
Visualizing a Job Search Or: How to Find a Job as a Software Engineer - Harj
http://kellysutton.com/2016/10/20/visualizing-a-job-search-or-how-to-find-a-job-as-a-software-engineer.html
======
pjlegato
Tip to shiny new CEOs: Ghosting a job candidate is not only grossly
unprofessional, it's extremely rude at a personal level.

The candidate went to all the trouble of engaging with you; you owe them (at
the very least) a timely and professional rejection email if you don't want to
proceed.

Yes, a rejection letter, because that's what you're doing -- rejecting them.
Ghosting is still a rejection; it's just a rude rejection. There is no way to
candy coat that, and you shouldn't try. Grow a spine, and write that rejection
letter in the kindest way you can.

~~~
rhizome
LinkedIn and Apple both ghosted me, it's not just new CEOs.

~~~
pjlegato
Maybe I should've written, "shiny new managers".

~~~
kafkaesq
Ah, but it's the CEO (or at least someone at the director of engineering
level) who sets the tone, and sets priorities and guidelines for their
underlings to follow.

So when you get ghosted, it's not the engineers who fizz-buzzed you who "did"
it... and it's certainly not the office manager (and/or "talent specialist")
who's doing it. As with everything else a company does, "message"-wise -- it's
coming from the top.

------
Harj
This is the first time I've seen a data visualization of the job search
process for a software engineer and it's amazing to see the variability in
responsiveness between companies.

This is actually the most surprising thing I've seen since we started
Triplebyte. Originally I'd assumed that every company complaining about how
difficult it is to hire engineers, would be moving every candidate through
their process as quickly as possible. In practice we learnt to stop working
with companies who were too dysfunctional to get back to candidates promptly -
even if it's just to let them know they needed a few more days to make a
decision.

We'll also often see dysfunctional companies switch to the extreme opposite
end of the responsiveness spectrum once they've made an offer and start
pushing candidates to make a decision immediately. Better to have been
responsiveness throughout the process. I suspect companies still underestimate
how much that makes a candidate more positively inclined towards them once
they're at the decision making stage.

~~~
DanFeldman
What are reasonable time frames for a company then? What should we aim for
with:

1) Phone Screens

2) Interview responses (moving to next interview?)

3) Final decisions

4) Negotiation/confirmations of receiving a response to an offer

~~~
Harj
They key thing is to minimize the amount of time a candidate is waiting back
to hear from you on the next step. We see a strong correlation between the
companies who have the highest closing rates on candidates (70% or more) and
how responsive they are in every interaction. The best companies will respond
to a candidate on next steps within 24 hours at every step of the process.

~~~
jdmichal
I suspect this is highly related to the ghosting mentioned in the article and
by pjlegato in a top-level comment [0]. This is so much the norm at this
point, that no response is typically seen as an implicit rejection and the
candidate mentally moves on.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12764521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12764521)

~~~
countingteeth
Agreed; I've futilely tried to mentor a recent grad who is applying to jobs he
has no qualification for and then sitting around waiting for them to follow
up.

------
dhd415
Having gone through this process recently, there's a lot of truth in this
post. I experienced more companies "ghosting" during the process than slow
turnaround times, but it is remarkable how short-sighted companies are during
the recruiting phase. It's as if common courtesy has gone completely out the
window in tech recruiting. Basic things like not missing phone interviews at
times that have been previously scheduled or informing candidates politely
that you've decided to move forward with other candidates can't even be taken
for granted anymore. Candidates' initial experience with a company is
typically through the recruiting organization and negative impressions during
the recruiting phase are often applied to the company as a whole. I could see
it being a competitive advantage to be known for having a good recruiting
process even if it is very selective. For example, I have a very positive
impression of DigitalOcean despite not receiving an offer because of the
professional and courteous way they handled their interview process.

~~~
ryandrake
The "ghosting" is just something you have to get used to as a candidate. Most
companies do it. It's likely there are far, far more candidates than jobs, and
companies simply can't get back to each and every person. Also, a lot of
times, the company can't make a clear yes/no decision and will stall and delay
on a borderline candidate in order to try to luck into a better one.

~~~
busterarm
Something that I'm seeing more and more these days are companies that are
actually not trying to fill the positions they are posting.

I've seen companies fully-contained within 4-person WeWork spaces showing
pictures of their non-existant 20+ person team and listing as many or more
open positions that don't exist. I've seen companies that list positions that
aren't actively looking to hire but want to keep the funnel open in case that
'special snowflake' comes along.

I don't know if it's 'wishful thinking' or something else, but it's fairly
poisonous.

~~~
wayn3
If you aren't "actively looking" but would bite if "that special snowflake"
came in, aren't you actively hiring?

Maybe you're more like passively hiring, but I'd still consider them hiring.

~~~
busterarm
I didn't want to be obviously derisive in my post. The two companies in
question were obviously stroking their own egos.

They didn't have an actual need for someone and it was all about how many/what
type of degrees someone had and from where before they'd even consider looking
at a candidate. In one of the cases, when the company did actually hire a
person, that person had no work to do -- it was purely a means to justify
their ask to investors for more money. We hire the best people!

~~~
wayn3
Does that make you angry? They'll soon fail anyway.

Some people don't internalize that this is a sellers market. There are orders
of magnitude more open jobs out there than there are qualified people to fill
them. You shouldn't concern yourself with a bunch of toxic idiots trying to
milk VC for a while.

~~~
ryandrake
> Some people don't internalize that this is a sellers market. There are
> orders of magnitude more open jobs out there than there are qualified people
> to fill them.

The "shortage of engineers" meme that just won't die. If this were actually
true, one or more of the following would be happening:

1\. Qualified people would not be having difficulty finding work

2\. Salaries would be increasing and low-paying open jobs would decrease in
response to short supply until the market went into equilibrium

~~~
wayn3
The market is in equilibrium.

Physics and Math graduate unemployment rates are virtually zero, and
practically all of us work in software.

That a lot of CS graduates actually can't do the job may be a pity, but its
not our problem. Qualified people don't have difficulty finding work (by
definition - if they're qualified, they will get hired).

Shortage of engineers is a meme?

"If you gave us another 100k great engineers we would only hire about 15k of
those" \- said none of the big 4 ever. They are perpetually hiring and they
will absorb any capable engineer who comes their way. You know that. Don't
pretend there's a shortage of jobs for qualified software engineers. That's
just silly.

~~~
ryandrake
> Physics and Math graduate unemployment rates are virtually zero, and
> practically all of us work in software.

How many of them are overqualified for what they're doing and would jump if
the market were paying more or if there were better opportunities? You can't
say much about whether it's an employer's or employee's market merely by
citing unemployment %.

> "If you gave us another 100k great engineers we would only hire about 15k of
> those" \- said none of the big 4 ever. They are perpetually hiring and they
> will absorb any capable engineer who comes their way. You know that. Don't
> pretend there's a shortage of jobs for qualified software engineers. That's
> just silly.

Any discussion about a shortage or surplus of jobs/talent is meaningless
without specifying compensation. Many companies would gladly take 100K great
engineers at a salary of $20K/year. What if the going rate were $1M/year?
Would there still be a shortage of engineers? When the bid and ask are far
apart, both sides will complain about how hard it is to make a deal.

~~~
wayn3
> How many of them are overqualified for what they're doing and would jump if
> the market were paying more or if there were better opportunities? You can't
> say much about whether it's an employer's or employee's market merely by
> citing unemployment %.

A lot of them are overqualified. But they are handsomely compensated. They
could do less boring work, but there's less of a market for it.

> Any discussion about a shortage or surplus of jobs/talent is meaningless
> without specifying compensation. Many companies would gladly take 100K great
> engineers at a salary of $20K/year. What if the going rate were $1M/year?
> Would there still be a shortage of engineers? When the bid and ask are far
> apart, both sides will complain about how hard it is to make a deal.

I made that statement under the assumption of current market rates. Whatever
google/facebook/uber/apple/microsoft are paying. Quit pretending that they
wouldn't hire more engineers if there was supply. They clearly are willing to.
Sure there's some hyperbole to it. But the entire valley + amazon/microsoft
could easily absorb another 100k engineers without that event drawing down
salaries significantly.

------
pmiller2
35 days, 23 companies, 4 offers. Is this typical?

This, for me, was the key section of the article:

> I had the luxury of having a few weeks free due to gaps in my consulting
> schedule. This time block is something that is a rare case in a job search.
> Performing such an exhaustive search must be _nearly impossible if you also
> have a full-time job._

(Emphasis added.)

The amount of time off required to do this is insane. Is this how most people
do it?

Also, I agree that speed of communication is key. I want to be on site within
2-3 weeks if everything is going well. Take much longer than that, and I'll
probably either have a job by the time you get back to me, or be too busy
talking to people who actually want to talk to me.

~~~
vdnkh
As a younger engineer (about 2 years of experience), trying to break from my
post-college job into a "real" software job in NYC, it took me almost a year.
You're not worth a lot until you're proven with a big name on the resume.

~~~
pmiller2
"proven" and "big name on the resume" are two entirely different things. I
wish more hiring entities knew this.

------
znpy
Two things are worse than ghosting:

1\. A company ghosts and the comes back months after (when you already took
another offer) and says: "wassup, you still down for that thing?"

2\. A company ghosts and comes back a month and a half later saying "oh btw we
hired a guy". Yeah thanks I figured it out.

~~~
tjr
3\. A company agrees to hire you and gives you a start date. The Friday before
you're supposed to start, you send a quick email to confirm which of their
several buildings you should show up at on Monday morning, and they reply,
"Oops, we actually reorganized staff, and we no longer need you."

~~~
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u
Assuming US, is this legal, even for an at-will state?

Whether it's worth suing over, is a different matter...

~~~
user5994461
It's legal in all Europe I know about.

There is a probation period, during which you can be fired in 24h without
reason.

Depending on the jurisdiction, The law might force to wait for the 1st day of
employment to cancel the contract.

------
um304
Tried to sign up at TripleByte, got this:

"Unfortunately we're only able to work with people with legal status
permitting employment in the US. We hope in the future to help set up visa
sponsorships."

I appreciate that they cleared expectations upfront. I tried to sign up on
Hired.com once, after going through effort of filling up their lengthy
registration forms, which took me several hours, they conveniently told me
that their services are not available in my country.

~~~
Harj
We wish we could work with you :(

In the meantime, we're working on making companies more aware of the H1-B
transfer options ([http://blog.triplebyte.com/gaming-the-h-1b-system-for-
good](http://blog.triplebyte.com/gaming-the-h-1b-system-for-good)) and the
recent OPT visa STEM extenstion ([https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-
states/students-and-exc...](https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-
states/students-and-exchange-visitors/students-and-employment/stem-opt)).

~~~
mattferderer
I would love to hear a timeline on remote opportunities if you have one.

~~~
wayn3
Triplebyte only works with YC companies and YC tells its startups in pretty
clear terms that remote employees don't work for early stage startups so go
figure.

~~~
triplebit
> Unfortunately we’re only working with programmers who can be based in the SF
> Bay Area.

Yeah, there's that too. :-(

~~~
donretag
Seriously? There is no mention of either only YC companies or the Bay Area in
their FAQ or on their website. Tacky.

------
guessmyname
> My job search lasted a total of 35 days [...]

> I communicated with 23 different companies [...]

> to receive 4 offers to make a single choice

> I was rejected 9 times [...]

I liked the article but with today's hiring procedures I can tell you that
these numbers are baby steps. I have spent so much time during the last two
months doing technical and non-technical interviews that if I were to write an
article like that it would take me days to complete it. To be fair, it gets
harder when you are a foreigner trying to apply for a position in a company
who wants your skills but that expects you to be 2x smarter to justify the
immigration process.

I visit /r/cscareerquestions from time to time and it is sad to read the
stories of recent graduates struggling to find their first job or even an
internship. If that happens to American citizen with an university degree and
fresh knowledge about algorithms and data structures, what can we _(non-
Americans with rusty algorithmic skills)_ expect? I would be happy to work
remotely if it wasn't because many banks limit the transactions that come from
foreign companies or simply don't let you create an account because you are
from a _risky_ country.

~~~
cyorir
I'm American, I've been to a decent US university (Northwestern), and trying
to get my first job has been an awful experience. I hear "there is so much
demand for CS right now," but it honestly seems like employers only want
people with professional experience instead of entry-level candidates like me.

------
donretag
Is there more to the Google doc or has it been edited?

Never heard of Triplebyte, so I looked into them. According to their candidate
FAQ:

"We save you time. ... Most candidates save hours that otherwise would be
spent on phone screens. We turn an O(n) process into an O(1) process."

The phone screen is where I can screen the companies, so this system will not
work in my case. I reject more companies before getting to any actual
interviewing when it is clear our shared goals are not being met. Most
companies just want a warm body, whereas I am very specific in what I want.

~~~
Harj
We save you the time of repeated technical phone screens across companies.
Companies will do a pitch call with our candidates as the first step, where
they pitch themselves to you and after that you decide if you'd like to move
forward with them.

~~~
donretag
Perhaps the pitch call is done differently via Triplebyte, but for the most
part, the initial non-interviewing phone call is with someone in HR or with
little technical knowledge. Most questions are answered with "oh, let me find
out and get back to you". I want the phone screen.

------
coldcode
A related problem also hard to solve, how to find a job as a software engineer
for a pleasant highly functional sane company. Let me know if there is a
solution.

~~~
skookum
Keep in touch with your pleasant highly functional sane ex-coworkers and use
your network to vet companies/orgs/teams.

~~~
mooreds
No easy answers, I agree. Jobs are the opposite of a commodity(as are people)
and so the solution to finding the right match will use technology, but can't
be replaced by technology.

------
sambrand
I find it interesting that the author doesn't mention anything about the
product as priority during his job search. No mention of tech stack, product-
market-fit, growth potential, or being convinced that a product is filling a
genuine need. These are the things that I would prioritize when considering a
job search. The author mentions as a priority responsiveness of the recruiter.
Also:

\- How nice are the employees? \- What’s the vibe in the office? Noisy? Quiet?
\- Do employees look happy? \- How’s the food? \- and so on and so on…

Is this typical?

~~~
wayn3
The author was a consultant before.

Its usually our job to deal with the circumstances and to actively change
them. We are not "good employees". We call bullshit and we get to call
bullshit.

We are not hired to help our bosses achieve things, we are hired to save their
asses. We are hired because someone goofed up. We are hired because something
went wrong and its our job to patch it up.

We come in with the expectation of getting things back on track. We are meant
to blend in with the "regular employees" but we never will, because we are
free agents. We can walk away from this job and we WILL walk away if what had
been promised does not happen. We will walk away unscathed because we have
other gigs in the pipeline anyway.

We do not conform. We come in with a plan, which we communicate in pretty
clear terms - with the expectation that the person who hires us will, to some
extent, play by our rules. Because that's what they brought us in for.

That's the mindset. In some way, we are mercenaries. What remains is whether
the people and amenities are nice.

At my current gig, I'm fixing telecommunications software - highly concurrent
stuff. Etching out another 20% of performance is actually important here.
Today I've had an email about working for someone who wants to set up a new
crypto currency and from someone who needs to port their badly engineered
python code to awesome pretty shiny new Elixir code. They all know my rate and
its certainly not cheap, but I'm going to reject most of them anyway. The
average gig is 9 months but there won't be a week during which I don't have
some kind of request in my inbox. And its all done remote. Most of my clients
haven't even seen my face.

Whether they've got product market fit is simply irrelevant. I pick the jobs
that are intellectually challenging, because that's what I want to work on.
Their business logic is irrelevant to me. Their stack is irrelevant to me. If
their stack sucks, I'll tell them to switch technologies or I won't be
available anyway.

Sometimes I entertain the idea of working for some startup. Getting involved.
But the reality is: 40 hour salary with a 60 hour expectation - no interesting
work (we need to get this frontend thing fixed so heres your react native good
luck not dying of boredom) - cramped office space; and I don't mean "crappy"
office space, I mean cramped. Where you can't have a thought without someone
being an idiot right next to you for no particular reason, etc. It just
doesn't make any sense to be an employee in 2016.

~~~
haldean
This is the path I've just started to take; I'm currently on my first 6mo
contract and it's great so far. This post really captures all of my reasons
for contracting beautifully, thank you!

A question, if you don't mind my asking: I'm a little hesitant to start
filling the pipeline before close to the end of my current gig. Do you find
people are planning months out, or do you have to wait until a few weeks
before you're free to start engaging with potential new clients?

~~~
wayn3
If you know for sure when your gig ends, you take every "meeting" (emails,
calls, however you acquire "leads"), discuss what they're looking for and let
them know when you'll be available.

Right now. Just be up front. You're no longer an employee, you are running a
business. You no longer have bosses, you have customers. Let them know your
terms.

Since this is your first one, you should be aware that the companies you work
with will want to play this gambit with you where they make it seem like they
want to extend your contract and then never actually do it right up until the
point where you depend on it. And then they try to gouge you. You need to have
options and they need to know that if they want to continue working with you,
they have to pay market rate - and market rate is going up the longer they
wait.

You engage with clients all the time. Doesn't matter whether you can'T sell
any time right now. You are a business. Engage with your customers.

~~~
haldean
Thanks for the advice, and thanks again for that great post. I'll get on it.

------
low_key
After reading the article, I think it would be appropriate to mark it as
"sponsored".

~~~
kellysutton
Author here.

Nope.

I just genuinely enjoyed my experience with Triplebyte and Gusto enough to
write about it.

------
FT_intern
>They only source under-represented candidates via outbound recruiting
efforts.

Is this not a violation of the equal opportunity act?

~~~
wayn3
Some people are more equal than others. Its just flipped directions. Deal with
it. Be above this equality nonsense. People want to hire you or they do not.
Nothing you can do about it.

~~~
ChemicalWarfare
+1 on the approach - I've been in situations where I wasted my time when later
it became clear they were looking for an "under-represented" candidate.

This is very visible in large companies where sometimes trying to move within
the company you get blocked by the invisible HR quotas. Everyone knows who
applied where and what kind of skills they have so it's very hard to hide, but
still they won't admit this straight up.

That said though - the very openness with which this institutionalized
discrimination is taking place is more than a little annoying. Imagine if they
went the other way around :)

------
jacalata
Interesting to see that they had one offer that they sat on for 30+ days -
seems like a long time for the company to wait?

~~~
busterarm
That was my immediate takeaway as well. What company was okay with this?

~~~
ryandrake
I remember a company contacting me about 2 months after the phone screen
asking me to come in for a first round of on-site interviews. I had already
accepted a different job and moved across the country to start with them by
that point.

~~~
busterarm
Don't you hate that? That happens at least twice in every job search phase I
make.

------
lifeisstillgood
This is close to what Inwant to build for my own personal CRM - something that
just says "you last contacted person X 22 days ago".

Somehow I can then overlay tagging for projects but it seems doable

~~~
kellysutton
Author here.

I actually built exactly this during some downtime, and you can sign up:
[https://personal.network](https://personal.network)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Interesting - I am not signing up with Google but it looks similar to my
thinking - grab gmail, LinkedIn etc and store centrally.

I am planning on using the infrastructure for this as the base example for a
book - so I am afraid this is going to become a duplicate project - but I hope
it will be fun.

Just need to get a few weeks free ...

------
31reasons
I wish there was a One Day hiring process. From initial phone screen to offer
all in one day. Wondering if interviews taking so many weeks is just a
logistics failure.

~~~
dudul
On the other hand, it means that, as a candidate, you need a full day off each
time you start talking to a company. I'm happy to do a few phone calls here
and there before taking half a day off to go on site.

------
LargeCompanies
I assume this post is geared towards all those just starting their career?

Once you have a few years of software dev experience or even less jobs just
come to you (I love recruiters .. use them to get the best deal).

If your smart with each new job you can give yourself a nice/big raise. Like
20 to 40k more with each new job especially govt. contracting gigs and at the
big silly valley tech companies too.

------
cheriot
With the similarities between job searches and dating, I wonder if a Tinder
for Jobs can work. By lowering the barrier to entry it could get more of the
passive not-really-looking-but-curious workers into the mix.

~~~
haldean
That's kind of what Angel List is. I found my current contract through them
and they were fantastic.

------
welder
Wish the author tried job search platforms, since I'm curious how they compare
to old fashioned recruiting. Job platforms are those where the candidate is
the customer.

------
pmiller2
I wonder how much of the numbers reflect that the author seems to be a man
with a typically female name (Kelly)?

