email, went through the normal interview process, and ended up with the job.

Past jobs/internships have been a mixture of applying directly on college job
boards, recruiters reaching out through email/LinkedIn, and Hired.

~~~
avh02
First mention I see of hired. Used it while I was looking for jobs in London -
definitely something I can recommend to get your foot in the door, especially
for people who need visa sponsorship (at least that was my scenario)

~~~
ctrl_freak
Yeah, it was decent. My experience was that it provided a lot of leads in a
short amount of time. In a matter of a week, my plate was completely full,
doing phone screens, take-home problems, and on-sites. Got several offers from
some pretty cool startups at the end of it, and it was nice to have salary
expectations up front.

I would say that I completely underestimated the amount of time required for
it. It skews more towards startups, and it seems like take-home problems have
become the norm in their application processes now. If you're going to take
this route, I would recommend taking 2 weeks PTO from your day job to dedicate
to this.

For my last job change, I took a much more passive approach. Over a period of
a couple of months, I engaged with a couple of recruiters who reached out to
me, only interviewing at 2 companies, and then took this job. Far more
relaxing and less pressure. The only downside is that I felt like I had less
negotiating power at the end.

------
xivzgrev
Nothing exciting here. I found the job online and submitted my application.
One interesting bit though is that I initially tried to intro my way in -
there was someone at the company whom I worked with several years ago. I
reached out to ask for an intro. Did not receive a response even with follow
up.

Generally speaking intros are more important as the company gets bigger. More
noise for recruiters to shift through from official channels.

------
zakalwe2000
My new job was a recruiter cold message on LinkedIn. This was pretty novel as
all my previous jobs (~17 years worth) were referrals of some sort.

~~~
koala_man
Mine's from a cold email I got while I was already applying.

I guess we're the reason why they keep doing this. Sorry everyone!

------
quickthrower2
Stackoverflow Careers.

Previous Jobs:

5 Job ad by recruitment agency

4 Contact from previous job

3 Job ad by recruitment agency

2 Job ad by recruitment agency

1 Job ad by recruitment agency

------
knodi123
I was unemployed, because I got fired (first time ever, by an asshole who
never liked me). I had taken a month or so to try my hand at writing a novel,
but eventually a recruiter cold-called me and offered me an interview, and
COBRA was so expensive I said "sure, go ahead and schedule it."

Current job is a good fit, I enjoy it and have been here for two years.

------
expertentipp
Flooded the market with over 100 job applications. Talked with dozens of
people - from Tech Leads on another continent to clueless HR interns. Build up
a really good perspective of the IT industry in the area. Dismissed many
dodgy, disrespectful, weird companies, afterwards discovered that one has very
bad Google reviews - customers call them scammers (my gut feeling was to
refuse working on their take home assignment with a copyright clause). Met
many respectful, caring people building legit businesses. The endeavour took 8
months (with one transitional acceptable job) and resulted with one legit job
offer, in a niche but interesting industry, paid what I believe is the market
rate. Realized that the job postings online basically evolved into Tinder -
showing off, claiming things, lying, liking-dismissing for the most trivial
reason, but few actual "transactions" happening. I don't want to go through
this again.

~~~
muzani
Did it result in a good job? It sounds like you're searching in the bad
places, where a lot of reputable employers and job searchers avoid.

Something like Stack Overflow jobs works a little better because people are
more willing to flag deceptive job ads.

------
paul7986
Recruiters mostly from LinkedIn.... last five or more jobs.

I do a lot of contract work and in the last few years got into
designing/coding govt sites and technology.

Overall I started this career by doing my own startups where I had a lot of
fun chasing the dream. During that time I also taught myself how to code &
design.

------
jon-wood
I was working for a company where I felt I had stagnated somewhat, about the
same time my current employer posted to a local Ruby mailing list saying they
were doing things with home automation technology and needed a developer to
join them. It just so happens I love home automation, so I applied, got on
well with the team, and ended up joining them.

The job wasn't quite what I'd expected when I accepted it - they merged with
an insurance startup between me accepting and starting - but I've been having
great fun since. These days I get paid to play with new bits of connected
hardware, and mentor the other developers on my team. When I first started I
got to write the first iteration of the firmware for our hub, and do a ton of
work on our core infrastructure.

------
linsomniac
Timing, luck, and connections. I decided it was time to look for a new job,
and that evening I went to Craigslist, just to see what jobs were listed
there. I had never looked at them before, and didn't have much hope, but one
of the ads was for exactly what I wanted, working at a company that I built
part of the initial proof of concept for a decade previous, and had done a
small consulting job 5 years earlier. I reached out to the CTO via e-mail, he
asked if he could take me out to lunch the next day, and 2 days later I was in
the office setting up my credentials and fixing some problems in their
infrastructure so the CTO could go on vacation the next day. A few weeks later
we negotiated the deal and I started my new job.

------
catears
During my university years my boss (current, not at the time) asked if he
could pitch an idea for those in class who wanted to listen instead of going
on 15 min break, I think at this point he was going to pitch to investors and
wanted the practice. Two or so years later I reached out to him, asking if
anything had come of it (I mean he did quit a stable job at Uni to do this,
might as well check up on him) and if they were looking for a summer intern
and/or part-timer. Luckily everything was going well (except that startups are
never smooth sailing) and I got offered an internship. A year later and I am
set to work there full time at the start of September.

The lesson I took away from it all was to make effort to stay in touch with
people.

------
octorian
One night in a bout of frustration with my then-current job, I started
searching message boards for names of products/companies in my field of side-
project interest (mobile development).

I then Emailed several of these places my resume, and within a half-hour I
heard back from one of them. I guess you could say the rest is history.

(At the same time, I also ended up in the application process with Amazon.
However, I probably flunked their tech phone screen on account of not being
able to cough up minesweeper-relates algorithms off the top of my head.)

One thing I really liked about the company that responded to me was that they
actually treated me as an individual, with existing projects worthy of
interview discussion, rather than just another faceless resume in a pile.

------
BrandoElFollito
I was presenting at a conference, the CIO came to me after the presentation
and we chatted about her company. She ended up offering a great position.

Funny that I have never heard of this huge company (and uber cool), some of
the great ones are just not visible to outsiders.

10 years later I still love it.

~~~
dev1n
That’s so neat. What was the conference / company name?

------
donatj
Every job I’ve had except the very first has been following a friend/coworker
to the new place.

------
joejerryronnie
I literally saw a super cool company sign on the side of 101 and thought to
myself, "hmmm, I wonder what they do?" Two months later when I was browsing
the job boards I saw a perfect fit opening for "that company with the sign".

I looked into the company further at that point and found out their customers
were evangelical fanatics about the product. I ended up getting the job and
three years later, it's by far the best job I've ever had - the team, daily
responsibilities, financials, etc. So when you're stuck in that long slog of a
commute on 101, take the time to peruse the corporate creativity lining the
freeway. It may just lead to your next opportunity.

~~~
ir193
Wow, so silicon valley

------
lewi
Became interested in a startup's technology and joined their developer
community. I build some small examples and offered my help here and there.

After helping out (paid) they kept asking for more assistance. I asked to
formalise my relationship with them and got the job.

------
vuldin
I was working at a large tech company with awesome coworkers and cool
technology, but I wasn't applying my experience/time/skill towards something I
cared about. But I likely would have stayed if it weren't for my SO getting an
opportunity for a position in an awesome new city/country.

I have been interested in education, healthcare, gamification, and video games
for a while. When my SO's opportunity came up, I found that one of the
companies I follow and that is focused on most of those interests of mine
(gamification of education, educational video games) was located in the same
city.

I applied, went through the interview process completely remotely, and was
eventually offered a job.

------
isostatic
First job out of uni - a company run training scheme, ran for nearly 3 years.
Fairly low pay, that came with a job

At the end of that, after a couple of months on second line I was then asked
by a dev department to take over from someone who was leaving.

Stayed there for 10 years and then had another head of department come up to
Manchester and beg me to work for her, with a hefty pay rise and official home
working.

I did apply for one job (internally)after a bad manager took over, which I got
- it wa supporting a system that I'd written, but they couldn't pay enough. On
the whole I'm terrible at interviews though (the training course was mostly
test based), head hunting is the only way I've managed to progress.

------
muzani
I'm a freelancer, so I usually have several jobs. The last 3 jobs:

1\. A VC who I pitched to didn't invest in my startup, but he was impressed
enough by my technical ability that he took me on for some work. After being
conscientious in series of jobs over a year, I usually get first pick in his
projects.

2\. A guy whose project I failed at recommended me to a friend. Two other
people also mentioned me. He was a speaker at a talk that I liked and so I
added him on Facebook years ago, which broke the ice.

3\. Some of my students were doing a real world project for educational
purposes. They dropped out and I took on the project, which was easy and paid
very well for the difficulty level.

------
bballer
I was a freelancer doing contract work for various companies (while also
running a few side projects) and a guy I did work for recommended me. Guy who
I was recommended to messaged me on LinkedIn and we arranged a lunch meeting
to get to know each other. Soon after I started doing contracting work for
them. After about a month of the contracting gig he asked what it would take
to bring me on full time and we came to some agreements. Now two years later
I'm a partner at the company and we're growing like crazy. It's cool how all
the little decisions and events in your life can come together to get you
where you want to be.

------
sanderjd
For years (and due to a comment I read here changing my ways), I have
responded to all the cold emails and linkedin messages I get from recruiters
with a short polite response thanking them for their consideration and saying
I will reach out if I become interested in new opportunities. So this time I
actually did that last part: I reached out to a recruiter who had sent me a
linkedin message a year or so earlier. He didn't actually work for the company
any longer (if I'm remembering correctly), but knew the person who had taken
his role. He put me in touch with her and she got me started on the interview
process.

------
davidbiehl
I saw an “adopt a highway” sign that the company sponsored while visiting the
city where they happened to be headquartered. I looked online to see if they
had any positions available. They did, so I applied and the rest is history.

------
markussss
I visited the library, and saw an advert in the local newspaper about a
programming job in a neighboring city (~3 hour drive). The day I saw the ad
was the deadline for sending an application, so I hurried home and threw
together an application, along with my CV. After just a few days, I was asked
to come in for an interview where I got a small task that I then went home and
worked on the task for a day or two before sending everything back to the
company. They loved both talking to me and what I had done on the task and I
was offered a job just a few days later.

------
pknerd
I actually applied for an RoR job but my employer learnt from my blog and site
(given in profile) that I can do data automation and scraping too so he hired
me for that. Now I am working remotely from Pakistan.

------
PascLeRasc
I've been out of undergrad for about 8 months now and I'm working for a
university doing research programming, what I've known I've wanted to do for
years. It took six months of searching university job postings and applying to
hundreds of positions before I landed mine, and I had to take an awful
electrical contracting job for 1.5 months just to have something to do.
Searching for jobs was really hard, so much harder than working, IMO. It feels
like you'll never get a job until you finally do, but you never know when that
will be.

------
scrappyjoe
I was a financial analyst with no interest in computers or programming.

Three years ago I bought a raspberry pi to set up a Plex HTPC. That led to
bash scripts to automate little bits of my work. Fell head over heels into
Linux and bash, then started learning R to do what Excel couldn’t do. Then I
quit and started a Data Science masters. Now I’m employed full time as a data
scientist but spend most of my time helping design a modern infrastructure at
my very traditional employer. Raspberry Pi to rack servers running
containerized workloads in 3 years - best time of my life.

~~~
scrappyjoe
As for actually getting a job, I’ve generally always applied for job openings
via normal channels, but the clincher has always been that I have some small
connection to the company - a friend of a friend worked there, or something. I
find there needs to be a ‘tribal link’, however weak. Social capital is real.

------
sonabinu
Recruiter reaching out on LinkedIn. I had a few recruiters approach after I
set the open to opportunities flag on in LinkedIn. I did onsites with three
companies and my current employer seemed the best fit.

------
itissid
If you are in the US you may want to go through Vettery/Hired especially if
you are a fresher or you don't have contacts to get your foot in the door. If
you do have some contacts working at companies, ask then to tell you how it is
working there and make a judgement for yourself if you like working there or
not.

Recruiters are a double edged sword, they can help you get your foot in the
door but if you do use them as I did a few years ago, make sure you do your
homework on the company and find out everything before signing the offer
letter.

------
ygra
Job posting on Stack Overflow, and a nice combination of closer to home,
things I know, and things I love to work on. Had a nice two-hour chat with my
now-boss and got the contract a day later.

------
ImaCake
I'm in bio research and not programming. Moral of the story is to cold-email
people who are friends of friends. I have never got a job through my
CV/resume.

Current job I got via word of mouth and an email. My boss used professors he
trusted and knew me to check I was okay.

Previous job I got from a friend mentioning I should ask them. I emailed them
and they gave me a job.

Back before University I got two jobs in retail and fast food through my mum
who worked as a bank teller and thus could ask if they were looking for work.

~~~
samyung
Are you the same ImaCake who once used to play Soldat, Minecraft also, cats?

------
xaranke
My current job at Amazon: Took two online coding tests, didn't talk to a
single person and got an offer a couple days after the second test. Efficient.

~~~
aphextron
Sounds fantastic. What role?

~~~
sadamznintern
Probably SDE. It's a similar process for everyone.

There's a lot of handwringing about it because it basically lets Googlers and
Facebookers shit on our employee quality now (and you _know_ they think we're
inferior).

~~~
xaranke
I couldn't care less about what Google or Facebook employees think; at the end
of the day I'm just thinking of whether I did the best I could, there's a
certain peace in it.

------
avip
I didn’t. I’m unemployed and enjoying every minute of it.

~~~
bionsystem
Where do you get, you know, the money from ?

------
kabacha
Recruiter talked me into doing web scraping for their new data division over
linkedin.

I've just got laid off from a very big company where I did web-crawling and
general data management/delivery and I wanted out from this particular niche,
but got a decent remote offer with laid back work hours. At first I thought
I'll regroup my mind for a more serious job but I kinda fancy low work load
and a small team.

------
thebiglebrewski
I cold emailed the company I work for now, saying their product (not a piece
of software, hardware, etc, a real-world thing) was cool and asking if they
needed tech help. At the time, they had none. Now we're starting to have
scaling issues and it's getting exciting!

BONUS The job before this: started working for a founder, showed him I was a
really hard worker and knew my stuff, then was asked to Co-found.

------
fkmd900
I applied for a thousand jobs on Indeed and went to about 40 interviews until
I got one where I clicked with the interviewer. I passed the first round with
the Director of Operations who subsequently ended up getting fired a week
before I started. My second interview I ended up with the Project Manager who
was also an alumni from the same university as I was.

~~~
jaboutboul
I feel like all those job sites are a waste. You apply and apply and apply and
hear back from pretty much 1-2% and if those even less get into anything
beyond a phone screen.

------
TheCapeGreek
There's a slack instance for local South African developers called ZATech.
Posted that I was looking for a job in the appropriate channels and was
approached by a few people and took one of them up on their offer. It's quite
the interesting gathering of developers since the other local popular tech
forums don't have as many developers gathered.

------
elvecinodeabajo
Bosch demanded IT employees from a part time job agency where I was
registered. Quite simple.

Be careful when searching for a job, you may find one...

~~~
mxuribe
Part-time job agency? Would you be willing to share this agency's name?

------
noddingham
I went to a conference put on by a vendor of products I supported at my then
current employer. I had met people over the years at this conference and was
at the dinner table with some folks and someone said "hey, aren't you looking
for new opportunities?" and introduced me to the person who would become my
new boss.

------
legohead
Strangely. I was looking, applying and interviewing everywhere (even HN's
Who's Hiring).. And then I overheard some office talk about a coworker who met
with his friends that worked at XYZ company, who is not exactly a competitor
but in the same space. So I looked up the company, applied, and got a job
there.

------
forg0t_username
5 months from graduating I started looking for job offers. I wanted to get
into ASICs D&V so I looked up the jobs from all the well-known companies, and
applied to the one that was in Europe and looked the coolest. Got the job.

Realised two months after that that my prof could have got me an introduction
there, but oh well!

------
thorgutierrez
Don't follow luck or what ends up coming on your path.

Ask yourself what is the most important problem you should be solving, and
find companies that do that. Then prepare the hell out to be relevant in that
field (follow MOOCs, read books, prepare for interviews, ...). Take a year if
needed. And finally, apply.

~~~
muzani
I find it's a mix of both. Most people don't have the luxury to learn for a
year. They usually have learn on a job. My first two years of working was
doing underpaid grunt work, but it was in the direction I wanted to go. Even
though it paid poorly, it got me there.

Another risk with learning on your own is that it's still mostly unguided.
Because you're not being paid, you can often go down an idealistic path that
doesn't work in the real world.

Also even if you do have a year, be careful. It could take a few months to get
a job, as the interviewing can be tough.

------
mindcrime
A recruiter who had been stalking me for about 5 years (in a good, friendly
way) contacted me, and the position was just interesting enough that, combined
with rumblings about possible pending layoffs at the then-current gig, I
decided to pursue it. $NEWCO made me an offer and the rest is history.

------
vidanay
Hated my current job and while I was on vacation in China, I sent a couple of
inquiring emails to some contacts I had. I had a phone interview from a hotel
lobby in Hong Kong at 2am (job is in Illinois). By the time I got home, I had
a face-to-face interview and had a new job in a week.

------
robjan
Emailed a company that I am a customer of saying "are you hiring?"; was
interviewed the next day

------
fsloth
I researched interesting companies in my area that were hiring and would fit
my current planned career trajectory. I went to a few interviews, other went
well until I interviewed the hiring manager, the second went much better and
after 7 years I'm still in the same company.

------
pimmen
I won a hackathon with a couple of friends at university, the company
sponsoring the hackathon let us work for them while writing the masters thesis
(carefully splitting us up, to see if one of us was just coasting on the
others' work) and we all got an offer 6 months later.

------
dbattaglia
Referral from an ex-coworker. I've gotten several jobs over the years this
way. If you can pull it off it really makes the whole process so much nicer,
knowing you have someone on the inside vouching for you.

 _$job - 1_ I found right here on "Who's Hiring?" :)

------
vfulco2
So much varies by industry, specialization, time of year, time in economic
cycle. My clients typically find 40% by aggressive networking (in-person,
LinkedIn, Meetups, conferences), 30% by who they currently know in industry,
the balance cold approaches and other.

------
namenotrequired
I needed a ride back home from a birthday party and so the birthday guy
introduced me to a friend of his who lived in the same direction. In his car
we naturally made small talk like “what do you do” and two or three weeks
later I was working for him.

------
analog31
I had moved to a new town, and got an adjunct teaching job as a stop gap. My
office mate was a former employee of a company. One day he called the founder
of that company on the phone, introduced me, and handed me the receiver. That
was 20 years ago.

------
qetuo13579
In my previous job work was drying up so my boss sent me out contracting at
another company. Six months later the company I was contracting at made me an
offer I couldn’t refuse. I’ve been there for 4 years now. Previous job was
nearly 8 years.

------
sreejithr
Referral. A good friend of mine dropped my resume for a different position a
year ago. In retrospect, I wasn't a perfect fit for that gig. But 6 months
ago, I got a call from the same company when a matching profile came up. I got
in.

------
AndrewHayes
Last 3 jobs = LinkedIn recruiters

------
zerr
I apply and do interviews without any references. I guess I could escape this
if I was interested in local jobs, but I work remotelly and every next
job/company/client is thousands of miles/km away from the previous one.

------
bonniemuffin
Power of the second-degree network: a friend of a friend referred me to my
current job.

~~~
DoreenMichele
That's been studied. The phrase "the strength of the weak tie" is one I have
heard in relation to this phenomenon. People you don't know that well tend to
be better leads than your closest friends.

------
cusack
Twitter DM in response to an engineering manager that tweeted ≈'we're
hiring!'. Talking to the eng manager directly, rather than going through a
typical recruiting channel, made the whole process a lot smoother I think

------
ignaloidas
I found a random post searching for developers in local Facebook developers
group. I responded, went for interview and got the job. It was quite a godsend
for a 16 year old, as most companies would consider this risky.

------
heliostatic
Twitter. I hearted a listing from my (now) boss because I liked the company
and thought the listing looked great. Wasn't really looking for a new job, but
things worked out that way, and it has been fantastic.

------
lostcolony
I've had jobs from -

An internship (itself gotten from cold applying, and serendipity meaning I had
HCI/HCD experience, when that was a big internal initiative at the company).

A recruiter reaching out.

A former boss poaching me.

A cold application sent in for an open req.

------
mrleinad
Had interviewed with a recruiter I met via LinkedIn a year ago, and rejected
an offer. One year later I felt like it was the right moment to switch jobs
and called him again. He got me the new job I have now.

------
hypertexthero
Saw a note pinned to a cork board while walking in a university campus and
wrote an introductory email with a link to my online portfolio and my resume
attached. Followed up two or three times.

------
eloisant
When I felt like it was time for a change, I went to my linkedin inbox and
replied to some of the recruiters who contacted me for the past 6 months,
asking if the position was still open.

------
flockonus
2 last jobs were through networking in tech meetups. (Vancouver, BC)

------
martin_
I was a customer that was given the opportunity to work on improving the
developer experience, and fixing the issues I was facing for a platform I was
passionate about (Twilio)

------
bradleyjg
Got a contract job with a unicorn through one of the giant domestic body
shops. Converted to permanent status after 3-4 months.

I don’t think I would have been hired through the front door.

~~~
lylecubed
> Converted to permanent status after 3-4 months.

How did that work? Most of the body shops I've worked with have clauses in
their contracts specifically forbidding their clients from poaching their
contractors for a period of time after termination (1-2 years).

~~~
bradleyjg
I believe there was a buy-out provision but I’m not privy to the details. It
was undoubtedly an expensive way to hire.

------
Sevii
Walking around the career fair at my university and talking to recruiters.
Three years later it’s still going well and I even got some of my friends from
school jobs here.

------
ladzoppelin
LinkedIn with proper keywords so people can find you. Recruiters will probably
start sending you messages really quick. I have no Facebook account but do
have references.

------
cbanek
Who's hiring right here on HN (on the first of the month).

~~~
lukker
Same for me! I also got the feeling that I was viewed differently (in a
positive way) from the candidates who came through recruiters. Most probably
because they've had previous successes with hires through HN.

------
sulam
Salesforce: recruiter

Twitter: referral

Current: referral

I also had to do a typical interview at all of them.

------
throwaway080383
Submitted my resume to a FANG online form a few months out of grad school.
Recruiter contacted me, I did the screens and interviews, and got an offer.

------
tonyedgecombe
First job was through an advert in a local paper, after that every job and
eventually contract came through contacts I made at previous employers.

------
DEADBEEFC0FFEE
After 18 months of applying, getting several 2nd and 3rd interviews, I got a
random message from a CIO I interviewed with 6 years ago.

------
tjalfi
A contact forwarded my resume to an IT manager at my employer.

I interviewed and was accepted for a temporary position.

They hired me full time after a few years.

------
znpy
Found the job listing on Monster, prepared CV and cover letter as required,
applied.

Went to the interview, got an offer, took the job.

------
bradlys
Hired.com. Alternate things that lead to offers: applying wildly on LinkedIn
and company websites.

------
hocuspocus
First job: company came on campus.

Since then: cold applications, yes they do work sometimes.

------
bluedino
CEO of a previous employer was working there and brought me in to fix shit

------
HHalvi
I was in the final year of college and having tried a couple of startups I
wanted to get a remote job. The naive thought was "gee, someone is gonna give
me a product role remotely" and let me see how many folks want to hire me.
Applied at every known startup in SV world and remotejob sites and gave up on
the hope for getting a product role but remote working still was a first love
of sorts. I started appliying for customer support positions at various places
again only to never hear back from them. Posted once on Who wants to be hired
on HN as well and that did not go anywhere. And out of the blue a friend of
mine whom I had sort of worked with in the past told me about a Product role
in Bangalore. I had given up hope on Product Roles, Remote jobs since I was
sitting on 70+ rejection mails. I decided to take it and that was nearly 3
months back. TL:DR ? a bit of network and luck(ing out and in ?)

------
cvittal
Contact from previous job. Before that it was a referral by a relative.

------
rsrx
Freelancing agencies. More specifically, Toptal, Gigster and Pilot.co.

------
jonathankoren
The last two jobs I've had I got from recruiters.

Before that LinkedIn.

------
bandris
Referral by former colleague.

------
ryan-allen
Word of mouth.

------
intense_feel
I was coding in Python almost 24/7 when studying at University and loved
teaching so I started offering private python courses for students that had
problems with it (it was mandatory also for some non-IT studies) in exchange
for beer/dinner/cash etc... One of them was my close friend that I knew for a
very long time, he got very excited to the point he applied to the python-dev
job at a major international corporation. During the interview, he was very
shy and the employer didn't have confidence that his python skills are
sufficient for the position he applied to so he gave him a coding homework
(simple stuff, convert some XML output to a nice HTML page). He forwarded it
to me asking for help if I could do this because he really wanted to get the
job. I didn't have the heart to tell him his skills are not as high as they
should be so I wrote that homework for him. Also as a kind of payback as he
actually helped me before to get my job I was working at that time. In the
homework, I put there a lot of comments with in-depth explanation of how each
piece worked and some of them contained rude words like "this sh __does not
handle utf-8 so we need to monkey patch it here and do some black magic below
" with instruction that he should read the comments to understand it and
delete them before submitting it for next interview round. Of course, he did
not. So he went to the next round in the interview with the homework, opened
it up. Everything working perfectly, even the comments with rude words made a
good laugh that he hasn't removed. He made a so good impression with that that
the guy immediately put him an offer for employment discarding all previous
candidates as he thought he is just a classic IT guy that is very bad when it
comes to social interaction but when closed in a room, is coding like a beast.
When the contract was presented to him, he made a long awkward pause and
disclosed that I made the homework and it was not his own work. The guy then
made him another offer to give him my contact details in exchange for dinner &
beer for both of us if I show up at the interview. I wasn't really looking for
a job change but I thought its cool since I was a student eating cheap instant
noodles to save money everywhere I could so a nice dinner (normal food, yay!)
sounded good for just showing up at the interview. I was immediately presented
with an offer that I took even if it was not my intention as I just had a few
nasty arguments at the current job. The position was for a fixed time, just
for one small project but I started poking around with their security systems
and built a complete system for remote forensic acquisition while my manager
was looking to free up money to offer me a full-time position. (successfully).

This was how I got my previous job, which I already left to fund a startup for
providing reconnaissance/OSINT as a service but that's another even longer
story.

------
sadamznintern
It's a big company so I applied online. Come to think of it all the companies
I've accepted were the same way, though I've gotten interviews by directly
reaching out to recruiters.

------
madeuptempacct
Jumped ship to a consulting company that my boss wanted to hire.

------
maccio92
Triplebyte.com

~~~
krisroadruck
I wish there was something like Triplebyte but for remote roles or at least
not limited to the 2 most expensive to live in cities in the entire united
states =/

